Academic Writing and Action: Making Learning Outcomes Socially Just

• In Event: Cultivating the Radical Imagination: Praxis and Possibilities for Social Justice Education

Abstract

In a previous era, the thrust of public interest was convened around bringing access and equity in education to oppressed and marginalized groups that were characterized by race and gender, particularly. Today, the effects of these identity movements on educational practices can be seen through the inclusion of content by and about people of color in public school curricula. Social justice education, however, requires that classrooms and schools evolve beyond content alterations to include reflection and critique of the intersectionalities and complex relationships that are inherent within identity categories (Banks, 1995; Nieto & Bode, 2018). To be clear: these days, multicultural education often means education about race, and sometimes elides issues of sexual orientation, gender construction, religion, and class norms. This elision further obscures fluid identities and community alliances.
What happens when students of color write about the problems they see in the world from their own identities? In this paper, the researchers report on their textual analysis of high school students’ writing in an effort to highlight the rich ways that students experience and conceive issues of race, class, and gender. These representations of student work serve as intersectional accounts of race, gender, and class (Crenshaw, 1995). We use the term “identity project” to illustrate the shifting cultural meanings and constructions at play in students’ writings. An identity project is one that seeks to illuminate the self in society and is impacted not only by individual agency, but also by endemic features of American cultural life. CRT counterstories are one form of identity projects that act to transform, re-envision, and rewrite the self and particular groups. They depend, in part, on an understanding of racism as endemic to U.S. society, but, equally important to this study, they extend this understanding to one that also intersects with other systems of oppression (Delgado, 2000). On the other hand, not all stories are counterstories: often, narratives reiterate dominant cultural narratives---and they are still part of mapping identities.
The authors examine how students composed expository writing and autobiographical writing, conducted research to support their claims, and the nature of the claims and warrants students made in their essays. Results indicate that students could, when provided with MCE curriculum and instruction, effectively include both traditional academic literacy markers (appropriate evidence, exegesis, academic diction, citation, order of argument, etc.) and their own voices and experiences to produce final drafts. Within these pieces, students simultaneously produced work that was both critical and aligned with white supremacist, capitalist patriarchal norms---offering up rich discussions of the nature of social justice education.

Authors

• Nikola Hobbel, Humboldt State University

• Thandeka K. Chapman, University of California - San Diego