“It’s Very Closely Tied in With the Police State”: Navigating Authority and Abolitionist Teacher Praxis

• In Event: Sunday Roundtable Session 11:25 am
  In Roundtable Session: Abolition, Agency, and Action: Dismantling Racism and Carceral Logics for Educational Justice (Table 1)

Abstract

This paper is based on a larger qualitative research study, which utilized a study group with K-12 teachers to explore how theories of police and prison abolition inform their thinking and their practice. I find that, as participants developed critiques of policing, they struggled to distinguish the authority inherent in their roles as teachers from oppressive practices of policing. In particular, they felt a tension between teacher authority and classroom community. While this difficulty sometimes led participants to feel “stuck,” our discussions led to ideas that distinguish some forms of authority from policing, thereby pointing toward possible ways to move forward within the messy and ambiguous terrain of teaching.

Author

• Noah Jefferson, Westfield State University