Into our hoods: where critical performance pedagogy births resistance

Abstract

This study focuses on Pin@y Educational Partnerships (PEP), an Ethnic Studies educational pipeline that the five authors have been part of. PEP is in direct opposition to neoliberalism by providing an educational experience for youth to positively transform themselves and their communities. As part of PEP’s transformative curriculum, we employ Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) and critical performance pedagogy. In contrast to high-stakes testing, traditional texts, and rote activities, the practice of YPAR has become popular among social justice teachers. YPAR emphasizes the ‘acquisition of knowledge on injustice as well as skills for speaking back and organizing for change.’ Similar to education, the stage can also be a tool to reproduce cultural hegemony or can be a forum where actors – both performers and audience members – can imagine, voice, and transform a better world. Like YPAR, critical performance pedagogy utilizes the stage as a place to expose the problems students face and build students’ agency to advocate for social justice ‘in their hoods.’ In this article, we provide a case study of how Ethnic Studies teachers in PEP combine YPAR with critical performance pedagogy to engage youth in an education that is responsive to students’ lives. The key components to a community responsive Ethnic Studies pedagogy are developing and growing students’ critical consciousness, agency, and their identity as transformative leaders. This article looks deeply at how these components are developed in PEP while also highlighting the building of a community that is ‘bonded through collective action.’

Keywords:

• YPAR
• critical performance pedagogy
• Ethnic Studies

Notes

1. Pinay/Pinoy is a nickname for Filipina/o in America, adopted by some of the earliest Filipina/o immigrants to Hawaii and the United States. Because of its almost exclusive use by working-class Filipina/o immigrants and their descendants in America from the turn of the twentieth century to the 1960s, some newly immigrated, elite Filipinas/os in the 1960s and 1970s shunned the terms. Now, the terms are accepted and used by Filipinas/os worldwide to refer to anyone of Filipina/o ancestry. Pin@y is a gender neutral term popularized by Filipina/o American students at UC Berkeley in the 1990s.