Why Do We Still Feel Disempowered? Examining Progress on Research and Practice on Engaging Students in Difficult Topics in U.S. Classrooms

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 1:45 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 2-3
  In Roundtable Session: Experience as Curriculum: Exploring Students' Understandings of School (Table 13)

Abstract

Using post-structuralism as a lens, this paper explores the pedagogical progress we have made in engaging students in controversial conversation, especially on the topic of race, in the U.S. in the past twenty-five years. An extensive literature review revealed that three major discourses on anti-racist education emerged in U.S. education. Some aspects of those discourses intersect with each other, and others contradict each other. There are also gaps among these discourses. While the field reduced the significant gaps within each discourse, which is a disconnection between the body, mind, and emotions, the major gap between theory about emotions and racial trauma (especially those used in counseling and psychology) and education still remains.

Author

• Kaoru Miyazawa, Lesley University