The Freedom School Way: A Model for Intergenerational Research Training Partnership Between Universities and Freedom Schools

• In Event: Still in the Struggle: Education for Liberation in Freedom Schools

Abstract

A partnership between a university research training program and a Freedom School in northern Florida was designed to address the lack of diversity among students earning doctoral degrees in education. University-student fellows are supported to frame research as a transformative process responsive to intractable social problems such as racism, poverty, or any other persistent inequitable conditions in American society. We draw from the related theoretical frameworks of culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris & Alim, 2014) and community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005) to explore how beginning researchers and community stakeholders collaborate within a transformative educational context. Research training fellows and stakeholders’ experiential accounts reveal how fellows frame their research to address social inequities while learning the Freedom School Way. Fellows experience culturally relevant research training that centers their identities. Also inspired by the intergenerational leadership model of the Freedom Schools, our hope is that these values are embodied as fellows embark on their careers.

Authors

• erik rawls, Florida State University
  Presenting Author

• Alysia D. Roehrig, Florida State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jeannine E. Turner, Florida State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Michael Peter Mesa, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
  Non-Presenting Author

• Madelyn McClarey, University of Memphis
  Non-Presenting Author

• Camille Lewis, Florida State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Cheyeon Ha, Yale University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Peggy Perkins Auman, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Tamara Bertrand Jones, Florida State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Dionne Gerri Wilson, Florida State University
  Presenting Author