Enactments of Humanizing Pedagogies and Racial Literacy in Social Studies Classrooms

• In Event: Equity Across Multiple Disciplines and Contents

Abstract

Through the qualitative methodology of portraiture (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997), this study aimed to document and analyze the complex relationships among four social studies teachers and the curriculum and pedagogy they enacted around issues of race and racism. Utilizing a combined framework of humanizing pedagogies (Salazar, 2013; Freire, 1979; Bartolome, 1994; Camangian, 2015) and racial literacy (Guinier, 2004; Twine, 2010; Stevenson, 2014), I analyze the practices and relevant lived experiences of four social studies teachers who intentionally center issues of race and racism in their curriculum and developed four comparative and complex narratives that seek to expand understandings about the nuanced contours of teaching and learning about race in social studies classrooms.

Author

• Christina "V" Villarreal, Teachers College, Columbia University