Asset Praxis: (Re)Create and (Re)Center Lived and Educational Transitions

• In Event: Thinking and Feeling With Justice: Destabilizing Voice and Practice in Transition

Abstract

The objective of this self-study is to give voice to my positionality in regards to both the lived and educational transitions I experienced while moving from vocational education as an entrepreneur of a community-based organization, to and through postsecondary education as a Professional Administrator and Adjunct Professor who recently earned her Ph.D., in Urban Education (Mitchell, Reilly-Scanlon, & Weber, 2005). In so doing, I (re)create and (re)center my humanity within research and the continuum of who I am (Dillard, 2006; Givens, 1999) as shaped by my vocational and post-secondary transitions and educational experiences and life circumstances (Seidman, 2013). To illustrate, Asset pedagogies (Durhamn et al., 2015; King & Swartz, 2016; Paris & Alim; 2014; Rose & Meyer, 2002; Waitoller & Thorius, 2016) center those closest to the phenomenon as knowledge bearers able to critically interrogate and decenter master narratives that misconstrue, misrepresent, misappropriate, and erase the voices and stories of those on the margins (XXX & Thorius, 2013; XXX, 2019; Crenshaw, 1993; XXX, Kahn & XXX, 2018). This context leads me to ask whose narrative matters in transition and post-secondary education, and how can voice(s) that embody the segregated perspectives of Blackness and dis/abilities matter in decentering Eurocentric ideologies that maintain the continual and interlocking systems of oppression in education (Annamma, Ferri, Connor, 2016; Bell, 2011; Durhamn et al., 2015)? In regards to my praxis, I am a Black woman with a dis/ability (BWD) spiritually striving to transform academic life. As such, I fill the role of “a spiritual being engaged in an earthly experience” (Dillard, 2006, p, 87). My conceptual framework of humans first connects to my spirit voice in research (Dillard, 2006), and intersects with the tenet voice in Disability Studies in Education (DSE). Further, explicit to AERA’s 2020 call, my voice makes clear the usefulness for engaging the power and possibilities for public good as a researcher in connection with stakeholders on and off campus to collaborate in engaging and meaningful ways. This, as well as the spiritual aspects of my voice is significant, unique, and essential to illuminate eliding perspectives of BWD transitioning from secondary or post-high school to postsecondary education (XXX, 2019).

Author

• Mercedes Adell Cannon, Indiana University - Indianapolis