"School's a Lie": Toward Critical Race Intersectional Pedagogy for Youth Intellectual Activism in Policy Partnerships

• In Event: The Politics of Student Voice: How Students Interrogate Policy Discourses, Processes, and Practices

Abstract

Purpose
Narrow equity agendas driven by neoliberal policies that prioritize simplistic achievement and discipline outcomes fail to achieve policy transformations that address educational constraints experienced by youth of color subordinated by multiple oppression. Community, scholar, and youth activists have called for policymakers and leaders to attune to the perspectives of multiply-marginalized youth of color in policy work as their perspectives hold possibilities for expansive educational transformations based on on-the-ground understandings of schools (Bertrand, 2018).

This presentation engages a critical race and intersectional feminist examination of pedagogical praxis in a Youth Voice Initiative (YVI) to theorize a model for facilitating multiply-marginalized youth of color (MMYoC) participation in district policy partnerships. Through interrogating our pedagogy; characterized by goals, classroom practices, and underlying ideological commitments (Collins, 2013); we propose critical race intersectional pedagogy to cultivate youth participation in transformative policy partnerships that engage with the experiences of MMYoC.

Theory, Methods, and Data Sources
Our YVI design and research employs critical race theory in education (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995) and intersectional feminism to examine how YVI pedagogy afforded and constrained MMYoC participation in district policy conversations. CRTE rooted our inquiry in the permanence of racism, upheld by racially oppressive schooling structures such as curriculum and pedagogy. Intersectional feminism attuned our research to the reality that people are differentially situated in structures of interlocking oppressions (i.e. white supremacy, patriarchy, heteronormativity, gender binaries and transphobia, and immigration and naturalization) and enabled inquiry to how our pedagogy differentially engaged MMYoC given the constraints they experience (Crenshaw & Matsuda, 2019). Our data included course planning meeting notes, curricular artifacts, reflective memos of teaching/learning episodes, and transcripts of ongoing analytical dialog. We analyzed the data using theoretically driven codes based on our conceptual framework and specific to educational purpose, instructional activities, curricular content, learning community dynamics and responsiveness, and course contexts. Subsequently, we consolidated the relationships that emerged into pedagogical components of educational goals and classroom practices.

Findings
Our findings present insights around three practices of critical race intersectional pedagogy for multiply-marginalized youth: Facilitating multiple consciousness; cultivating intersectional policy analysis skills; and imagining intersectional policy transformations. For each practice, we highlight themes that illuminate constellations of goals, learning activities, and resources that opened possibilities for youth, as well as constraints that limited opportunities for youth to engage their voice(s) in this policy partnership. Our analysis points to the need for a fourth practice of forging coalitional praxis amongst youth as a mechanism to resist internal and external structural constraints that impacted learning opportunities.

Scholarly Significance and Connections to AERA Conference Theme
Our model of critical race intersectional pedagogy emphasizes ideological principles that are foundational to negotiating the pedagogical practices identified above. Current models of institution-sanctioned youth voice policy partnerships leanly focus on single-axis equity frameworks, exclude perspectives from MMYoC, and dismiss the need for educational support for youth voice initiatives. Our research demonstrates the necessity of pedagogical interventions from critical race and intersectional feminist perspectives to create empowering conditions for multiply-marginalized youth to engage in transformative policy conversations.

Authors

• Manali J. Sheth, University of Illinois at Chicago
  Presenting Author

• Jason Salisbury, University of Illinois at Chicago
  Presenting Author