Wayward Teaching, Imagining, and Being in Educational Enclosures

• In Event: Education Reimagined: Implications for Praxis in a COVID-19 Environment

Abstract

In this paper we reflect on a qualitative project in an undergraduate education class that sought to center the course design and its spaces around four Black women. Taking place at a historically white university, our work builds on the notion of identity resources (Nasir & Hand, 2008; Nasir & Cooks, 2009) and in particular, on thinking about Black spaces, Black teachers and young Black women (ross, 2016). Through experimental, often improvised interactions with the course design, as well as through readings, images, and aesthetic choices, we signal our intentions to the white space (Anderson, 2015). We interrogate and mess with our learning environment, its settled expectations (Bang, Faber, Gurneau, Marin & Soto, 2015; Harris, 1995), its inherent anti-Blackness.

Authors

• Rachel Collins

• Jarek Sierschynski, University of Washington