Transnationalizing Social Justice Education: InterAmerican Frameworks for Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century

Abstract

Social Justice Education currently uses mostly U.S.-based theories and concepts, and it often relies upon nation-specific historical legacies and nation-centric contemporary understandings of patterns of inequality. This study offers interdisciplinary conceptual-historical frameworks garnered from historical studies, African Diaspora Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, along with studies of frameworks and pedagogies in critical and multicultural education to enlarge Social Justice Education. This conceptual study utilizes a world-historical analysis and focuses on the interconnectedness of the Americas—Latin America, the Caribbean, and North America— establishing a hemispheric and regional framework to inspire more transnational work in educational projects. Arguing that there are shared historical and present-day patterns of social oppression across the Americas, this work excavates dynamics of race and gender and how they have lived in similar ways across American societies. Focusing on the African diaspora, this research charts a history of colonialism and the workings of race in various American nations. It also utilizes multicultural feminist thought and the theory of intersectionality to expand the frameworks that educators can use to “transnationalize” their thinking and practice, and to work with interlocking systems of gender, race and class in their teaching content and pedagogy.