Paper Summary
Share...

Direct link:

“Are you ready for the smoke?”: Engaging Ethnic Studies Epistemologies toward new forms of Leadership in Education

Wed, April 23, 12:40 to 2:10pm MDT (12:40 to 2:10pm MDT), The Colorado Convention Center, Floor: Meeting Room Level, Room 606

Abstract

Purpose
The passing of AB 101, which makes teaching Ethnic Studies (ES) a requirement in California, created new opportunities and challenges for educational leaders. ES is a decolonial discipline created to disrupt the status quo and create personal and social transformation for historically oppressed communities (Cammarota, 2016; Freire, 2000). However, many educational leaders are not prepared with the epistemological foundation that informs the restorative and transformative goals of ES. Without such preparation, school leaders are ill-equipped to engage in the repair work needed for ES to flourish. This paper merges two concurrent narratives occurring in one high school: the pedagogical practices of an ES teacher and a school’s (mis)handling of Cinco de Mayo.

Theoretical framework
I use postcolonial theory to situate education in the U.S. as a postcolonial project. I draw from postcolonial scholars such as Maldonado-Torres (2007) and critical pedagogues such as Freire (2000) to illustrate the distrust created by dehumanizing teacher-student relationships. Finally, I turn to Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy, which affirms the cultural assets that young people bring to make sense of an ever-changing pluralistic democratic project (Paris and Alim, 2017).

Methods & Data Sources
This paper is part of a larger project investigating the effective teaching of Latine youth in Hope Valley (pseudonym), where the primary focus was on the pedagogy of an ES teacher. However, when I collected data, a micro-aggression occurred between administrators and students during a Cinco de Mayo celebration, which swept me into a series of meetings where I witnessed the events discussed in this paper.

Data came from a two-year study where I surveyed 137 community college students to identify effective teachers in Hope Valley (pseudonym). Using ethnographic methods, over 27 hours of classroom observations were collected. From the larger study, a sub-set of data was used to highlight this particular Cinco de Mayo discussion and the discourse around it. I analyzed interviews, pictures, artifacts, and social media using the methods designed by Strauss (1987) while also making use of Van Dijk (1997) and Fairclough’s (1995) Critical Discourse Analysis CDA) methods. CDA permitted me to study language critically, as language reflects and refracts how culture, ideology, and power are constructed.

Results
This paper compares the restorative transformation experienced inside an ES classroom with the repair work occurring within the larger school context. The comparison brings forth valuable lessons of what can happen when educational leaders attempt to clear the “smoke” by engaging young people’s hearts and minds, repairing trust, centering student voices, and moving forward with an “all hands on deck” approach to understanding the community’s cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005).

Significance
The lessons learned from this study are central to any legitimate effort to renew, repair, and transform decades of dehumanizing schooling practices for historically subordinated students. This study illustrates what is possible when educational leaders pivot from a punitive playbook toward community actualization. The comparative analysis provides educational leaders with an emergent leadership framework that embodies the interdisciplinary traditions of ES to imagine new forms of achievement in education.

Author