Leslie Ann Locke

Finding My Critical Voice for Social Justice and Passing It On: An Essay.

Abstract This introspective critical essay elucidates some of the challenges I encountered in my efforts to persist at various levels of education as a first-generation White student from a low-income background and through multiple intersectionalities, primarily class and gender. My lived experiences and transformation from a near high school dropout to a university professor are detailed with particular attention to how these experiences transformed my thinking about my family from deficit to asset, and how I now use this critical consciousness in my teaching and research. Particular attention is paid to the political, social, and educational factors that influenced my philosophy of social justice.

‘It’s like giving us a car, only without the wheels’: a critical policy analysis of an early college programme

The purpose of this qualitative inquiry was to examine the perceptions and experiences of Latina students, who were underperforming in an early college high school (ECHS), regarding their achievement and experiences. Additionally, the school’s institutional documents were used to critically assess the viability of the ECHS as an equity-oriented, social justice policy intervention to increase educational opportunity. Conceptual frameworks of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum frame the analyses, which reveal a myopic focus on achievement to increase educational opportunity is naïve. While the ECHS studied may have been designed with good intentions, as a policy intervention it was not broadly effective. A perspective existed that opportunities for advanced achievement were accessible to all students in the programme. Unfortunately, this perspective naively ignored the constraints students faced in their lives. These constraints were often unavoidable and tended to undermine students’ progress towards high achievement and increased the likelihood, students would make choices that negatively impacted their achievement. Findings reveal significant gaps between policy-makers’ assumptions regarding how to expand educational opportunity and what students need to achieve. Equity-oriented, social justice policy interventions, like the ECHS, do little in terms of increasing achievement if they ignore the holistic lives of students.

An introduction to ecologies of engaged scholarship: stories from activist-academics

This special edition of the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, ‘Ecologies of engaged scholarship: stories from activist-academics,’ is a product of a distinct form of peer r...

What’s in your wallet? Not much green, but a whole lotta white

Abstract Here, I include parts of my personal positionality or story in terms of my privileges (white skin, cisgender, straight, educational attainment, ability, language) alongside my marginalities (low income). Specifically, I highlight how while I never had much green (i.e. cash/income), I have had lots of white (privilege). Relatedly, I explain how my social class complicates, but never extinguishes, whiteness; and how I strive to use those privileges and marginalities in the academy to critique and push back against the pervasiveness and ethos of white-centred norms and values.

Queer Resistance: LGBTQ Students and Allies in Mississippi Adult and Higher Education

We open this chapter by questioning the assumption that Mississippi has always been a hostile space for LGBTQ people. We offer some historical evidence that there was, at one point, a sort of tense tolerance for same-sex sexual behavior in the state, and the rise of overt and vehement anti-LGBTQ sentiment appears to be somewhat linked to the civil rights era. We then turn to describing the work that has occurred, especially in recent years, on Mississippi’s college campuses around LGBTQ issues. We describe the challenges inherent in such work, as well as some of the efforts that have been successful. Then, we describe community organizations and adult educational spaces in which LGBTQ work has occurred and is occurring. Again, we describe the successes of such efforts as well as the challenges those efforts have faced. We close by theorizing a way forward in LGBTQ resistance in the state.

Conditions of Oppression in Mississippi Adult and Higher Education: The Legacy of White Supremacy and Injustice

We begin this chapter by tracing the legacy of White supremacy in primary and secondary education. We demonstrate the segregated nature of education in the state and the consequences of segregated education for students’ preparedness for higher education. We then document the oppressive nature of higher education in Mississippi for both primarily White-serving institutions (PWIs) and historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). We begin by highlighting the segregated nature of higher education in Mississippi, in which Black Mississippians heavily attend HBCUs, as well as disparities in funding levels of HBCUs and PWIs, among other factors. Then, we describe the ways in which experiences with PWIs can be oppressive. This includes a discussion of racialized advising, housing, and instructional practices as well as how low-income students, queer students, and others are marginalized within Mississippi’s PWIs. We also document the ways in which community informal learning and adult educational efforts are stratified by race and income in the state.

Thank God for Mississippi

This concluding chapter revisits a concept from the introduction: that Mississippi’s persistent educational shortcomings and oppressive actions cause leaders of other states to remark, “Thank God for Mississippi,” as the state keeps others out of the bottom of national rankings. We ask if this sentiment could be reinterpreted in light of resistance work going on in the state. We describe the ways in which Mississippi can render legible the workings of oppression, and serve as a bellwether of oppressive efforts that might migrate to other states. We also describe the ways that resistance work in Mississippi can be instructive for those working elsewhere. Finally, we offer theories about moving toward social justice and equity in Mississippi adult and higher education.

Oppression and Resistance Timeline

This chapter presents a graphic representation of the grand timescale on which oppression and resistance have been carried out. We present a number of events intended to illustrate how oppression has been enacted from 1607 to 2016. We also provide a number of examples on the same timescale for resistance efforts. This timeline makes clear that oppression started early and continued in force through the present day. It also makes clear, however, that resistance efforts have been ongoing, with more visible successes in the modern day.

Education for Democracy and Resistance in Mississippi: Critical Pedagogy and Liberation in Southern Adult and Higher Education

This chapter includes a review of concepts central to critical pedagogy. We then describe how hegemony, domination, and social reproduction play out in Mississippi. We give attention to the ways in which the dominant ideology of White supremacist heteropatriarchy filters into everyday concepts of knowledge, vocabulary, and representational systems. We then describe models of emancipatory or liberatory education that have been proposed by critical pedagogues and others. We attempt to trace how resistance efforts in Mississippi map onto those models, and the ways in which they diverge. We close this chapter by theorizing how critical pedagogy might inform future efforts at liberation and resistance in Mississippi, as well as in other locations.

Introduction: Understanding Mississippi as a Particular Site of Oppression in Education

In this introductory chapter, we introduce the context of Mississippi adult and higher education. We describe how Mississippi is both similar to and distinct from its Deep South neighbors, and how Mississippi can serve as both a unique case and an object lesson for social justice and equity across contexts. We also review briefly the history of K-12 reform efforts in the state, including their connection to racism, segregation, and oppression. This chapter also includes positionality statements from all three authors, as well as a collective positionality statement describing our combined experiences in Mississippi. Finally, we offer an introduction to the theoretical framework of critical pedagogy which drives our analyses in this text.