Critical Participatory Research as Strategy: Challenging the Watering Down and Eradication of Ethnic Studies in K–12 Schools

• In Event: Saturday Roundtable Session 9:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Into the Fray: Critical Participatory Action Research Approaches for Impacting Policy and Building Community Power (Table 39)

Abstract

With the recent passing of Assembly Bill 101, California is the first state to require all high school students to complete coursework in ethnic studies as a graduation requirement. School districts throughout the state are conceptualizing new ethnic studies courses but are confronted by challenges related to curriculum content, teacher preparation, and ethnic studies policy implementation. Teachers are being thrust into teaching a spectrum of ethnic studies courses with minimal structural and content support. Rising political pushback and doxing that has targeted ethnic studies professors, school teachers, district administrations, and consultant professionals signals the need for education scholarship to clarify visions around what ethnic studies work entails, how to preserve the critical and radical spirit of historic ethnic studies movement that built upon histories of racial collectivism, racial struggle, and community work for an integrated public education curricula. Such rising political pushback and doxing has centrally focused on teaching with an anti-racist approach and teaching about histories of colonialism, genocide, and anti-semitism. Embroiled within these tensions are historical questions about Israel and Palestine, ethnic studies and the Black question, and questions of identity, indigeneity and racial capitalism. Though largely disconnected from actual ethnic studies classroom practice, the flarings of these tensions have disrupted and slowed down the rollout of ethnic studies in K-12 schools, and have created controversy through revisionist histories around historical claims and political narratives for ethnic studies. This research project centers ethnographic interviews and focus group and critical participatory action research with local school teachers and educators who are scrambling to fulfill a state mandate to teach ethnic studies while confronting the ramifications of the political tensions surrounding ethnic studies rollout in local schools. This paper-presentation shares findings around the strategic value of a critical participatory action research approach to school-community-researcher visions of anti-racist and radical approaches to ethnic studies that aim to counter the institutionalization and dissolution of ethnic studies as a state mandate.

Author

• Rekia G. Jibrin, University of California - Santa Cruz