College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Term of Award

Spring 2026

Degree Name

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

Document Type and Release Option

Dissertation (restricted to Georgia Southern)

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

Ming Fang He

Committee Member 1

Sabrina Ross

Committee Member 2

Alma Stevenson

Committee Member 3

Rachel McMillian

Abstract

This dissertation explores my lived experience as a Black woman educator as a legitimate form of knowledge to defy dominant traditions that marginalize Black women’s voices, spiritual epistemologies, and embodied ways of knowing (Collins, 2000). Theoretically drawing from Black Feminist Thought (e.g., Collins, 2000; hooks, 1994), intersectionality (e.g., Crenshaw, 1989, 1991), and culturally responsive/relevant/sustaining pedagogies (Gay, 2010; Ladson-Billings, 1995, 2021; Paris & Alim, 2017), I engage in speculative memoir (Gonzales, 2022) as a methodology to compose my memoir (Barrington, 2002; Birkerts, 2008; Ledoux, 2006; Roorbach, 2008; Zinsser, 1980, 1998, 2004) while speculating (Schubert, 1991) and theorizing the memoir. Rather than treating personal narrative as anecdotal, I use memories not only as testimonies but also as analytic tools to examine how schooling functions as a site of silencing, surviving, and resisting (Crenshaw, 1991) and how my experience of invisibility, economic insecurity, grief, faith, and endurance shapes my identity as an educator and engenders pedagogical practices embodied with care, affirmation, and justice.  Nine meanings have emerged from my dissertation inquiry: (1) For Black women, to survive is to live, to live is to thrive, and to thrive is to resist and fight back all forms of oppression. (2) Black women’s lived experiences are theories which are legitimate sites of knowledge production that shape our theoretical orientations, pedagogical choices, and ethical commitments to social justice education and worthwhile living. (3) Schools should not be sites of enslaving surveillances and punitive disciplines that conform Black women into “docile bodies” (Foucault, 1975) and sabotage their creativities; rather, they should be spaces and places of possibilities where Black women’s funds of knowledge are valued, their talents recognized, their emotions respected, their identities affirmed, and their best potentials realized. (4) In order to empower Black women, we need to challenge and dismantle official languages in schools, such as grit, professionalism, and high expectations, that obscure and perpetuate institutionalized inequities which evoke detrimental effects on the ways the policies, expectations, and disciplinary practices are interpreted and implemented.......

Research Data and Supplementary Material

No

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