Term of Award

Summer 2025

Degree Name

Doctor of Education in Curriculum Studies (Ed.D.)

Document Type and Release Option

Dissertation (open access)

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Department

College of Education

Committee Chair

John Weaver

Committee Member 1

Marla Morris

Committee Member 2

Daniel Chapman

Committee Member 3

Ugena Whitlock

Abstract

Homeplace (Whitlock, 2007) describes the place where we live most comfortably. It is not confined to a physical place, but is constructed by the culture, customs, beliefs, and messages, implicit and explicit, that we absorb over the course of our lives. In this study, I utilize the method of currere, a method of self-study established and then reimagined by Pinar (2023), and Critical Race Feminist Currere introduced by Baszile (2015) to examine my educational experiences and more fully understand what has contributed to my personal construction of homeplace. My experience, like that of Baszile (2015), reflects the need to examine experiences through the intersectional spaces of race and gender, but also illuminates the need for an additional lens for the spaces created by religious and spiritual messaging. Study of my educational experiences, first as a student in a fundamentalist Christian school and then as public school teacher helped to highlight the impact of Christian nationalism on the collective construction of homeplace in the United States, even for those in supposedly secular public spaces such as public schools. This ubiquitous religious messaging is resulting in the corruption of our collective sense of homeplace and contributing towards spiritual trauma. I call for the use of a Critical Race Feminist Spiritual Currere especially for educators who identify as Christian, to examine our own experiences, seek our own spiritual healing, and construct a resulting version of homeplace which will allow us to spiritually healthy structures of homeplace for those children for which we have influence.

OCLC Number

1528849988

Research Data and Supplementary Material

No

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