We're More Than What "They" Say We Are: Identity-Making in the Figured World of the Culturally Relevant Classroom

• In Event: 54.059 - Moving From Knowledge to Action Through Humanizing Literacy Curricula

Abstract

Objectives
Within a context where Black and Brown youth are told daily that their lives do not matter physically, emotionally, spiritually, or intellectually, the extent to which school curricula reifies or disrupts the dehumanization of these youth is of utmost importance. While many policy and research conversations have increasingly focused on improving academic and life outcomes of Black and Brown male youth specifically, many of the programs and interventions implemented are technocratic and do not acknowledge the humanity of Black and Brown youth, but rather frames them and their communities as problems (Dumas, 2016). Building upon Popkewitz’ (1997) assertion that “curriculum is a disciplining technology that directs how the individual is to act, feel, talk and ‘see’ the world and ‘self’” (p. 132), and Taliaferro-Baszile’s (2009) notion of the “racial self as a curricular construction” (p. 485), this qualitative case study examines the figured world (Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998/2003) of the culturally relevant classroom as a curricular space of resistance for Black male youth.

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
This paper is grounded in notions of identities-in-practice within the figured world (Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998/2003) and the notion of identity resources (Cote & Levine, 2002; Nasir & Cooks, 2009) so that I may identify the artifacts (e.g. discourses and curricular materials) that mediated Black male students’ identity making.

Modes of inquiry and Data Sources
The data are taken from a larger case study that was conducted during the 2012-2013 academic school year at a transfer high school, (ACHS) in the Northeastern U.S. The focal teacher, Marcus, is a Black male ten-year veteran teacher, who was selected utilizing a community nomination process (Ladson-Billings, 1994) intended to identify exceptional teachers of African American males. The data for this paper were generated from field notes of fifteen classroom observations in Marcus’ Slavery in America history elective class, three 60-minute semi-structured interviews with Marcus, a focus group with four of the Black male students in his class, and informal conversations with Marcus. Data analysis was an inductive process utilizing open coding and Nasir and Cooks’ (2009) notion of identity resources to code and index data in Atlas.ti. Data were then re-read to identify emergent themes (Creswell, 2007) across the categories.

Results
Preliminary findings reveal that Marcus’ pedagogy and curricula positioned students in ways that enabled them to develop complementary cultural and academic identities. By selecting texts that positioned students as strong, resilient, and as emerging activists, the identities taken up differed significantly from the ones that are usually available to Black male youth in schools (Ferguson, 2000). Curricula also mediated students’ abilities to think critically about the continued oppression of peoples of African descent and begin to develop solutions.

Scholarly significance
The findings for this study extend the ways in which we conceptualize educating Black male youth by forwarding a humanizing and ecological approach to curriculum making.

Author

• Keisha McIntosh Allen, University of Maryland - Baltimore County