Abstract
Institutions of higher education are experiencing social, cultural, and political changes, contesting long-standing characteristics that break away from dominant culture. Dominant culture is understood as cultural practice that is dominant within a particular context in which multiple cultures exist, referring to norms that are customary in the social world. In this chapter, critical theory, community cultural wealth theory, and the theory of liminality are paired with collective autoethnography as a theoretical and methodological approach to explore lived experience and problematize dominant characteristics. Three perspectives present how leaders of color who are first generation college graduates re-negotiate political spaces in positions of power-dynamics. The aims of this chapter are to: (a) demonstrate how to navigate structural oppression embedded within institutional culture, (b) assert that lived experiences dismantle injustice, and (c) advocate for life-affirming institutions to construct educational possibilities for aspiring leaders of color in K12 schools.
TopTheoretical Framework
Each author grounds their story in a different theoretical framework. In this chapter, Critical Theory, Community Cultural Wealth Theory, and Liminality are used to make meaning of lived experience and problematize dominant characteristics in positions of power-dynamics within educational institutions.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Storying: When conceptual ideas like that of dominant culture are brought to life with lived experience.
Boundary Setting: The act of directly communicating the standard that one sets for how they would like to be treated.
Autoethnography: Research inquiry that collects different forms of expression to link the autobiographical with the multiple contexts it exists within for greater meaning-making.
Hegemony: the way in which people are convinced to embrace dominant ideologies as always being in their best interest.
Ideological Critique: The act of recognizing how uncritical internalizations of dominant ideologies influence the social world.
Aspirational Capital: The ability to remain hopeful and dream for the future despite challenges and barriers.
Liminality: A mental state of uncertainty marked by a contradiction between what is stated and what is possible.
Conscientization: When individuals develop, strengthen, and alter consciousness at a systems level.
Mentoring: Actions by a trusted leader or colleague who articulates one’s assets, takes proactive steps to include one in spaces of power, and provides guidance during times of uncertainty.
Hidden Curriculum: The invisible norms, policies, and expectations to succeed but not taught explicitly.
Familial Capital: Cultural knowledge fostered among family that draws from community history, memory, and intuition.