Why we need Critical Race Theory: moving toward Critical Race Praxis in P-20 education

• Date: 13 December 2023
• Pages: 410-424
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-01-2023-0017
• Published date: 13 December 2023
• Author: Asif Wilson,Erica Dávila,Valentina Gamboa-Turner,Anänka Shony,David Stovall

Why we need Critical Race Theory:

moving toward Critical Race Praxis

in P-20 education

Asif Wilson

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA

Erica D

avila

Lewis University, Romeoville, Illinois, USA

Valentina Gamboa-Turner

Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago, Illinois, USA

An€

anka Shony

Ishongo Earthwork, Chicago, Illinois, USA, and

David Stovall

University of Illinois Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA

Abstract

Purpose –In this paper the co-authors, educators and organizers working together in a liberatory curriculum

development organization (People’s Education Movement Chicago), put forth a conceptualization of Critical

Race Praxis (CRP) in education as it applies to K-12 curriculum and education writ large. They take

Yamamoto’s (1997) premise seriously in that they need to spend less time with abstract theorizing and more

time in communities experiencing injustice.

Design/methodology/approach–The co-authors utilize critical race counterstory methodologies to analyze

and (re)tell their experiences building and supporting justice-centered curriculum bound in CRP. In doing so,

they share narratives that illuminate their individual and collective experiences navigating the gratuitous

violence of white supremacy and other forms of structural oppression, and their work to center justice in and

out of K-12 schools.

Findings –The findings provide examples of organizational praxes within the tenets of CRP (Conceptual,

Material, Performative and Reflexive). For People’s Education Movement Chicago the conceptual conditions of

their praxes begin with an intersectional analysis of schooling, education, and life. Within the CRP tenant of the

material, the co-authors share experiences that detail their continuous political education and offer seven

emergent ways of being and building to bound the material change they seek to create through their work.

Next, the co-authors share their insights on the performative tenet, with a focus on curriculum, which creates

learning experiences that support people to remember social movements and develop within them the curiosity

and agency to act on their findings in ways that center justiceand transformation. Finally, the findings related

to reflexivity focus on the authors’internal practices as a collective. The authors place process over product

which, as they articulate, is a must if they are to produce a vital harvest for communities they work with and for.

Research limitations/practical/socialimplications –The authors conclude the article with the following

offerings useful to P-20 educators, researchers, school administrators and community members advancing

more just educational futures: a commitment to the on the groundwork, situating social justice as an

experiential phenomenon, the utilization of interdisciplinary approaches, collaborative work and capacity

building, and a commitment to self and collective care.

Originality/value –As P-20 teachers, community workers, organizers, caregivers and education scholars of

color building together in a K-12 curriculum development organization, the authors suggest that now is the

moment to pivot away from the rhetoric of “we don’t do CRT”and into work that constructs paths toward

praxes bound in the tenets of CRP.

Keywords Critical race praxis, Critical race theory, Curriculum, Justice-centered education

Paper type Conceptual paper

Given the current attacks on teaching Critical Race Theory (CRT) and supporting the

capacity of students and educators to ask critical questions of their world, the following

EDI

43,3

410

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/2040-7149.htm

Received 17 January 2023

Revised 25 July 2023

25 September 2023

Accepted 4 November 2023

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion:

An International Journal

Vol. 43 No. 3, 2024

pp. 410-424

© Emerald Publishing Limited

2040-7149

DOI 10.1108/EDI-01-2023-0017