Paper/Proposal Title

Building Antiracist Communities of Practice that Result in Transformative Learning Spaces: A Social Education Project

Presenter/Author Information

Aaliyah BakerFollow
Marisol Morales, American Council on EducationFollow

Location

Kennedy Union 310 (on UD's main campus)

Start Date

November 2023

End Date

November 2023

Keywords

antiracism, critical reflection, transformative spaces, community engagement

Abstract

In killing rage: Ending Racism (1995), bell hooks talks about her writing of this work as being “fundamentally optimistic”, as ‘courageously and fiercely critical”, and as “forging a politics of solidarity”. The creation and evolution of a cross-institutional anti-racism community of practice was drawn to that path. In this workshop, we demonstrate how creating antiracist spaces and connecting with others allow us to explore the role of racism in our lives, our institutions, and our nation. We aim to build the capacity to support a commitment to racial justice in community-engaged work by naming anti-black racism as a human rights violation, centering experience, critical reflection, and rational disclosure (Valamis, 2021). We implement transformative learning theory to explore a connection between antiracism and human rights as an institutional practice. The layered realities of racial injustice as captured by the political rhetoric of divisiveness within the context of a threatened American democracy can feel overwhelming. When we create space to process, reflect, and if possible feel and heal, the heaviness of this time can be met with an eye toward hope, possibility, and care --- the kind of intentional practice and courageous care that can only really happen in the community. As a byproduct of the success of an antiracism community of practice, we will initiate a space for discussion and exploration and end with strategies for solidarity and action. The organic nature of this kind of process allows us to experience the power of holding space for each other with the messy, hurtful, and embedded aspects of racism that creates division yet also allows us to channel hope and bask in the possibility of bridges not barriers in antiracist work.

Author/Speaker Biographical Statement(s)

Dr. Aaliyah Baker is a community-engaged scholar and faculty member in the Department of Educational Administration at the University of Dayton, School of Education and Health Sciences. She earned her Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis in Multicultural Education and the Analysis of Educational Policy Studies from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Through an array of independent and collaborative research projects in local, state, national, and international forums, Dr. Baker’s scholarship focuses on antiracist leadership, critical theory and pedagogy, the social context of education, and the Black homeschooling movement. As an education ambassador and cultural exchange delegate, she traveled to Cuba with an interdisciplinary group of members from the National Association for Multicultural Education to foster a commitment to social justice. Her work has been published at international conferences such as the American Educational Research Association and the International Congress of Qualitative Research and in edited books and peer-reviewed journals. She serves as a peer reviewer for research and dissertation advisor to a diverse group of doctoral students. Dr. Baker is a founding member of the Black Family Homeschool Educators and Scholars (BFHES) Review Board of Scholars. Dr. Marisol Morales serves as the Executive Director of the Carnegie Elective Classifications for the American Council on Education (ACE). From 2018-2022 she was the Vice President for Network Leadership at Campus Compact. Morales was the Founding Director of the Office of Civic and Community Engagement at the University of La Verne from 2013-2018 and the Associate Director of the Steans Center for Community-based Service Learning and Community Service Studies at DePaul University from 2005-2013. She serves as an adjunct faculty at Northeastern Illinois University. Morales sits on the editorial board of the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, on the editorial advisory board of Liberal Education, and on the board of the International Association for Research on Service Learning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE). Dr. Morales holds a BA in Latin American/Latino Studies and an MS/MS in International Public Service Management both from DePaul University. She earned her Ed.D in Organizational Leadership at the University of La Verne in 2021. Her dissertation focused on the community engagement experiences of Latinx students at a Hispanic Serving Institution.