“…They were concerned with many social justice issues impacting their communities and worlds, specifically naming racism, immigration, global warming, gun violence, mental health, and the election of Donald Trump. Through social media platforms, such as Snap Chat and Instagram, girls had access to current events and news in real time (Kelly, 2018; Ma'ayan, 2012). In an interview, Blanca named the issues that concerned her the most, stating:Animals…the world, racism, all that stuff.…”
The author explores the words and writing of Rocky, Reyna, Blanca, and Elizabeth (grades 6–12) through their participation in Somos Escritoras/We Are Writers, a creative space for Latina girls and their parents. For 6 weeks, alongside their parents, girls used drawing and personal writing to dialogue about their experiences and bring into language the issues most important in their lives and worlds. Alongside one another, their writing served as a tool to define themselves and supported them in developing visions for the future. Their voices illuminate the urgency of connecting our writing classrooms and community spaces to the lives of youth to make writing relevant and meaningful in order to move our words into action.
“…They were concerned with many social justice issues impacting their communities and worlds, specifically naming racism, immigration, global warming, gun violence, mental health, and the election of Donald Trump. Through social media platforms, such as Snap Chat and Instagram, girls had access to current events and news in real time (Kelly, 2018; Ma'ayan, 2012). In an interview, Blanca named the issues that concerned her the most, stating:Animals…the world, racism, all that stuff.…”
The author explores the words and writing of Rocky, Reyna, Blanca, and Elizabeth (grades 6–12) through their participation in Somos Escritoras/We Are Writers, a creative space for Latina girls and their parents. For 6 weeks, alongside their parents, girls used drawing and personal writing to dialogue about their experiences and bring into language the issues most important in their lives and worlds. Alongside one another, their writing served as a tool to define themselves and supported them in developing visions for the future. Their voices illuminate the urgency of connecting our writing classrooms and community spaces to the lives of youth to make writing relevant and meaningful in order to move our words into action.
“…We posit that girls’ self‐reported engagement with sociopolitical behaviors (like participation in human rights groups) could function as important meaning‐making activities for girls experiencing interpersonal and individual acts of discrimination. Indeed, as evidenced by Kelly (2018) and Cervantes‐Soon (2012), engaging in critical action is a way in which girls demonstrate resistance and a healthy maladjustment to larger, oppressive socio‐structures that manifest in their lives as daily instances of interpersonal trauma and discrimination. Although these direct associations were evidenced for structural oppression and critical action, we did not find evidence for the interplay of these manifestations in predicting critical reflection or action.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Importantly, however, the two girls in the Cervantes‐Soon (2012) study were attending a school with a critical pedagogy orientation. Indeed, scholarship finds that both critical action and reflection develop over time in relational, educational, and community contexts that support locating experiences of oppression within larger structures (e.g., Ginwright & Cammarota, 2007; Hope et al, 2015; Kelly, 2018; Seider & Graves, 2020). Rather than being embedded in such supportive contexts, the girls in the current study are enmeshed in a legal system more concerned with disciplining their behaviors (Morris, 2016) and focusing on punishing the “danger inside of the child” (Cox, 2019, p. 553) rather than disrupting the intersection of socio‐structural and institutional forces that push them into system involvement.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Within the context of a youth participatory action research community for Black adolescents, Hope, Skoog, and Jagers (2015) found that not only were Black adolescents readily able to name racially discriminatory interpersonal experiences within their schools, but that they also implicated school structures such as the curriculum in perpetuating social oppression. In addition, Kelly’s (2018) research with Black adolescent girls attending a predominantly White high school elucidates how readily girls can name the racism inherent in school‐based, oppressive, institutional structures (i.e., disciplinary practices) and in society (i.e., the backlash against the Black Lives Matter movement), and how they develop key actions to resist everyday oppressions.…”
Scholarship identifies critical consciousness as a key developmental asset in promoting the well‐being of adolescents experiencing multiple socio‐structural axes of oppression. Girls of color at acute risk for legal system involvement or re‐involvement are absent from this literature. They are a critical population in which to examine this construct given their experiences of oppression and the myriad benefits of critical consciousness. The current study addresses this gap by examining traumatic incidents and experiences of racism and sexism as correlates of critical reflection and action among a sample of girls (N = 220; Mean age = 14.5 years; SD = 1.3 years). Using path analysis and multigroup modeling, we examine direct associations between these three manifestations of structural oppression and critical consciousness and explore the interplay of traumatic incidents, and racism and sexism in girls’ critical consciousness development. Findings suggest that experiences of sexism and racism, uniquely and positively predict critical action, but not critical reflection. Surprisingly, girls’ experiences of traumatic incidents do not predict reflection or action. Finally, multigroup analyses show no evidence that these associations vary by the interplay of traumatic incidents, racism, and sexism. Implications for community psychology values and juvenile legal system practice and policy are discussed.
“…After many years of informal discussion about these issues, and in particular Michael's published research surfacing these accounts, we felt it necessary to bring the themes of local practices with educational technologies to Learning, Media and Technology. While such research is certainly not new to a journal of this sort - Kelly's (2018) work on snapchat and critical resistance serves as an excellent example -a specific themed issue allowed us to, not only focus attention on marginalisation and local practice in this field, but also highlight the range of different approaches and understandings that might be brought to this discussion.…”
Section: Editing and Academic Publishingmentioning
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