Krueger-Henney, P. (2016). What are we listening for? International Journal for Critical Pedagogy, 7(3), 49-66. Ebsco. 21571074

Krueger-Henry brings up the question of what are we truly hearing in classrooms that are anti-black racism? Much of the research in education focuses on the “achievement gap.” Some of the key questions being asked are what identifiable sounds do structural racism make? How can we listen to the harm black folks face without “damage-centered” pathologies? The first thing we must do is truly sit in the fact that school is a site for black suffering. Being able to acknowledge the full gravity of the suffering means we can do something about it. It is important for educators to understand anti-black racism so that they can loosen the bolts of the power circuit. It is also important to see how revolutionary love is critical to undoing harm. The way that we must do this type of research is by participatory action research which means focusing on unraveling racist ideological structures and discourage social practices that sustain them.  

 

Kwong, K. (2020). Teaching Microaggressions, Identity, and Social Justice: A Reflective, Experiential and Collaborative Pedagogical

Approach. International Journal of Higher Education, 9(4), 184-196.

Kwong discusses the key elements of how to teach social workers to understand microaggressions, identity, diversity, and social justice. Key models that are discussed are the minority stress model which is chronic stress due to oppression, intersectionality theory which is the intersection of microaggressions and health disparities as well as the idea that social groups don’t act independent of each other, critical race theory which is centering intersectionality of BIPOC folks and challenging the dominant narrative in the world, and lastly the social identity model that has four key elements: accepting and internalizing dominant narrative, questioning, rejecting or resisting dominant narrative, exploring, redefining, and developing new sense of social identity, and integrating and internalizing new identity. Kwong also suggests key challenges that are faced when teaching social justice and racial dialogue. The key challenges are: students and faculty having diverse backgrounds which can lead to emotional exchanges and strong fear of discourse, managing classroom dynamics (silent white students plus angry BIPOC students equals anxious teacher), fear of sharing personal beliefs staff to staff for fear of showing bias, and lastly, educators or facilitators don’t check their own biases. This can be mitigated through reflective, experiential, and collaborative learning components. Those are tools for content mastery, critical thinking, action and social change, personal reflection, and awareness of multicultural group dynamics.   

 

Lac, V. T. (2017). In Real Time: From Theory to Practice in a Critical Race Pedagogy Classroom. i.e.:inquiry in education, 9(1). :

http://digitalcommons.nl.edu/ie/vol9/iss1/3

Lac discusses the key ways to turn the theory of critical race pedagogy into a reality. Many articles that have talked about this topic have focused on what critical race pedagogy is, but not how to implement it into the classroom. It is incredibly important to be able to incorporate not only critical race theory, but also problem-posing classrooms (praxis as a process). Dialogue is a key aspect to implementing Critical Race Pedagogy into the classroom. Key findings are: building trust is key, student-agency in the decision process, having a range of critical texts not just what we deem as important or legitimate (i.e. poems as well as academic articles), using kinesthetic activities to teach white privilege and racism, using dialogue to construct knowledge, and the teacher cannot operate as neutral. Other key elements are leveling the playing field between teacher and student. It can be hard to do that all the time, but it is important to push back on hierarchy and we must acknowledge and confront the problem if we are trying to fix it. We need to know what we are even fighting. 

 

Mosley, D. V., Hargons, C. N., Meiller, C., Angyal, B., & Wheeler, P. (2021). Critical Consciousness of Anti-Black Racism: A Practical Model to

Prevent and Resist Racial Trauma. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 61(1), 1-16. HHS Public Access. doi:10.1037/cou0000430.

Mosley et al. discuss the validity of black trauma; however, this article focuses on resistance. Racial trauma (race-based traumatic stress) is the psychological, emotional, and physical injury from experiencing real and perceived racism. The different forms of racism are overt, covert, interpersonal discrimmination and harassment, institutional, and systemic. One intervention to mitigate, prevent, and resist racial trauma is critical consciousness. Critical consciousness is the skill of awareness and with that awareness putting it to action. This leads to healing. The most healing form of critical consciousness for black people is critical consciousness around anti-black racism. The way this is executed is by witnessing, processing, and responding to anti-black racism.

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Nojan, S. (2020). Why ethnic studies? Building critical consciousness among middle school students. Middle School Journal, 51(2), 25-35.

DOI: 10.1080/00940771.2019.1709259

Saugher discusses the benefits of having an ethnic studies course for middle school students. Three key aspects that Saugher believed critical consciousness will support students are by making meaningful connections to their own life, developing the capacity for social action, and being able to hold contradictory beliefs. Saugher believes that by having teachers with similar racial/ethinic and socioeconomic status backgrounds, supports the development of critical consciousness. Ethic studies pushes back on the “race-neutral'' eurocentric color-blind curriculum and centers marginalized communities. This allows for students from marginalized backgrounds to connect to their lives and communities. The lens that an ethinc studies class takes is with critical race theory. Critical race theory is centering Black, Indigenous, and people of color to challenge and transform the dominant narrative. The goal for these two concepts is to eliminate racism by critiquing and transforming systems of oppression on an institutional, interpersonal, and intimate level. Challenges with introducing ethnic studies and critical pedagogy is teachers not being well versed in these two areas as well as the majority of the teaching force is white. Some key findings in this study with middle schoolers is that having an ethinic studies course with critical race theory did exactly what it said it would do. It created content that connected to students' life and community, developed their capacity for social action, and skill at holding contradictory beliefs. The only struggle was that middle schools do not have development yet to connect their current circumstances to a bigger picture. In other words, complex personhood is difficult for middle school students. This means that societal inequities don’t always translate to the students' lived experience, they are aware of inequity but don’t believe it’s happening to them, and the historical progress introduced with critical social justice foundation gives a false sense of progress and inhibits recognizing localized inequities. 

 

Smith, K. (2020). Cultivating Critical Consciousness in the Classroom. Facing Today: A Facing History Blog.

https://facingtoday.facinghistory.org/cultivating-critical-consciousness-in-the-classroom

 

Smith brings together two understandings of critical consciousness and develops for key practices of ways of developing critical consciousness. The first definition is from Paolo Freire and it is about the ability to recognize oppressive social forces shaping society and to take action against them. Freire claims that it helps gain functional literacy as a means to gain transformative literacy. It also builds resilience. The second definition is by Watts, Dreamer, & Voight. They focus on social analysis, political agency, and social action. Smith’s major takeaways from the different schools she examined are taking a class on social engagements, students learning from students, creating opportunities for political engagement, and real-world assignments. For social engagements, it allowed students to create a deeper understanding of systemic racism. Students learning from students supported class culture and more profound learning. Political engagement supported student agency and political agency. Real-world assignments developed students' capacity to be involved with social action.