About this poster

---

Panel information
Panel 3. Schooling and Education

Abstract

---

School adults can negatively impact Black adolescent girls through their biased perceptions and inequitable disciplinary practices (Neal-Jackson, 2018). In order to promote anti-racist education, it is critical to better understand how experiences with school adults permeate all levels of school. This may be especially crucial during adolescence as Black girls develop their identity. This study explores how Black girls’ perceptions of and experiences with school adults shape whether they see their identity reflected in their school.

This study’s aim emerged during coding in a larger project that centered the voices of Black girls by coupling search and screening methods associated with systematic reviews of qualitative studies with a novel approach of creating a new data sample comprised only of quotes in which girls talk about school adults (N = 286). This dataset is comprised of quotes on school adults from a diverse group of Black adolescent girls (e.g., high achieving; low achieving) across different school contexts (e.g., predominantly White schools; predominantly Black schools) from studies with very different research aims published between 1994-2021. We used strategies from constructivist grounded theory to engage in initial line-by-line open coding of the direct quotes, compared open codes to develop data-driven focused codes, memoed, created a codebook, and independently coded the full dataset.

There were four data-driven codes (Table 1) that we grouped together under a category called “Blackness Reflected/ Not Reflected” because they similarly captured whether a girl saw their race reflected in their school. Analysis of the 43 quotes coded under codes that fell within this category suggested Black adolescent girls reflect on their identity across three domains:
1) School-Level Priorities & Characteristics: Black adolescent girls’ connection to school was shaped by the degree in which they saw their own identity within school-level priorities and school adult demographic characteristics. Direct quotes commented on the dearth of Black History Month celebrations, the presence or absence of ethnic studies classes, and the number of Black teachers in the school.
2) In-Class Observations: Black adolescent girls’ connection to school was shaped by the degree to which their identities were authentically reflected in the way teachers taught. Direct quotes covered areas of culturally relevant teaching such as whether teachers included readings with Black female characters and harmful teaching such as teachers who minimized the horrors of slavery.
3) Interpersonal Interactions: Black adolescent girls’ connection to school was shaped by the extent to which adults at school respected their physical features and treated them as whole individuals. Direct quotes often referenced times adults made comments about or touched Black girls’ physical features.

See Figure 2 for the mapping of exemplar direct quotes across the school ecology in these three domains. These preliminary findings suggest Black adolescent girls use the lens of the school ecology to answer a critical question relevant to identity development: “Does this school reflect who I am?” For many of the direct quotes, the answer was “No” as illustrated in the left side of Figure 2. A smaller number of direct quotes answered “Yes” as illustrated in the right side of Figure 2.

To truly reflect Black girls’ identities, it is critical that schools intervene at multiple levels of the ecology. Schools need to prioritize Black studies, actively recruit and support Black women teachers, and celebrate Black history while simultaneously ensuring all educators know how to talk about slavery and infuse curriculum that celebrates Black women and girls. Black girls also need to be asked about the nature of school adults’ interpersonal interactions with them and administrators must address those who dehumanize Black girls including touching their physical features like hair.

⇦ Back to session