Education Commons^™

Our Lives Are Worth Celebrating, Darius M. Phelps, Brian Mooney

New Jersey English Journal

No abstract provided.

Politics Of Refusal: Justice And Liberation For Black Trans Lives, Quincy Smith

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis investigates the challenges faced by Black trans people. In this thesis, I will explore how protest is used to highlight and confront the obstacles faced by the Black trans community. I will also examine the cultural work of Black trans people and what they teach us. The Brooklyn Liberation march and the TV show Pose is an important part of Black trans legacy. They both look at the complications surrounding Black trans lives and contributes to Black trans representation in protesting and fighting marginalization. This thesis will argue the importance of allyship to create safe space for Black …

Liberation And Inclusion Through The Voices Of Trans Youth: A Phenomenological Approach, Klaudia Neufeld

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The primary aim of this phenomenological study is to elevate trans youth voice to understand the essence of their individual and shared lived experiences within school systems designed for them to be silenced, excluded, and erased. In alignment with Eve Tuck’s desire-based research, this study is designed to counter deficit narratives of trans youth. Participants include six racially and ethnically diverse trans youth, ages 13−17 in the U.S. state of Colorado. Analyses revealed four themes: a gender-identity transition journey; navigating geography; safety and the impact of school culture; creating belonging through a coalition of community and friendship; and youth lessons …

Transforming Learning Spaces: Decentering Whiteness To Dream Of A Liberatory Education, Kimberly Booker

Ed.D. Dissertations in Practice

The educational system in the United States claims to be a neutral system in which each child has equal opportunity to learn. Rather, it is a system that is constructed from a white epistemology (Ladson-Billings, 1998) that teaches a white worldview (Sleeter & Stillman, 2005) while simultaneously disregarding epistemologies, including knowledge bases, from Communities of Color. This dissonance creates dehumanizing and harmful experiences for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color who are made to participate in an educational system that denies their worldview and way of being. The study is grounded in Critical Race Theory to acknowledge the permanence of …

Selling Graduation: Higher Education And The Loaning Of Liberation, Annie Pocklington, Elizabeth J. Flanagan, Christopher Bodenheimer Knaus

Essays in Education

While the costs to attend college continue to rise exponentially, a bachelor’s degree is held up as required for economic stability within the U.S. and across the globe. With drastic disparities in earning potentials after graduation reduced by racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, ableism, and related structural disparities, the value of a degree continues to be questioned, especially for historically marginalized communities. As the loan industrial complex continues to profit off of students, President Biden has offered $10,000 in student loan relief for some borrowers, though this action has been blocked by federal courts and is currently on hold. Whether Biden’s …

An Educator’S Reflection On The Importance Of Embodiment, Imagination, And Liberation, Ashley N. Gibson

Journal of Multicultural Affairs

This reflection piece offers an interpretation of the years 2020-2021, through the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic and the racial awakenings in the US. Writing at the intersections of race, gender, and religion, this piece is part essay, part spoken word, and part treatise. The ultimate call to action is threefold; we must lean into embodiment as a habit for living, use our imaginations, and seek liberation for ourselves and one another if we are to hope for a better future. While many aspects of life now seem bleak, there is hope if we consider these three principles for …

Perspective Of Nyerere On Self-Reliance: A Transformational Rhetorical For Liberating African Identity In Tanzanian Context, Ayub Mwampela

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Julius Kambarage Nyerere (1922–1999) was the first president of Tanganyika in 1961 and the founding father of the United Republic of Tanzania, after having merged Tanganyika and Zanzibar in 1964. He died from leukemia on October 14, 1999, in London. He was 77 years old. Among the most memorable events in the life of Nyerere is his involvement in the struggle for the freedom of African people from foreign influences.

The goal of this research is to ask and answer to the following question: How does the perspective of Nyerere on self-reliance contribute to the effort of liberating African identity? …

The Water We Were Swimming In: Transgender And Gender Nonconforming Students' Lived Experiences In Engineering., Natalie Saroff Oliner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Few studies address the lived experiences of transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) students in engineering. Grounded in critical trans politics (Spade, 2015), this dissertation contributes to the literature on TGNC students in engineering by examining their experiences negotiating their identities while navigating interrelated systems of oppression in a field dominated by White, heterosexual, cisgender men. Using a critical constructivism framework, I conducted a narrative inquiry to explore the lived experiences of five TGNC students in engineering programs. Participants experienced TGNC oppression at their universities, built LGBTQ+ and TGNC communities, and described more welcoming climates in non-engineering contexts compared to engineering. …

An Open Letter To The Marginalized Academic: Divesting From Colonial Indoctrination, Dr. Khadija Boyd

The Vermont Connection

Paulo Freire (1970) stated, "In order for the oppressed to be able to wage the struggle for their liberation, they must perceive the reality of oppression not as a closed world from which there is no exit, but as a limiting situation which they can transform." Academia has historically been evoked by a white, male, hetero-normative framework that has limited the space for opposing identities to be marginalized through policies, organizational culture, and social imagery. Although liberation is not a notion employed in academia, assimilation, obedience, and domination serve as the protagonist embedded in the optics within these institutions, often …

When Trauma Comes To School: Toward A Socially Just Trauma-Informed Praxis, Catriona O'Toole

International Journal of School Social Work

Given the prevalence and devastating consequences of childhood trauma, there has been a surge in initiatives to help schools become trauma-informed. However, despite the growing adoption of such initiatives, a number of concerns have been expressed. These include the lack of attention paid to issues of power and inequality including poverty, racism, and community violence as well as the power of adults to neglect, mistreat or abuse children. Contemporary approaches can also serve to inscribe deficit-based perceptions of children, reinforcing negative stereotypes and stigmas; and they tend to overlook the possibility that schools themselves can contribute to students’ distress, especially …

A Case For Open Educational Resources (Oer) For Liberation: Leveraging Librarians And Library Skills, Aisling Coyne, Amy Fitzpatrick

Other

This paper will establish the case for Open Educational Resources (OER) for Liberation for Ireland, and the leveraging of librarians in pursuit of creating a database of Open resources for public good and public liberation within the context of post-neutrality librarianship. The researchers have conducted a literature review of existing OER initiatives and emerging areas of Open Education. The review is underpinned by the philosophical and pedagogical motivations of Open, with a keen focus on equity, access and accessibility. Through this research, it has been found that there is a strong framework available for establishing a national OER initiative, and …

The Passing Show, Kathryn Fanelli

Masters Theses

The Passing Show, examines the interface between contemplative practices and the destabilizing effect of the carnivalesque. A repurposed early 20th century merry-go- round is reconfigured as a conceptual vehicle for renewing our attention to removing hindrances. The site-specific installation, titled Vimoksha, is viewed through the lens of the radical imaginary, investigating notions of karmic inheritance through a heuristic approach to material processes, personal history, kinetics and sound.

Afro-Brazilian Cosmology As Praxis For Student Affairs, Catarina E. Campbell

The Vermont Connection

In this article, one will find a friendly introduction to several orixás, the archetypal forces of nature in Yoruban and Afro-Brazilian cosmology, in order to explore the applicability of their teachings within the realm of student affairs. With each orixá comes a teaching story, series of reflection questions, and a tangible pedagogical practice. When employed with reverence to their origin and context, these tools can catalyze self-development, sense of purpose, and breadth of perspective for both for our students and ourselves.

Becoming Liberated In The Process Of Researching And Writing About Liberation: A Scholarly Reflection Of A Healing Process In A Doctoral Program, Falon N. Thacker

Georgia Journal of College Student Affairs

This article chronicles the process of researching and writing a dissertation about liberation and how it connects to my own experiences of liberation. Qualitative research involves a more personal connection between the researcher and the study (Hays & Singh, 2012) which allows for a more in depth understanding of the experiences of the participants and the researcher. This article provides a reflection of my journey that began in early childhood and through the doctoral process, connecting those experiences to the research process utilizing Pillow’s (2003) four reflexive strategies. Reflecting on the method, theory, and findings, the researcher makes connections with …

Academic Esl World History Unit 5. Destruction And Liberation. Decolonization.Reading And Writing, Karin Lundberg

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

Interrogating Whiteness In Community Research And Action, Brett Russell Coleman, Charles R. Collins, Courtnay M. Bonam

Woodring Scholarship on Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion

Community psychology is expressly concerned with social justice. Such concern necessitates attention to race. Yet, nearly absent from the field’s literature is explicit and critical attention to whiteness. Thus, community psychology’s contribution to promoting social justice remains incomplete. In this article, we examine how a critical construction of whiteness can be useful for community research and action. After a brief history of the construction of whiteness in the United States, and a summary of key insights from critical whiteness studies, we present a scoping review of the nascent body of community psychology literature that addresses whiteness. That work implicates whiteness …

From Creative Writing To A Self’S Liberation: A Monologue Of A Struggling Writer, Ethan Trinh

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

The pressure of being alone in a new country and of surviving in a competitive academia has scared me to death. I cannot find any better way to heal me other than writing. Writing helps me make sense of the worlds and come closer to my true self. This piece is journeying from my own struggles of a Vietnamese, queer, immigrant teacher to accept who I am as a writer. In addition, writing this piece helps me get closer to decademizing academic writing in higher education.

Critical Pedagogy And The Ethics Of Care: How Values Affect The Classroom Dynamic, Colby D. Reed

MSU Graduate Theses

This thesis centers on the benefits of Paulo Freire’s critical and liberatory pedagogy for introductory composition classes when used as an ethical and moral template as opposed to a sociological ideology. Using care ethics as a lens, chapter one begins by addressing current difficulties and criticisms present in the discussion of care ethics and the pedagogy as the models for composition classes and then applying the ethics of critical and liberatory pedagogy to these issues. Chapter two builds on that by exploring what ethical and moral elements are present in Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and how they relate to …

Moving From Trauma To Healing: Black Queer Cultural Workers’ Experiences And Discourses Of Love, Durryle N. Brooks

Doctoral Dissertations

Within the US context, there is a considerable misunderstanding of what love is. Normative discourse on love within our society is almost exclusively relegated to romance, familial relations, and or sexual connections. However, many scholars (Fromm, 1956, 1976; hooks, 2000, 2001; Tillich, 1952, 1954) have explored love within a critical theoretical construction, which has linked contemporary discourse on love to power, privilege, and oppression. In that sense, normative discourses on love are not innocuous but instead are hegemonic and serve as an ideology to perpetuate individualism and oppression. This qualitative study explores the impact of normative discourses of love at …

Black Spaces In White Places: Toward Black Educational Imagination, Shenita Nicole Mayes

Dissertations

Using a combination of Critical Race Theory, self-determination, and Black radical imagination as a theoretical framework, this dissertation explores how the features of Black educational imagination – liberatory pedagogy, critically conscious acts, and a revitalized Black teaching force – animate Black school space. These spaces facilitate the re-humanization of Black people, the recognition of counter-narratives as valuable, and the consideration of racial trauma in hiring practices. Each space represents a meaningful recognition of Black radical imagination and therefore inform my actions in the workplace. I argue that a possible path towards liberating Black people from racialized oppression is paved by …

A Pedagogy For Justice: Kant, Hegel, Marcuse And Freire On Education And The Good Society, Michelle J. Johnson

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

Rousseau’s educational treatise Emile is a well-known pedagogical work often noted for its progressive educational insights. Although Kant’s Lectures on Pedagogy is much less well known, Kant suggests a solution to an educational problem Rousseau is unable to solve: the problem of whether or not education can work for the good of humanity. Rousseau is concerned that society, and the schools in society, inflames people’s passions and leads to inequality and enslavement. Rousseau sketches an educational program that ideally develops students’ autonomous moral reasoning untainted by inflamed passion, an education which enables students to be moral and just citizens, working …

The Radical Evolution Of The Communist Educator: Doxey A. Wilkerson, Shante` Lyons

Dissertations

Abstract This study illuminates the life, practice, and sociopolitical ideology of Communist Educator, Doxey A. Wilkerson. Wilkerson, a former member of the Communist Party of the United States of America, facilitated the development and execution of the Party’s educational programs during the mid-twentieth century. Contextually, narratives grounded in Black liberation, educational equity, and the sociopolitical inclusion of African-Americans have been dominated by the most visible members within the Black intelligentsia, such as renowned historian and scholar, W.E.B Du Bois. The research and narrative constructed within this work provides a unique and sound contribution to liberatory themes within educational frameworks and …

Understanding Internalized Oppression: A Theoretical Conceptualization Of Internalized Subordination, Teeomm K. Williams

Open Access Dissertations

Internalized oppression is one of the conceptual foundations of social justice education. Though the literature on internalized oppression is rich with descriptive data, little theory has been developed in this area. To date, the field of Social Justice Education has been limited by this oversight. Drawing upon the work of theorists who have examined this topic across a variety of social identities, this study presents a generalizable framework for understanding and analyzing internalized oppression. More specifically, this research focuses on the internalized oppression of subordinant groups, also known as internalized subordination. The framework presented within this study identifies internalized oppression …

Not You/Like You, With You: Toward A Praxis Of Love, Learning, And Liberation In Teaching Efl Writing — On Zombies, De-Colonial Feminisms, And Freire In Efl Contact Zones, Jessmaya Morales

MA TESOL Collection

This paper explores EFL writing as a critical contact zone in which identity and subjectivity are found, denied, contested, de/constructed and occupied. The author opens with an account of a dream, utilized as a metaphor to examine EFL learning through the analytical lens of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. The paper’s first section is a self-reflexive discussion of Freire’s pedagogy and why his unambiguous analyses of power, subjectivity, and the “banking system of education” are vital to the field of ELT. In the second section, the author discusses subjectivity, identity, and intersectionality as rooted in the work of …

A Process Of Becoming: U.S. Born African American And Black Women In The Process Of Liberation From Internalized Racism, Tanya Ovea Williams

Open Access Dissertations

Internalized racism is a contributing factor to the inability of African Americans to overcome racism. (Speight, 2007) Because this is a cognitive phenomenon over which individuals can have agency, it is important to study, understand, and seek out ways that African Americans are able to gain a liberatory perspective in the midst of a racist society. By using colonization psychology and post-traumatic slave psychology to define the phenomenon, and Jackson’s Black identity development model theory to ground and analyze participants’ process of liberation, this study used phenomenological in-depth interviewing to understand the experiences of African American and Black women who …

Rhythms Of Rebellion: Artists Creating Dangerously For Social Change, Susan J. Erenrich

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

On December 14, 1957, after winning the Nobel Prize for literature, Albert Camus challenged artists attending a lecture at the University of Uppsala in Sweden to create dangerously. Even though Camus never defined what he meant by his charge, throughout history, artists involved in movements of protest, resistance, and liberation have answered Camus’ call. Quite often, the consequences were costly, resulting in imprisonment, censorship, torture, and death. This dissertation examines the question of what it means to create dangerously by using Camus’ challenge to artists as a starting point. The study then turns its attention to two artists, Augusto Boal …

De L’Aliénation À La Libération, Alexie Tcheuyap

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This essay addresses the issue of education in pre and post-colonial Africa. It examines the ideological discourses, challenges and consequences associated with the adoption of western education in African countries. Based on novels and films, some of which are set in universities, the article analyses the effects of violence and irrelevant syllabi on African education, and argues that in order for knowledge to serve as a tool for real liberation, it has to be relevant to the social environment. It contends further that, paradoxically, even colonial education can contribute towards the liberation of Africans from some problematic aspects of their …

African Agenda, June & July 1975, African American Solidarity Committee

African Agenda

The Vol 4, No 4 issue of the African Agenda newsletter was published by the African American Solidarity Committee. Articles: Women's Liberation Is Essential For The Revolution, International Women's Year 1975, Chili's Experience And Problems Of The Class Struggle Part II, Scientific Socialism in Africa by Marien Ngouabi, President of the People's Republic of the Congo, Africa's Choice, One Million Voices Petition, After 477 Years Of Struggle: Mozambique, Recommended Books. 8 pages.

African Agenda, August & September 1974, African American Solidarity Committee

African Agenda

The Vol 3, No 5 issue of the African Agenda newsletter was published by the African American Solidarity Committee. Articles: Puerto Rico Is Our Fight Too, Puerto Rican Solidarity Day, Historical Outline Of Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico: Special Colony of the U.S., The Time For Liberation: interview with Juan Mari Bras, Puerto Rican Labor In The U.S., U.S. Colonialism Exposed at the U.N. 8 pages.

African Agenda, June 1973, African American Solidarity Committee

African Agenda

The Vol 2, No 6 issue of the African Agenda newsletter was published by the African American Solidarity Committee. Articles: National Movement In Solidarity With Africa, A Call To Action, The Auction of Sister Africa by Antar Sudan Katara Mberi, The Plot Against Amilcar Cabral, Difference In The African National Revolution, Recommended Books. 4 pages.