For two summers while I was in high school, I designed curricula and taught a Spoken Word Poetry class in five elementary schools in Miami. I was hired by Thomas Armour Youth Ballet, a nonprofit organization that brought free dance and tutoring lessons to multiple schools across the city. I had never taught a class before and was ill-equipped to manage classes of over twenty students ranging from four to twelve years old. It was somehow both terrifying and affirming to look out at a room full of young, bright Black and Brown faces. I was so excited to discover what stories each student would bring to the class, how I could relate to them, what they would teach me, and yet so terrified to know their introduction to this form of expression was in my incredibly inexperienced hands.
To open each class, I asked each student to yell their name as loud as they could. It was a fantastic gauge for reading the personalities of the class. Extroverted students enjoyed being bold and theatrical when speaking about themselves, while some would barely whisper. Either way, we applauded for each and every student. After completing their writing assignments, each student performed their work in front of the class. To nurture their confidence and gain their trust, I offered to have students read their writing to me alone if they didn’t feel ready to perform. It was my goal to encourage theatricality and exaggeration, to remove the seriousness and pressure of performing, in order for them to become comfortable enough to express themselves boldly.
They squirmed in their seats before each turn to perform for their peers. They danced across the classroom reading Haikus, telling stories of mischievous little brothers and loving aunts and uncles. They were honest with me because I empathized with them- even those who detested writing. Once, I helped a group of reluctant students compose a rap about their dislike for Spoken Word Class, and we performed it together amidst fits of laughter. We developed an atmosphere of trust and acceptance. When they were silly, I was silly. When I was serious, they were too. By the end of the summer, I had watched children who were at first too timid to even speak in class become performers, singing and reciting stanzas with newly found confidence. As an artist and poet, no work I’ve written or painted has felt as fulfilling.
Teaching this class effectively shaped the rest of my educational experience. I felt so lucky to learn so much about my students through poetry and to witness their transformations throughout the class. Throughout my primary education, I was lucky enough to have access to similar programs offering academic enrichment through art, music, and writing. I credit those invaluable opportunities for affording me the skills to be admitted at an institution like NYU. However, my time here has reminded me of how incredibly fortunate I was to participate in such unique educational programs. Teaching those two summers allowed me to watch for myself how transformative arts-based learning can be. Connecting with their creativity, life experiences, relationships, and emotions, and making their expression central to their learning – allowed the students to light up and engage in a way I had not expected. In my experience, schools and other institutions rarely ask what is important to the youth in their communities, about their experiences, or how the institutions can best support them. From the time we are children––and I refer here most specifically to Black, Brown, and low-income students––we are taught that quiet is good and obedience is better. We are brought up with an understanding that our voices are not valuable in the home or the classroom. We are taught that our success is tied to our ability and efficiency to follow directions, and that unfair treatment is outside of our control. This imposed complacency is at the root of various of our education system’s failings. Education systems are institutions that impact society on a massive level, and I believe that an arts-based pedagogy can challenge harmful educational practices and create opportunities for the positive power of education to reach its fullest impact.
I aim to de-radicalize theories of creative education reform so that the majority of students have educational experiences embedded with opportunities for self-expression and academic enrichment. The arts have great potential for expanding the ways we learn and how deeply our learning can impact our view of the world. Artists have often served the role of historians and truth-tellers in society. This is likely why there is also a long history of the role of the arts in political activism and social movements. Throughout history, artists have served the roles of journalists, philosophers, social critics, anthropologists, scientists, and activists. The arts provide opportunities for students to take steps into these roles and discover that they are more than capable. I have observed and experienced how education systems set a precedent for what students gauge is possible for themselves to achieve. When we are primed to expect highly of ourselves, we are more likely to achieve highly. Likewise, when we are taught that our capacity is limited to obedience, how can we even visualize ourselves exceeding those expectations? The classroom is a mirror of the systems at work in our society, and expectations are charged with sociopolitical and cultural contexts. My experiences with students and extracurricular arts and academic programs have illuminated how systemic failures in education seem to reflect our country’s resistance to change. When our children’s education reflects the inequitable, inaccessible world of yesterday, how can we expect them to build a greater tomorrow? I believe that through art, I can develop an understanding of how to foster academic environments that do not reproduce our country’s limited, stagnant, colonial mindset, but instead empower and prepare students to take history into their grasp and shape stronger futures. Assessing the mechanisms of the education system has been an essential part of my research. Understanding these mechanisms has allowed me to identify where and how the arts can be implemented as a powerful tool.
While we may have hopes for our schools to serve as incubators for greater futures, the institution of education is a microcosmic reflection of contemporary American political, social, and economic systems which are built to maintain high levels of social stratification and inequity. The mechanisms by which race, gender, ethnicity, and immigration status, for example, work to limit and/or expand one’s educational opportunities most often function on invisible psychological and systemic levels. These variables include educators’ internalized racial or ethnocultural stereotypes and biases, students' socioeconomic status and access to social and cultural capital, and students’ cultural attitudes toward education and experiences within the institution. An intersectional framework that addresses the layered nature of identity in education is central to understanding how these mechanisms function.
Research illustrates how students are prepared for particular economic outcomes based on their present class status (Bowles and Gintis 1976; Anyon 1980). Jean Anyon’s seminal study on “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work,” gathers qualitative examples of the ways students are primed with different assignments and intellectual expectations depending on the school or community’s level within the socioeconomic hierarchy (Anyon 1980). The study notably delineates the different characteristics valued and praised for students in each group. In schools where students’ families are in the lower and working classes, students are required to follow and memorize instructions without questioning methods, and obedience is often praised over accuracy. Critical thinking and students' personal interests are not involved in the curriculum. In contrast, children in upper-class and elite schools are involved in highly engaged learning activities where they are expected to articulate their personal understandings of the topics at hand (Anyon 1980, pp. 79-83). They are often assigned open-ended creative projects where their personal expression and critical thinking are valued highly, rather than their ability to complete simple tasks. The curriculum is flexible, and lessons are sometimes shaped by the students themselves through their questions or personal points of interest (Anyon 1980, pp. 80-85). Students’ learning experiences in these schools are highly individualized, whereas, in lower-income schools, students are likely to experience more standardized learning with a focus on disciplining. This phenomenon, which occurs subliminally across education systems is what Anyon calls the “hidden curriculum.” The hidden curriculum is a concept involving the unacknowledged and often unintended lessons, values, and perspectives that students internalize in school that often encourage highly specific expectations for behavior, morals, or language based on class (Anyon, 1980). The work students are assigned reflects their projected roles as workers in society––either in lower-paid labor-driven jobs, highly paid executive and leadership positions, or somewhere in between-- depending simply on the wealth and status of their community, reinforcing the challenges of social immobility.
This discriminatory pattern is not simply the fault of individual schools or educators; it is also a result of large-scale political and economic systems that purposefully relegate certain groups to particular levels in the class system (Anyon, 1980; Bowles and Gintis, 1976). Anyon’s article fails to note the ways in which the hidden curriculum is inextricably tied not only to class but to race. Due to systemic policies that maintain white privilege and inequitable distribution of wealth (including but not limited to the development of generational wealth, over-policing, over-disciplining, and political processes such as redlining) economic resources, curriculum quality, teacher preparation, and the reputation of a school are variables linked to the race and class of a community (Stovall, 2018). Abundance in quality and resources is far more likely to be found in majority middle and upper class usually white communities (Catterall, Dumais, Hampden-Thompson, 2012). As demonstrated above, open-ended, creative thinking is a skill primarily valued in schools of higher class status, likewise, the disparity in arts education and creative projects between majority POC schools versus majority white schools is vast. If creative thinking is seen as an asset for middle and upper-class students, the benefits for Black, Brown, and low-socioeconomic status (SES) students could very well be a missing piece in the disruption of social reproduction through education. Longitudinal studies by the National Endowment for the Arts show that young adults who have a history of in-depth arts involvement show better academic outcomes than do youth with lower arts involvement, regardless of their SES; they earn higher GPAs and demonstrate higher rates of graduation, college enrollment, and attainment (Catterall, Dumais, Hampden-Thompson, 2012). Equalizing arts involvement opportunities is a proven way to increase the overall educational experiences of students regardless of their SES or background (Catterall, Dumais, Hampden-Thompson, 2012). In addition, arts-centered teaching methods not only impact students' individual outcomes but can also impact the overall structure of classrooms as a whole.
I have spent the last three years researching what it means to educate, and what makes an educational space just, and have found that in order for education to contribute to communal healing and social justice it must be centered in the voices and experiences of students (Lyiscott et al, 2018; Kraehe, Acuff, 2013; Ladson Billings, 2011; Dewhurst 2010). Jamila Lyiscott is an educator and scholar of anti-colonial education, racial equity and youth empowerment through arts and performance. In the study, “An Anticolonial Framework for Urban Teacher Preparation,” Lyiscott discusses the importance of modeling classrooms structured toward critical, anti-colonial practices in teacher education. In one case study, Lyscott discusses the Youth Participatory Action Research Project (YPAR) in which students open each class meeting with a check-in of their day. During one meeting, a student expressed her dismay at being assigned an individualized education plan which she felt was extremely inaccurate (Lyiscott et al, 2018). Following the student’s discussion, the day’s lesson revolved around the social forces that affect students' lives. The particular student’s “self-awareness, self-reflection, and self-direction,” was invited into the democratic learning space, encouraging both her fellow youth and the adult allies in the group to consider the institutional powers discussed in the unit and in their own lives (Lyiscott et al, 2018). Learning environments like these center student experience, empowering them to voice their personal views and emotions, and strongly promoting meaningful exchanges (Lyiscott et al, 2018; Dewhurst 2010). This means naming, exploring, and discussing the social, political, and economic systems or symptoms that affect students’ lives and bringing those topics into the classroom.
The classroom is not a vacuum; if learning does not address the realities of the lives, communities, and policies affecting participants, then the learning that occurs may be rendered irrelevant and inconsequential to its overall success. (Lyiscott et al, 2018; Kraehe, Acuff, 2013; Ladson Billings, 2011; Dewhurst 2010) Educators must understand the cultural, social, and political realities of their students in order to shape curricula that will engage them (Ladson Billings, 2011). The arts provide a specific, personal, and student-centered approach to developing an understanding of the lives of one’s students. They contribute to learning environments that enable and encourage students to express their individual experiences. Lyiscott, for example, utilizes public speaking, spoken word, and hip-hop to engage students with a medium they are familiar with are open to engaging with while challenging them to share their own stories through their writing. The artistic process, in general, often begins by responding to one’s own life and community experiences, facilitating critical analysis of environment and self (Monet 2016, Dewhurst 2010). These investigative and analytic processes can be a segue into critical inquiry into the multiple social, cultural, political, and economic factors that contribute to their lives outside of the classroom (Monet 2016, Dewhurst 2010). Furthermore, striving to create an educational experience rooted in social justice does not mean only discussing the most obvious forms of inequality (Dewhurst, 2010). Incorporating the artistic processes into the classroom can also help integrate expressions of mental health and other less obvious variables in student performance. For example, the simple and playful activity of drawing responses to the question “how are you feeling today” or “how are you feeling and what does that feeling look like?” is an unobtrusive way to invite individuals to contemplate their mental state without pressure and while fulfilling a relaxing task. Providing the option of sharing with the class encourages a more open discussion of mental states. Processes like this empower students to consider themselves and their personal identities as worthy of communicating and learning about in academic settings.
While it seems the focus of practices of critical pedagogy is on the experiences of students, reform within the learning space requires that we look critically at the role and experience of adults and educators themselves (Lyscott et al, 2018; Kraehe, Boyd Acuff, 2013; Ladson Billings 2011). Likewise, this criticality requires a constant judgment of dynamics of power present not only in learning material but in the classroom itself, meaning that hierarchies between the students and teachers must be assessed, reimagined, and even dismantled (Lyscott et al, 2018; Ladson Billings 2011). Valuing and training preservice teachers’ preparation and creativity are vital elements in this process. Teachers who are trained to think critically and creatively are better equipped to challenge provided curricula and practices that inhibit their students and provide effective solutions. Education do not exist apart from the truth that US society, as we know it today, is a result of histories of European colonialism unto global Indigenous populations. The subjugation and enslavement of these Indigenous populations are the basis for the physical and political foundations of this country. This system of white superiority over the bodies and minds (through the stripping of religious freedom and denial of education) is the basis of the systems of economics, politics, and culture of segregation that maintain the vast levels of inequity that we see today. It is impossible to ignore this as one walks through the streets of cities like Miami or New York. Ultimately, this culture shapes education not only by shaping history, but by priming individuals who become educators as essential pawns in this system. Hegemonic, white supremacist dominant culture creates leagues of educators who are ignorant to the realities of racial and class discrimination and how to address it in their classrooms, especially if they do not themselves experience targeted discrimination or have a personal understanding of the impacts of systemic discrimination.
Researchers Leoandra Rogers Derrick R. Brooms study on ideologies of white male teachers in an all-Black, all-male high school shows that teachers’ conception of self in relation to their students’ heavily impacts their ability to teach fairly (Rogers and Brooms, 2020 pp. 450-455). White teachers, though they are not alone in this, have a tendency to view themselves as distanced from their Black student’s experiences, and, therefore, not responsible for addressing these experiences in school (Rogers and Brooms, 2020 pp. 462-464). Consequently, these educators place blame for “poor achievement” on students’ individual failings rather than maintaining a holistic view of their achievement in context with the systemic challenges they may face. This contributes to the perpetuation of meritocratic ideals and racialized deficit perspectives imposed disproportionately onto Black students. Teachers also develop expectations based on stereotypes about particular student groups, and research shows that these expectations go on to strongly impact students’ outcomes. For negatively stereotyped students, this manifests in apathy and low expectations, instilling low self-esteem. Failure is stigmatized as the default for these students, making it a likely outcome (Rogers and Brooms, 2020 pg. 422). For positively stereotyped groups, teacher attitudes manifest in acts of encouragement, care, and instilment of high self-esteem, contributing positively to their understanding of their ability, and ultimately, their success (Tyson, 2003). Teachers’ outlooks shape students’ self-image and relationships to learning. Students who are negatively stereotyped, primarily Black students and other students of color, suffer the consequences of poorly trained teachers. They are denied the positive psychological development around learning and educational opportunities that propel other students toward success in school and beyond. This cycle propels social reproduction and causes tensions between individuals on varying levels of authority (e.g. student/teacher/administrator, etc.). Ultimately, educators hold an immense amount of power in traditionally structured learning environments and their function as an institution (e.g. teacher knows all, student knows nothing) (Freire, 1972).
This common structure is described by Paolo Freire in “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” as the “banking” model of education, in which teachers “deposit” information into the students, who are expected to passively obey and memorize (Freire, 1972). Such a model, in which there is no exchange between student and teacher, creates a dynamic where the teacher knows all and the student listens and knows nothing––a framework which mirrors oppressive society and internalizes inferiority in the learner.
“It is not surprising that the banking concept of education regards men as adaptable, manageable beings. The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world” (Freire, 1972 p. 73).
Artistic activities place students in active roles (e.g. student as researcher, author, expert, artist, etc.) as opposed to limiting them to passive roles such as listener or learner. This enables them to be agents in their own learning (Dewhurst, 2010). It also enables them to more readily question power structures on cultural and political levels (Lyiscott et al, 2018; Kraehe, Boyd Acuff, 2013). In an arts-informed learning environment, this means the process of creation and action is a collaborative and simultaneous process for students and educators (Dewhurst, 2010). It creates fewer circumstances for students to question their capability because they have been primed with the confidence and open expectations of their educators. The educator does not look down and delegate tasks upon students to prove their learning ability but instead asks students to share their understandings of important concepts with each other, make connections with the material and how it can be incorporated into their lives. This allows the educator to learn just as much about their students as the students are learning from them (Lyiscott et al, 2018). When engaged in personal artmaking and sharing, educators have the opportunity to dismantle power structures between students and teachers and deconstruct the definitions of the classroom, making room for exploration and culturally relevant learning. Students are empowered to discuss issues relevant to them, again, allowing them to engage more deeply in their learning not as something limited to a classroom and a textbook, but as an everyday practice that is connected to their lives (Lyiscott et al, 2018; Kraehe, Acuff, 2013; Dewhurst, 2010).
The education system is one of countless American institutions that function to advance injustice and maintain high levels of inequity, segregation, and social immobility. It is important to acknowledge the innumerable failings of the American education system, arguably the most prescient among them being racial and class disparities in educational quality. The United States’ current circumstances remain comparable to those present during the Brown V. Board decision meant to “outlaw” practices of discrimination and segregation in 1954. The tools of this system are still present. Political systems like redlining and housing discrimination in tandem with social phenomena of internalized xenophobia, “colorblindness,” and poor teacher education support and perpetuate anti-Black racism and outright discrimination. Ultimately, educational inequity and the racial/class segregation that is still present are symptoms of the same illness that most of our political and social systems suffer from: white Americans’ (both civilian and those in positions of power) deep discomfort with facing the history of white supremacy and subjugation of people of color– a history which has shaped their lives through power and privilege that only they are afforded. I have observed a strong hesitance and even aversion to the discussion of such topics in education systems in the US. Justice-oriented pedagogical models such as critical pedagogy, culturally relevant pedagogy, and critical multiculturalism. A commitment to equity requires that these topics be addressed in order to prevent them from being continually perpetuated. Informal, personalized exploration of the way these topics affect students in their everyday lives can come from the implementation of arts pedagogy. The arts are limited only by human creativity and available resources (Dewhurst, 2010). The arts allow individuals to depict, dissect, warp, and transform our perspectives on our individual and collective humanity. Art provides an essential channel for imagining realities beyond our own– and in order to maintain hope in working toward a more just world, we must be able to radically envision the future we are working toward– an idea referred to as the “radical imaginary” (Stovall, 2018).
These ideas are particularly pressing as virtual media and communication become a primary platform for work and interaction in the 21st century. As upcoming generations become attuned to the simultaneously impersonal and deeply vulnerable reality of social media, and engage with the evermore complex search for truth amongst infinite varying sources, the capacity for empathy and critical thinking becomes increasingly necessary. Contemporary arts, at their core, are based in practices of compassion and critical perspectives of the status quo. By integrating interdisciplinary arts-inspired approaches to education, the unfeeling, binary mindset perpetuated by the nature of social media can be transformed. Incorporating the arts into education provides a vehicle for exploring large-scale, often painful events and concepts that are necessary to an enriching and culturally sustaining educational experience. Contextualizing these “difficult” concepts, how they impact oneself, one's peers, one's community, or one's education, is necessary to ensure the learning process does not continue to cause desensitization or trauma. I pose arts education as a means for encouraging individuals to deeply question these systemic inequities and face them with empathy, collectivity, and action as opposed to fear and complacency, which only inhibit the development of social justice.
Despite the gravity of dismantling centuries-old systems of thought, I remain hopeful that great progress will be made to this end in my lifetime. I remain hopeful despite the evidence I have seen that seems to prove the opposite. I remain hopeful although it often appears more logical to be pessimistic. I remain hopeful because I have to– because in order to work toward a more just world for all my siblings on this earth, I must be motivated by hope, and I maintain this hope through the practice of envisioning a perfect world. This may seem to be a radical act– whether it is radically naive or radically brave depends on one’s outlook. But in truth, by imagining a “perfect world,” I resist forces that bank on the burnout of freedom organizers and seek to drown out movements for hope. I do not intend to define radical imagination as a blind hope completely dissociated from our current reality. I believe this sort of hope is not only less effective, but impossible in this world. Working towards peace and justice requires firm grounding in the present. Using art as a tool to activate radical imagination reminds us that we can simultaneously feel the pain and frustration of current inequity, the joy within everyday life, and the excitement for a better world.
As phillip agnew so lyrically describes, “[this] work is in a long line of cultural organizers that understood to use art to animate a radical future… That to get people to build the ship, you've got to get them to long for the sea; that data rarely moves people, but great art always does” (Monet, agnew, 2018). Art reminds us of our humanity, our longing, our desire. It reminds us to question what is and who made it so and decide for ourselves what is right. If the ultimate goal of social justice efforts is to contribute to a future that is more just, peaceful, humane, and healthy than the world of today, then our practices must enable us to imagine that future––to supersede the complacency and pessimism that comes with learning how much pain there is embedded in the systems that rule our world (Monet, 2016). If critical pedagogy educates on and prepares students to challenge the way things are, then radical imagination allows us to see how they could be. Embedded in our education is a sense of complacency––an understanding that this is simply the way things are. As we grow, we learn not to react emotionally to the pain we observe around us. This is also a calculated symptom of the sickness of “discomfort” and complacency that leads us to accept a world that benefits the few at the expense of the many. Hope for better has been beaten out of us for so long and so effectively that we are generations deep in an understanding of the world as fixed in its brokenness. We have become unfeeling. It is a result of a practice of survival. But at what cost? We are desensitized and disconnected from our desire and responsibility to work toward a better world. I believe through the arts, we can embed practices into education that prioritize reckoning, healing, and humanity into our everyday lives. These everyday changes illuminate the path toward a future where processes that maintain present states of injustice are actively dismantled and replaced with restorative and humanitarian systems.
When students learn to express themselves through creative outlets, they participate in processes that equip them with the critical skills to articulate their stories, identities, and desires. This way, they are empowered to advocate for themselves and their communities, ultimately allowing them to manifest action that contributes to greater peace. The nature of the arts creates great opportunities for pedagogy to involve the voices of students as agents, and address the systems that shape their material realities as well as those of others. Centering the voices of marginalized students by encouraging the expression of their personal experiences through art allows for reconciliation to occur in the classroom. These practices support student’s capacity for empathy, critical analyses of power structures and status quo, and expand the radical imagination of a world with solutions to harmful systems.
List of Works
4 works from the Humanities/Critical Theory
“Envisioning Black space in environmental education for young children,” Fikile Nxumalo & kihana miraya ross, 2019
“A Talk to Teachers (Delivered as “The Negro Child – His Self-Image”), James Baldwin, October 16, 1963 [HIS]/[CPC]
We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching, Bettina Love, 2019 [CPC]
“The uses of the erotic: The erotic as power,” Audre Lorde, 1993
4 works from the Social and/or Natural Sciences
“Social Class and The Hidden Curriculum of Work,” Jean Anyon, 1980 [HIS]/[CPC]
“Notes from the Back of the Room: Problems and Paradoxes in the Schooling of Young Black Students,” Karolyn Tyson, 2003 [CPC]
“I don’t want to hear that: Legitimating whiteness in schools,” Angelina Castagno, 2008 [CPC]
"The Arts and Achievement in At-Risk Youth: Findings from Four Longitudinal Studies,” Catterall, James S., National Endowment for the Arts, 2012 [CPC]
7 works from premodern or early modern periods
Hall of Bulls, in Lascaux (FR), c. 28,000 BCE - c. 10,000 BCE
The Standard of Ur, Sumerian, 2600–2400 B.C.E. [HIS]
Mahabharata, trans. W. Buck (University of California), c. 400 BCE – c. 400 CE
Book of Songs: The Ancient Chinese Classic of Poetry, Trans. Arthur Waley, c. 1100 BCE - c. 700 BCE
Rules of Painting, Vishnudharmottarai, c. 6 CE
Codex Mendoza, Aztec, c. 1542
Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies), Bartolomé de las Casas, 1552 [HIS]
5 works that point specifically to your concerns in your concentration.
“Being a Critical Multicultural Pedagogue in the Art Education Classroom,” Joni Boyd Acuff, 2018
“A Love Story about the Power of Art as Organizing,” (Performance), Aja Monet and philip agnew, 2018
“Re-Investing in Arts Education: Winning America’s Future Through Creative Schools,” Edited by M. Christine Dwyer, The President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, 2011
“Are we ready for school abolition? Thoughts and Practices of Radical Imaginary in Education,” David Stovall, 2018 [CPC]
Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paolo Freire, 1972 [CPC]
Works Cited (Not included in List of Works)
Bourdieu, Pierre. "The forms of capital.(1986)." Cultural theory: An anthology 1 (2011): 81-93.
Bowles, Samuel, and Herbert Gintis. Schooling in capitalist America: Educational reform and the contradictions of economic life. Haymarket Books, 1976.
Catterall, James S. "The Arts and Achievement in At-Risk Youth: Findings from Four Longitudinal Studies. Research Report# 55." National Endowment for the Arts (2012).
Dewhurst, Marit. "An inevitable question: Exploring the defining features of social justice art education." Art Education 63.5 (2010): 6-13.
Fordham, Signithia, and John U. Ogbu. "Black students' school success: Coping with the “burden of ‘acting white’”." The urban review 18.3 (1986): 176-206.
Lyiscott, Jamila J., Limarys Caraballo, and Ernest Morrell. "An anticolonial framework for urban teacher preparation." The New Educator 14.3 (2018): 231-251.
Ladson-Billings, Gloria. "Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy." American educational research journal 32.3 (1995): 465-491.
Kraehe, Amelia M., and Joni B. Acuff. "Theoretical considerations for art education research with and about “underserved populations”." Studies in Art Education 54.4 (2013): 294-309.
Tyson, K. (2003). Notes from the back of the room: Problems and paradoxes in the schooling of young black students. Sociology of Education, 76(4), 326-343.