Building Abolitionist Futures in Education Now: Critical Engagements with Freedom, Belonging, and Police-Free Schools

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This panel brings together leading scholars whose cutting-edge research advances the growing field of abolitionist education. Panelists will share new methodological engagements, theoretical frameworks, empirical findings, and community-based insights that interrogate and dismantle carceral logics in educational institutions. Our objectives are to (1) foreground abolition as a generative framework for reimagining safety and learning, (2) identify how prison geographies are persistently linked directly to education, (3) present evidence from recent efforts to remove police and punitive structures from schools, and (4) highlight how queer, disabled, community, and youth-led movements are reshaping understandings of care, accountability, and belonging in educational spaces.

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Division G - Section 1: Education and Place, Space, Time

Chair

• Subini Ancy Annamma, Stanford University

Papers

• Whose Compliance Matters? Incarcerated youth identify prison geographies, and possibilities for abolition - Subini Ancy Annamma, Stanford University

• Abolitionist Possibilities in Education Research: Methodological Praxis with Black Foster Youth - Brianna Marche' Harvey, California State University - Fullerton

• The productive tensions of designing, implementing and negotiating an abolitionist vision of police-free schools - Rekia G. Jibrin, University of California - Santa Cruz

• From Mandated Reporters to Mandated Supporters: Educators Rebuilding Safety to Challenge the Family Policing System - Erica R. Meiners, Northeastern Illinois University

Session Organizer

• Erica R. Meiners, Northeastern Illinois University

Discussant

• Michelle Fine, Graduate Center - CUNY