The Fallacy of Social Justice in Teacher Education and the Urgency for Afrocentric Epistemology and Praxis

• In Event: 16.010 - Stop Killing Us! The Praxis of Morally Engaged Research Advancing Equal Educational Opportunity and Human Freedom

Abstract

“Embodying disposability has serious psychic, social, and health consequences.”
Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro, (1933)

Ample empirical evidence suggests that educational attainment is a predictor of long-term health. Although drivers such as improved health literacy, higher income, improved social standing and healthier social networks are suggested in the scholarship, the causal pathway that connects education and health has not been established. (Dudovitz, Nelson, Coker, Biley, Li, Wu, and Chung (2016) argue that “schools are critical public institutions” (p. 6) that have the power to impact a child’s long-term health trajectory. As such, it is imperative to confront critical institutions that are enacting cultural dispossession through educational inequities. Contemporary schools function to support the “ongoing project of colonialism and imperialism” (Patel, 2015, p. 14) that subjugates and harms youth of color by extending social inequities resulting in academic, psychological and economic consequence (Fine & Ruglis, 2009). Using Critical Race Theory and Whiteness studies, this theoretical and reflective paper examines how schools are structured in a post-colonial society to produce disparities in health and education outcomes for students of color. Additionally, a review of literature in teacher education revealed shortcomings of social justice teacher education programs to effectively explicate the intersections of race, class, and gender among pre-service teachers. This paper concludes with a discussion on how infusing Afrocentric epistemology in teacher education can harness the power of all learners—teachers, students, parents and the community—hence enabling teachers to center education for liberation and equity (King & Swartz, 2016).

References

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Author

• Adrian Neely, Georgia State University