Abolition Is Not a Metaphor: Conceptualizing Teachers' Decriminalizing Practices Within an Abolitionist Framework

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Nine
  In Roundtable Session: Enacting Spaces of Justice and Activism in Teacher Education (Table 9)

Abstract

This article contends that an abolitionist perspective, which imagines alternatives to punishment, incarceration, policing, and slavery, is required in order to truly address the criminalization of Black boys in grades K-3. Moving beyond metaphor, this theoretical paper argues for the direct application of an abolitionist framework in the K-3 classroom through the introduction of “decriminalizing practices” in teacher education and practice. The paper begins by drawing from Black male studies and abolitionism in order to interrogate contemporary educational research on interventions in the school/prison nexus for Black boys. The author then offers an abolitionist conceptualization of decriminalizing practices as a means to practically address the school/prison nexus for Black boys in grades K-3.

Author

• Maeve Wall, University of Utah
  Presenting Author