The importance of safe space and student voice in schools that serve minoritized learners

UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
Katherine Cumings Mansfield, Associate Professor (Creator)
Institution
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/

Abstract: This article is based on an ethnography conducted over a six year period that used participant observation, photography, focus groups, and interviews to discover and describe the emergent school culture and the lived experiences of female secondary students in an all-girls college preparatory school. This article shares the story of a group of women educators who created a novel school culture, and the female students who meet them there, to disrupt and transform the dailiness of sexism, racism, and classism. Through a commitment to building a supportive school culture that includes developing robust relationships and forefronting the voices of women, this community of learners is working in a very socially just way so as to confront the past and interrupt the present, and revolutionize future trajectories of historically minoritized peoples.

Additional Information

Publication
Journal of Educational Leadership, Policy and Practice, 30(1), 25-38
Language: English
Date: 2015
Keywords
Safe space, student voice, gender, race/ethnicity, social class, leadership for social justice, urban school reform, single-sex schooling, diaspora

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