Recognizing Our Unfinishedness: Justice-Centered and Abolitionist Teaching in the School-Prison Nexus

• In Event: Envisioning Justice, Imagining Freedom: Teachers as Transformative Interrupters in Civic Education

Abstract

The primary purpose of this study is to explore the experiences of P-20 social studies educators who participated in a five-week professional learning series—Envisioning Justice, Imagining Freedom—in Illinois. The content of the professional learning series focused on the intersections of the school-prison nexus and teachers’ justice-centered praxes. This included exploring how social studies teachers define the school-prison nexus and their role within it; interrogating how social studies teachers might be complicit in the perpetuation of the school-prison nexus; and identifying the tools social studies teachers might use to engage in the fight against carcerality in schools. As such, the following research question guided this study: How do “justice-centered” social studies educators understand, navigate, and/or disrupt the school-prison nexus?

Authors

• Rachel McMillian, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Presenting Author

• Asif Wilson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Presenting Author

• Jon Hale, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Presenting Author