A Different Kind of Blackness: Using Successful Journeys to Examine Students’ Experiences of Secondary Schooling

Abstract

Black females achieve high standards of success, yet their lived experiences are frequently absent from educational literature in Canada. Using narratives gathered through semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions, this thesis documents the navigational strategies adopted by four Black female students to achieve academic success in learning environments that often predicted their failure. The narratives highlight the factors the girls believed contributed to their academic success, how they conceptualized their identity and the role(s) their identity played in their schooling experiences and academic success. Contrary to deficiencies that are often highlighted in studies on the schooling experiences of Black students, using feminist theory, critical race theory and antiracism, coupled with resistance theory shed light on the positive aspects of these Black females’ schooling experiences in Ontario. Such an approach disrupts negative views of Black students as lagging behind in education in Canada. Disseminating the narratives of successful students provides real life examples for other students to imitate in pursuit of academic success amidst educational and societal barriers. On a macro level, these narratives provide education policy makers with different perspectives on how students struggled to achieve academic success within a system that promised to be accessible to all students.