Abstract
Background/Context
Critical consciousness (CC) is an awareness and reflection of inequities, political efficacy, and agency in response to injustice. Similarly, sociopolitical development (SPD) is the process of developing a critical understanding, skill set, and emotional depth to enact individual agency against oppressive forces. Of the latter, SPD is vital in empowering youth from traditionally marginalized communities to challenge inequities. However, SPD has largely remained absent from U.S. classrooms.
Purpose/Objective/ Research Question/Focus of Study
Considering the absence of SPD in U.S. classrooms, this case study explores the SPD of Black female preservice teachers and their Black female high school mentees in a two-year tutoring and mentoring school-based program. Our study captures the woke pedagogical experiences that advanced participants’ co-constructed CC. As such, we seek to describe student exemplars of what it means to be awakened and stay woke through an analysis of interviews, journal reflections, and video data. To this end, the research question that guided this study was: What are the perspectives of Black female youth as they co-construct CC toward SPD in a two-year tutoring and mentoring school-based program?
Research Design
Through the lenses of critical race feminism and woke pedagogies, this study used a single case study design. Case study is appropriate for this study because it highlights the particularity and complexities of one unit of analysis.
Findings
Our findings capture the perspectives of Black female youth as they cultivate CC toward sociopolitical development in one educational initiative geared toward partnering undergraduate and high school students. An examination of data through the lens of critical race feminism and woke pedagogies spotlighted the perspectives of our participants as they co-constructed CC through woke pedagogical experiences. Mentors deepened their CC on race, and mentees gained heightened awareness of gendered and racialized school procedures and policies. Black girls in this study woke up (CC) and stayed woke through their activism (SPD).
Conclusions
In sharing the perspectives of Black female youth as they cultivated SPD, it is our intention that the critical approach and experiences that we have described capture the methods and strategies that one educational initiative implemented to empower and promote agency among Black female students. As an example of woke pedagogy, this educational initiative offered Black girls at the intersection of race, gender, and class an opportunity to critically question their world and become aware of racial and social injustices impacting their everyday lives and community.
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