(Re)Framing Dropout: Quitting School as a Form of Marronage

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: School Policy and Praxis: Vital Voices, Disparate Viewpoints

Abstract

Received wisdom suggests that Black students who drop out of school exhibit self-defeating behavior; in this article, we suggest otherwise. We apply the historical, archaeological, and political science understandings of marronage to advance a theory of educational marronage. Under this theory of educational marronage, we found that our 8 participants displayed behaviors of resistance, rejection, and refusal that should be associated with traditional understandings of maroons and marronage. We use this study to provide an alternative conceptualization of the act of dropping out of school: Moreover, we suggest that these Black students who dropped out of school committed actions that are part-and-parcel of a lineage of resistance, rejection, and refusal to captivity and antiblack violence and terror.

Authors

• Steven Leonice Nelson, University of Nevada - Las Vegas

• Sheron Davenport, The University of Memphis

• Gina English Tillis, The University of Memphis

• D'Andrea Ashley Heggs, The University of Memphis