Faculty members must employ pedagogical practices that foster humanizing learning environments for graduate Students of Color who have been marginalized and othered in higher education. Methodologically using narrative inquiry, this paper describes graduate Students’ of Color stories in higher education/student affairs hybrid graduate preparation programs to understand how faculty contribute to humanizing and critical pedagogy. The findings highlight three central pedagogical strategies faculty used in hybrid classrooms that graduate Students’ of Color named as most effective: (1) taught to transgress against racism and oppression, (2) emphasized dialogic pedagogy strategies, and (3) encouraged collaboration inside and outside of the classroom. This study highlights critical pedagogies for student engagement and is a call-to-action for higher education to center humanizing praxis in hybrid learning environments and beyond.
Black girls have been at the forefront of educational change as leaders who "run the show" throughout history yet their unique contributions are missing from books and classroom materials, and their perspectives excluded from definitions of leadership. To address these deficits, we interviewed 21 Black girls enrolled in a summer program in a mid-sized Southern city individually and in focus groups about their knowledge of Black women leaders and definitions of leadership. Using narrative analysis, we analyzed the individual and focus group interviews. Knowledge of Black female leaders ranged from 0 to 4 with the majority (11; 52%) listing 1. Definitions of leadership aligned with identity developmental questions of "Who am I?" and "How do I fit in?" Being a leader involved making positive life choices for staying on the right path, even if that path differed from their peers, and emphasized that leaders support other Black girls. Suggestions as well as a list of ten guiding questions to help researchers, policymakers and practitioners continue to support developing Black girl leaders in middle school are provided.
For Black girls, whose histories are often taught in schools through deficit-based narratives, the need to create and reauthor their personal and communal stories is a resistant act that gives their stories permanence in the present and the future. This article explores how Black girls leveraged creative expression to freedom dream in a virtual summer arts program. Theoretically grounded in Abolitionist Teaching and Critical Race Feminism, this study explored eight adolescent Black girls’ (co-researchers) experiences in Black Girls S.O.A.R. (scholarship, organizing, arts, and resistance), a program aimed to co-create a healing-centered space to engage artistic explorations of history, storytelling, Afrofuturism, and social justice with Black girls. The study utilizes performance ethnography to contend with the following research question: (1) How, if at all, do adolescent Black girls use arts-based practices (e.g., visual art, music, hair, and animation) to freedom dream? Analyses of the data revealed that co-researchers used arts-based practices to reclaim personal and historical narratives, dream new worlds, and use art as activism. In this, co-researchers created futures worthy of Black girl brilliance—futures where joy, creativity, equity, and love were at the center. I conclude with implications for how educators and researchers can employ creative, participatory, and arts-based practices and methodologies in encouraging and honoring Black girls’ storytelling and dream-making practices.
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