The Educational Journeys of Students of Color Across the Educational Pipeline: A Pedagogy of Storytelling or a Struggle for Freedom?

Abstract

ABSTRACTSocial inequality as evident through poverty, racism, and irrelevant social and educational policies and practices have created consistent disparities on most educational achievement and attainment outcomes for historically marginalized students, and students of color specifically. These ongoing inequalities and injustices require policy, practical, and pedagogical changes across the educational pipeline. The work of the people on the ground needs to be intentional when exploring ways to creatively and courageously engage with students of color inside and outside the classroom. This paper describes, conceptualizes, and applies a pedagogical practice called Educational Journeys/Caminos Educativos, which is built on a grounded, context-specific, and culturally relevant set of processes that helps students, educators, leaders, policy makers, and other stakeholders to co-create a series of pedagogical approaches that facilitate opportunities for educators to heal, build, and thrive with historically marginalized students, particularly minoritized, immigrant, and undocumented youth. The goal of this paper is to propose pedagogical processes that allow these populations, and the educators who serve them, to imagine a new social condition for and with students of color across the educational pipeline as a gesture toward equity and social justice. The author suggests that the pedagogy of Educational Journeys is more than storytelling; it’s about a struggle for freedom—past, present, and future.