Black Feminist Liberatory Pedagogy and Ubuntu Solidarity: Toward an Otherwise World of Education

Since the beginning, U.S. public schools have perpetuated harm towards students that do not fall under the descriptors of male, middle/upper class, cis-gender, heterosexual, able-bodied, neurotypical, and white. Education scholars with varying ideological backgrounds have approached questions of education equity for decades; yet, in asking these questions through the "white gaze" (Wright, 2023), some scholars have perpetuated the harm they seek to demystify. The following series of manuscripts express the dire need for (re)calibrating U.S. public schools so that all children receive just, equitable, and humanizing education. The first manuscript analyzes harmful white supremacist ideological hegemony embedded in education policy, the second manuscript is an ethnographic portrait (Lawrence-Lightfoot and Davis, 1997) that resists the "white gaze" and illuminates the good in a thriving classroom comprised of Black and Brown teachers and students through a lens of Black feminist theory, and the third manuscript interrogates what it takes emotionally and intellectually to do this work as a white woman scholar who seeks ubuntu feminist solidarity. The dissertation concludes with a posture of hope. Hope of an otherwise world (Greene, 1995) of education in which ubuntu feminist scholarship will inform praxis so that students may experience pedagogies that liberate instead of harm.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Curriculum and Instruction

Department dc:contributor.department

Education, Vocational-Technical

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Kaerwer, Karin Louise

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Weaver-Hightower, Marcus Bennett

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Baldwin, Andrea N.
• Kniola, David John
• Kuehl, Rachelle Elizabeth

• liberatory pedagogy
• Black feminism
• critical policy analysis
• portraiture
• critical autoethnography

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en

Dc Identifier Other

vt_gsexam:41354

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/121520