Critical Racial Third Spaces: Attending to Racialized Realities to Honor Student Engagement

• In Event: Fostering Engagement for All: Advancing Socioculturally Inclusive Theory, Research, and Practice in Student Engagement

Abstract

This presentation advances a critical racial framework for understanding and enhancing student engagement among youth of color by centering their racialized identities, lived experiences, and cultural knowledge. We argue that traditional student engagement models often ignore or evade the realities of antiblackness, white supremacy, and systemic racism shaping youths’ educational experiences. At times, researchers have concluded that students of color, particularly Black youth, are disengaged from school (e.g., Ogbu, 2003). However, much of this research conceptualized student engagement as an individual “issue,” without acknowledging the educational inequities that Black and non-Black youth of color experience and the multiple social factors that negatively impact their engagement. In fact, it is well-established that Black and non-Black youth of color experience school-based spiritual, epistemic, and physical violence (Coles, 2016; Magill & Rodriguez, 2022) and endure the effects of structural antiblackness and racism inside and beyond school walls (Bonilla-Silva, 1997). In response, we integrate critical race theory (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995) with Bhaba’s (1994) theory of Third Space to introduce the concept of critical racial third spaces, educational settings co-created with youth that provide culturally sustaining environments for critical dialogue, storytelling, and identity exploration. We argue for the urgency of critical racial third spaces as pedagogical and relational interventions that intentionally disrupt the dominant schooling culture and foster spaces where Black and non-Black youth of color’s racial literacies, identities, and cultural knowledges are centered and expanded. Critical racial third spaces challenge deficit-based approaches to youth and family engagement by positioning families and communities as vital co-creators of knowledge, rather than as problems to be fixed. Further, critical racial third spaces foster authentic partnerships between educators, youth, families, and communities by rejecting hierarchical, color-evasive frameworks and centering the epistemologies and cultural wealth of people of color. Drawing from community-based counterstorytelling workshops with Black and Asian youth, we highlight three distinct but overlapping engagement spaces to demonstrate how these critical racial third spaces foster four interconnected modes of engagement: cognitive, affective, social, and agentic. Together, these three spaces affirm youths’ racialized realities and nurture their critical racial literacies. Building upon what we learned from these workshops, we challenge educators and researchers to reimagine engagement not simply as individual motivation or behavior but as a deeply relational and racialized phenomenon that requires intentional, equity-focused pedagogical strategies. Through the critical racial third spaces framework, we propose a pathway toward educational environments where youth of color are not only present but truly seen, heard, and emboldened.

The presentation will highlight the following provocative/novel insights:
● Asserts that student engagement is deeply racialized and mediated by systemic oppression, rather than treating engagement as a neutral or universal construct.
● Conceptualizes critical racial third spaces, foregrounding the potential of community-based approaches to student engagement that transcend traditional classroom boundaries.
● Positions counterstorytelling as both a pedagogical strategy and an engagement mechanism, revealing how opportunities to narrate and share their racialized experiences deepen cognitive, affective, social, and agentic engagement for youth of color.

Authors

• Crystal Charity, University of Maryland

• Rolonda L. Payne, University of Maryland