Blackness as intervention: Black English outer spaces and the rupturing of antiblackness and/in English education

Abstract

Purpose By engaging in critical literacy, participants theorized Blackness and antiblackness. The purpose of this study was to have participants theorize Blackness and antiblackness through their engagements with critical literacy. Design/methodology/approach The authors used a youth-centered and informed Black critical-race grounded methodology. Findings Participants’ unique and varied revelations of Blackness as Vitality, Blackness as Cognizance and Blackness as Expansive Community, served to withstand, confront and transcend encounters with antiblackness in English curricula. Practical implications This paper provides a model for how to engage Black youth as a means to disrupt anti-Black English education spaces. Social implications This study provides a foundation for future research efforts of Black English outer spaces as they relate to English education. Findings in this study may also inform existing English educator practices. Originality/value This study theorized both the role and the flexible nature of Black English outer spaces. It defined the multi-ethnic nature of Blackness. It proposed that affirmations of Blackness sharpened participants’ critical literacies in Black English outer spaces as a transformative intervention to anti-Black English education spaces.

Girls of Color Embodied and Experiential Dreams for Education

“…Guided by the needs and demands set forth by the Sisters, the Unnormal Sisterhood endeavored toward becoming a space of educational promise. Although imperfect and ever-shifting, as any educational space is, we attempted to create what Coles and Kingsley (2021) described as an “outerspace,” a space that interrupts and transcends the confines of white, heteronormative, patriarchal bounds of dominant education. Instead, it strove toward a reframing of what counted as knowledge and ways of knowing, celebrating the wholeness of the girls’ bodymindspirit, and giving space for girls to explore their worlds by putting those literacies to use.…”

The Role of English on International Business Growth and Social Inequality

“…It was established that English language educators might help pre-service teachers develop a more democratic disposition by participating in English language education activities at the program level (Arseneault, Deal, & Mills, 2019;Coles & Kingsley, 2021). We described the program's structural features and recommended generating questions for colleagues interested in critical and democratic English education work at the program level to assist replication in terms of program coherence (Gatti, Masterson, Brooke, Shah, & Thomas, 2018).…”