Who's Lives Matter? A Reflection on the Practices, Politics, and Competing Interests of Project-Based Learning Curriculum

• In Event: Black to the Future:  Afro-Futuristic Approaches to Teacher Education for Students in the Urban South

Abstract

Educators, politicians and community members alike are attempting to reshape the educational landscape into one that meets the needs of underserved students. An oft touted solution advanced by neoliberals is “school choice” which is currently being implemented by increasing competition in the educational marketplace through the creation of charter schools (Buras 2010). Tempted by neoliberal rhetoric disavowing underfunded, underachieving public schools and attracted further by alternative curricula, such as that offered through the Project Based Learning (PBL) delivery system framed within a STEAM models, parents in one large southeastern school have invested in a charter school which uses these methods.

To support the mission of ensuring culturally relevant instructional methods are introduced into the curriculum, a leadership team was formed by the board and administration of Simon Charter Senior Academy. Simon, a secondary extension of an already (12 years) established primary and middle school, located in a large metropolitan city, Terminus, in the southeastern region of the United States opened its doors in 2013 with six (6) founding staff members and 100 predominately Black (98%) students.  

This paper is designed to examine my experience as a member of the leadership team imbued with the task of developing several interdisciplinary model project units. One project in particular, called Who’s Lives Matter?, originally introduced by a sixth grade Social Studies teacher, also a member of the team, was later expanded into a project to be developed by myself and my co-teacher for our tenth grade World Studies course (a combination of World Literature and World History).

Using a Womanist Performance Pedagogical framework (Ali 2012), this evocative autoethnography serves as a reflection on the seemingly competing interests of teacher members and the school’s board of directors and administration in implementing the stated goals of constructing an authentic social justice curriculum. Adams, Jones and Ellis (2013) suggest "autoethnography is a research method that uses a researcher's personal experience to describe and critique cultural beliefs, practices, and experiences. Acknowledges and values a researcher's relationships with others” (pp. 5). As a beneficial tool to deny subjectivity, autoethnography is useful to clarify the competing values, practices and underlying theories governing the school and the ways in which those values, practices and theories conflict with or are compatible with my own.

This work can serve as model for examining the convergence of arts, activism and scholarship in the development of interdisciplinary PBL curriculum and the implications of such for teacher practice.

Author

• Khalilah Ali, Clayton State University