Black Students’ Emotions Matter Too! Examining How Black Students Feel when Learning Black Historical Suffering

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 7:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Black Teachers and Students Historicity, Wake Work and the Struggle Against Erasure

Abstract

This interpretative phenomenological study examines how Black high school students emotionally engage with histories of Black suffering. Informed by the findings, I offer a three-part framework, focusing on discourse, disposition, and instruction, to support educators, teacher educators, and researchers with effectively and critically teaching historical narratives of suffering. This work is particularly urgent given ongoing political efforts to suppress the teaching of Black histories and white supremacy in K-12 schools. By centering Black students’ emotional insights, this study expands our understandings of the emotional and pedagogical implications of teaching and researching historical suffering and calls for a shift toward inclusive, emotive, and affective justice-centered history education.

Author

• Brittany Jones, University at Buffalo - SUNY