Becoming Unshackled: A Reflective Inquiry into Healing, Sovereignty, and Relational Abolitionist Being Through Course Evaluations

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 7:45 am - Gold 2
  In Roundtable Session: Healing, Sovereignty, and Relational Justice in Higher Education

Abstract

This presentation explores how abolitionist being, healing, and sovereignty intersect in my practice as a teacher educator with a refugee background at a predominantly white, private university in the Southeastern United States. Through autoethnographic analysis of three years of course evaluations, I examine how justice- and freedom-oriented approaches to teaching and learning are recognized or resisted by students navigating systems of whiteness shaped by unearned privilege. This work unsettles the purpose of student evaluations in the neoliberal university, highlighting tensions between transformative teaching and traditional approaches. Ultimately, this presentation offers a model for linking personal healing to collective liberation, envisioning justice-rooted education that transcends institutional harm and centers possibilities for equity and abolition in higher education.

Author

• Nermin Vehabovic, Elon University