Don't Just Tell Me, Show Me: Exploring Culturally Congruent Care for Black Students in Pre-K–20 Institutions

• In Event: Disrupting Antiblackness in the Pursuit of Educational Equity, Truth, and Justice

Abstract

For many Black youth school is a place where they experience the constant and pervasive nature of racism and anti-Black violence (Dumas, 2014). Schools overuse of exclusionary discipline policies and collusion with law enforcement serve to marginalize Black youth, especially those in the foster system that are most vulnerable to over-surveillance, hyper-criminalization, and state control (Harvey et al., 2021; Plater, 2019). Using an interdisciplinary theoretical frame, this paper highlights research that examined school practices, policies, and procedures that yield culturally congruent care for Black youth. Care has been theorized as an essential component for effectively educating students of all backgrounds (Noddings, 2010; Tronto, 2020). Care is generally understood within education as educators demonstrating attentiveness to the needs of their students (Smylie et al., 2020). However, much of the educational literature on care does not account for culturally nuanced ways care is understood and conveyed (Gay, 2018). A plethora of research on cultural congruence in education argues that one of the primary reasons students of color do not perform as well as their White counterparts in school is the cultural mismatch between racialized students and the schools they attend (Howard, 2020; Milner, 2020). This study sought to complexify the enactment of care and examine culturally congruent ways care can be conveyed to Black students. The theoretical frame that guided this study is a combination of Harpers (2010), Anti-deficit achievement framework and Leininger' (1988) cultural care theory. The integration of these frameworks allowed the identification and examination the practices, policies, and procedures that yield culturally congruent care for Black children and spurn academic achievement. A qualitative comparative case study methodology was used across three school sites. The findings suggest that when educators are willing to relinquish power to position themselves as learners and take action to disrupt normative practices to create optimal learning environments for Black children, it benefits Black children academically and behaviorally. In line with the interrogation of consequential truth where racial equity is concerned, these findings align with previous research on culturally sensitive care (Gay, 2018; Ladson-Billings, 2021) that argues that informed educators can better provide the support necessary for student success.

Authors

• Jaleel R. Howard, University of California - Los Angeles
  Presenting Author

• Brianna Marche' Harvey, California State University - Fullerton
  Presenting Author