Fugitive Learning: Doctoral Research as Critical Inquiry into My Own Miseducation

by Aqueelah Ellzy and Sharon Ravitch

In this post, Aqueelah Ellzy, Assistant Middle School Principal and executive doctoral student in the Mid-Career Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, reflects on the transformational learning her practitioner research and professional inquiry have evinced. Approaches as fugitive pedagogy (Givens, 2021), a framework Aqueelah discovered during her research, Aqueelah examines how engaging in critical research about racialized schooling experiences and examining broader educational inequalities as a Black school leader foments critical consciousness (Freire, 1970) and evinces fugitive leader learning as anti-racist praxis. She wrote the post with Dr. Sharon Ravitch, a Sage Methodspace Mentor in Residence.

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Learning to See My Conditioning

My first school memories involve extended observation of my first teacher, a White woman, and an almost instinctual decision to be just like her. I devoted substantial effort to studying her. I practiced the way she spoke, gestured, and interacted with students while I “played school” with my neighborhood friends. Unbeknownst to me for decades, my observations were undergirded by systemic alignment and teaching practices that perpetuate systemic oppression. This early conditioning, which manifested in the desire to imitate Whiteness, demonstrates the ways that Black and Brown educators have been socialized in systems that normalize White supremacy and unconsciously perpetuate discriminatory systems through their teaching service, this if they even make it through the hurdles to certification and employment.

The decision to pursue teaching as my career led me, like so many, to a predominately White, traditional teacher college. My undergraduate experiences confirmed my observations and expectations of teaching and learning. I modeled myself accordingly. While I was generally the only student of color in nearly all of my classes and my own schooling experiences did not match what I was learning, I continued to “swim with the tide,” unintentionally contributing to the normalization of White Supremacy through my avoidance of disruption, which was complicated by the invisibility of the hegemony. My college experiences further crystallized my obedience to systemic processes.

While I had plans to teach in a setting like the urban, economically disadvantaged schools I attended, my intention was to serve as a model of success for my students, since I thought of myself as a model of success. I defined my success as academic achievement and overcoming the perils of the neighborhood from which I came. I thought, “surely I can model this for other students so that they, too, can be successful.” When I am completely honest with myself, the thought did not enter my mind that systemic barriers were to blame for the disparities in achievement between Black and Brown students, and I was living proof. I entered the profession motivated to serve as a role model, having already determined that the remedy for the disparities experienced by Black and Brown students was consistent hard work and self-determination. It took becoming a doctoral student to realize that this is an imposed and internalized mindset of White Supremacy.

This uninformed mindset was the result of sustained effort to align myself with the expectations of a school committed to social reproduction. I was a model student by all accounts and measures. If it was taught or assigned, I did it and the extra-credit. I emphasize this point, because it was  not that I missed the lesson on critical consciousness. I was not absent on the day or days I was supposed to learn about my situated identity, or ways to see, name, and challenge racial oppression. I have no memories of these lessons because they did not happen–not formally in school or informally in sports or extracurriculars.

These critical lessons did not happen because there is an expectation to avoid conversations of race in schools. This avoidance, according to Stevenson (2014), is an “indication of colorblindness to one’s own cultural and racial dynamics, experiences, and reactions that occur in real time, in moments of conflict” (p. 42). Colorblindness activates a host of avoidance coping strategies, impairing our ability to find “relevant the salience of racial matters” (Stevenson, 2014, p. 42).  While I participated in conversations about race and my situated identity at home, there was a disconnect in the messages I received, and my school experience as a hard worker and “good student” served to confirm the biases of a “just world” where self-determination and perseverance are the keys to success. 

Finding My Voice

In 2019 I started a doctoral program at the University of Pennsylvania. Shortly after my acceptance and just before the first session, the murder of George Floyd reopened the wounds of anti-Black racism. This, coupled with the racialized inequities of the COVID-19 pandemic, revealed a social mirror with a horrifying reflection. It was frustrating that I didn’t have the language to verbalize what I was experiencing, nor the awareness that my generalized anxiety was a manifestation of trauma resulting  from Racial Battle Fatigue, a term a term coined by William Smith (2007) to describe the cumulative result of race-related stress responses to distressing mental and emotional conditions. These conditions emerge from constantly facing racially dismissive, demeaning, insensitive, and hostile racial environments and individuals. As an administrator, I didn’t yet have a model for my staff, a response that felt appropriate. Managing my own emotions, along with the protective stance that I needed to take on behalf of  the students and families I serve, left me feeling powerless and victimized.

When I started the doctoral program, I immediately noticed that critical conversations about race were normalized. More than half of my cohort members identify as representatives of marginalized groups. Unlike anything I had ever experienced, I was learning with and from a diverse group of people who were ready to participate in the identity excavation that characterized our first year of study.  For  the first time in my life, I received explicit confirmation that systemic racism is evidence based. My lived experiences were validated. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was approaching a transformative rupture, defined by Bernal and Alemán (2017) as “those incidents, interactions, experiences, and moments that expose and interrupt pervasive coloniality and structural inequities” (p. 5). At this point, I felt cognitive dissonance that caused complete disequilibrium caused by sudden and painful distrust of the very system that was such an integral part of my personal and professional identity.

I recall a catalytic moment that occurred while reading Michele Foster’s Narratives of Black Teachers on Teaching. In one narrative, a teacher described the necessity of Black teachers to speak up on behalf of Black children, make our presence felt and “keep other teachers honest” (Foster, 1997, p. 126). This statement caused a flood of emotion including tears and guilt. This statement pushed me to think about the ways that I have enacted my professional leadership consistent with the color-mute objectives that my training demanded.

In all of my educational and leadership training, not once before this moment was I compelled to consider my identity as more than a call to disrupt stereotypes and covertly engage with Black and Brown students on matters of race as a cultural mentor. From that moment on, everything I read, wrote, and observed aligned to this transformative rupture in a way that  demanded the active development of new knowledge for informed action. The more conscious I became of the vicarious permission to disrupt, assumed from the Black educators who came before me, the more I became curious about the absence of critical consciousness, a Freirean concept for the ability to recognize and analyze systems of inequality and take action to transform those systems through education, including teacher education programs and teacher professional learning.

The parallels between my own critical consciousness development and curiosity about this phenomenon as it is experienced by Black and Brown educators, led me to study this phenomenon as my dissertation research topic. In addition to contributing to existing scholarship, my dissertation study serves as an opportunity to heal from the personal trauma that I have experienced as a student, teacher, and leader in educational environments that are largely influenced by, and therefore complicit in, socially replicating oppressive systems that negatively impact students and educators of color. Fugitive pedagogy argues that Black education began as a subversive act characterized by covert instructional strategies passed down as educational heritage among Black educators as creative response to the persistence of White oppression. I aim to lead, enact, and teach fugitive pedagogy as a resilient educational approach and counter-narrative to prevailing anti-Blackness. This inquiry, and the leader learning community from which it emerged, has enabled me to cultivate my own fugitive learning approach.

Recommendations to Practitioner-Researchers

Based on my experiences, which are embedded in my cohort of 24 educational leaders working on our practice-based dissertations, here are recommendations to my fellow practitioner-researchers:

1.        Research what matters to you. My lived experience and passionate commitment to this research contributes to a kind of authentic vulnerability–as a practitioner and as a researcher–that allows me to examine the nuances and contours of participants’ experiences and explore opportunities for shared healing.

2.        Reflect on your own experiences often. Consider the ways that new knowledge provides enhanced clarity about your own past experiences. As you reflect, resist the urge to be critical of yourself as you navigated spaces with the tools that you had at the time. Embrace new learning  and the power of reframing those experiences as instrumental to your personal and professional growth as well as central to your ability to conduct rigorous and critical research.

3.        Do dialogic engagement with thought partners frequently. Dialogic engagement means the systematic integration of reflexive dialogue with though partners who can push you on your implicit biases and assumptions (Ravitch & Carl, 2021). When done with regularity, this drives more grounded and informed inquiry and action. Establishing dedicated time to discuss the day-to-day occurrences of your research creates greater awareness of opportunities to recognize and disrupt systems of oppression. Further, the commitment to engage in reflexive conversation serves as shared accountability to act. As my dialogical partners and I share our experiences, we are also learning how to use our voices in new ways. Integrate this into your research design proactively and pursue it ongoingly.

4.        As you experience transformations, check in with yourself.  Be gentle with yourself and practice self-care. This journey has revealed to me that practicing self-care, which for me is primarily enacted through protection of boundaries, is essential. My boundaries have been redefined as a result of my learning. Microaggressions and racist practices that affect me and the students I serve are visible to me now–in technicolor–and I can not and will not un-see them or ignore the urgency to act. My daily work and personal stance for activism have been redefined by my research.

5.        Remember that this work is massive. Maintain optimism and take comfort in the understanding that as we collectively pull at the threads of injustice, we are helping to unravel the shared quilt of oppression.

References

Bernal, D. D., & Aleman, E. (2017). Transforming Educational Pathways for Chicana/o Students: A Critical Race Feminista Praxis. Teachers College Press.

Foster, M. (1997). Black Teachers on Teaching. New Press.

Freire, P (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Herder & Herder.

Givens, J. R. (2021). Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching. Harvard University Press.

Ravitch S. M. & Carl, M. N. (2021). Qualitative Research: Bridging the Conceptual, Theoretical, and Methodological. (2nd Ed.). Sage Publications.

Smith, W. A., Allen, W. R., & Danley, L. L. (2007). “Assume the Position…You Fit the Description”: Psychosocial Experiences and Racial Battle Fatigue Among African American Male College Students: PROD. American Behavioral Scientist, 51(4), 551-578.

Stevenson, H. C. (2014). Promoting Racial Literacy in Schools: Differences that Make a Difference. Teachers College Press.

[1] This title is adapted from Jarvis R. Givens’s (2021) book, Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching. Harvard University Press.

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