To Educators, With Love: Leveraging Black Children’s Emergent Sociopolitical Understandings as Resources in Teacher Learning

• In Event: AERA Poster Session Saturday 9:45 am
  In Poster Session: Teaching in the Key of Liberation: From Jim Crow to AI Literacies

Abstract

The savvy that Black children regularly embody to navigate and resist disempowering social systems is often overlooked as valuable indices of learning. This paper reflects a body of research focused on learning from/with Black children, with particular consideration of when/how close analyses of children’s sociopolitical ideas carry potential in shaping Black teachers’ pedagogical philosophies and imagination. As part of a larger project, I conducted interviews with Black teachers. Teachers were asked to analyze an example of a child “Chase” describing the circumstances surrounding the murder of Freddie Gray. This paper (1) reports findings related to teachers’ interpretation of the Chase example and (2) discusses how their sensemaking shaped subsequent professional learning activities oriented toward creative, dynamic and humanizing pedagogical futures.

Author

• Natalie R. Davis, University of Michigan