Pedagogy of empowerment: student perspectives on critical multicultural education at a high-performing African American school

Abstract

Despite decades of education reform, the US school curricula remain virtually unchanged. Multi-billion dollar initiatives such as No Child Left Behind, Common Core State Standards, Race to the Top, and Every Student Succeeds Act have not resulted in significant academic gains or curricula change. The exclusion of diversity and multiculturalism in US classrooms and textbooks underserves all students and inaccurately perpetuates a hegemonic narrative. This omission particularly disserves minority students, whose only exposure to Black history is slavery and the Civil Rights Movement. Thus, this qualitative case study examines a high-performing school, Harriet Tubman Academy (pseudonym) – HTA, that utilizes critical multiculturalism and anti-racism education. The findings reveal greater academic achievement, and the students explain that they had a greater understanding and appreciation for multicultural education because of their experiences at HTA. The findings of the study have great implications for urban school reform.