Decolonizing Urban Education: Leveraging Action Research Toward Liberation and Educational Possibilities in Urban Districts

• In Event: Sunday Roundtable Session 7:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: From Participants to Collaborators: Leveraging Multiple and Mixed Methods to Further Educational Equity (Table 19)

Abstract

A scoping metareview of the last few years of urban education action research scholarship reveals insufficient research focusing on community cultural wealth, sources of knowledge, and ways of knowing in urban districts. Urban education research largely focuses on damage-narratives (Tuck, 2009) and education reform. This paper addresses the question: How can action research be conducted to leverage urban communities’ cultural wealth and local knowledges toward liberation and educational possibilities? I employ a reconceptualization of W. E. B. Du Bois’s “The Negro Problem” and Leigh Patel’s notion of “answerability” to construct urban liberatory action research. This work recenters urban communities and local priorities in an asset-based approach to urban education inquiry and constructing educational possibilities.

Author

• Tristta M. Kuykendall, Cleveland State University