Waking Up Woke: Exploring Black Female Youths' Critical Consciousness and Sociopolitical Development

• In Event: Critical Examination of Race, Ethnicity, Class, and Gender in Education: Black Girls

Abstract

Sociopolitical development (SPD) is vital in empowering youth from traditionally marginalized communities to challenge social injustices and inequities. Considering the importance of SPD, this case study explores the SPD of Black female preservice teachers and their Black female high school mentees in a two-year tutoring and mentoring program. Our study captures the raced pedagogical experiences that advanced participants’ co-constructed critical consciousness. As such, we describe student exemplars of what it means to be woke, by employing critical race feminism and other woke pedagogies, through an analysis of interviews, journal reflections, and video data. Findings indicate that Black female youth identified various levels of social inequity within their social and educational spaces as a result of their interactions in the program.

Authors

• Abiola Farinde-Wu, University of Massachusetts - Boston

• Jemimah L Young, Texas A&M University