Repairing Harm With Heart and Humor: Exploring Black Women Preservice Teachers’ Engagement With "Abbott Elementary"

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 1:30 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: Repair(ing)s of Education Through Identity and Multimodal Storytelling (Table 9)

Abstract

In our rapidly evolving, image-saturated culture, media reflects American beliefs and shapes public consciousness. In this study, we used "Abbott Elementary" to disrupt and repair multiple harms: (1) harms inflicted by Hollywood’s “urban schools” genre, which perpetuates deficit-based narratives, and (2) harms inflicted by teacher education’s tendency to marginalize Black pre-service teachers’ needs. Through a qualitative case study, we aim to answer the question: What are the affordances of integrating "Abbott Elementary" as a foundational curricular text to support Black women pre-service teachers’ engagement with issues related to urban education? Analysis shows how integrating "Abbott Elementary" afforded opportunities for participants to demonstrate shifts in their perceptions of urban schools and themselves, while battling the gravitational pull of hegemonic whiteness.

Authors

• Sara Ann Jones, Illinois State University

• Mariah D. Harmon, Pennsylvania State University