(Re)membering Spirituality in Teacher Education: bell hooks' FIGHT for Freedom, Hope and Wisdom
Duff, Rosalynne E.
Citations
Abstract
This study celebrates (re)membering bell hooks’ spirituality in teacher education through a text analysis of her Teaching Trilogy: Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (hooks, 1994), Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope (hooks, 2003b), and Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom (hooks, 2009). The purpose of this study is to explore the body of knowledge cultivated by Black Women that remains excluded in the emergent field of spirituality in teacher education due to historical marginalization (hooks, 1989a; Muhammad et al., 2020; Dillard, 2021; Truehill, 2021; Ramdeo, 2023). The theories of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991; Collins & Bilge, 2016) and soulfulness (hooks, 2003a; Harrell, 2019) inform the study along with the methodology of (re)membering, weaving together an endarkened feminist methodology (Dillard, 2000, 2012, 2021b; Dillard & Neal, 2021; McClish-Boyd & Bhattacharya, 2021a & 2021b) with a hybrid (inductive and deductive) thematic analysis (Braun & Clark, 2006; Xu & Zammit, 2020). The study's significant findings illuminate bell hooks’ spiritual ways of knowing, doing, and being in the context of teacher education, through the lens of freedom, hope, and wisdom. The findings also confirm/support an emergent well-being framework expressed through the acronym FIGHT (faith, identity, gratefulness, heartfulness, and truth-telling). This study has implications for strategies to cultivate curricula that center on spirituality in teacher educator professional development, as in Black/Africana and Women and Gender studies, Black Women’s well-being practices, pedagogy in higher education, and Teacher Education. This study, above all, honors the academic legacy of bell hooks–another trailblazing woman from Kentucky–and celebrates her contributions to transformative pedagogies.
