Critical hope is a pedagogical tool that addresses unjust systems through meaningful dialogue and empathic responses ( Zembylas, 2014 ).
Published in Chapter:
This Is How I Learn: Co-Creating Space for Students' Voices
Jessica H. Burbach (Portland YouthBuilders, USA), Staci B. Martin (Portland State University, USA), Javonta Arnold-Fowlkes (Portland YouthBuilders, USA), Johnathan Sakaith (Portland YouthBuilders, USA), Cheyenne Julius (Portland YouthBuilders, USA), and Andrew Hibbs (Portland YouthBuilders, USA)
Copyright: © 2017
|Pages: 15
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-0897-7.ch009
Abstract
This chapter presents research on how Culturally Responsive Mathematics Teaching (CRMT) and a critical hope framework can be used as learning tools in the alternative high school classroom. Our study shows how 12 high school students and two teachers, one in high school and one in post-secondary, can work together to nurture students' personal and collective identity, agency, and hope. We use the concept of the “six words” from the Race Card Project (Norris, 2015) to co-create spaces that question the dominant narrative, which describes students as dropouts, and that offer spaces of hope and solidarity. As researchers, we believe without student collaboration in the research process itself, their voices will be muted in the academic language describing them and the dominant narrative that disempowers them. We believe that we have not achieved a true social justice curriculum until there is action where hope can surface (Freire, 1970).