Womanist Pedagogical Futures

Presentation given at the Curriculum Studies Summer Collaborative. Womanism is a social justice-oriented standpoint perspective focusing on the unique lived experiences of Black women and other women of color and the strategies that they utilize to withstand and overcome racialized, gendered, class-based, and other intersecting forms of oppression for the betterment of all humankind. Womanist pedagogies are grounded in Womanist perspective and utilize processes of teaching and learning that embrace politics of care, risk, and political clarity in order to achieve social justice goals (Beauboeuf-Lafontant, 2002; Ramsey, 2012). Womanist pedagogies hold curricular significance. By providing insight into the ways in which formal and informal curricula are understood, enacted, or resisted from the perspectives of women navigating multiple and simultaneous systems of oppression, examination of Womanist pedagogies enables curriculum to be understood differently. There are two purposes to this presentation. First, strengths of Womanist pedagogical approaches and limitations that threaten the long-term viability of these approaches to education are outlined. Next, a discussion of Womanist pedagogical futures, what these futures might entail, and how they might be called forth is offered