This article outlines some contentions within conventional Western psychology and across the social sciences to define what counts as legitimate forms of “resistance” amongst members of historically marginalized groups (e.g. people of Color, working class/poor groups) in efforts to push back against injustice and foment social change. Without an expansion of what is understood as resistance, the discipline risks imposing narrow models and reifying deficit narratives about marginalized groups' capacity for resistance. In contexts where overt forms of resistance (e.g. marches), may lead to incarceration, deportation, death, or other egregious punishments, people located in “tight spaces” of oppression may engage in everyday off‐stage practices of resistance that are covert and not observable to those in positions of privilege or who exercise state power. This article encourages psychologists to take a political stance in solidarity with marginalized groups to acknowledge that not all forms of resistance are observable or measurable. This stance can allow psychologists to begin to dismantle deficit narratives of people mistakenly understood as being passive in the face of oppression and instead observe agency, aspirations for change, and resistance.
Introduction This paper explores what praxis is and its importance for catalyzing social justice. Statement of the Problem At times, psychologists have articulated the importance of bridging the researcher-activist divide via praxis, but progress in creating these bridges has been slow. Literature Review We examine how praxis can be rooted in decolonial pedagogical approaches and a tool that can bridge scholarship and activism. Building on previous work by teachers of psychology, we review small, medium, and large-scale praxis assignments that have been used in university courses. Teaching Implications We discuss our own versions of praxis assignments used in four different psychology courses (three of which took place during the pandemic). We reflect on the ways we see students motivated by an assignment with relevance to the real world and potential for creating social change, the ways that students are able to integrate course material more deeply through action, and some of the challenges with these assignments. Conclusion We conclude by providing recommendations for educators interested in assigning praxis projects in their psychology courses.
Current measures of student success fall short in capturing the nuanced and multiplicitous ways that underrepresented and misrepresented students (e.g., Latinx, first-generation college students) who are navigating the intersection of multiple contexts important to their identities (e.g., home communities and university), define and understand success. For students, success includes individual and collective desires for well-being, or the desire to acquire an education to improve one's life and to pursue social justice in their home communities. In this study, we used Chicana feminist Gloria Anzaldúa's concept of the Borderlands (1999) as a conceptual framework to develop a Borderlands scale as a new measure of student success. For the psychometric validation of the scale, we surveyed 250 college students who were enrolled in a Hispanic Serving Research Institution. On a random half sample of the data, we performed an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to determine a good fitting model. On the other half of the sample, we performed a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to assess evidence of validity. For the purposes of assessing convergent and discriminant validity, we provide correlations between the Borderlands scale and three thriving quotient subscales: academic determination, social connection, and diverse citizenship (Schreiner, 2010a), as well as high school grade point average (GPA) and composite Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores. We end the article with implications for the college student success literature, and for universities, especially Hispanic Serving Institutions.
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