Stepping into the (Cess)Pool While the Water Is Stirring: Deconstructing/Reconstructing Black Pedagogical Activism Narratives

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

At the 1851 Women’s Convention, Sojourner Truth declared: “I’m glad to see that men are getting their rights, but I want women to get theirs and while the water is stirring, I will step into the pool.” Cross-generational, cross-organizational researchers in this session interrogate a collaboratively curated Young People’s Black Pedagogical Activism Lab. With a Harvard Graduate School of Education Black Teacher Archive micro-grant, “The Lab” engaged youth-co-researchers in exploring Black pedagogical activism/organizing traditions, particularly the Jeanes Teachers/Supervisors serving southern rural Black communities after Reconstruction into the Jim Crow era. Deconstructing Black educational historiography through a Black pedagogical activism/organizing lens, five Symposium papers reconstruct narratives of Black women’s education practice as resistance–-while imagining new futures and education research visions.

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Division G - Section 5: Inquiry, Transformation, and Communities

Chair

• Joyce E. King, Georgia State University

Papers

• Re-Membering Pedagogical Activism: Africana Research Methodologies in a Multi-State Youth-Led Lab - Melissa Speight Vaughn, Georgia State University

• Histories within Histories and an Eye to the Future: An Organizational Ethnography - Max Altman, Southern Education Foundation; Allison Boyle, Southern Education Foundation, Inc.

• Black Pedagogical Activism as Creative Praxis: Learning from the Jeanes Teachers to Imagine Educational Futures - Camea Davis, Research Partnership for Professional Learning

• Empowering Voices: The Role of Black Women Educators in Shaping Equitable Futures - Danie Marshall, Georgia State University

• Leaning into the Jeanes Teaching Tradition for Equity in Educational Research and Practice - Terrance Joshua Lewis, University of Alabama

Session Organizer

• Joyce E. King, Georgia State University

Discussant

• LaGarrett J. King, University at Buffalo - SUNY