Black Youth Resisting Carceral Schooling: Critical Hope, Radical Imagination, and Sociopolitical Development in Youth Organizing

• In Event: AERA Research in Progress Roundtable Session Four
  In Invited Roundtable: Research-in-Progress RT058 (Saturday)

Abstract

My dissertation examines how Black youth cultivate sociopolitical development, critical hope, and radical/political imagination through critical political education and organizing against carceral systems in schools and communities. Focusing on a Los Angeles youth-led organization, I use a multi-method approach: participant observation, semi-structured interviews with current high school youth and alumni (ages 19–30), and a focus group. This triangulation will capture how youth develop sustain political identity, hope, and imagination across developmental trajectories and they engage in movement work. Grounded in Sociopolitical Development, critical consciousness, and Black, Critical, and Liberation Psychologies, the study centers youth voices to highlight organizing as a developmental, protective, and transformative educational process.

Author

• Shantell P. Missouri, UCLA