“Our Own Little spaces”: Critical Consciousness among Girls of Color in an Independent School

• In Event: At the Intersections: Leveraging the Strengths of Girls of Color in Schools and Communities

Abstract

Paper/ presentation summary:
Objectives or purposes: The purpose of this study is to investigate and understand students’ perceptions of discipline, safety, and belonging in an independent single-gender school in New York City. Specifically, we ask, how do Black girls in an independent school perceive school discipline and climate differently than do their non-Black peers?

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework: (citation deleted for blind review)’s model of Positive Youth Development (PYD) as well as critical race theory (Crenshaw, 1995; Delgado & Stefanic, 2017) were instrumental in our efforts to examine Black girls’ experiences of school discipline and climate through the lenses of race, culture and power.
Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry: Our analytic process was informed by the model of Positive Youth Development and we utilized both deductive and inductive coding schemes, drawing on research around adolescent mental health, affinity spaces, and teacher diversity as well as allowing themes from participant experiences to emerge in a dimensional, collaborative and iterative process (Boyatzis, 1998; Thornberg & Charmaz, 2014).

Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials: Following our prior research, which analyzed the school’s climate survey, we conducted ten semi-structured interviews (Seidman, 2006). All ten girls of color were recruited from odd grades in the upper school. The interview protocol was designed to surface the students’ specific experiences of discipline, social groups and friendships, academic and social needs, and perceptions of socioeconomic advantage.

Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view: We present here a very attenuated summary of the study’s key findings. The girls’ voices shared here offer recommendations of their own in addition to implications we ground in prior research. The girls repeatedly suggested that the school needs to hire more diverse faculty and provide affinity spaces. We interpreted these recommendations as directly connected to their mental health status, and the need for more support. As a result, we urge schools to consider hiring more faculty of color, creating and supporting affinity spaces for both students and adults, focusing on mental health as a need for all students, and providing learning opportunities for faculty to develop critical consciousness in order to better facilitate student development of the same.

Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work: This study offers a substantive contribution to extant research on gendered and racialized experiences of identity, school discipline, and school climate. First and foremost, we are committed to supporting the positive academic, social, and emotional development of Black girls in this particular school through their character, competence, contribution, confidence, and connection as well as resistance and resilience (citation deleted for blind review). In our active allyship, we respond to multiple calls for research and practice to both center, value, and reframe the experiences of Black girls and to build capacity for systemic change (Watson, 2016). Finally, we call out some of the ways independent schools induce experiences of difference and privilege along the lines of race, gender, wealth, and the intersections of those identities.

Authors

• Daron E. Cyr, The Hewitt School

• Lauren P. Bailes, University of Delaware