Toward What Justice and Justice for Whom? A BlackCrit Meditation on and against Miami University’s Department of Teaching, Curriculum, and Educational Inquiry’s Threshold Concepts

ABSTRACT

This article is my personal and decidedly unapologetic Black meditation on and against the threshold concepts the Department of Teaching, Curriculum, and Educational Inquiry, where I formerly taught has embraced as a means of addressing issues of social justice. Threshold concepts are a set of guide posts to enact change. Drawing on Black critical theory, this article argues that the concepts ignore Black suffering in and beyond K-12 schools and, thus, are anti-Black in nature. In so doing, I ask, When anti-Blackness is deafeningly silent and visibly missing from the threshold concepts, toward what justice and justice for whom is the department aiming? If threshold concepts are irreversible, transformative, integrative, troublesome, and bounded, what do they mean when the theorization of anti-Blackness is foregrounded within them? Recommendations are provided for teacher education broadly and the Department of Teaching, Curriculum, and Educational Inquiry in the College of Education, Health, and Society at Miami University (Ohio).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nathaniel Bryan

Nathaniel Bryan, PhD is formerly an associate professor at Miami University (Ohio) and is currently an associate professor of early childhood education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at The University of Texas at Austin. His research addresses the teaching styles of Black male teachers in early childhood education and the lived schooling and play experiences of Black boys in early childhood education.