Toward a Theory of Educational Marronage

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: Dismantling Anti-Blackness in Educational Research and Practice

Abstract

This paper builds on the concept of marronage as freedom-seeking practices that embody a rich history of resistance, refusal, and revolt against antiblackness. We propose a framework, educational marronage, to extend Roberts’ four pillars of marronage to encompass the liberatory acts that Black students, educators, families, and communities engage in to resist the bondage that is commensurate with antiblack schooling processes. We explain how the four pillars of marronage: distance, movement, property, and purpose may be used to make meaning of resistance. We position resistance in schools within a legacy of resistance that extends contemplations of historical and contemporary conditions as well as imagined and potential futures that are currently being conceptualized in continuity across time and space.

Authors

• Sheron Davenport, The University of Memphis

• Gina English Tillis, The University of Memphis

• Steven Leonice Nelson, University of Nevada - Las Vegas

• D'Andrea Ashley Heggs, The University of Memphis