#151: “He probably did something really, really badder than anything”: Leveraging Black Children’s Sociopolitical Sensemaking as Resources in Co-Learning with Educators

This study investigated how educators interpreted and responded to a case of a Black child’s sociopolitical sensemaking. As part of a larger social design experiment and interviews conducted with 12 justice-oriented teachers, I presented participants with an extended example of a child (“Chase”) describing circumstances surrounding the highly-publicized murder of Freddie Gray. The purpose of this paper is to (1) report on select findings related to educators’ analysis of the Chase example and (2) discuss the relationship between their sensemaking and subsequent pedagogical design thinking. Findings show how many defaulted to developmental lenses that emphasized naivete, empathizing while overlooking the complex reasoning embedded in Chase’s ideas. This shaped the pedagogical possibilities they imagined in response. This work highlights the need for conceptual and methodological tools that attune educators to the sociopolitical and intellectual lives of Black children and, that position children as epistemic contributors and partners in justice-oriented educational design.