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Impact of elementary grade teachers practicing radical love in Florida classrooms
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Impact of Elementary Grade Teachers Practicing Radical Love in Florida Classrooms
by
Maria E. Schwartz
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION
August 2024
Copyright 2024 Maria E. Schwartz
© Copyright by Maria E. Schwartz 2024
All Rights Reserved
The Committee for Maria E. Schwartz certifies the approval of this Dissertation
Dr. Alan Green
Dr. Paul Gothold
Dr. Cathy Krop
Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California 2024
iv
Abstract
This study applies radical love theory and emergent strategy to understand how
elementary school teachers can create positive, affirming classroom environments for students
from currently and historically marginalized communities. The purpose of this study was to
understand what radical love pedagogical practices look like, how teachers who implement
radical love aligned pedagogy may observe students experiencing more psychological safety and
belonging at school, and how these practices are and can be shared with others. Using data
collected from a screener tool distributed to five schools in Spring County, Florida participants
were selected and interviewed based on self-reported alignment with radical love practices. Data
collected from interviews were explored for potential positive practices towards achieving all
elementary students experiencing psychological safety at school. Findings from this study will
provide teachers working in contentious political environments with pedagogical tools to
promote students’ well-being at school. Data suggested that teachers who practice pedagogy
aligned with tenets of radical love, such as empathy and understanding, report increased
perceptions of students’ belonging and comfort in their classroom environment. The study
conclusions encourage further exploration of how pedagogical practices aligned in radical love
have a positive impact on particularly vulnerable and marginalized students’ sense of
psychological safety in the classroom.
v
Acknowledgements
I extend my deepest gratitude to my dissertation chair Dr. Krop. Her unwavering support,
kindness, and insightful guidance have been invaluable throughout this research journey. Dr.
Krop's ability to provide thoughtful feedback and encouragement was a cornerstone of my
journey. Her dedication to my growth as a researcher has been inspiring and humbling, and I am
profoundly grateful for her mentorship
I would also like to express my heartfelt thanks to Dr. Gothold. His embodiment and
emanation of human-centered leadership have been a guiding light in my educational endeavors.
Dr. Gothold's commitment to creating a nurturing environment where love and care for children
are central to their education is truly commendable. His example has not only shaped my
research but has also influenced my approach to leadership and education in profound ways.
My sincere appreciation goes to Dr. Green, whose influence has been transformative. Dr.
Green's ability to expand my mind and push the boundaries of thought has been a pivotal part of
my academic growth. Her embodiment of a lifelong learner has been a source of inspiration,
constantly encouraging me to challenge myself and explore new horizons. Dr. Green's
mentorship has been a beacon of intellectual curiosity and growth.
In addition to my academic mentors, I am deeply grateful for the unwavering support of
my family. To my parents, sister, nieces, partner, and two dogs, your love and encouragement
have been my foundation. Your belief in me has fueled my perseverance through long nights and
weekends of research and writing. This dissertation is a testament to the power of community,
love, and dedication. As I conclude this chapter, I thank my participants, and am optimistic that
the spirit of love and care continues to spread in Florida schools, fostering environments where
every child can thrive and flourish.
vi
Table of Contents
Abstract ..…………………………………………………………………………………………iv
Acknowledgements ………………..….…………………………………………………………..v
List of Tables ..…………………………………………………………………………………....x
List of Figures……...……………………………………………………………………………..xi
Chapter One: Introduction…………………………….…………..………..……………………..1
Background of the problem……………………………………………………………….1
Organization context and mission…………………………………………………………3
Purpose of the study and research questions………………………………………………4
Importance of the study…………………………………………………………………...5
Overview of theoretical framework and methodology……………………………………6
Organization of the dissertation…………………………………………………………..7
Chapter Two: Literature Review………………………………………………………………….9
Overview of United States’ Public Schooling Educational Context ……………………..9
History and background of white supremacy’s role in U.S schooling……………...…….9
Explanation of the Language of deOliviera’s Boxhead Grammar……………………… 12
DeOliviera’s Boxhead Grammar ………………………………………..…………... 13
Florida’s current political climate: schools and politics……………………….…...16
Understanding a Sense of Belonging and Emotionally Safe School Spaces …………..19
Defining a sense of belonging and psychologically safe spaces …………….…..19
Evidence on a sense of belonging and emotionally safe environments …………21
Consequences of a lack of a sense of belonging and safe spaces………………..24
Potential Sources of Positive Outcomes for Students in Affirming Environments Through
vii
a Conceptual Framework of Radical Love and Emergent Strategy…………..………….26
Radical love theory and implementation ………………………..………………….26
Core principles of emergent strategy and applications to sharing teacher
pedagogy …………………………………………………………….………….29
Elements of anti-racist teacher pedagogy rooted in radical love………………...33
Summary……………………………………………………………………………..…. 36
Chapter Three: Methodology…………………………………………………………………… 38
Overview of methodology……………...………………………………………………. 38
Data sources………………………………………………………………,………….….39
Participants……………………………………………………….………………39
Instrumentation…………………………………………………………………………..41
Data collection procedures………………………..……………………………..43
Data analysis……………………………………………………………….…….44
Credibility and trustworthiness…………………………………………………….…….44
Ethics……………………………………………………………………………………..45
The researcher……………………………………………………………………………47
Chapter Four: Findings…………………………………………………………………………..50
Site and study participants……………………………………………………………….50
Research question 1: What types of pedagogical practices are predominantly present in
elementary teachers within Spring County who practice radical love? ............................52
Finding 1: A culture of safe dialogue……………………………………………53
Finding 2: A core focus on humanization and empathy…………………………58
Finding 3: Provided structure of consistently supported high expectations……..63
Research question 2: How do teachers who engage in radical love practices perceive the
viii
impact that pedagogy has on students’ psychological safety and sense of belonging…..67
Research question 3: How and where, if at all, do teachers share these practices among
their colleagues to spread through radical love?................................................................73
Summary…………………………………………………………………………………76
Chapter Five: Recommendations and Discussion…………………………………………….….77
Discussion of findings.……………….……………….………………………………….77
Research question 1: Discussion of findings….…………………………….…78
Research question 2: Discussion of findings……………….………………….81
Research question 3: Discussion of findings…………,……………………….82
Recommendations for practice…………………………………………………………..86
Recommendation 1: Incorporate specific, effective pedagogical practices aligned
with radical love into professional development……….…….….………………87
Recommendation 2: Incorporate direct student voice and engagement around how
they would like to experience school……………………………………………89
Recommendation 3: Elevate spaces for informal and self-selected teacher
collaboration and peer learning………………………………………………….90
Limitations and delimitations……………………………………………………..……..92
Recommendations for future research …………………………………………………..93
Conclusion .……..….……………………………………………………………………95
References………………………………………………………………………………………. 97
Appendix A: Screener survey tool……………………………………………….…..…………108
Appendix B: Interview outline and questions……….………………………………………….111
Appendix C:
ix
List of Tables
Table 1: Participant Overview 51
Table 2: How Teachers Incorporate Student-Centered Control 62
Table 3: Teacher Quotes on the Importance of Knowing Your Students 66
Table 4: Summary of Findings and Recommendations 71
Table 5: Overview of Collaboration Data 74
Table 6: Summary of Findings Related to Emergent Strategy 84
Table 7: Summary of Key Findings and Recommendations 86
x
List of Figures
Figure A: deOliviera’s Language of the Boxhead Grammar 20
Figure B: Teacher Quote 62
1
Chapter One: Introduction to the Study
This study sought to understand the perceived impact elementary teachers practicing
radical love-based pedagogy in their classrooms has on their students’ sense of psychological
safety and belonging at school. In the United States, there is a significant misalignment between
the representation of student populations and the teachers educating them (Pollock &
Matschiner, 2022). Increasingly, public school students enter this space with ways of knowing as
historically marginalized populations and those most vulnerable to the exploitative nature of the
capitalistic, settler colonial systems in the United States (Gaztambide-Fernández, 2013).
The focus of the study was to examine how classroom teachers who practice humanizing
pedagogy perceive their students to have a strong sense of belonging and psychological safety in
their classrooms. This study sought to understand ways in which radical love can serve as a
promising and humanizing practice that could be disseminated using Emergent Strategy (Brown,
2017) to increase positive psychological outcomes for students in schools in the United States.
These practices were studied for their potential to increase equitable access to student success
through a sense of belonging and well-being in an affirming school culture.
Background of the Problem
Education research, particularly focused on social justice, describes how students from
uniquely marginalized intersectional identities including immigrants, non-English speakers,
people of color, LGBTQIA+ and Indigenous nations are placed in a disadvantaged positionality
in their schooling (Crenshaw, 1991; Yaluma & Tyner, 2021; Worley & Young, 2023).
According to Patel (2012), schools have continued to perpetuate the settler colonial ideals of
White supremacy by legitimizing only Eurocentric norms and forms of knowledge through
curriculum and pedagogy. Currently, the percentage of students of color is rising in public
schools while the majority of teachers serving them are White (Leonardo & Boas, 2021). In fact,
2
in 2021, over 80 percent of the teacher workforce in the United States was White and female
(Leonardo & Boas, 2021). If education is to share knowledge, educators predominantly
representing one intersection of identity creates space for continuation of the achievement debt
(Ladson-Billings, 2016) in which students of color underachieve compared to their White
counterparts.
There have been an extensive number of studies highlighting the negative impact of the
racial and ethnic achievement gap in the United States (Yaluma & Tyner, 2021; Matheny,
Thompson & Townley-Flores, 2023; Ladson-Billings, 2006). These studies have often been used
in the justification of top-down political mandates which further restrict and minimize space for
educator input on student learning (Donald, 2010). Many accountability measures tie directly to
the test scores of students, leading to tunnel vision on behalf of schools toward standardized
measurable knowledge. This enables the curricular project of replacement as described by Tuck
and Gatzambide-Fernández (2013) where students from historically oppressed and marginalized
communities have a low positionality within their own education. Students are operating in an
institution that relies on classification of people in racial terms (Bonilla-Silva, 2001), while
simultaneously denying students the opportunity to learn about how this has caused harm since
before the foundation of the educational system (Wozolek, 2022).
Schooling operates within the confines of deOliviera’s Boxhead grammar (2012), placing
boundaries around access to knowledge and claiming ownership of the legitimate world view.
Teachers are potentially continuing to practice with unaddressed internal biases, furthering
allochronic thinking to justify the existence of the achievement debt (Ladson-Billings, 2006).
Without engaging in an approach rooted first in the humanization of all children, it is hard to
imagine a dismantling of the current oppressive status quo producing undeniably inequitable
3
outcomes for students based on race, ethnicity and linguistic backgrounds (Ladson-Billings,
2006).
Radical love, a theory first outlined by Paolo Freire (1970), can be transformed into a
pedagogical practice wherein teachers treat their students with humanization and empathy. In the
classroom rooted in radical love, teachers demonstrate cooperation and compassion with students
consistently across interactions. This study aimed to identify and empower teachers to utilize
radical love in their practice, examining how it creates a psychologically safe environment for
children to learn and feel a sense of belonging so they may achieve at their highest potential
(Duhigg, 2016).
Spreading awareness of the potential positive impact that creation of a psychologically
safe space through radical love can have (Douglass & Nganga, 2013) could lead to better
achievement outcomes for students from historically underachieving populations most oppressed
by the current system. This is where radical love can merge with elements of Brown’s (2017)
Emergent Strategy, which offers insight into non-linear ways for organizations to grow and
change, to disseminate this potentially promising pedagogical practice.
Organization Context and Mission
To increase privacy protection for participants in this study, the pseudonym of Spring
Public School District was used to describe the education system being studied in the state of
Florida. Spring Public School District is an urban school district, serving over 200,000 students
in over 300 schools. Spring Public Schools is fully accredited with a stated mission to provide an
education to students which equips them for success in the future. The district is locally run by
elected school board members and a Superintendent, although is still subject to power of the state
educational laws and Department of Education which sometimes intervenes in local control.
4
The organization serves a student population representing over 165 countries and who
speak over 140 different languages, including students from identities historically marginalized
by the settler colonial system of public-school education throughout the United States. Spring
Public School District enrolls predominantly White (18%), Black (40%), and Latinx students
(38%), with other populations representing less than 5%. Over 50% of the districts’ students
receive free and reduced lunch, with a total of 30% of the population served being English
Language Learners (ELL) or having special educational needs (ESE). Overall, students in the
system belong to multiple populations vulnerable to receiving less than equitable access to
educational opportunity being educated by teachers who may know very little about their
respective culture and epistemology.
As suggested by Tuck and Yang (2014), this matter is urgent, as the ideology and logic
perpetrated in many schools by select teachers seeks to eliminate the very epistemologies of
students’ culture to only legitimize the apparatus of settler colonial knowledge. It is within this
context that this diverse set of historically marginalized populations is receiving an education
and developing their sense of self and identity. The importance of creating a psychologically safe
space for students to engage in their learning and development can be critical to student success
(Curby, Brock, & Hamre, 2013; Garner & Estep, 2001). If teachers can use the classroom to
create a culture where students, particularly those vulnerable to facing underachievement, feel
psychologically safe and that they belong, they may increase the likelihood of positive outcomes
for students.
Purpose of the Study and Research Questions
The teacher workforce across United States public school systems is 85% White, while
students and families are increasingly from racially and ethnically minoritized and immigrant
populations (Leonardo & Boas, 2021). With entanglement of White supremacy tenets detailed by
5
Jones and Okun (2011) in the school systems, it is essential that teacher pedagogy be continually
interrogated and rooted in radical love (Douglas & Nganga, 2013) to ensure all students
maximize their achievement in a learning environment that is affirming and safe. This study will
address the following research questions through teachers interviews:
1. What types of pedagogical practices are predominantly present in elementary teachers
within Spring County who practice radical love?
2. How do teachers who engage in radical love practices perceive the impact that pedagogy
has on students' psychological safety and sense of belonging?
3. How and where, if at all, do teachers share these practices among their colleagues to
spread radical love?
Importance of the Study
The work of Duhigg (2016) highlights the positive impact that psychological safety has
on one’s sense of belonging as it relates to the success of both organizations and individuals. By
extending these findings to elementary school-aged students, teachers who practice radical love
when interacting with students may have more success creating a psychologically safe
environment. The state in which this study was conducted currently has educational laws
prohibiting explicit instruction of the history of multiple cultures including that of African
Americans and LGBTQIA+ individuals. Most recently, in 2023, social studies and history
curriculum were adopted in the state from Prager University, a non-accredited and non-academic
conservative media outlet (NPR, 2023). This poses a significant obstacle imposed by the state
system itself when creating an identity affirming environment for students from these oppressed
groups. Jones and Okum (2011) suggest that it is urgent to create and discover explicit means to
dismantle the system of White supremacist education that is spirit murdering (Love, 2012) our
most marginalized vulnerable students.
6
Those students most hurt by the achievement-debt, as described by Ladson-Billings
(2006), are the exact students who are politically, legally, and socially oppressed by the current
state political climate (Edweek, 2023; NPR, 2023) while teachers are being increasingly required
to limit their scope of interaction with students regarding identity. Without direct attention on
how teacher pedagogy can be both impactful and spread through radical love with elements of
Emergent Strategy (Brown, 2017), educators in this system have little chance of creating a
classroom culture and relationships where students are truly affirmed. Findings from this study
may have positive impact and serve as a source of resilience for students and teachers within a
political environment that is debating education on a national stage. The consequences of leaving
this problem of practice unaddressed are leaving behind another generation of students, losing
passion and potential from minoritized students.
Overview of Theoretical Framework and Methodology
Elements from radical love (Freire, 1993, 1998) and Emergent Strategy (Brown, 2017)
were drawn upon to guide this inquiry and brought together to disseminate a potentially
promising pedagogical practice to foster psychological safety and belonging within Spring
School District, a unique place politically, historically and demographically wherein potential for
oppressive outcomes for marginalized students is high. At its foundation, this study is rooted in
concurrence with the Blackfoot Nation’s belief that all humans serve and achieve selfactualization through existence.
The perspectives and principles of Emergent Strategy can be applied to spreading
pedagogical practices rooted in radical love (Douglass & Nganga, 2015) to create a network of
educators affirming students’ identity in the classroom to optimize conditions for achievement.
Overall, Emergent Strategy (Brown, 2017) emphasizes the constantly changing nature of
organizations, the value in giving attention to problems of practice and the critical importance of
7
trust between individuals and the organization for success. This study draws on Brown’s
discussion of the movement starlings, described as murmurations, with the potential to begin
anywhere in the group. The research inquired how radical love could be cultivated in teacher
practice and murmurate through school sites to increase student sense of belonging. Promoting
learning opportunities outside of the status quo curriculum and creating positive relationships
will create a pipeline of strong, capable developing leaders who can utilize their strengths to
address the achievement-debt (Ladson-Billings, 2006).
The study utilized qualitative descriptive interviews to address the stated research
questions. After obtaining local Internal Review Board approval with Spring County, principals
were contacted via district email from a list of ChatGPT randomized schools who fit criteria for
study. Of the 50 schools contacted, five responded with approvals from principals allowing
research to be conducted in their school site. Teachers at the selected schools were emailed via
their district email with information about the study and a link to the screener tool in order to
identify whether participants implemented pedagogy aligns with radical love practices. Teachers
who indicated they utilized such practices will be interviewed on the perceived impact on
students’ sense of psychological safety and belonging in the classroom, which research suggests
positively affects their academic achievement and other markers of success (Boston & Warren,
2017) were solicited for an interview.
Organization of the Dissertation
This dissertation will be organized and presented as follows. Chapter one provided an
overview of and justification for conducting this research inquiry. Chapter two will present a
literature review on topics relevant to the study, including understanding a sense of belonging
and emotionally safe spaces for students, an overview of the United States’ public schooling
educational context and potential sources of positive outcomes for students in affirming
8
environments. Chapter three will outline the methodology used for the study. This chapter will
also include acknowledgement of my positionality within the study, commentary on ethical
implications of the research and provide a detailed description of how the study will be
conducted. Chapter four will present the research findings to the research questions presented.
Finally, Chapter five will provide a discussion of the findings related to literature reviewed in
Chapter two and recommendations for practice based on study findings and research-supported
practices as well as highlight suggested areas for further inquiry.
9
Chapter Two: Literature Review
The following chapter will present literature pertaining to the problem of practice of how
students from marginalized identities are placed in a disadvantaged positionality in their
schooling. The main topics include an understanding of what a sense of belonging or emotionally
safe space for children looks like. This section will define these topics, provide a brief history
related to historically marginalized students and provide a context for potential detrimental
consequences of a lack of access to these spaces. Next will be an overview of the overall
educational context of public schooling in the United States, including a historical account of the
role of white supremacy in the creation of U.S schools. Finally, this information will be
contextualized using the language of Boxhead Grammar, a linguistic framework by deOliviera
Andreotti (2016), to provide a common language to discuss students’ current school spaces.
Finally, literature will be used to discuss the specific educational climate in Florida, which has
received national media attention for its contentious educational environment (NPR, 2023).
The final section will propose potential sources of positive outcomes for students exposed
to safe spaces in school. Radical love (Douglas & Nganga, 2013) and Emergent Strategy
(Brown, 2017), two influential systems for creation of affirming spaces, will be discussed as the
study’s guiding conceptual framework.
Overview of United States’ Public Schooling Educational Context
History and Background of White Supremacy’s Role in U.S Schooling
This paper acknowledges the existence and endemic nature of racism and settler
colonialism (Taylor, Gillborn & Ladson-Billings, 2023; Tuck & Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2013)
throughout United States social institutions, including education throughout its stages (Harper,
2012). According to Bonilla-Silva (2001), the racialized social system of the United States was
created to perpetuate status in favor of the belief system that put White, Anglican, cisgender
10
males atop the social hierarchy. Schools exist today to uphold their beliefs and schooling consists
of teachers being mandated (sometimes legally) to ensure that the ethnocentric norms created by
systems of White supremacy continue the opportunity gaps that marginalize students of color
and English Language Learners (Patel, 2021; Ladson-Billings, 2006). The elementary school
experience, beginning in kindergarten, is often the first experience students have with schooling.
In the current US model, students come into a system where individual grades and scores are
more valued than the collective well-being and creation of knowledge. Instead, students are
presented with the definition of knowledge created by White epistemologies valued greater than
others (Patel, 2021) and the student-teacher relationship is devalued behind high test scores. This
model has its origins in the assumption that cultural value is strongly associated with materialism
and economic needs (Darby & Rury, 2018) and the standard of assimilation into White culture,
as it was characterized by manifest destiny, as more civil (Tuck & Gaztambide-Fernandez,
2013). The White supremacist norm created by the narrative of White supremacy founded a
system of schooling which elevates heteropatriarchal family arrangements and operates under a
strict logic of replacement (Tuck & Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2013). Racism has been
institutionalized into the system of schooling and is associated with the continued colonization of
information and opportunity (Bonilla-Silva, 2001).
Throughout the history of the United States, schools have been formal institutions adept
at bringing those deemed as outsiders into the dominant American culture or eliminating those
who would not comply (Tuck & Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2013). Along with narratives like
manifest destiny, ideals from both racialized science (Smedley & Smedley, 2005) and capitalism
have also contributed to the school systems’ production of the dominant societal structures they
reproduce (Meyer, 2010). Schools have gone so far as to commit cultural and actual genocide
11
against Native Americans (Leonardo, 2009) and have yet to break free from the creation of
oppressive conditions for other historically marginalized groups (Matias & Boucher, 2023).
The entanglement of the principles of White supremacy are so strong, they continue to
impact public schools throughout the United States today. Evidence of this is an increase in book
bans among books that discuss race, racial identity or gender identity (New York Times, 2023).
Political action such as book bans and legislation that encloses teacher practice serves only those
in positions of privilege (NPR, 2022), described by Freire (1970) as the oppressors, who control
others through limiting the positionality of the oppressed to question why. In their updated 2021
work, authors Jones and Okun (2023) build upon their outline of the tenets of White supremacy
which appear in systems throughout the United States. These tenets outline clearly how the
history of colonization and replacement (Tuck & Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2013) created a system
of schooling entrenched in White supremacy, elements of which are discussed in the following
paragraphs as they pertain to schooling.
Politics and schooling have come together in states serving high populations of
historically marginalized and disadvantaged students to create conditions steeped in White
supremacy in two of the following ways outlined by Jones and Okun (2023).
Paternalism. The current systems of public schooling operate under a top-down
bureaucratic model in which there is a trickle effect of power from the federal department of
education to the states, to local school boards and schools. In these systems, classroom teachers
have a low positionality to make changes to decisions made at the top regarding curricular
adoption and other important influences on student achievement. These teachers do, however,
have a choice in which pedagogical practices they bring to their interactions with students.
Additionally, the degree of separation between the communities which are being impacted and
12
the individuals making the decisions fits comfortably within this tenent of White supremacy
(Jones & Okun, 2021).
Objectivity. The standardization of standards and testing throughout the United States
has increased since the time of No Child Left Behind (Hursch, 2005) and has further perpetuated
the idea that the value of a student can be assigned objectively. This tenant of White supremacy
states that there is an existing objective way to measure student knowledge (Jones & Okun,
2021) based on a standardized test score which further dehumanizes students who may already
be underachieving. Radical love, by contrast, creates conditions where students’ value is rooted
in their humanization (Douglass & Nganga, 2013).
If United States schooling is to be reimagined to create affirming and psychologically
safe spaces where students from all racial and ethnic backgrounds can receive equitable access to
educational attainment, there will first have to be a shift in mindset (Nadelson et al., 2019).
Within this context, the necessary shift in thinking must move away from the enclosing language
of Boxhead grammar (deOliviera, 2012) towards a more liberatory model where teachers can
practice radical love.
Explanation of the Language of DeOliviera’s Boxhead Grammar
This section will outline a framework for understanding the types of thinking that have
led to creation of a system limited by the principles of white supremacy (deOliviera, 2012).
Bonilla-Silva’s (2001) view suggested the racialized social system of the United States was
created to perpetuate status in favor of the belief system that put White, Anglican, cisgender
males on top of the societal hierarchy. This has led to what Tuck and Gaztambide-Fernandez
(2013) describe as elimination of those who cannot be brought inside, an abandonment of
students who don’t fit the “American” standards of being and knowing. DeOliviera’s language of
13
the boxhead is offered here as a framework to provide a deeper understanding of White
supremacy’s hold on public schools.
DeOliviera’s Boxhead Grammar
Boxhead grammar (deOliviera, 2016) limits our organizational thinking, and ability to
dismantle elements of white supremacy (Jones & Okun, 2011) which are currently present in our
educational systems and practice. This grammar can be adapted as a clear language to discuss
how oppressive positionalities continue to perpetuate the status quo of how schooling is
approached in the United States. The proposed goal is to move away from each element of the
Boxhead (deOliviera, 2016) currently entrapping historically marginalized students. These are
the circumstances in which young students are entering our school systems, which has proven
ineffective in equitably creating psychologically safe spaces for all students. Each way of
Boxhead thinking outlined here contributes to the current system which does not provide
sufficient psychological safety of belonging to all students.
Figure A. deOliviera’s Language of the Boxhead Grammar (2016)
Logocentrism – “I say, therefore it is”
14
Logocentrism (deOliveira, 2016) limits types of thinking and cultural knowledge through
imposing the dominant narrative of history, language, culture and even concept knowledge itself
as the only way of being possible. According to Turner (2020), White supremacy has yet to leave
educational systems even in the United States despite the number of initiatives aimed at pushing
colorblind multicultural policies to improve ‘diversity’. It is due to logocentric contributions to
education standards that states throughout the country are experiencing a shift in focus of
teaching history away from the truth about America’s treatment of enslaved Black individuals
(Seeger, Patterson & Paz, 2023; NPR, 2023).
Universalism: “I think, therefore it is all there is”
The constant centering of white Anglo-Christian values determines educational
curriculum, policy, representation and parental and community involvement in public schooling.
From the top down the educational system priorities are perpetuating epistemologies that reflect
whiteness and privilege. According to Bonilla-Silva (2001) the racialized social system of the
United States was created to perpetuate status in favor of the belief system that put white,
Anglican, cisgender male narratives. Throughout the United States multiple states have adopted
academic standards which tell a version of United States history which does not include the
holistic picture of the history of race-based marginalization (NPR, 2023). Schools uphold their
beliefs, with schooling in some states even going so far as to mandate teachers align with
ethnocentric norms which marginalize our most vulnerable (NPR, 2022; NPR, 2023). New
curricular standards uphold White privilege by distorting, omitting narratives of other
communities while perpetuating harmful stereotypes (Ladson-Billings, 1998) against minoritized
students.
Teleological thinking: “I plan, therefore it will be”
15
The shine of modernity (deOliveria, 2012) promotes an attitude of continuous forward
only progress towards the beauty of an idealized modern age. This push creates a sense of
urgency around academic achievement and promotes the capitalistic concept of competition
throughout society which has invaded educational funding and accountability policies.
Educational legislation has imposed spirit murdering accountability measures tied to high-stakes
testing on educational professionals that turn teachers into gate keepers that read anthropocentric
white dominant curriculum to an increasing number of students who are not represented by it.
This is done in order to ensure that the capitalistic structures in society are reinforced through
education and students are prepared for the modern society as it was planned by settler
colonialism. Lawmakers and educational policy makers have committed so strongly to the plan
of modernity that anything labeled inclusive or equitable is deemed an enemy of progress and
made illegal to discuss or consider in an educational setting. All this even though educational
research recommendations call for the opposite. Carey et al (2018) explains that it is imperative
educators possess the reflective and broad understandings of students’ identities to properly
reach and educate them. By explicitly soliciting counternarratives in the adopting of new
standards, curricular resources and class prioritization, we may begin to create a new perspective
towards educating students in a space that is psychologically safe.
Dialectical thinking: “It is this, therefore it can’t be that”
Throughout the history of the United States immigrants have been forced to assimilate to
the dominant White Anglo-American culture which was established after the cultural and actual
genocide of the indigenous Native Americans. This history shows how our country’s systems fall
into dialectical thinking, where everything is defined through exclusionary rather than inclusive
terms. Once something is deemed as non-fitting into the dominant capitalistic white patriarchy it
is labeled as harmful, dangerous, or a threat. Historically marginalized students are especially
16
vulnerable to being minoritized as they carry distinct potential of possessing intersectional
identities (Carey, 2018) including indigenous, non-English speaking, person of color, or low
socioeconomic status due to the enclosures of poverty surrounding these populations in the
United States. This places students from historically marginalized communities, more recently
Latinx students (Carey, 2018), in a position of vulnerability as systems and professionals who
adhere to this way of thinking are creating the culture of spaces where they are being educated.
Allochronic and Evolutionary thinking – “It is this, therefore it can’t be that”
Finally, allochronic and evolutionary thinking have led our lawmakers, in a desperate
attempt to avoid the necessary reconciliation and understanding of inflicted violence on
minoritized peoples in the United States, to pass legislation making open and truthful discussion
of history illegal. Through the controlling of information, the power structure of schooling and
curriculum where white, Christian, heteronormative identities are prioritized to maintain the
societal status quo. In addition, legislation has been passed to limit the discussion surrounding
identity, particularly sexual or Mexican-American (Gillborn, 2013; NPR, 2023) identity, so as to
discourage students from identifying with or learning about themselves. Radical love, in contrast,
offers students an affirming environment where their identities may be explored and included in
the classroom (Douglas & Nganga, 201
Florida’s Current Educational Climate: Schools and Politics
Since the 1960s, the United States has been in a period of increased political polarization
(Fitzgerald, 2021), and schools and schooling are highly discussed issues within each political
view. This amount of attention provides a unique opportunity to use this spotlight to promote
practices which empower students. Psychologically safe spaces must be deliberately created in
the push for better, but these efforts towards humanization, consistent with Freire (1978), are
being undermined by legal action in certain states (NPR, 2022) which limit education and
17
inclusion of identity. This creates the context for urgency around affirming students experiencing
oppression and injustice and providing protection from potentially adverse impacts of Florida’s
schooling environment within the context of the greater United States (Alvarez, 2023).
Educational legislation has imposed spirit murdering (Love, 2012) measures tied to highstakes testing and political opinions that have turned teachers into gatekeepers of knowledge
rather than vehicles of it (Wu, 2007). Anthropocentric curricula grounded in White-centered
narratives have been adopted by states, including Florida (NPR, 2023), to strengthen capitalistic
structures in society through education (Hursh, 2004). This system prepares students for the
modern society as designed by settler colonialism (Tuck & Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2013). This
instructional material furthers the denial of the reality of racism and allows for Whiteness to
become an invisible racial identity (Leonardo, 2009).
Educational research has demonstrated that practiced inclusivity and attention to equity
can have positive outcomes for students (Hughes, Cavell & Jackson, 1999; McCay & Keyes,
2012; Vialle et al., 2005; Wilson, 2006). It is, however, the case in many states, such as Florida,
that legislators and educational policy makers have labeled anything under the umbrella of equity
prohibited for discussion within the school setting or funding (AP, 2023). Laws within the state,
such as HB 7, transforms Whiteness further from one with a history of literal and ideological
oppression (Leonardo, 2009) to one that is anything other. Changes in academic standards and
discourse are creating classrooms thwarted by educational injustice with laws passed in 2023,
such as Florida’s House Bill (HB) 7 and House Bill (HB) 1557.
Each of these two laws targets a particular historically marginalized group, specifically
the LGBTQIA+ communities in HB1557 and Black and African-American communities in HB7
(NPR, 2022; NPR, 2023; DeSantis, 2022). In the language of HB 7, the law targets “woke”
action towards diversity or equity in all levels of public education throughout the state (DeSantis,
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2022). It does this by withholding funds from institutions which include equity programs, suing
employers who host diversity training programs for staff and outlawing teaching of a broadly
defined version of Critical Race Theory (DeSantis, 2022). Similarly HB 1557, titled The Parental
Rights In Education Act which is also known as the “Don’t Say Gay'' bill (NPR, 2023) has
significant consequences for the LGBTQIA+ community (Goldberg, 2023). Goldberg’s (2023)
study the impact of HB 1557 in Florida found 88% of LGBTQIA+ parents were very anxious
about the potential direct effect this legislation may have on their child’s well being. Specifically,
parents expressed concern about: school becoming a hostile environment for their children, their
ability to volunteer or be involved in their child’s schooling and jeopardizing their sense of
legitimacy (Goldberg, 2023). Despite being widely criticized (NPR, 2023; NPR, 2022;
Washington Post, 2023) both bills were passed and are currently impacting education in the state.
It is here that teachers can play a potentially positive and protective role in students’
lives. Public education institutions may not be in a position to minimize external sources of
discrimination, they may be in a position to buffer students from the potential adverse impact on
their psychological well-being (Hussain & Jones, 2021). Specifically, the practice of radical love
in classrooms may provide a strategy for educational spaces to enact which will re-humanize the
experience of schooling for all students. In his work, Freire (1978) proposes that injustice and
oppression are two forces which thwart humanization. Teachers can instead make decisions in
their pedagogy and instruction to be reflective and work towards broad understandings of
students’ identities to properly psychologically validate them (Carey et al., 2018). Until
psychologically safe and loving spaces can be accessed and shared with students, they will
continue to suffer the consequences of moving through a system not designed for their success
(Matias & Boucher, 2021). The promising practice of radical love, discussed next, may create a
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positive space for students through formation of strong social bonds within school cultures and
provide protection from refusal (Baumeister & Leary, 1995).
Understanding a Sense of Belonging and Emotionally Safe School Spaces
Humans have an innate need to belong that can be directed toward and fulfilled by
anyone in their environment (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Educational spaces provide children
with potential relationships with adults and peers that can be placed on a spectrum between
psychologically safe and unsafe. If teachers can practice with the compassion and patience
integral to radical love pedagogy (Douglass & Nganga, 2013), it is possible they can increase
students’ psychological safety leading to positively associated social bonds and sense of
belonging (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). This section will explore the importance of educational
relationships for elementary-aged children and the corresponding impacts of students’
experiencing psychologically safe or unsafe spaces.
Defining a Sense of Belonging and Psychologically Safe Spaces
An abundance of research across professions and disciplines exists studying details of
humans’ sense of belonging throughout life (Hagerty et al, 1992; St-Amand, Girard & Smith,
2017; Froehlich et al, 2023). Importantly, to create a sense of belonging in the classroom space,
it must be one that creates humanizing relationships founded on mutual trust between the
individuals functioning within it (Freire, 1993). This is essential for elementary aged students
who form attachment-like relationships with their teachers (Halberstadt, Denham, & Dunsmore,
2001). The definitions used for the purpose of this study are aligned with the belongingness
hypothesis. This hypothesis states that human beings possess the drive to form and maintain
lasting, positive interpersonal relationships (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). The hypothesis outlines
particular features of belonging including: frequent personal contact marked by mostly positive
20
interaction, feeling others care for your welfare, and positive feelings associated with others
(Baumeister & Leary, 1995).
Psychological safety is an important need that must be addressed and satisfied for
individuals to fulfill their innate human need to belong (Clark, 2020; Baumeister & Leary, 1995).
For this study, I will apply Clark’s (2020) definition of psychological safety which states it “… is
a condition in which you feel (1) included, (2) safe to learn, (3) safe to contribute, and (4) safe to
challenge the status quo” (pg. xiv). These are the four conditions which encompass the
operational use of psychological safety for students in an elementary classroom. The other highly
related component of a psychologically safe space involves the conditions of safety,
operationalized here as students experiencing a sense of belonging. In her work in belonging,
Allen (2021) stressed the importance for people to experience belonging as fundamental to living
a healthy life. Students who can create a pattern of frequent positive interactions with teachers or
classmates will experience a higher sense of belonging, essential for creating a psychologically
safe learning space. In fact, promisingly, students who perceive that a bond exists between
themselves and others experience their classroom as emotionally reassuring (Baumeister &
Leary, 1995).
Classrooms, and many modern workplaces, are highly interactive environments where
students must be prepared to work collaboratively and engage in self-regulation during social
interactions (Duhigg, 2016). In a study of team dynamics, Duhigg outlined that working spaces
which have openly discussed group norms, a common communication platform and members
show interpersonal trust and mutual respect function the most effectively. Additionally, spaces
where members engage in conversational turn taking, display empathy and have a common
language to communicate were observed as having functional and cohesive teams. Students in
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classrooms experiencing psychological safety will actively engage in class participation with
confidence rather than fear of reprimand or embarrassment (Duhigg, 2016).
Psychologically safe spaces for students include adults who display emotional
consistency towards their students and behave in predictable ways that will assist elementary age
students to securely engage in sense-making of the world around them. When students
consistently receive emotional support from teachers and positive reinforcement, they experience
positive outcomes including competence in their ability to predict others’ emotions, higher levels
of social competence and less reported problem behaviors (Curby, Brock, & Hamre, 2013;
Garner & Estep, 2001). Furthermore, past research shows support for positive student outcomes
experienced by those with positive teacher emotional support (Kashy-Rosebaum, Kaplan &
Israel-Cohen, 2018).
Evidence on a Sense of Belonging and Emotionally Safe Environments for Historically
Marginalized Students
Students spend an average of approximately six hours at school every day (National
Center for Education Statistics, 2020). This is a significant portion of students' waking hours in
which they are spending time with teachers and peers. Proximity is a strong factor in relationship
formation (Hughes, Cavell & Jackson, 1999), and with this extended time together, students have
a better chance of feeling positively about school if they experience one that is psychologically
safe (Clark, 2020). When students feel safe in their classrooms, they are more likely to actively
explore their learning environment and have positive social interactions with their peers
(Hughes, Cavell & Jackson, 1999). Unfortunately, while an influencing factor, mere proximity of
the contact between student and teachers is not sufficient to create a positive relationship
(Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Students need to experience a sense of belonging in their
22
educational environment, as they may find meaning, identity and measures of happiness there
(Allen, 2021).
In particular, students of color experience a detrimental effect to their sense of belonging
in school settings when they endure discrimination and bias (Hussain & Jones, 2021). Educators
can create a shift in these outcomes by giving deliberate attention to their professional practice,
specifically their pedagogy. This shift could provide students with multiple positive impacts
including a buffer from adverse care-giving experiences, higher level enhanced cognitive
development, as well as higher levels of motivation, participation and resiliency in school
(Hughes, Cavell & Jackson, 1999; Vialle et al., 2005; McCay & Keyes, 2012).
Using empathy and humanizing forms of pedagogy may give teachers a tool to dismantle
the first major obstacle in effective learning for students, their desire for a genuine and personal
relationship with their teacher (Franklin & Harrington, 2019). Grounded in empathy, radical love
allows the teacher to engage in more sensitive and attachment-like behaviors with students to
increase probability of positive relationship formation (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). With a
trusting and supportive adult in the classroom, students may feel comfortable to initiate more
social interactions which, in turn, further facilitates student belonging and, ultimately, school
performance (Wilson, 2006). A meta-analysis research study inquiring into student-teacher
relationships found that positive student-teacher relationships were associated with improved
academic achievement and a reduction in disruptive behavior, suspensions and student drop out
rates (Kincade, Cook & Goerdt, 2020). The number of students who experience healthy
friendships with their peers in class may be an indirect indicator of how comfortable students
feel within the classroom (Durrah, 2022).
Additional research from Bateman and Bateman (2002) on inclusion of learners with
exceptionalities demonstrated that deliberate inclusion of diverse needs in fact benefits outcomes
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for all. If students are being educated in spaces where their teachers practice an empathy-based
pedagogy, the teachers can use the universality of social bonds throughout human culture to
create psychologically safe outcomes for all students. When students trust their teachers, they
can all work through the education space together towards the common goal of learning
(Baumeister & Leary, 1995).
Overall, it is possible to provide students with a psychologically safe learning
environment where they feel as though they belong (Clark, 2020; Allen, 2021). This type of
classroom provides a possible pathway for positive outcomes such as experiencing rich
friendships, higher academic achievement and less instances of disruptive behavior (Durrah,
2022; Kincade, Cook & Goerdt, 2020).
Consequences of a Lack of a Sense of Belonging and Safe Space for Elementary Students
It is imperative that students are provided with a psychologically safe school space in
order for them to learn. Multiple studies have shown the potentially negative consequences
students who do not have access to a psychologically safe classroom environment endure. At the
foundation, when students do not feel they are in a psychologically safe environment, it can have
detrimental effects on their sense of belonging (Hussain & Jones, 2021). This must be addressed
at the elementary level, as gaps in achievement based on race and ethnicity often begin during
this period of formal education (Copur-Gencturk et al., 2020), and lack of belongingness can
cause engagement in disruptive behaviors (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Negative behaviors are
wide-ranging and are ultimately problematic because they take away students’ attention from
learning. Disruptive actions occur daily in classrooms, and range from minor in-classroom
disruptions to those that require a students’ removal from class. Any disengagement from
learning means a student is receiving less instruction and therefore are more likely to have
academic deficits (Gage, Scott and MacSuga-Gage, 2017). This lack of belongingness feeds into
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negative behaviors and disproportionately has negative consequences for students of color. Even
when disruptions are minor, Black male students were found to experience more negative
interactions with their teachers for their behavior (Scott et al, 2019).
Potential school-related issues may arise if students experience insecure attachments to
their teachers, including: less engagement in school, increased learning problems, increased
negative responses from adults and peers and less contact with teachers (Hughes, Cavell &
Jackson, 1999). Students who are less engaged in school may experience less success and lower
academic achievement (Gage, Scott, & MacSuga-Gage, 2017). By contrast, students who
experience their psychological needs being met at school tend to have a positive relationship
with others, resulting in an increase in academic achievement (Wang, Tian & Huebner, 2019).
Each of these negative experiences can impact a students’ willingness to engage in
learning which may impact their academic achievement. Looking more broadly, individuals who
are experiencing fear in their social environments also experience more disengagement and less
efficacious learning (Clark, 2020). The perception of psychological or social isolation from their
school community can also precipitate depression for students (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). In a
longitudinal study of primary and secondary school students, Matthews and colleagues (2015)
found that students who experienced social isolation were more likely to have difficulties with
their mental health. Teachers play an essential role in creating students’ perceptions of their self
efficacy through the learning atmosphere they provide (Kuykendall, 1989), which cannot be
attained without providing psychologically safe spaces of belonging.
This responsibility is to be taken seriously by teachers, as a lack of understanding of how
to create psychologically safe spaces that create a sense of belonging can lead to a multitude of
negative outcomes for Black and Brown students (Ezikwelu, 2020). Historically marginalized
students, particularly Black and Latinx students, have suffered multiple negative effects of
25
stereotyping, marginalization and other dehumanizing interactions (Walton & Carr, 2012). The
impacts are widespread from academic achievement outcomes and opportunities to negative
psychological consequences. Many have been documented thoroughly by educational research,
including: the overrepresentation of Black and Brown students in special education programs
(Morgan, 2020; Delhunty & Chiu, 2020; Artilles & Trent, 1994), underrepresentation of students
of color in STEM programs (Thomas & Larwin, 2023; Kricorian et al, 2020), lowered
expectations and dehumanization (Fudge, 2021; Sanders, 2006; Gershenson, Holt & Papageorge,
2016) and increased rates of grade retention (Kaczala, 1991).
These school-based interactions can continue to negatively impact students into their
future education and careers. Students of color, for example, are less likely to enroll in continued
schooling after high school graduation (Knaggs, Sondergeld & Schardt, 2015). This can occur
for multiple reasons, including lack of access to college preparatory programs at urban high
schools and an overall lack of preparation for these students during their K-12 education
(Knaggs, Sondergeld & Schardt, 2015). These school-based interactions also affect students of
color being less likely to enter the teaching profession (Gordon, 1994; Nguyen & Le, 2023),
causing an underrepresentation of minoritized teachers, and less opportunity for students to see
themselves represented in the classroom (Nguyen & Le, 2023). All of this may serve only to
create another obstacle to students’ sense of belonging or psychological safety when interacting
with their teachers. Curby, Brock and Hamre (2013) found that preschoolers who have
emotionally inconsistent teachers experience higher levels of stress when witnessing other
student-teacher interactions. Students in these classroom environments may hesitate to engage
with the teacher they feel is inconsistent, and will divide attention between classwork and the
unpredictable behavior of the adult (Curby, Brock & Hamre, 2013). These findings demonstrate
two potential avenues of impact for students in environments they perceive to be psychologically
26
unsafe. Students will seek out the attention of their teachers less when they cannot predict their
behavior, limiting the adults’ ability to assist and intervene with learning, and they do not have as
much cognitive attention to give to academic tasks as they are attending to the emotional state of
their teacher. This divided attention impacts multiple domains of cognitive functioning which
may in turn negatively affect student learning and retention of information (Kaplan & Berman,
2010) .
Overall, the stakes are high surrounding the efficacy of teacher pedagogy in connecting
with students. Without the creation of a psychologically safe space for elementary-aged students
as they enter their schooling experience, the country risks continuing to inflict negative impacts
outlined by research above (Curby, Brock & Hamre, 2013; Kaplan & Berman, 2010).
Potential Sources of Positive Outcomes for Students in Affirming Environments Through a
Conceptual Framework of Radical Love and Emergent Strategy
Radical Love Theory and Implementation
The need for safe and affirming spaces for elementary students from historically
marginalized communities, including in Florida, the focus of this study, is critical. Teachers play
an active role in creating self-actualizing experiences for students, and without this, generations
of students may continue to be at risk of adverse outcomes of schooling. School environments
are highly socially interactive and, therefore, subject to the belongingness hypothesis, which
suggests a system’s culture is created partly to satisfy the human need for togetherness
(Baumeister & Lester, 1995). While the current political and educational status quo imposes
obstacles around encouraging togetherness, teachers who understand their relationships with
students can have potential protective effects from adverse care-giving experiences (Hughes,
Cavell & Jackson, 1999) and can use their pedagogy to create a classroom culture of cooperation
and consideration.
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The pedagogical strategy to achieve togetherness and belonging for all students framing
this study is radical love, introduced by Paolo Freire (1970), as a potentially promising way to
create space for a sense of psychological safety and belonging for students generally and from
oppressed communities, specifically. Practicing radical love allows one to recast power
differences in the classroom and create space for affirming students from non-dominant
positionalities.
In an interpretation of Freire’s work, Cunningham (2004) offered a perspective that to
practice radical love one must refuse to work within the system of oppression. Instead, those who
practice love that is considered real and radical demonstrate cooperation and compassion
(Douglas & Nganga, 2013). In pedagogical behaviors, educators may choose to regularly solicit
and reflect on student voice, work together with colleagues to spread promising practices, and
share expertise or demonstrate patience and compassion when faced with students who struggle
with behavior or learning. These actions go against the historical system of schooling status quo
which positions the teacher as the dominant voice of the classroom, encourages educator
competition over collaborating and sharing, and implements top-down hierarchical structures
(Jones & Okun, 2021). Radical love pedagogy has potential to be an effective buffer against the
stronghold of White supremacy foundations, wherein educators resist exploitation of their
students by creating classrooms where they perceive their students demonstrate they feel safe
and empowered.
In the current political and educational context of Spring County, Florida, a pseudonym,
teachers practicing radical love can be identified as those who advocate for and include students
and families that are specifically targeted in recent legislation including: HB 7 (FL Senate, 2022)
which limits discussion and funding of Black and African histories and HB 1557 (FL Senate,
2023) which limits discussion of LGBTQIA+ identities and histories. The most notable
28
communities being further oppressed by this legislation include the Black, African American and
LGBTQIA+ communities whose histories are distorted and specifically forbidden from being
discussed (FL Senate, 2022; FL Senate, 2023; NPR, 2023). The context of the Florida
environment where educators are vulnerable to legal prosecution and job loss for discussing
identity (HB 1557, 2023) and losing funding for teaching African-American history (HB 7,
2023) positions educators to exercise courage in their commitment to liberating students from the
status quo, a key tenet of radical love (Freire, 1993).
Teachers who practice radical love can also be identified through their report of types of
interactions with students, including degree of warmth they exhibit and how they address
developing the confidence and sense of student well-being (Ridd, 2019). Hughes, Cavell &
Jackson (1999) determined students can experience highly positive impacts from a secure
attachment to their teacher, including higher engagement in learning, better school adaptation,
more academic motivation and a larger degree of peer acceptance. Teachers who approach
student relationships with a high degree of warmth and demonstrate involvement in their
students’ interests, families and lives are creating environments rooted in radical love.
A final lens of insight into identifying teachers who practice with radical love is the
degree to which teachers demonstrate emotional stability and behavioral predictability in their
interactions with students. A central tenet of radical love is the demonstration and use of
compassion and cooperation (Douglas & Nganga, 2015). Children in the elementary grades are
in a vulnerable stage of development where they are learning how to navigate and understand
their environments. Teachers who can consistently demonstrate compassion towards students
allow them to create a confident sense of self in their classroom environment because they feel
safe and secure to explore their learning and themselves. Curby, Brock and Hamre (2013) found
that teachers who could create a predictable, positive class environment created an emotional
29
atmosphere that fostered close relationships among students and enthusiasm and respect for
learning. More promisingly, the researchers reported that even subtle improvements in the
consistency of emotional support to students had significant relationships to student outcomes
(Curby, Brock & Hamre, 2013). Deliberate inclusion of compassion, empathy and collaboration
while constructing students’ learning environment is aligned with practicing radical love, which
may lead to enhanced psychological safety and feelings of belonging and better academic, social,
and psychological outcomes for students.
Core Principles of Emergent Strategy and Applications to Sharing Teacher Pedagogy
While teachers working toward creating spaces that are safe and affirming for vulnerable
and marginalized students may practice radical love in their classrooms and see positive benefits
to their students, in the current structure of schooling, teachers are often siloed and separated
from one another, through both scheduling and the competitive nature of the teaching profession
(Taylor, 2010). This can make it difficult for educators who wish to collaborate and learn from
their peers or who would take the opportunity to share their effective practices with their teams.
While it is generally the role of the principal to prepare school staff by providing them with
resources to succeed (Bateman & Bateman, 2002), teachers often report professional
development opportunities as unhelpful or inapplicable to their current practice (Williams,
2014). This leaves teachers with limited space for other forms of professional development and
collaboration, in turn continuing the status quo of isolating effective practice to individual
classrooms. One of the results of this pattern is the limited sharing of pedagogical practices that
may have positive outcomes, and only students assigned to specific teachers benefiting from the
practices.
It is here that Adrienne Brown’s core principles of Emergent Strategy (2017) can be
adapted to spread radical love throughout classrooms in the absence of formal meetings or
30
opportunities for collaboration or district training. Each of the following principles and
descriptors can be adapted to provide teachers with a strategy and opportunity to disseminate
their affirming practices to colleagues and grow the number of psychologically safe and affirmed
students in schools:
● Small is good, small is all.
● There is always enough time for the right work.
● Trust the people.
● What you pay attention to grows.
A final element included from Brown’s (2017) work is the provided dandelion analogy
applied to teachers practicing radical love, which can be adapted in Spring County, Florida in the
current climate. Dandelions can be hard to uproot, may be seen as a weed or a threat to structure
and represent resilience, resistance, regeneration, and decentralization. The remainder of this
section will elaborate specifically on how each of Brown’s core principles, understood through
the dandelion metaphor, can be directly applied to identifying and spreading radical love
throughout elementary classrooms.
Small is Good, Small is All (Resilience)
Given their low positionality in the bureaucracy of a major urban school district, such as
Spring County, teachers may feel despondent about their ability to have a positive impact on
student outcomes. Using this core principle of emergent strategy and the language of resilience,
teachers can create their own system of change in their everyday interactions with students.
Classroom teachers are with their students for most of their day providing constant opportunities
for small interactions. Teachers who practice radical love understand that their direct interactions
with students can greatly impact their perception of themselves and comfort in the learning
environment (Curby, Brock, & Hamre, 2013). Teachers with a radical love pedagogy will use the
31
unique nature of their repeated small interactions with students to demonstrate consistency in
compassion and support and take each opportunity to allow students to bring their cultural and
community knowledge to the classroom space. Radical love pedagogy, therefore, demonstrates a
type of resilience work, resisting the oppressive nature of schools’ status quo from its inception
(Tuck & Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2013). Attention to the small acts of resilience in classrooms
can support further the idea that love has the potential to be a force to resist exploitation and
oppression (Douglass & Nganga, 2015)
Trust the People (Resistance)
Public schools in the United States were founded as institutions of assimilation to the
White Anglo-Saxon epistemologies, committing cultural genocide against the Indigenous
populations and creating today’s status quo (Tuck & Yang, 2014). This mission and history of
schooling is being both promoted and, in the current case of Florida, emboldened to the point of
threat of punitive legal action for those who are perceived to be non-compliant in some way (HB
1557, 2022). This culture promotes resource and power hoarding among teachers that can be a
counterproductive distraction to curating classroom environments to meet the needs of students
(Jones & Okun, 2021).
A potential source of hope comes from Hitt and Tucker (2016) whose work suggests that
teachers are open to learning from someone credible, empathetic and in tune to their realities.
This is promising, according to Hitt and Tucker (2016), as here lies an opportunity for teachers
to trust one another as credible and supportive sources of information, including promotion of
radical love pedagogy that could potentially benefit their students. This way, the potential
positive outcomes radical love can have on students’ well-being and sense of belonging can be
spread throughout schools from the roots, out. When teachers trust one another, they may be able
to create connections that can resist and withstand the oppressive combination of status quo and
32
recent legislation, affecting marginalized and disempowered communities (NPR, 2023). This
resistance can be transformative in creating a new system of norms for teacher interaction,
compassion, trust and capacity building.
There is Always Enough Time for the Right Work (Regeneration)
The over-structuring and minute-to-minute accountability scheduling of many public
schools leaves little room for spaces of collaboration that are not already delegated towards
learning certain state-mandated standards. Teachers in Spring County, Florida, for example,
spend the majority of delegated professional development time engaged with peers to discuss
strategies for reading and math related to both teaching and assessing academic outcomes. While
time spent in data and analysis of student academic achievement is critical, this assignment of
topics does not allow teachers to determine areas of growth and collaboration for themselves.
As a way to demonstrate resistance against this system and create space for radical love
to be shared, teachers must capitalize on the mix of informal and formal meetings to support
their collaboration at work. Schad (2017) found teacher dissatisfaction with the amount of time
they had for communication with colleagues and suggested long-term efforts be made in helping
teachers establish and maintain their professional interactions. Until this restructuring can be
accomplished, teachers can still use even their brief and informal interactions with colleagues to
share a moment of empathy or collaboration with a colleague. By acknowledging that taking
advantage of the time granted by each interaction with colleagues, teachers can create a positive
sense of urgency in spreading the potentially humanizing impacts of radical love.
Recent research has emphasized the importance of work-related relational mechanisms
for employee work engagement and well-being, and ordinary social interactions have been
shown to be important regarding teachers’ abilities to cope with demands negatively associated
33
with teacher burnout (Tuck & Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2013) and regenerate a system of trust,
collaboration and compassion.
What You Pay Attention to Grows (Decentralization)
Using this core principle of emergent strategy, teachers can use the space of their
classroom to allow students to focus their attention on their own identity development and
affirmation. Using radical love, teachers can draw attention to acts of compassion, cooperation
and growth which may protect students from the polarizing nature of the learning standards. By
drawing attention towards radical love, teachers can take power from institutional
marginalization through the act of humanizing students in everyday interactions. This paradigm
shift will decentralize the point of schooling away from absorbing presented facts to teaching
students to cocreate liberatory spaces for learning.
Elements of Anti-Racist Teacher Pedagogy Rooted in Radical Love
Radical love aligns with antiracist pedagogy in language and action. To choose the
practice of radical love is to refuse to work within the system that promotes competition and
cultural violence (Douglas & Nganga, 2015). When teachers demonstrate cooperation and
compassion, this is an example of action into an antiracist model of pedagogy rooted in radical
love. These small acts of compassion and space making in a teachers’ day-to-day interactions
with students have a potential positive impact on students’ sense of belonging in the space of
school. This study seeks to identify and understand what elements of pedagogy elementary
teachers are implementing to provide students with a classroom where they feel a sense of
belongingness and safety. Douglas and Nganga’s (2015) analysis of Freire’s (1970, 1992, 1993)
works provides a framework applicable to education and provides essential key concepts that can
be aligned to tangible actions that teachers can take in their classrooms.
34
In the United States’ educational environment where minoritized student populations are
owed an educational debt (Ladson-Billings, 2006) while their histories are targeted by current
state legislation, strategies to combat the oppressive status quo are indispensable to teachers. The
system of schooling in the United States has, from its founding, promoted views of culture that
justify settler colonialism (Tuck & Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2013). Teachers who practice radical
love pedagogy may offer promise as a counternarrative to the increasingly narrow and
imperialist curriculum which continues to center and privilege Whiteness (NPR, 2023; ACLU,
2023).
Radical love frames teaching as its own act of love which demonstrates a commitment to
the liberation of others (Freire, 1970). The screener questionnaire used by this study will directly
ask teachers about their use of identifiable elements of radical love in their pedagogy.
Specifically, potential participants will be screened for the following outlined actions from
Douglas and Nganga (2015). Each of these five actionable concepts indicate the teacher is
practicing an anti-racist, radical love approach to engaging with their elementary aged students.
Capacity for Risk Taking for the Benefit of Students and Communities Served
A central component of Freire’s (1993) work applied to radical love pedagogy involves
teachers making a commitment to taking professional risks when advocating for students and
their families. In the current climate of Spring County, Florida, teachers who teach outside of the
settler colonial curriculum mandated by the state make themselves vulnerable to job loss,
certificate revocation and legal action. Teachers who practice radical love show a capacity for
risk taking by refusing to work inside the system’s curriculum and provide their students with
counternarratives in history that include Black joy, cultural and scientific innovation, resistance,
and resilience. Ideally this type of learning would be provided in instructional materials and
35
lessons throughout the year, rather than simply during cultural heritage months such as Black
History and Hispanic Heritage months (Latimore, 2008).
Relinquishing of Oppressive Circumstances, Materials, and Practices
Newly adopted standards at the elementary school level have revised language for
teaching African American history from a depth of understanding and contextualizing Black
contributions to American history and innovation to merely recognizing a few individuals.
Middle school standards include language intended to dictate what information is included in the
teaching of certain standards. This instructional standards on how enslaved persons could
develop skills for personal benefit (Alvarez, 2023) and the state now promotes curriculum from
the conservative media outlet PragerU which contains videos about the necessity of slavery in
creating “something great” (Archie, 2023). Instead of aligning with this curricular direction,
teachers can instead present their students with knowledge and information that is rooted in
humanization of minoritized cultures, and further, allow students to bring in their own
community based knowledge into their classroom spaces to share (Douglas & Nganga, 2013).
Creating Space for Students’ Community-Based Knowledge
To create a classroom space where students feel an emotionally safe sense of belonging,
teachers who practice radical love will acknowledge that students’ own community and familybased spaces are an important source of their knowledge (Freire, 1970) and integrate that
acquired knowledge into learning. Teachers can understand what the breadth of education means
by providing students with opportunities to learn outside the formal classroom setting, including
outdoor and community spaces. The integration of community knowledge can be reported by
teachers as inquiring and incorporating student knowledge from music, sports clubs, theater,
community programs, as well as various spiritual settings (Freire, 1970).
Classroom Culture of Critical Thinking, Collaboration, and Dialogue
36
Teachers who practice radical love will have created classroom spaces that are set up to
encourage collaboration and dialogue among students. Students are given opportunities for turn
and talk activities, group work and open class discussion. Critical thinking about learning targets,
school rules and procedures and activities is welcomed and openly discussed by the teacher
rather than punished or ignored. Classrooms will be designed with these goals of cooperation in
mind and may include table groupings of students rather than desks, shared or community-based
supplies or spaces dedicated for group work. Teachers who create a culture of dialogue may
report that their students have many opportunities throughout the day to have structured and
unstructured social interactions where students feel safe to engage with one another. They will
promote probing and follow up questions from students and provide them with age-appropriate
resources to create their own successful learning.
Dedication of Instructional Minutes to Real Learning Opportunities
The act of teaching and co-creating knowledge are themselves acts of love that can be
anti-oppressive (Douglas & Nganga, 2015). Teachers who structure and utilize classroom
minutes to provide students with an authentic opportunity for learning and inquiry, hands on
learning experiences and chances to collaborate are practicing radical love. By demonstrating
commitment to maximizing every moment of learning their students have, teachers engage in
small acts of resilience against a status quo that devalues true learning over acceptance of
presented information.
Summary
This chapter provided a discussion of sense of belonging and psychological safety, as
well as an overview of the history of schooling in the United States. Then, the work of
deOliviera’s Boxhead grammar was outlined alongside enclosures currently experienced by
students from historically marginalized and minoritized communities. Finally, the radical love
37
framework was introduced to bring forward an alternative potential promising pedagogical
practice to provide all students with an equitable and reflective education. The chapter that
follows will build upon the context created through this discussion of history, politics, love and
belonging to present the methodology that will guide the collection of data to answer the study’s
research questions.
38
Chapter Three: Methodology
This chapter will address the method of data collection that was used to identify and
interview elementary educators in Spring County, Florida, a pseudonym, whose stated practice
aligns with Radical Love (Douglas & Nganga, 2013) to understand their pedagogical approaches,
their perceived impact on students’ sense of belonging and psychological safety, and how they
share these practices with others. The chapter will describe participant selection and
demographics, the interview components, data collection procedures and data analysis. Chapter
three will end with a discussion of ethics, my positionality’s potential for impact on the study
and the limitations and delimitations of the research design and study implementation.
The research questions guiding the study are:
1. What types of pedagogical practices are predominantly present in elementary teachers
within Spring County who align with radical love?
2. How do teachers who engage in radical love practices perceive the impact that pedagogy
has on students' sense of psychological safety and belonging?
3. How and where, if at all, do teachers share these practices among their colleagues to
spread radical love?
Overview of Methodology
The research study utilized a qualitative method of descriptive interviews with
elementary school teachers to gather insights into the guiding research questions. After
permission was obtained from the local Internal Review Board (IRB) and participating
principals, a brief Survey Monkey questionnaire was used as a screener tool to select participants
appropriate for inclusion in the interviews. Interviewing participants allowed for responses that
address their pedagogical practices related to radical love practices and perceptions of students'
experiences of belonging and psychological safety in their classrooms. It provided the
39
opportunity for teachers to address how, if at all, they share their practices with colleagues
throughout their school site or elsewhere. Question items were designed to gather lessons and
effective practices from teachers in a Florida school district to be provided as recommendations
for practice at the closing of this research. Interviews were composed of multiple question types,
including the following from Merriam and Tisdell (2016): devil’s advocate, experience and
behavior, hypothetical, opinions and beliefs and ideal position.
Data Sources
In this following research, teachers were screened for aspects of their practice which
indicate their pedagogy creates positive interactions and relationships with students where they
feel psychologically safe in the classroom. Teacher interviews were used to gather information
about the research questions. Prior to the interviews, a brief screener questionnaire was
distributed to elementary teachers within Spring County, Florida with questions designed to
determine their pedagogy’s alignment with ideas of Radical Love (Douglas & Nganga, 2013).
The screener tool was utilized to help in deliberate selection of interview participants. It
consisted of five questions to rate teachers’ closeness to the targeted identifiable practices.
Depending on the outcome of their responses, teachers were selected to participate in an in-depth
interview to further understand their pedagogical approaches and the perceived impact it had on
their students’ sense of psychological safety and belonging.
Participants
Participants were recruited from five elementary schools in Spring Public School District
with a high percentage of students from historically marginalized and oppressed communities.
Information from the Spring County school demographic data system was used to determine
which schools were selected for possible participation. Specifically, schools with the highest
percentage of students from racially and ethnically minoritized populations were selected for
40
study. After recruitment emails were sent to fifty identified schools, five principals responded
with permission to reach out to teachers. As of 2022, there were over 5,000 teachers serving at
the over 100 elementary schools in the Spring County public school system. While specific
demographic data is not published for the exact racial makeup of teachers in the district,
nationally, 85% of the teaching workforce is White non-Hispanic. Student demographics of the
district are reflective of many urban school districts around the country, serving mostly
minoritized student populations with Black students representing the majority and Latinx
students a close second. The following specifics have been rounded to further de-identify the
district and protect identity of participants: 10% White, 40% Black, 35% Hispanic/Latino, 5%
Asian and less than of students 1% identify as American Indian, Hawaii or Alaska Native,
Pacific Islander. Once Spring County’s Internal Review Board approved the study, elementary
teachers in five elementary schools representing the large percentage of minoritized students
received an email with an explanation of the study and an invitation to participate in the
screening tool questionnaire.
The 2020 US Census reported a decline of White non-Hispanic people for the first time
since its creation, creating a greater sense of urgency in creating psychologically safe and
empowering classrooms for students from non-White backgrounds (Hernandez, 2022). With the
majority of elementary teachers across the United States identifying as White (Wandix-White,
2023), this shift in student-teacher demographics demonstrates the growing need for teachers
who can practice pedagogy that will create safe and affirming spaces for all students, particularly
those who are in historically marginalized communities. Without addressing pedagogy, these
students will continue to underachieve and suffer in their educational spaces as those spaces
continue to reflect the status quo of the world outside the classroom (Ladson-Billings, 2006).
41
To obtain reliable data while considering time constraints on behalf of the participants,
the study was able to recruit six elementary teachers participants whose stated practices align
with ideas of radical love regarding their pedagogical practices and their perceptions of their
students’ sense of psychological safety and belonging.
Instrumentation
The study began with a screener questionnaire to identify participants for the interview.
The screener tool was distributed via e-mail to principals at the five elementary schools to
forward to their teachers, with a link to the screener questionnaire containing five questions
designed to identify if teachers’ pedagogy contains key tenets of Racial Love (Douglas &
Nganga, 2013). Questions were brief and clear, to avoid the issue of granularity that may lead to
respondents becoming fatigued (Robinson & Leonard, 2019) and were scored using an interval
level of measurement (Salkind, 2017) to rate whether a participant reports their practices were
aligned with Radical Love. A copy of the screening questionnaire can be found in Appendix A.
Participants with the highest self-reported alignment at each of the selected schools were asked
to participate in the interview, and of the fifteen screener participants, six agreed to interviews.
Those selected for the interview confirmed their consent for participation through e-mail
and provided a schedule of availability for interviewing. Participant discussions were led through
online video meeting platforms for convenience and increased participation likelihood for
teachers. Interviews lasted an average of 35 minutes and followed the protocol in Appendix B.
Questions followed a semi-structured format, which according to Merriam and Tisdell (2016),
allowed for flexibility in question order and usage depending on the context and flow of the
conversation. This format was also more appropriate then unstructured or highly structured
interviews (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016) due to moments where probing questions were necessary.
As a doctoral student with limited experience interviewing and conducting research, having a
42
distinct structure with specific lines of questioning was paramount to minimize error and entry of
bias into the interview.
Each research question is designed to qualitatively understand the day-to-day pedagogical
practices of radical love implemented by teachers in classrooms of increasingly minoritized
students and the potentially positive impact these practices have on students’ sense of safety and
belonging. Further, it was to understand how and where teachers who engage in such practices
collaborate with colleagues to share and spread radical love through all elementary classrooms.
Information regarding students’ sense of psychological safety and belonging in their classrooms
was gathered from teachers’ perceptions and opinions shared during the interview.
Due to the multifaceted nature of the study’s research questions, the interview consisted
of items from each of Patton’s (2015) six question types to increase likelihood of information
saturation and provide participants with multiple opportunities for expression.
● Experience and behavior questions helped to integrate understanding of classroom
behaviors of teachers when interacting with students. It also provided
opportunities for participants to speak on how, behaviorally, they are enacting the
tenets of radical love that were screened for in the survey.
● Opinion and values questions directly addressed how teachers perceive their
students’ sense of belonging and well-being, and what strategies they feel are
effective for spreading promising practices among their colleagues.
● Feelings questions helped to assess how the participants experience their own
emotions as well as report on the perceived feelings of their students. Many of the
concepts included in the area of research are experienced as feelings; such as love,
belonging and well-being.
43
● Knowledge questions were limited, but used to gain factual information about the
current structure of the teachers school day, teacher’s knowledge of legislation
that potentially impacts their practice and materials they use in the classroom.
● Sensory questions were utilized in the form of probes during the interview to
follow up on behavioral or emotional information provided by the participant.
They were also used to triangulate a reported behavior, student emotion or social
interaction.
● Background and demographic questions were asked at the outset of the interview
to create a feeling of ease with the participant and will serve to inform possible
trends among responses from particular racial, ethnic or linguistic groups.
Data Collection Procedures
Data collection began when the study was approved by the University of Southern
California’s and the Spring County School’s Internal Review Boards. At that time, the screener
questionnaire and study information sheet were emailed to principals of fifty randomly selected
elementary schools in the district with an invitation for their teachers to participate in the
research study’s initial screener. The contents of the email provided information on the study and
its purpose, who I am as the conductor of the research and a clear explanation of the voluntary
and confidential nature of their participation. After principal approval, teachers who wished to
participate were given two weeks to return their responses to the screener tool via
SurveyMonkey. An email reminder was sent to participants after the first week encouraging
them to participate, with a clear statement that the screening questions will take under five
minutes to complete. Once all screening materials were returned, teachers who fit criteria based
on their survey responses were contacted for an interview via the online video platform. Once
both parties met for the interview, interviewees were again asked for their informed consent,
44
including for permission to create an audio recording of the conversation. These recordings were
collected through an encryption app that automatically transcribed the interview to facilitate data
coding later on.
In addition to recordings, I took brief handwritten notes on impactful or insightful
moments, body language and facial expression of participants during conversation, as well as
potential points to further probe for more information. The intent in combining audio recording
and brief notes was to both maximize engagement with the participant personally through
maintained eye contact and attention as well as capture field written notes and key dialogue
(Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).
Data Analysis
Data analysis was conducted alongside data collection while it was still in recent
memory, within twenty four hours. Memos were written within twenty four hours of completing
the interview to promote accuracy of the information based on recency of the conversation. In
addition, I documented my thoughts, concerns, and initial impressions of the responses gathered
that outlined connections to research presented in chapter two. This assisted with later analysis
and write up of the final analysis and discussion of results.
Transcriptions were generated during the interview simultaneously to the recording via
the Otter A.I software which were later coded into identifiable patterns and themes that emerged
related to the research questions and conceptual frameworks (Merriam & Tisdale, 2016). In two
instances, I recontacted an interview participant for clarification of responses retrieved during the
interview that required additional information during the data analysis.
Credibility and Trustworthiness
Here I would like to first acknowledge, just as with the history of educational settings,
formal research has a relationship with white supremacy through legitimization and concepts like
45
objective scientific validity or truth. Throughout United States history there has been the
presence of deOliviera’s (2016) concept of universalism, or the idea that there is one existing
knowable truth that is to be sought and emulated. Which concepts are deemed true and legitimate
are influenced by politics and power (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016) which has been historically in
the hands of White settler colonialists who created the systems to benefit their own status and
power. With this point made, I recognize the need for some form of review or consent to
understandings of research so that further shareable knowledge can be constructed.
Interviews were selected specifically because they provide the most potential for
authentic findings that are internally valid (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). With the limited number of
participants being interviewed, I wanted to ensure that those chosen will provide rich and
descriptive data that could be analyzed toward understanding the research questions.
To ensure validity of the respondent data collected from the interview, I will engage in
member checks (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016) with participants over the phone or on Microsoft
Teams video platform to gain insight into whether I correctly perceived and interpreted their
responses and to gain clarification, as needed. Additionally, it will be important to both have a
strong interview protocol and field notes to assist with mitigating potential researcher bias
(Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Constant reflection, check-ins with colleagues in research to analyze
deidentified interview responses and use of direct quotes may all assist with disciplining my
subjectivity as a researcher (Maxwell, 2013).
Ethics
My role as a former employee of the same district I am studying could potentially coerce
participants to take part in the interviews required for this study. Due to the sensitive nature of
topics related to students from historically marginalized communities and equity it would be
important that my participants’ rights to privacy are respected through maintaining
46
confidentiality with the specifics of what will be discussed in interviews (Glesne, 2011). It is
possible throughout the interview that the participant feels discomfort while either engaging in
direct discussion of equity, issues of social justice or around their students so it will be
paramount to remain empathetic, allow for pauses and remind the interviewee they are not under
any pressure to provide responses that may upset or disturb them.
Before completing the screener survey, potential participants will be provided with an
information sheet about the study using plain language to maximize participant understanding of
what they are agreeing to. To further safeguard the well-being of participants, information
regarding the study will again be shared at the start of the interview. Participants will be
reminded with clear language that their time and effort is voluntary, and they may withdraw from
the interview and research at any time.
The risk to potential participants mainly involves this type of discomfort which should be
temporary and may be addressed as part of the interview protocol. At the beginning and end of
the interview process, participants will also be reminded of the potential benefits of the study’s
findings and possibility for positive impact on teaching and student learning (Glesne, 2011) to
mitigate some of the potential risks of negative feelings arising towards having participated.
Rubin and Rubin (2012) also stress that an important element of ethics is ensuring that there is
not deceit or pressure involved during the research process, and participants are treated with the
utmost respect throughout.
Interview sessions will be audio-recorded upon permission granted to ensure the quality
of information gathered and minimize entrance of any bias from the researcher. Merriam and
Tisdell (2016) recommend the use of video recording equipment to ensure additional cues, such
as body language, may be noted by the researcher to provide further insight into responses. This
study will engage in audio recording of participant interviews to minimize the intrusive nature of
47
capturing video (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016) during an interview that may discuss difficult
political or personal lines of inquiry. To mitigate the impact of the potential cues missed while
interviewing, included in the interview protocol and throughout the process I will collect notes
regarding participants behavior, body language and facial cues while speaking.
Here, it is to be acknowledged that worship of the written word and legitimization of only
written agreements (Jones & Okun, 2001) is a potential manifestation of white supremacy in
modern research. It will be presented both verbally and in writing that the interview will be
recorded from start to finish, upon participant approval. This increases the likelihood that a
participant will understand all recordings, which are to be kept confidential, are taken only with
their permission. Audio recordings collected from interviews will be encrypted and kept in
password protected documents known only to the researcher and the participant themselves.
Interviewees will be given a password-protected copy of their audio recording to maintain full
transparency with data collected and comfort of the participant.
The Researcher
The following section will address my positionality and how the research questions were
shaped and impacted by my positionality, epistemology and general socio-political alignment.
Positionality, as cited in Douglass & Ngana (2013), refers to how one’s societal position is
determined through the intertwining of power dynamics, societal impressions, and tolerances of
all potential aspects of a personal identity. The combination of privileges afforded to me through
my identity as a middle-class, privately educated white person have allowed me to gain entry to a
multitude of educational spaces and experiences. This directly relates to the proposed inquiry, as
it is part of the contribution I can make towards social justice to use my privilege to create
positive change in outcomes for students who are vulnerable and marginalized. This work is
necessary all over the United States, though particular attention must be paid to politized areas,
48
such as Florida, which continue to draft and pass legislation targeting our most historically
marginalized students.
As of the time of this writing, I am transitioning roles from a kindergarten general
education teacher in the Spring County School District to an elementary instructional coach at a
charter school. I was an employee of the district for nine years working in two elementary
schools, exclusively in primary grades. In my new position as an instructional coach, I will be in
a more central leadership role regarding instruction implementation. Marginalization in my work
stems from the pushback I have received about being heard on the very issues of equity I had
been charged by my organization to address.
As a White person and former employee of the same school district, I share certain
immediately noticeable commonalities with participants. One area vulnerable to epistemological
blindness in this study is rooted in a White researcher interviewing White participants. In this
case there is a lack of endarkened perspectives (Tillman, 2002) from the administrative and
teaching perspectives that may result in information lost and viewpoints not considered. One
strategy to ensure this does not happen is to acknowledge my points of epistemic blindness and
deliberately seek an understanding of Dillard's endarkened feminist epistemology (Tillman,
2002) through consultation with colleagues. The participant demographic of this study included
teachers from a mix of racial and ethnic backgrounds.
I here would like to openly recognize power relations within the formalized US systems
and how they manifest within research and solicitation of feedback from marginalized
communities within the district that may then impact their definitions of how students’ identities
are acknowledged, celebrated, or oppressed by their teachers. Finally, I believe it is essential to
address how teachers can have a positive impact on the rapidly changing demographic of
students and their families so as not to risk perpetuating stereotypes of inferiority that limit our
49
student’s human potential (Smedley & Smedley, 2005). Using the theoretical framework and
procedures laid out throughout the paper, I aim to push back against the status quo of U.S
schooling and provide our most vulnerable historically marginalized students with a validating
and fulfilling education in which they feel they belong.
50
Chapter Four: Findings
The purpose of this research was to understand the pedagogical practice of radical love
and the impact it may have on students’ psychological well-being at school. The study focused
specifically on the context of elementary school classrooms at a major school district in Florida,
Spring County, a pseudonym. After receiving consent from principals, primary teachers
received a 5-item screener tool to determine alignment with radical love practices. Interviews
were then conducted with participants who practiced radical love aligned with the following
research questions:
1. What types of pedagogical practices are predominantly present in elementary teachers
within Spring County who practice radical love?
2. How do teachers who engage in radical love practices perceive the impact that
pedagogy has on students' psychological safety and sense of belonging?
3. How and where, if at all, do teachers share these practices among their colleagues to
spread radical love?
This chapter begins with a discussion of the studied school sites and participants. This is
followed by a detailed discussion of findings gained from interviews with teachers aligned with
each research question. Finally, this chapter closes with a summary of the findings and
conclusions.
Site and Study Participants
Participants were contacted for interest in participating in the study over a period of six
weeks during the final quarter of the district calendar's 2023-24 school-year. Following Internal
Review Board (IRB) approval, principals were contacted for their school’s participation in the
study. Of the fifty schools within Spring County which met the demographic criteria for study,
five principals responded with permission to reach out to their primary teachers. Each of the five
51
participating schools met the study criteria of serving a student body with over 50% of children
from historically minoritized populations. Once permission was granted from principals,
classroom teachers were sent an email with an introduction to the research, the researcher and
provided a link to the screener tool. After three weeks of contact and attempts, fifteen teachers
completed the initial five-question questionnaire via Survey Monkey. From those, fourteen
participants were selected and contacted for an interview based on the alignment of their
responses to the framework of radical love. Of the seven who responded to this contact email, six
followed through for interviews conducted using Microsoft Teams, as shown in Table 1, with
four participants agreeing to be recorded and two agreeing to note-taking.
Table 1
Participant Overview
School
Pseudonym
Teacher
participant(s)
Grade level Reason for participation and
their “why” for radical love
practices
Meadowlark
Grove
Ms. Carter Small group instruction,
multiple grade levels
Focus on mental health and well
being for students, desire to be a
counselor
Spoke to her experience as a
parent watching her daughter’s
responses to teachers with
humanizing practice
Summit View Ms. Morgan 2nd grade Desire to work with special
education students and
marginalized populations, wants
more inclusion of culture and
language in the classroom to
combat xenophobia and
prejudice
Pinecrest
Meadows
Ms. Thompson 4th grade Described impression of radical
love in the classroom as “all
encompassing, where you’re
looking at the kid, you’re
looking at the human being in
52
front of you” which is aligned
with her pedagogical practice
Oakwood Ridge Ms. Bennet
Ms. Mitchell
2nd grade
Kindergarten
Both participants have children
who have gone through the
public school system, or are still
currently in it
Center importance of the wholechild in their practice
Willowbrook
Hills
Ms. Brooks 1st grade Believes students learn more
when they feel loved, prioritizes
the mental well-being of
students who have worked
through difficult home
circumstances
Pseudonyms were generated using ChatGPT
Research Question 1: What Types of Pedagogical Practices Are Predominantly Present in
Elementary Teachers Within Spring County Who Practice Radical Love?
The study sought to better understand the pedagogical practice of radical love to provide
students in the district with affirming and validating spaces where they feel psychologically safe
and able to learn. Teachers whose every day practices are aligned with radical love can provide
insight into specific tools educators can use to create a school environment where students
experience well-being and growth. The first research question was designed to better understand
which practices, specifically, could be disseminated as effective in creating psychologically safe
spaces for students in Spring County to learn.
Participants were asked questions about their classroom environments, including: how
they encourage conversations among students, how space is created for students to dialogue and
learn authentically, what expectations students are provided with and how they are
communicated, and finally questions regarding specific practices aligned with radical love.
Specific questions and probes can be found in Appendix B.
53
Throughout discussions, four major findings emerged as tools and approaches teachers
perceived were successful in creating a psychologically safe and affirming environment for their
students.. The following sections will present each of these four findings along with a discussion
of the evidence gained through teacher interviews.
Finding 1: A Culture of Safe Dialogue
Throughout conversations with all six participants, a pattern of promoting safe dialogue
within the classroom became an evident practice that teachers implemented consistently.
Students were given opportunities to engage each other in conversation in multiple contexts
including; intentional class meetings, conflict resolution and collaborative academic activities.
While it was implemented differently for different participants, all of the teachers
interviewed discussed how dialogue is encouraged throughout the day within the structure and
agreements of their classroom. Throughout all six interviews, teachers mentioned several
specific examples of opportunities students have for dialogue throughout the day including: turn
and talk, small group work, carpet time, partner support during independent work, collaboration
through arts and engagement activities and morning meetings. These provide students with
multiple opportunities to dialogue with one another under close teacher supervision and attention
to visual cues from students regarding their feelings. In her first grade classroom, Ms. Brooks
keeps her dialogues safe with a combination of strong expectations and structure: “During the
beginning of the year when we lay down ground rules we practice quietly with a partner and
actively listening.” Teaching students deliberately the skill of active listening allows her students
to understand how to truly engage with each other and sets them up for successful and safe
interactions. Additionally, she mentioned her close monitoring of students during independent
work using “quite work with soft music playing in the background… for a calming effect” and to
maintain a noise level of voices where she may supervise conversations. A key element of
54
radical pedagogy alignment is the teacher placing deliberate effort and attention into the creation
of a safe space for students to engage in dialogue as an authentic learning opportunity either
academic, social or emotional.
In their interviews, half of participants specifically mentioned the use of the ‘turn and
talk’ or partnering strategy to provide students with structured moments of dialogue around a
pre-selected topic. This common strategy seemed more prevalent when working with younger
students, as the teachers who utilized and named this strategy all worked exclusively in primary
classrooms. In their interview, Ms. Mitchell and Ms. Bennet, both primary teachers, cited that
many of their students come to school unprepared to engage in academic dialogue and active
listening. This provides both educators with the opportunity to model from the beginning for
students how to be a kind and active listener. Ms. Mitchell stated that she listens closely to
student conversations during collaborative activities to ensure they are kind, providing “a lot of
just the support to get them started, like a structure.” She continued that she sustains that
foundation by addressing immediately this way, “I do kind of stop. Okay, this hurt our friend
because XYZ.. we have to stop and talk about this because this is not the culture of our class.”
Ms. Bennet, too, spoke to how
When discussing why they began implementing these strategies, both mentioned how in
their recent observations, parents are not conversing as much with their children in the home
which has changed how they approach teaching classroom talk. Each stressed the importance of
beginning the school year by providing students with structured scaffolding strategies like
providing prompts, question stems and specific phrases for students to use in discussions in order
to give them a strong foundation in kind and affirming dialogue. The other primary teachers also
gave similar responses, emphasizing that students have multiple opportunities for groupwork to
practice their interpersonal skills where they can be monitored within earshot. These scaffolds
55
provide young students who are still developing their vocabulary and social skills with structure
and a safe supportive environment to learn how to effectively engage in productive conversation.
As student grade level increased, data acquired in this study suggested that while teachers
may not specifically name the strategy used to create space, those who practice radical love still
actively create space for safe dialogue throughout the day. Ms. Carter and Ms. Thompson both
characterized their classrooms as places where students “bounce ideas off each other,”
“organized chaos depending on the given day” respectively, before describing how the
collaborative nature of their classrooms create a lot of space for dialogue, which can be
perceived as loud or messy. Ms. Carter spoke to using strategies that she would wish for her
middle school-aged daughter such as getting to know her students personally, encouraging them
to participate and model patience with the variations among students’ personalities and abilities.
Figure B is an image of her quote from speaking to an experience she had in to witness her go
through in her own school she provided insight into why she implements the strategies.
Figure B
When discussing how she maintains that students are speaking kindly and constructively
during these moments, Ms. Thompson said, “I let them try to figure out how to work it out
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amongst themselves because if they’re never given the opportunity to have conflict resolution
and they’re never going to figure it out…” She continued:
... they have to have the experience, but if I see that it’s getting out of hand, if I see it’s
going one-sided… I’ll call out to the students “Hey, Jimmy come over here. And that’s
the one who I see is getting the most frustrated in their face. Whether because
they’re the angry one or maybe they’re the one who’s being attacked in some way… I
call whoever is the most stressed out that I can see based on their visual cues.
This close monitoring of student cues and intimate attention to detail of student
interaction indicates alignment with a space with elements of radical love, as this type of
classroom environment is in contrast to the over structured lecture format of more traditional
schooling. The implementation of an active culture of safe and respectful dialogue is promising
in its alignment with radical love and the data suggests it creates a psychologically safe
environment for students to engage in co-constructed academic learning.
In addition to creating space for students to speak with one another around standards and
benchmarks, six out of six participants gave reference to general or specific instances of
classroom dialogue around conflict resolution. Student conflict and negative behavior was a
topic met with some frustration by each teacher, however, in discussing interactions with their
students, teachers stressed acting with patience and understanding. In a discussion of her
classroom, Ms. Thompson cited examples of her fourth graders experiencing conflict during
learning activities and her strategy of using a “courtroom” system where each student is “allowed
to speak, but you can’t interrupt them.” This strategy of allowing each child the opportunity to
share their perception or experience has paid off with Ms. Thompson who spoke confidently to
her students’ ability to self-regulate conflicts by the end of the year.
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This was another pattern that emerged when teachers discussed open discussion of
conflict in their classroom. Each teacher had a specific example of a disagreement or a conflict
resolution strategy structure that allowed students to grow and handle issues that arise on their
own. As stated clearly by Ms. Brooks, later in the year once students have had the opportunity to
participate in modeled conflict resolution dialogue, students “usually try to apologize or resolve
the issue… together.” Even with younger students in kindergarten, Ms. Mitchell proudly
described her students’ ability to “stand up for each other” based on the culture she has created in
her classroom without having to do as much intervening “because they’re starting to do that on
their own.” She creates this loving environment by treating her students the way she treats her
own children, including her daughters and those she shares with her husband stating that “they
[her students] are going to know I love them… I do get silly with them, I do love on them… I
think it helps them respect you and when they respect you they have love for you and they know
you love them because it makes them feel safe.”
An important component of incorporation of dialogue aligned with radical love that was
expected to be more present was the effort to include space for students’ home language and way
of communicating in the classroom. While teachers mentioned several formal and informal
settings where students will speak with one another, only one participant, Ms. Morgan,
specifically mentioned deliberately bringing in opportunities for students to share their home
language in school. After she created a welcoming environment towards students’ home
language, she stated without hesitation that her students enjoyed sharing how to communicate
different words outside of English.
“I want all of my students to have a sense of belonging in their class community. It’s
important to me for them to teach me in their home language because it builds positive
relationships and fosters the idea of cultural acceptance. I feel that Americans can be
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xenophobic when unfamiliar cultural practices and languages are introduced. I’m trying
to eliminate that.”
Providing students with a way to connect their culture at home with their experiences of
school and validate their home experience in the formal school setting is an element of inclusion
and radical love dialogue that requires more data to discuss. It may be that other teachers did not
mention this specifically because, as all six participants are native English speakers, students
may not feel it is worth it to speak in their home language (predominantly Spanish) if they will
not be understood. It is for this reason that it is essential teachers understand the importance of
creating a classroom like Ms. Morgan’s, where a student’s home language and culture are
embraced and celebrated. Overall, through further discussion, the role of home language and
culture to create safe dialogue in their classrooms could be further understood.
Overall, all six participants were consistent in reporting that their students had ample
opportunity within the classroom to speak to one another and engage in discourse, closely
monitored by teachers who demonstrated withitness in attending to student conversations and
facial expressions. While teachers differed slightly on strategy, the mix of opportunities for
students to speak authentically within a safe and structured space of the classroom created a
learning environment where teachers report improvement in student independence and
implementation of successful dialogue. This is promising for the practice of radical love, as
providing students with safe spaces to speak and express themselves throughout the school day
can improve their willingness to engage in their academic and social emotional growth within
their time at school.
Finding 2: A Core Focus on Humanization and Empathy
Study teachers all gave examples and spoke to the importance of practicing empathy in
the classroom with and among students. A clear theme of humanizing students emerged, with
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particular mentions of prioritizing social emotional learning in the classroom, student comfort
and interpersonal relationships between classmates. Teachers repeatedly mentioned the
importance of knowing the students personally in dealing with their classroom behavior and
sparking academic interest.
Data was coded for evidence of specific radical love practices cited in chapter two, with
empathy and humanization being identified a total of 94 times throughout the six interviews.
Examples of specifics cited by participants included a deep personal connection to the
importance of incorporating social emotional learning in class, a stress on the indispensability of
getting to know students personally, and the willingness to prioritize a human “teachable
moment” over academic lessons. In addition to moments where empathy was deliberately
discussed as a concept to be taught to students, teachers themselves spoke to instances of
humanizing students’ experiences at home and in life and how that impacted them at school.
There was a wide range of situations reported, including: assisting with food insecurity, conflict
resolution guidance, verbal reinforcement of support and a range of calming and de-escalation
strategies. Interestingly, participants specifically referenced challenges experienced by students
as something impacting their well-being as a child rather than their performance on assignments
or assessments. In accordance with radical love, participants prioritized the psychological wellbeing of the child during students’ difficult moments rather than focusing on the academic task.
Among examples of moments where teachers approached students with empathy rather
than authority, were instances of conflict between students observed by the teacher. In a more
traditional classroom management style, the teacher is the center of the classroom, controlling
the pace of learning and the space for conversation and interaction among students. In this
approach, the teacher does not take time out from learning activities to address student needs
through discussion and validation but rather redirects them to learning or punishes students for
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being off-task. All six participants in this study showed alignment with radical love towards a
more humanistic approach to understanding their students’ interactions, guiding them through
conflicts as “teachable moments” students can gain from rather than pushing the emotional needs
of students aside for academic progress. Ms. Bennet discussed her approach to addressing
conflicts with her second graders:
“I try to deal with it on a case by case when it comes up. You do try to handle it on the
spot. I do like to make sure it is a teachable moment, I’ve tried to kind of make
sure that at lest if you can make it a teachable moment it may not be so many of these
situations and incidents all though the day. Maybe we can make a learning lesson out of
this one. So I do take the time to try to talk it through. Ask the others, how would they
handle it? Or what they would to, try to get them involved. And then by the end of the
conversation, what’s the right thing to do?”
Half of participants mentioned specifically that they had a strong personal connection to
the need for psychological well-being, either by having children of their own they empathized
with or experiences from their past that impacted their approach today. Ms. Carter spoke at
length about her strong professional desire to be a school counselor, mentioning she hoped to
pursue a degree in mental health to help students with their psychological well-being at school.
In fact, she still plans to pursue her master’s degree in counseling to fulfill her passion for
students’ social emotional growth.
“What attracts me to teaching is that emotional connection with the kids and these past
few years, I've been in a position where I've done small group pull-outs which I've
loved because I've been able to really connect with the kids… I’ve looked into getting a
master’s degree but at this point with two kid and a full-time job, I actually started I did
one semester and realized that it’s not possible.”
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Similarly, Ms. Thompson lamented that the teacher preparation programs that she was
familiar with did not include information on how to provide a less authoritarian and restricted
structure to the classroom environment. She describes the need for teachers to “get okay with the
discomfort” they might feel when a classroom appears more chaotic when truly students are
simply actively engaging in their school experience. She went on to add that the way teachers are
taught [in her experience] was comparable to “I want to say prison system… our schools are
looking like with…silence in the hallway.. takes the fun out of everything and so you have to be
able to not only feel comfortable in it, but have the confidence that you know what you’re doing
is gonna make a difference…” What she was describing is a type of faith that teachers practicing
radical love may benefit from holding, that throughout the year students will grow when given
the safe space and opportunity to do so.
The last element discovered within this finding was that teachers who practiced empathy
in their classrooms gave students control over different elements of their day. This control was
found across participants and granted for a number of things from academic center tasks to
coping skills that they wished to implement when experiencing a frustrating moment. Five out of
six teachers directly provided examples of ways that students could exercise control throughout
their day within their classrooms. This practice is rooted in humanization as it allows students to
be seen as persons who can have preferences, and that their individual characteristics can be
explored and affirmed through safe choice exploration. Table 2 provides an overview of relevant
examples and quotes from participants addressing how they incorporated student control within
their classroom environment.
Table 2
How Teachers Incorporate Student-Centered Control
Teacher Practices to incorporate student control Applicable Quotes
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Ms. Carter Providing students the opportunity to
choose when to speak to her about an
upsetting feeling or event.
● “If one kid is showing me
that they’re feeling sad… I
immediately stop and ask
what’s going on, what’s
bothering you or do you
want to talk? If you don’t
want to talk that’s fine, but
you know you can always
knock on my door and ask
to talk to me.”
Ms. Morgan Allowing students to choose their
coping techniques in moments of
distress.
● “... I will diffuse the
situation by asking the
child to: build blocks,
write in a calm journal or
take five deep breaths. My
students respond by
choosing an option out of
the three...”
Ms. Thompson Allowing students to decide how
issues are resolved when conflict arises
in the classroom.
● “Do you want to give me
some ideas? Do you have
some ideas you wanna
bounce off?”
● “Depending on which
route we go, we then take
the next step into the
resolution.”
● “Go back to the group and
see if whatever we
discussed about can be put
into play to solve the
problem.”
Ms. Bennet Allowing student interest to change the
course of a lesson or unit activity.
● “But there are times where
you just kind of go with
the flow and something
will come up and it’s
like… okay, well that’s a
good topic. Let’s talk
about this… so it just
depends.”
Ms. Brooks Students may choose questions they
ask during small group work, and how
they engage with materials.
● “During small group
learning I have each
student take turns
answering my questions or
asking their own…
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allowed to ask their
“teammates” any
questions and have
discussion.”
Participants across the grade levels not only spoke to modeling empathy and creating
space for students to practice their interactions with frequent opportunities for dialogue, but
repeatedly mentioned their approach to speak with students about issues in their lives. Teachers
mentioned instances of directly addressing students’ psychological needs and well-being when
they perceive something was wrong. Finally, teachers who practiced radical love exercised
empathy by giving control to students over their learning, coping and conflict resolution
experiences.
Finding 3: Provided Structure of Consistently Supported High Expectations
Teacher participants focused on ensuring that their students were aware of their high
expectations and engaged in specific practices to consistently communicate them in the
classroom. This practice, often mentioned concurrently with the humanizing practices discussed
in the previous finding, provided students with a classroom environment that was structured,
familiar and safe to be themselves.
Spring County is a large public school district and, as such, imposes a lot of structure on
teachers, including mandatory structure to use of class time. Interestingly, throughout interviews,
there were only two mentions of the concept of discipline or traditionally structured classroom,
with Ms. Thompson having the least traditional classroom. Specifically, Ms. Thompson
described learning in her classroom as “thematic” with different subjects integrated throughout
the same block, including center activities, and small group discussions along the same learning
theme. This classroom setting was open in creating space for students to explore authentically
both academically and in their social interactions, which were weaved throughout every aspect of
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learning, as described by the teacher. Students were allowed to explore learning in groups
through many different modalities which all promote participation and involvement to normalize
the learning experience for all students. Specifically, Ms. Thompson described her classroom as:
“Organized chaos, depending on the given day. I would say if it’s a new topic, brand
new, there’s usually some type of arts integration activity to really gain interest. So it could be a
theater activity where they’re at their seat pantomiming or literally up acting things out. It could
be a visual arts thing where they’re getting messy with paint and clay. It could be dance and
music. It could be anything of that nature just to get them up and interested in whin whatever it is
we’re about to be learning.”
The other five participants worked with younger students, a possible limitation in their
ability to create a classroom with so much open “flow” as students in primary classrooms,
particularly kindergarten and first grade, can require more structure to avoid disruption. The four
primary participants, in particular, implemented a structure based on rotating centers for
activities in the classroom with a mix of group work, independent tasks, and time working
directly with the teacher. Centers were introduced at the beginning of the year and then expanded
and implemented with a consistent schedule, based on the county’s mandated instructional
minutes, to facilitate different modalities of student learning.
All six participants demonstrated that procedures and high expectations must be
consistent and supported from the beginning of the school year. Ms. Bennet spoke to how
creating a consistent calm tone directed towards learning throughout the year had helped her in
creating a relaxed learning-driven environment. During the discussion of classroom structure she
said, “I try to do it in the very beginning of the year to set the pace so that they continue it
throughout the year.” By doing so she could create a classroom environment where students
knew the expectations of how to treat one another with humanity and respect. Both Ms. Bennet
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and Ms. Mitchell spoke to the importance of structure and clear communication with students.
Ms. Mitchell stated that “I will describe mine [kindergarten classroom] as very structured and
disciplined. I’m very big on that, and I will lead with discipline.” though immediately upon
stating that she chuckled and took it back “Let me not say that because I lead with love, but it’s
structured.” She later spent time describing that her discipline was centered around enforcing the
students treat each other with respect, stating “I tell my students a lot, how do you think that
made them feel, or you know, we’re not laughing at our friends, we are all friends…” Overall
participants all mentioned the importance of providing the structure for students to know the
boundaries of what is context appropriate and can make their choices based on that knowledge.
Teachers not only set clear expectations for behavior and procedural elements of the day,
but aligned with radical love, teachers spoke to how they communicate regularly with students
about how they are expected to move through the world and why. Ms. Thompson, bluntly spoke
to how given this experience of outside expectations and community expectations being
perceived as low, she challenged her students directly to achieve. When discussing her classroom
environment, she stated, “There’s the freedom to kind of be themselves at the same time. You’re
all the same in the sense that these are your expectations, follow them. But you’re all yourself in
that you could be yourself and express yourself.”
This consistency also provided elements of security that teachers stated students were not
experiencing in their home lives, living through food insecurity and unreliable situations related
to their housing and adult caregivers. Ms. Morgan discussed how her students not only rely on
her for education in the classroom, but many communicate to her regularly that they are
experiencing hunger while trying to learn. Part of her supportive and consistent practice to
address this human need within her students was to keep additional snacks and water in her
classroom to provide them to students who could not access it consistently at home. Practices
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like this required teachers to pay close attention to students’ circumstances, mood and overall
well-being. This trait was shared by all six participants throughout the interviews, each was able
to speak to both specifics and generally about how what they withitness impacted their day to
day. They made statements about needing to know who your students are, understand what calms
them down and what triggers them and the importance of monitoring their behavior and facial
expressions closely in the classroom. One participant even mentioned the importance of
monitoring students' facial expressions to determine an appropriate time to intervene if necessary
during a potentially problematic or unsafe behavior.
Table 3
Teacher quotes on the importance of knowing your students
Teacher Participant Applicable quote(s)
Ms. Carter ● “...when she did have a teacher that
was like “ I know how smart you are”,
just took her under her wing and she
flourished. She participated more, she
got better grades.”
● “For some students who are sensitive
in that way, if they feel like they’re
heard and understood and seen, it
allows them to let their guard down
and focus more on learning.”
Ms. Bennet ● “You learn your kids and you learn
what they need… you try different
things.”
Overall, teachers practicing radical love spoke to the importance of creating the
classroom as a structured and consistent space where students understood what was expected of
them from the beginning. It is in that context that they could feel safe and explore their growth
and learning throughout the year.
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Research Question 2: How Do Teachers Who Engage in Radical Love Practices Perceive
the Impact That Pedagogy Has on Students' Psychological Safety and Sense of Belonging?
Teachers who engage in radical love practices perceive the impact of the practices as
fostering students' psychological safety and sense of belonging, evidenced by students feeling
comfortable to confide in them and seek emotional support. This supportive environment extends
to peer interactions, where students self-regulate, uphold community expectations, and offer
comfort to one another. Throughout the school year, participants noted that students demonstrate
significant growth in their inter- and intrapersonal skills, including self-regulation, critical
thinking, and a commitment to a kind and productive learning environment. Interview items in
this sections were centered around providing teachers with space to discuss how they perceive
their pedagogical practices impacting their students feeling good at school. Three major findings
emerged from the interviews for Research Question 2, each described in the sections below.
Students Feel Safe With Their Teachers in the School Space
Most notable to this research question was the finding that teachers who utilized some or
all of the radical love pedagogical strategies were able to express positive growth of
communication and relationships with their students throughout the school year. Teachers
provided extensive accounts of ways they have supported their students through emotional
distress, from severe to more daily frustrations. In each case, teachers would describe how
students would communicate their direct needs to them either with or without prompting.
Teachers suggested that they are creating relationships with students where they feel comfortable
enough to confide in them and ask for support in their needs being met.
Students felt safe with teachers who used pedagogical features of radical love,
demonstrated by their willingness to reach out during times of personal distress. For instance,
Ms. Brooks reported an instance of a former student calling her during the summer when they
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felt unsafe, seeking reassurance and protection from a situation they perceived as dangerous. On
the incident, she said:
`“Another former student called me over the summer asking me to call the police for her.
It ended up being a silly, non-threatening situation but she had trusted me to take care of
her even after school was over and she was no longer my student.”
Through her interview, Ms. Brooks also gave instances of students confiding in her that
they were witnessing domestic violence, experiencing physical and verbal abuse and absent
parents due to incarcerations and gang violence.
“Students have confided in me and considered me a safe person to talk to. For example, a
student told me his teenage uncle was verbally and physically abusing him but he had never told
his mother because the uncle threatened him. We told his mother together. A former student was
acting out in his new class and asked to speak to me, he explained his mother was hospitalized
from gang violence and he was not allowed to tell me but it was affecting him and that’s why he
was upset and not doing his work.”
Teachers also reported students confiding in them about other sensitive home situations,
including issues like divorce, abuse, and neglect. In their account, two participants troublingly
stated that students even confided in them when adults in the home had threatened retaliatory
consequences for doing so.
Ms. Thompson recounted an instance where a novel she had chosen for her class
triggered a students’ ongoing experience of their parents’ divorce. After being first comforted by
a fellow student, they spoke to Ms. Thompson about the pain of their experience prompting her
to offer the class to read another book rather than the one she had chosen. In being willing to
change the curriculum, Ms. Thompson was able to harness radical love and provide this student
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with reassurance that she was a safe and caring adult presence. When speaking on her experience
of this she stated:
“You know, I had a student whose parents were going through a divorce and I was
reading a book in class Hatchet which talks about a boy who is experiencing his parents going
through a divorce, and so one of my students started crying just very quietly. That was on me. I
really should have thought about that one before I read that book… he came to me later.”
She continued to describe how she approached the situation with empathy and personal
connections:
“I spoke with the kid again afterwards and I was like, are you okay if I continue reading
this. Because this was a novel, it was my read aloud novel and it took place over several
weeks. I was like, are you okay if I continue reading about this? And then he was, and we
discussed his feelings. I expressed, you know, how I lived through it as a child and how
it’s all part of unfortunately growing up sometimes and you come out better.”
Participants cited themselves as being in the position often of being a crucial source of
stability and support for their students, offering a listening ear and practical assistance to young
students who may not otherwise have that in their home lives. Teachers also reported being
counted on by students to provide much more basic needs, with Ms. Morgan discussing
individuals in her class who solicit her for additional breakfast and snacks to get them through
school as they experience food insecurity at home. These actions not only addressed immediate
needs but also reinforced the students' sense of being cared for and valued within their school
community.
The classroom environment created by these teachers was intended to be a space
experienced by students as a space where they experience the emotional safety and acceptance
they hoped to provide. Teachers mentioned younger students, in particular, feeling comfortable
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enough to seek physical comfort from their teachers, such as asking for hugs or embraces when
they were sad. These interactions exemplified the deep bonds formed between students and
teachers, where emotional and psychological safety was prioritized, allowing students to
navigate their educational journeys with confidence and security. The consistent availability and
compassionate responses from teachers fostered a community where students knew they were
supported, heard, and understood.
Students Feel Safe With Each Other
Throughout conversations with participants, it became evident that in addition to feeling
comfortable with expressing needs to their teachers, students also behaved in ways that indicated
they feel comfortable in the environment with one another. Teachers who held high expectations
for student behaviors in a culture of dialogue reported being solicited by their students to assist in
resolving class and playground conflicts, reflecting that the deep trust and respect students had
for these educators could be expanded to each other. In another example, Ms. Thompson likened
her classroom to a courtroom where students are encouraged to share their experiences
uninterrupted, fostering a sense of fairness and open communication. When working with her
fourth graders she emphasized the multiplicity of perspectives by creating space for everyone to
speak. She then aided students in understanding and navigating different viewpoints,
highlighting the importance of learning collaboration and respect, even in the absence of
personal affinity and stressed those skills as integral components of their social and personal
development. By her own report, by the end of the year, students are able to self-monitor and
regulate their own conflicts to constructive outcomes that do not disrupt the learning
environment for long periods of time. Finally, she was also able to point to specific examples in
her classroom of times which stood out to her when students observed one another's distress and
reacted with comfort, empathy and compassion.
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Table 4
Two Highlighted Examples of Student Behavior Exhibiting Comfort and Empathy with Peers
Teacher Quote
Ms. Mitchell “And I've noticed that after a while your
students figure it out on their own. Like,
they'll say things that I say… to each other.
And I'm like, okay, they're listening. Now
they're putting that into motion. Or, it's funny
because we go outside for recess… all of
kindergarten is together. And every class is
not the same culture wise. And when some
students come over, and they start doing
things, my students stand up for each other.
And it's just… okay, you know, it's crazy to
see that in action.”
Ms. Thompson ““I had a student whose parents were going
through a divorce, and I was reading a book in
class, which talks about a boy who is
experiencing his parents going through
divorce. And so one of my students started
crying. Just very quietly crying. That was on
me, I really should have thought about that
one before I read that book. But before I could
even step in to comfort the child, another
student who knew what was going on went
and put his arm around the kid and was like,
it's okay. He came to me later and he's like,
“hey, did you know that? So and so was
crying because of XY&Z”
Similarly, Ms. Mitchell emphasized lessons in empathy, teaching her students, "We do
not hurt our friends," to guide their interactions during recess and help them understand the
impact of their actions on others. She also mentioned that her students will even remind one
another when they are at recess what the boundaries of expectations are for how they treat one
another, stating that when students violate that boundary, they are reminded by their peers how
to behave. Ms. Brooks reported that when conflicts arose, her students instinctively sought her
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out to share their sides of the story, demonstrating their desire for her guidance and approval
before self-regulating, apologizing, and resolving the issues themselves. These examples
illustrated how teachers' commitment to radical love created a supportive environment where
students felt empowered and safe to address and resolve conflicts constructively. In fact, there
was only one teacher who reported that students had a common language to communicate when
they distrusted one another, using the term “suss” to describe behavior in her first-grade
classroom. Overall, conversations with participants revealed that students not only feel
comfortable expressing their needs to teachers but also demonstrated a sense of security, trust
and comfort among peers.
Students Grow in Their Inter- and Intrapersonal Skills Throughout the School Year
The final notable finding from interview data was teachers reporting maturation and
growth of their students throughout the course of the year. While this growth was mentioned
specifically by only three participants, the finding suggests that radical love practices may help
facilitate students’ emotional growth throughout the year. This growth can improve their
capacity for experiencing psychological well-being and being equipped with coping and
communication skills to deal with challenges while at school.
Teachers reported students’ significant growth in their social-emotional skills throughout
the academic year, particularly in self-regulation and their ability to refocus on tasks after
disruptions. For example, Ms. Mitchell’s students exhibited a notable capacity for self-regulation
during recess, where they remind each other of behavioral expectations, as she noted, "I think
when you build it from the top, it trickles down to them. And then you don't have to do it as
much because they're starting to do it on their own." This proactive approach to maintaining a
respectful and inclusive environment reflected their internalization of classroom values and
fostered a community where students took responsibility for their actions, even in kindergarten.
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Ms. Thompson and Ms. Bennet also reported that throughout the year, the time it required
students to calm and reset their emotions in order to return to their academic task improved
greatly. In Ms. Mitchell’s kindergarten classroom, she describes that her students “I've noticed
that after a while your students figure it out on their own. Like, they'll say things that I say, to
each other. And I'm like, okay, they're listening. Now they're putting that into motion.”
Research Question 3: How and Where, if at all, Do Teachers Share These Practices Among
Their Colleagues to Spread Radical Love?
Data collected for this research question presented teachers sharing practices of radical
love primarily through informal channels due to significant constraints within their formal
professional learning community (PLC) sessions, which predominantly focused on academic
instruction and testing protocols. In order to gather data for this question, participants were asked
where they spent time discussing classroom practices and to what extent they felt colleagues
were open to collaborating on student well-being. This section will summarize the findings
gained from participants’ speaking to the ways they interact with fellow educators at their sites.
The structured nature of PLC sessions left little room for discussions on pedagogical
approaches that emphasized emotional support and community building. This limitation is a
common lament among teachers who recognize the need to also collaborate on the state of
student well-being but find few formal opportunities to discuss and develop these methods
within the established framework of current PLC mandates. In response to these constraints,
teachers creatively utilized various informal moments throughout their day to share and discuss
their experiences and strategies. Informal exchanges were noted as taking place during recess,
dismissal, morning duty, and lunch, where brief conversations could occur organically.
Additionally, teachers made extensive use of digital communication tools such as email and text
messaging to share insights and support with each other outside of academic achievement. A
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breakdown of different reported strategies can be found in Table 3. These methods were reported
to be all that allowed for a continuous, albeit fragmented, dialogue that fostered a sense of
community and shared purpose among educators committed to nurturing their students'
psychological safety and sense of belonging.
Table 5
Overview of Collaboration Data
Teacher Obstacles to collaboration cited Collaboration methods cited
Ms. Carter ● Teacher perceive classroom
management as “solid” rather
than in need of development
or change
○ “... but it seems like
they’re all kind of on
the same page as far as
how to handle
different things.”
● Focus on state testing and the
limitations that places on time
and learning material in the
classroom.
● “It’s a matter of finding the
time to stick that also into the
schedule.”
● “Chatting outside at recess
sometimes or during
dismissal.”
Ms. Morgan ● Colleagues who are not open
to sharing ideas “due to
restrictions past their control”
such as: time
● During team meetings
● In passing
● During “down time”
● After school
Ms. Thompson ● PLC time was focused on
specific academic data,
limiting scope of conversation
● Throughout school day lack
of overall time to have
conversations that are not
structured into the schedule
● Change in personnel on the
team leading to a shift in
collaborative dynamic
○ Teammate selfdescribed as a “one-
● “Texting over the phone or
on off time.”
● “Little in-between chats
when we could”
● Walking into colleagues'
classrooms to observe and
ask about elements they were
interested in or liked.
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and-done” teacher
pursuing a different
career
Ms. Bennet ● Time, mentioned that
sometimes collaboration
happens in passing
● “If we see each other and
maybe I’ve just made copies.”
● Over structured and
supervised PLC times
● Email
● Testing
● In passing
Ms. Mitchell ● Team dynamics of
collaboration vs. siloing
resources
● “The team aspect is just…
you know but for the few
teammates that I do have that
relationship with…”
● Email
● Team meetings (referenced
this was done previous to this
year)
Ms. Brooks No specific obstacles cited ● Informal conversations
● Email
Despite their resourcefulness, teachers express a strong desire for more structured and
dedicated time to collaborate on these critical practices. The current professional learning
community (PLC) meetings are highly structured and narrowly focused on specific academic
data points, leaving little room for holistic discussions about student welfare and socialemotional learning. Teachers mentioned that the overemphasis on academic metrics undermines
the potential for comprehensive professional growth that includes emotional and relational
aspects of teaching. This very thing was cited by Ms. Carter as a reason that she wishes to leave
the teaching profession and focus solely on counseling so that she may have the permission and
space to engage with students about their psychological safety and well-being. Additionally, Ms.
Thompson joked about the over-structured nature of PLCs being a “soapbox” issue for her as
they are always allocated for specific academic, data-driven discussions only. This structure is
common throughout the Spring County district, with Ms. Bennet even mentioned that their PLC
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time is supervised by administrators so even if teachers desired to use that allocated time for
another purpose they would not be able to do so. In order to provide teachers with enough
professional time to discuss student well-being, there is a clear need for PD frameworks to
evolve, incorporating dedicated time and space for teachers to explore and refine these impactful
pedagogical approaches collaboratively.
Summary
In summary of chapter four, it is worth highlighting the gravity of providing safe
communication lines for students to feel humanized with the adults and peers they spend 180
days with. All six participants spoke on examples of students feeling comfortable enough to
confide in them and interact with one another productively and positively throughout the school
day. Through the common and heavy nature of interactions that arise at school, teachers are
searching for ways to provide their students with a loving and safe environment to experience
learning and growth. Based on the data collected here, radical love may assist teachers with
creating affirming relationships with students wherein their students feel safe enough to learn,
make friends, be themselves, and when necessary report instances of harm or abuse they are
experiencing. Radical love also helped to facilitate positive relationships between students in
various contexts, providing affirming and enjoyable friendships for students to experience at
school. To not create these relationships potentially leaves already vulnerable students without a
potentially positive and loving relationship to provide the student with experiences of love and
support.
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Chapter Five: Recommendations and Discussion
Chapter five provides a comprehensive analysis of the findings obtained from
elementary teachers’ interviews from the study. This chapter delves into the implications of these
findings in connection to the existing body of literature and radical love framework, outlined in
Chapters One and Two. The discussion aims to interpret the significance of the results,
highlighting how they contribute to addressing the research questions posed by the study.
Based on the findings, this chapter also includes recommendations for practice and
applications for educators in the field. These recommendations are intended to provide practical
guidance for teachers to enhance their pedagogical practice and foster greater psychological
safety and belonging for all students. Further, recommendations for future research are designed
to guide subsequent studies in addressing the limitations and delimitations encountered during
this research. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the overall contributions of the study,
summarizing its possible significance and impact on the field. Through this comprehensive
discussion, the chapter not only underscores the value of the research but also highlights areas of
future inquiries and improvements in educational practice and student outcomes.
Discussion of Findings
This section interrogates findings from participant interviews within the cited literature
and Paolo Freire’s radical love theory framework. The research questions that guided this study
were as follows:
1. What types of pedagogical practices are predominantly present in elementary teachers
within Spring County who align with radical love?
2. How do teachers who engage in radical love practices perceive the impact that pedagogy
has on students' sense of psychological safety and belonging?
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3. How and where, if at all, do teachers share these practices among their colleagues to
spread radical love?
Research Question 1: Discussion of Findings
This study aimed to further understand how teachers accommodate students’ innate need
to belong in their environments (Baumeister & Leary, 1995) and which pedagogical practices
may benefit creation of safe spaces while at school. The first research question focused on
understanding which specific pedagogical practices help to create humanizing relationships,
mutual trust (Freire, 1993), and meet Clark’s (2020) definition for a psychologically safe
environment. Throughout interviews with participants, three main findings became apparent that
strongly aligned with creating an environment where students feel included, safe to learn and
contribute (Clark, 2020), and positive feelings associated with school. Overall, it became evident
that teachers who aligned with radical love engaged in the following specific pedagogical
practices to create their learning space. These key practices included: (1) Teachers practice
empathy, patience and inclusion of student language to create safe spaces for dialogue; (2)
Teachers actively engage students in speaking and listening skills through guided and supervised
engagement; (3) Teachers effectively and consistently communicate high expectations for their
class community’s behavior and achievement.
Providing students with safe spaces for dialogue through guidance, support and modeling
was discussed throughout interviews with each of the six participants. Aligned with cited
research from Duhigg (2016), teachers prioritized student interaction in order to promote
psychological safety while in the classroom so students felt safe to engage in class participation
with confidence. Particularly within the context of elementary education, when children engage
in their first schooling experiences, students must experience a sense of belonging to find
meaning and happiness (Allen, 2021). Teachers discussed how their classrooms were conducted
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with a blend of independent, group work and small-group learning time to expose students’ to
different work and social environments while at school. Each teacher stressed the importance of
being attentive to student conversation, frequently citing examples of instances within their
classrooms where student interaction was modeled, intervened in or praised and encouraged by
other students. Teachers interviewed who aligned with radical love closely monitored and stayed
engaged with students throughout the school day and classroom spaces, with special attention
during unstructured time, such as research, where there is high potential for conflict.
Importantly, teachers modeled dialogue through demonstrations of empathy, warmth and
accountability for student voice and choice. They understood deeply the importance of their
relationships with students, particularly around the potential positive and protective impacts of
creating a class community centered in humanity, cooperation and consideration (Hughes, Cavell
& Jackson, 1999). Participants teaching kindergarten to fourth grade all prioritized engaging with
their students through a humanizing lens, acknowledging that school is a place for them to learn
how to interact with their peers in a safe and respectful environment. All six participants shared
specific stories of moments where they addressed a child or group of children with empathy:
asking students to adopt one another’s point of view, modeling appropriate apologies and even
discussing curricular changes to accommodate students’ emotional experiences. Students in
classrooms rooted in radical love were reported by teachers to be experiencing healthy
friendships with peers and reductions in disruptive behavior (Kincade, Cook, & Goerdt, 2020;
Durrah, 2022). Interestingly, no participants in the study mentioned any impact of the radical
love space on student achievement or test scores. Additional follow up research should be
conducted to see if students who experience the psychological safety discussed with teachers in
this study also achieve higher marks on standardized assessments than their peers who are
disengaged or experiencing social isolation (Matthews et al, 2015). If radical love pedagogy can
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positively impact students’ achievement as well as their psychological experience of safety and
belonging in the school space, there may be increased incentive to study and practice its
effectiveness.
Participants practicing radical love also prioritized communicating high expectations for
student behavior and achievement while in their class, refusing to submit to the settler colonial
colonization of opportunity and power hierarchy (Bonilla-Silva, 2001). Children in these spaces
were reported to have received consistent communication about the high expectations for kind
and caring interactions in all school settings. Teachers focused in radical love pedagogy refused
to lower their expectations or dehumanize students (Fudge, 2021; Sanders, 2006), rejecting the
settler colonial stereotypes of black and brown students in their communities dictated by
logocentrism and universalism. One participant discussed her disappointment with what she
described as “American xenophobia,” and to combat this in her classroom, actively pushed
against logocentric prioritization of Anglo and English ways of knowing to celebrate their home
languages and culture. Additionally, teacher participants working within testing grades stressed
their focus away from state testing and prioritization of thematic and authentic learning
experiences for their students, rejecting the spirit murdering (Love, 2012) ways students in the
district are tied to their test scores. Instead, these teachers aligned with Freire’s (1978) early
proposal that injustice and oppression thwart humanization and have prioritized decisions in their
pedagogy that work to validate student experience.
Pedagogical practices became a clear area of choice for teachers in a system where they
have low positionality in an dialectical system which defines policy and procedure through
exclusionary rather than inclusive terms. Even though teachers were unaware of radical love
theory, their aligned practices were reportedly enough to provide their students with some
protection from the world of settler colonialism and boxhead grammar in which their schools
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operate. Participants spoke proudly and passionately about their moral alignment to providing
students with safe spaces wherein they could explore their interests, learning, identity and
socialization.
Research Question 2: Discussion of Findings
Teacher participants in this study optimistically reported the various ways in which
students in their care experienced school. By practicing a pedagogy wherein students were the
focus and their well-being was prioritized through humanizing and safe interactions within the
classroom with themselves and peers, teachers were pushing back against the oppressive status
quo of Florida schooling policies. Findings for this question were encouraging as teachers
described instances of positive and trusting interactions between themselves and students as well
as between their students. Consistent with the literature cited in Chapter Two, students in radical
love spaces, as perceived by their teachers: built strong bonds between themselves and others in
their school, experienced positive interactions in school with teacher support, indicated feeling
school was a safe space protective from adverse life circumstances (Baumeister & Leary, 1995;
Kaplan & Israel-Cohen, 2018; Hussain & Jones, 2021; Curby, Brocke & Hamre, 2013).
The research findings revealed that teachers perceived notable positive impacts from their
practices aligning with radical love. Teachers noted that even minimal interactions that students
are willing to engage in, such as joking or playfulness, indicate comfort levels of children to
solicit their attention in a supportive and warm manner. On the other side of the spectrum of
reported behaviors were multiple examples of children confiding that other adults or experiences
in their life outside of school were exposing them to harm. These findings are supported by
Baumeister and Leary’s (1995) work that students who perceive a bond between themselves and
their teachers experience school as emotionally safe and reassuring. This is essential, as it forms
the foundation for a safe and supportive learning environment.
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Further supporting findings related to evidence of student psychological safety, Kaplan
and Israel-Cohen’s (2018) research highlights that positive student outcomes are significantly
correlated with the emotional support provided by teachers. The teachers in this study
demonstrated that creating a nurturing environment fostered students’ social and emotional
success. Findings are also consistent with Hussain and Jones’ (2021) research, which indicated
that public schools can indeed buffer students from adverse effects by providing a safe space.
The teachers’ practices of radical love, which included both formal and informal trust-building
conversations, contributed to this safe and supportive atmosphere.
Finally, the creation of predictable and positive environments, as described by Curby,
Brocke, and Hamre (2013), enhanced the emotional atmosphere of the classroom, fostering close
relationships among students and enthusiasm for learning. Teachers who allowed students to
speak their home languages also contributed to fighting logocentrism, empowering students to
take pride in their linguistic and cultural identities. This practice, as reported by the teachers, not
only reinforced students' sense of belonging but also enriched the classroom environment, as
students shared their languages and cultures with their peers and teachers. These findings
collectively underscore the impact of radical love in educational settings, highlighting its
potential to create emotionally supportive, inclusive, and empowering learning environments.
Research Question 3: Discussion of Findings
Teachers working within Spring County, a major public school district, are subject to the
context of American schooling which perpetuates individualism, competition and teleological
(deOlivieria, 2016) mindsets which drive academics forward without sensitivity or consideration
for other forms of student success or well-being. Within recent years, Florida legislators have
passed additional limiting educational policies preventing teachers from utilizing certain books,
teaching racial history with respect and accuracy, and prohibiting expressions of support and
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guidance for LGBTQIA+ identity development (NPR, 2022; New York Times, 2023). Within
this context, participants reported feeling they had limited access to authentic opportunities for
collaboration with colleagues and other forms of professional learning. Without a strategy to
combat these outside influencing pressures, teachers will continue to struggle suspended in their
own isolated classrooms with little to no opportunities to expand their practice, pedagogical or
otherwise.
All six participants lamented not having formal and structured time provided by their
respective schools to discuss pedagogy and other issues pertaining to student wellness, which is
consistent with cited findings from Williams (2014). Each mentioned their schools’ respective
Professional Learning Community (PLC) meetings, held twice a month, had strict guidelines to
discuss only student achievement data in a particular subject area such as math or reading. Two
teachers, colleagues at the same school, even highlighted the presence of administrators at their
meetings, further limiting the flexibility of conversation during that hour-long period. Another
participant described the rigidity of PLCs as her “soapbox” issue, where she felt strongly that
they should be open to teacher and team input and collaboration regarding the general necessities
of students and teachers as they worked together throughout the school year. Throughout my
nine years as a classroom teacher in Spring County, I shared similar feelings to those expressed
by participants that PLCs may be a more effective use of time if teachers had some input as to
what would be discussed at these precious moments which were set aside for collaboration. It
was through this experience that Emergent Strategy (Brown, 2017) offered an alternative
structure to that formally created by the school district which is subject to the limitations of the
Boxhead grammar (deOliviera, 2016) and tenets of white supremacy which are integrated into
American schools. The following table shows a summary of the study findings as related to the
self-reported pedagogical practices and teacher collaboration. This visual provides a clear outline
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to each element of emergent strategy as it relates specifically to collaborative or pedagogical
practices reported by teachers interviewed for the study.
Table 6
Summary of Findings Related to Emergent Strategy (Brown, 2017)
Emergent Strategy Tenet Dandelion Framework
Element
Self-reported collaborative
teacher action
Radical love pedagogical
practice in participants’
classrooms
Small is good, small is all Resilience Maximizing opportunities
to collaborate
● Outside contract hours
● Text messaging
● Email
● Hard copies of student
activities
● Creating comfortable
environments for
students to learn
● Leading with empathy
as a model to students
● Communicating
consistent high
expectations clearly to
students
There is always enough
time for the right work
Regeneration Prioritizing collaboration,
even with no structural
support, through any
available moments
● During dismall,
recess, lunch and
other professional
duties
Teachers make time to
prioritize authentic learning
opportunities and
interactions with students,
while maximizing on school
day minutes through
teachable moments for
humanizing others
Trust the people Resistance ● Four out of six
participants
unhesitatingly reported
professional trust
among teammates
● All teachers reported
having worked on a
supportive, cohesive
team at some point in
their career
● All six participants
highlighted teachers
desire to collaborate,
though cited different
reasons for why they do
not at times
● Teachers create trusting
and consistent
environments within their
classroom, promote
trustworthy action within
the classroom
● Teachers validate
student culture and are
open to the opportunity
to learn about a
students’ identity
What you pay attention to
grows
Decentralization Four out of six participants
expressed interest in
learning more about radical
love as an effective
pedagogical practice
Teachers focus attention on
empathy and identity
affirming approaches to
student interactions. Drawing
attention to expectations for
compassion, cooperation and
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growth
Interviews with participants indicated reasons for optimism that the application of nonlinear, non-hierarchical methods, such as Emergent Strategy (Brown, 2017), were already being
implemented by teachers outside of their professional obligations. In the course of the
interviews, all participating teachers demonstrated practices aligning with emergent strategy
principles, characterized in Chapter Two by resilience, resistance, and regeneration. They
consistently showed a willingness to embrace decentralization in their respective environments.
This was evident in their adaptive responses to challenges, their persistent advocacy for change,
and their innovative approaches to problem-solving. Notably, four participants expressed interest
in learning more about radical love, indicating an openness to deeper engagement with emergent
strategy’s tenets. Despite varying team dynamics - ranging from active support and collaboration
to instances of siloing with lack of cohesion - each teacher provided examples of shared
activities, advice, and stories that they exchange, emphasizing a communal spirit that transcends
the limited allocated by district mandated PLCs.
The most significantly optimistic finding from these interviews is the potential for
emergent strategy to be adopted by teachers, fostering the spread of loving, humanizing practices
that contribute to protective social justice focused pedagogies, such as radical love. This
resilience was universally present, as all teachers at some point highlighted moments of positive
interaction and mutual support among their peers. These interactions occurred despite structural
constraints and reflected a deep-seated commitment to collective well-being and educational
equity. This finding underscores the viability of Emergent Strategy (Brown, 2017) as a
framework nurturing environments where radical and social justice can flourish to protect highly
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marginalized and vulnerable students, even within the different restrictive confines of the Florida
educational system.
Recommendations for Practice
The purpose of this study was to explore how pedagogical practices aligned with radical
love may have a positive impact on the psychological well-being of students attending school in
Spring County, Florida. Based on data gathered from interviews with six teacher participants, the
following recommendations for pedagogical practices are proposed. Table 4 outlines
recommendations for practice as they relate to the study findings.
Table 7
Summary of Key Findings and Recommendations
Impact of Elementary Teachers Practicing Radical Love in Florida Classrooms
RQ1: What types of
pedagogical practices are
predominantly present in
elementary teachers who
align with radical love?
RQ2: How do teachers who
engage in radical love perceive
the impact that pedagogy has
on students’ sense of safety
and belonging?
RQ3: How and where, if at all, do
teachers share these practices
among their colleagues to spread
radical love?
Key Finding 1 Empathy, patience,
inclusion of student
knowledge and culture,
creation of safe spaces for
dialogue both academic and
social
Students feel safe and
comfortable with their teacher:
confiding life-events,
soliciting for assistance during
conflict or struggle, relying for
safety
Teachers are open and willing to
learn more about positive
practices that may assist their
students’ well-being or sense of
psychological safety
Key Finding 2 Teachers actively engaged
students in speaking and
listening skills, with
supervision and engagement
Students feel safe to engage
with one another and selfregulate conflict and
conversation
Limited time for planning and
collaboration, teachers must
capitalize on personal or “down”
time
Key Finding 3 Teachers effectively and
continually communicate
high expectations for
behavior and achievement
Students exhibit social
emotional growth throughout
the year as trust in classroom
environment and teacher
grows
N/A
Recommendation 1 Incorporate specific, effective pedagogical practices into new teacher and administrator trainings,
offer trainings in radical love through the district equity department
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Recommendation 2 Raise the importance of radical love practices within today’s
school environments
Provide teachers with designated
times to discuss and collaborate
on matters outside of academic
achievement and data
Recommendation 1: Incorporate Specific, Effective Pedagogical Practices Aligned With
Radical Love Into Professional Development
The current study provides compelling data suggesting that practices aligned with radical
love—characterized by resilience, support, and the nurturing of deep, trusting relationships—
have a significant positive impact on students' emotional well-being in school. In states like
Florida, where recent legislative actions (NPR, 2022; New York Times, 2023) have been
perceived as oppressive and marginalizing, the need for safe and supportive educational
environments is even more pronounced. Interviewed participants all practiced elements of radical
love pedagogy in their classrooms, and have throughout their careers, despite never having been
formally trained or being aware of these practices’ foundation in research. All teacher
participants in the study cited a personal connection as the primary reason for their pedagogy
being rooted in humanization. The ability for teachers to connect to their own stories was
highlighted as crucial for fostering a genuine and humanizing environment for students. This
personal connection and buy-in are essential for cultivating such an environment, as they directly
impact the quality of interactions and relationships within the classroom. Furthermore, this selfreflection is vital, as it not only reinforces the commitment of individual educators but also
encourages others to embrace and implement these humanizing practices. This data suggests it
would be beneficial for school districts to educate teachers about the potential positive effect of
radical love pedagogy on students and provide them with professional development, on-line
modules or district resources related to this practice.
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Classroom environments can act as crucial buffers against the adverse effects of external
discrimination and systemic marginalization. District lead development focused on the
effectiveness of radical love in such contexts could provide tools to educators to better support
marginalized students and foster inclusivity, resilience, and well-being. Learning opportunities
could explore various dimensions, including further delving into the specific practices that
contribute to psychological safety, the challenges potentially faced by educators in implementing
these practices, and the outcomes for students across different marginalized groups. Findings
from the study underscore the lack of time teachers have to maximize their professional learning
opportunities. While they use other means to maximize their time learning from and
collaborating with their colleagues, district-provided development could help alleviate reported
feelings of stress surrounding limited time for collaborative learning. To maximize participation
and access for teachers across the district, it is recommended that districts offer training in
multiple modalities, including but not limited to: in-person, self-paced online modules or
synchronous video lead courses through Microsoft Teams or Zoom. In addition to the
implementation of teacher trainings, it is important to recognize that the five principals who
granted permission for this study likely possessed traits that made them particularly agreeable to
educational research initiatives. This observation underscores the need for district-level trainings
that include administrators, focusing on strategies to empower their teachers effectively. Such
trainings should also emphasize creating an environment that fosters radical love within schools,
thereby promoting a more inclusive and supportive educational culture.
Moreover, if concurrent research is conducted on the effectiveness of these professional
developments on teacher practice, these findings could inform policy and practice on a broader
scale, offering evidence-based recommendations for creating more inclusive and supportive
educational systems. By understanding how radical love can be leveraged to counteract the
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negative impacts of oppressive laws and marginalizing policies, educators, policymakers, and
advocates can work towards more equitable and just educational environments. Ultimately, such
accessible professional opportunities hold the promise of not only improving the experiences and
outcomes of individual students but also contributing to the broader goal of educational equity
and social justice.
Recommendation 2: Incorporate Direct Student Voice and Engagement Around How They
Would Like to Experience School
In the course of this study, it became evident that the voices of students were notably
absent. This gap can be attributed to the complexities and challenges associated with obtaining
permission to speak with elementary students, a process often entangled in bureaucratic and
ethical considerations. Despite this hurdle, the importance of incorporating student perspectives
cannot be overstated. Their firsthand experiences and insights are invaluable for developing a
holistic understanding of their needs and for creating supportive and nurturing school
environments. The absence of student voice is a significant limitation that should be addressed in
future research and practice.
To bridge this gap, it is recommended that teachers, principals, counselors, and other
educational professionals who interact with students actively solicit their direct feedback.
Understanding what students themselves perceive as necessary for their psychological safety and
sense of belonging can lead to more effective and tailored interventions. Engaging students in
conversations about their school experience can provide critical insights into the challenges they
face and the support they need. This approach ensures that the policies and practices
implemented are truly reflective of the students' needs and contribute to a more inclusive and
supportive school environment.
An exemplary practice was observed with one interviewee, a fourth-grade teacher, who
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regularly solicited feedback from her students. By creating a routine of asking her students for
their input, she was able to build a strong foundation of trust within her classroom. This practice
not only enhanced the students' sense of belonging but also empowered them to voice their
concerns and suggestions, fostering a more responsive and dynamic learning environment. Such
practices highlight the importance and effectiveness of incorporating student feedback in
everyday educational settings.
Incorporating student voice systematically throughout the school year is a practice of
radical love that should be actively promoted. As an example, the University of Chicago’s
Cultivate/Elevate survey collects comprehensive data on students' experiences and relationships
within the school environment. This survey plays a crucial role in improving relationships by
compelling adults to reflect on their own practices and interactions with students. Surveys like
these are invaluable as they delve into the core of students' experiences and their connections
with teachers, providing essential insights for fostering a supportive educational atmosphere. It is
recommended that such tools be incorporated into regular assessments to ensure continuous
improvement in student-teacher relationships and overall school climate.
This approach humanizes and centers the child in their educational experience,
acknowledging them as active participants in their learning journey rather than passive
recipients. By prioritizing and valuing their input, educational professionals can create a more
empathetic and responsive school culture that truly supports the holistic development of every
student. Promoting such practices aligns with the broader goals of educational equity and justice,
ensuring that all students feel seen, heard, and valued in their school communities.
Recommendation 3: Elevate Spaces for Informal and Self-Selected Teacher Collaboration
and Peer Learning
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Based on interview data, a key recommendation is to restructure teachers' professional
time to create more opportunities for discussing and developing pedagogy, collaborating, and
building trusting relationships through radical love. Teachers consistently highlighted the need
for dedicated time to engage in meaningful professional development and peer collaboration,
however mentioned multiple spaces in which they connect informally. Allocating spaces
specifically designed for collaborative efforts of teachers to come together to enhance their
practice can lead to the development of innovative teaching strategies and a more cohesive
educational approach throughout the district rooted in child well-being.
Teachers in the study expressed that the current structure of their professional time often
leaves them feeling isolated and overburdened, with little room for collaboration or professional
growth. By providing online forums and informal spaces, particularly within social media
platforms and other internet locations with dedicated information targeting teachers,
professionals can collaborate and foster a culture of continuous improvement and mutual support
around practicing radical love. This approach aligns with findings from educational research,
which suggest that collaborative professional development leads to improved teaching practices
and better student outcomes. Moreover, providing spaces where teachers can work together on
curriculum planning, share best practices, and discuss student needs can build stronger, more
trusting relationships among staff, creating a more supportive and positive work environment.
Implementing these changes requires a thoughtful and participatory process, involving
input from teachers at every stage. Ensuring that teachers have a voice in how to collaborate and
which categories of information they would like to engage with towards furthering their
professional development may lead to greater buy-in and more effective dissemination of
positive practices. Examples could consist of teacher-dedicated spaces on Facebook, LinkedIn
and other social networking sites that elevate and inform on the practices of radical love and their
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impact on students in their worksites. Additionally, such an approach may help address issues of
teacher burnout and job satisfaction by creating a more balanced and supportive work
environment where teachers can connect creatively and authentically in a non-professional or
judgemental space. Ultimately, creating spaces for teachers to prioritize collaboration and
relationship-building not only benefits them but also has the potential to significantly enhance
student learning experiences and outcomes, as teachers who feel supported and empowered are
better equipped to provide high-quality education.
Limitations and Delimitations
Limitations are influences that the researcher cannot control. Delimitations are the
boundaries set by the researcher that need to be addressed (Creswell, 2014). A key limitation to
this study lies in the short amount of time available for data collection due to the constraints of
doctoral work and length of my doctoral program. The process of establishing reliability and
validity of any instrument can take years of intensive work (Salkind, 2017). While it is advised to
use a measure that has already been established, this particular set of inquiry was specific to this
particular set of environmental and societal circumstances, therefore a previously tested protocol
was not available. Even with ideal objective questions and interview protocol implementation, I
cannot control the degree of truthfulness with which respondents choose to offer during the
discussion. It is possible that respondents may have felt social pressure to present answers they
thought were favorable, speaking with a self-serving bias (Baumeister & Leary, 1995) that
distorts teachers’ analysis of student belonging.
For delimitations, as a novice researcher conducting the interviews for my first Internal
Review Board approved study, the limit of my experience with the process may have impacted
the quality of the interviews. I have not yet developed the knowledge gained through experience
of crafting proper questions and asking relevant probing questions on multiple occasions with
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active participants, a key factor in the outcome of interview data (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).
Further, Merriam and Tisdell (2016) suggest that in an ideal world with more time and resources
to complete the research, I would be able to engage in triangulation to determine if perceptions
discussed in the interviews matched reality. While the research questions being studied related to
teacher perceptions, inclusion of other stakeholder groups would have helped to create further
knowledge regarding the reality of improved sense of belonging in historically marginalized and
oppressed students in classrooms with elementary teachers. Finally, it is worth noting that
student voice is absent from this study. While regrettable, students were unable to provide their
own feelings and perspectives on belonging at school to protect the vulnerable minor student
population.
Recommendations for Future Research
Future research should seek to understand how radical love pedagogy and aligned
practices may be present in counties outside of Spring County throughout the state of Florida and
the greater United States. Specifically, it should prioritize directly engaging with students to gain
deeper insights into their experiences within the school environment. Students are the most direct
source of information regarding their psychological and social needs, and including their voices
in the research process is essential for a comprehensive understanding. By surveying or
interviewing students, researchers can gather valuable data on how students perceive their sense
of belonging, safety, and overall school experience. This direct engagement will provide a more
nuanced and authentic perspective, enabling educators and policymakers to design interventions
that genuinely reflect and address the students' needs.
Additionally, focusing on student perspectives can further the concept of radical love
humanization within schools. By understanding how students experience school and what makes
them feel valued and supported, researchers can develop strategies to enhance their sense of
94
belonging. This approach aligns with the principles of radical love, which emphasize empathy,
respect, and the humanization of students. Incorporating student feedback into research and
practice can lead to more inclusive and supportive school environments, fostering a culture
where every student feels seen, heard, and valued. Future research practitioners should continue
to explore these avenues, ensuring that student voices are at the forefront of educational
improvements. With additional research into radical love in different districts throughout the
United States, educators may further understand the potential for positive impact on students’
well-being and psychological safety at school. This may in turn provide educators with
information about how to create affirming spaces for students to learn and develop. Further
research should also expand to focus on students in high school and middle school, as the
structure and dynamics of these educational environments present unique challenges.
Understanding how these factors impact student experiences and relationships is crucial for
developing effective strategies. This expanded focus would provide deeper insights into fostering
supportive and humanizing educational practices across different age groups.
Finally, future research on radical love should be conducted in school districts free from
restrictive and oppressive non-inclusive legislation. These settings will allow for a more
authentic exploration of the principles and practices of radical love, providing a strong
foundation of empirical evidence. By studying the positive impacts of radical love on student
belonging and psychological safety in these more inclusive environments, researchers can build a
compelling case to present to state legislators. This evidence can be instrumental in advocating
for the repeal of harmful laws, demonstrating the benefits of inclusive and humanizing
educational practices and their role in fostering equitable and supportive school communities.
95
Conclusion
This study explored the pedagogical practices of elementary school teachers in Spring
County, Florida, to understand their alignment with the humanizing practice of radical love, their
perceptions of the impact of these practices, and how they are shared among colleagues to spread
these practices. Through a series of interviews, it was found that teachers who embrace
principles such as humanization, empathy, and a deliberate focus on social-emotional growth
tend to cultivate a trusting and supportive relationship with their students. These educators
reported that their students confide in them and perceive them as loving and trustworthy adults,
highlighting the positive impact of these practices on the teacher-student relationship. Despite
the willingness and openness of teachers to learn and implement effective pedagogical practices,
a significant barrier identified was the lack of designated district time to engage in professional
development and idea-sharing. Additionally, teachers cited the time allocated for collaboration
was too restrictive, focusing solely on academic data in one subject area, in what was discussed
and often supervised by administrators making authentic dialogue and collaboration more
challenging. This finding underscores the need for systemic changes within the educational
framework to provide teachers with the necessary time and resources to enhance their
pedagogical skills. This includes allowing for teacher input and flexibility in what they are
discussing as it relates to the well-being and needs of their students both academic and
psychological. Additionally, this means creating spaces both formal and informal throughout
various modalities of engagement where teachers expertise, knowledge and professionalism are
lifted, shared and spotlighted to enhance their practice. Addressing this impediment is crucial for
fostering an environment where radical love and humanizing practices can flourish, ultimately
benefiting both teachers and students in the elementary school setting of Spring County and
elsewhere. These practices become particularly important when considering the context of the
96
study in the state of Florida. Duhigg (2016) emphasizes the importance of psychological safety
for individual and organizational success, a concept that can be extended to elementary students
through teachers practicing radical love. However, state laws in the study's location restrict the
teaching of diverse cultural histories, creating significant challenges for fostering identityaffirming environments for marginalized students. Jones and Okun (2011) argue for the urgent
need to dismantle White supremacist education systems, as these systems harm the most
vulnerable students, who are also oppressed by current political climates. Teachers face
increasing limitations on addressing student identity, hindering their ability to create affirming
classroom cultures through radical love and Emergent Strategy.
All students deserve nurturing environments where they can develop a love for learning,
supported by educators who demonstrate humanity and celebrate their diverse cultures and
knowledge. In Florida and elsewhere, current political and legislative agendas overshadow and
undermine a central focus on children, their well-being, and teachers as educated professionals,
creating a challenging landscape for educators. It is imperative that educational practices
prioritize student well-being and cultural affirmation (Graham, Powell & Truscott, 2016),
ensuring that every child has the opportunity to thrive in a supportive and inclusive learning
environment.
97
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Appendix A
Screener Survey Tool
Question items will be emailed to elementary school principals at five randomly selected
schools:
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Item Response options* Alignment to radical love
Rank the following items in order of
importance, from most to least
important to you in your professional
practice.
1. Student achievement scores
2. School safety and security
3. Professional development
and opportunities to share
knowledge of pedagogy
4. Student and parent
relationships and well-being
Screener participants will
rank their responses from a
scale of most important to
least.
Teachers who align with a radical
love framework will rank empathy
and student identity validation
higher than more operational aspects
of their job.
Ranking: 4 and 3, then 2 and 1 (may
occur in either order)
Which of these responses most
aligns with how you would handle a
student who is struggling with
behavior and mood in your class?
1. Use calming techniques to
relax the student, then
conference with them about
their behavior
2. Call for administrative
support or the students’
removal from class
3. Ignore the student and
continue with instruction
Screener participants will
choose one of the provided
answers.
Teachers who align with a radical
love framework will respond with an
answer which centers the student and
their needs.
1. Using calming techniques to
relax the student, then
conference with them about
their behavior
How would you respond if one of
your students confided in you that
they were struggling with a piece of
their identity?
Screener participants will
have a short open answer
question.
Teachers who align with radical love
framework will respond to
conversations about student identity
with empathy and compassion.
These teachers will validate the
student and show them support
(driven by the student).
Do you supplement the county’s
adopted curriculum with any
additional resources? If yes, what do
you look for to determine if a
resource is right for your class?
Yes or No
If yes, participants will have a
short response where they
may input what they look for.
Teachers who align with radical love
framework will look to supplement
the current curriculum with
additional resources. These may
include looking for resources in:
● Social emotional learning
● Coping techniques
● Representation of multiple
racial and ethnic groups in
110
Appendix B
Interview Outline and Questions
Aligned Research Question Question Item
Opening Question I’d love to first hear a little about you. If you could share a bit
about yourself, family, educational experience and some things
material selection (authors,
illustrations, stories etc.)
● Home language resources for
English Language Learners
● Alternative narratives and
perspectives for social
studies content
How would you respond to this
question?
“Having positive and loving
relationships with students is more
important to my practice than
achieving high data marks”
Agree or disagree. Teachers who align with radical love
will find this acceptable and agree.
This concept can be explored more
during the interview phase.
Agree
111
you try to prioritize throughout your life.
1. What types of pedagogical practices
are predominantly present in
elementary teachers within Spring
County who practice radical love?
What does radical love as a pedagogical approach mean to
you?
What does it mean to you to practice radical love in your
classroom?
Tell me about the specific pedagogical approaches you use
in your classroom.
● How do you encourage conversation among your
students during formal learning?
● How do you encourage or make space for
conversation for students during independent or
group learning tasks?
● When you have a student who is experiencing a
negative feeling (i.e anger or sadness) how do you
respond? How do your students respond?
Probe for the following specific and relevant radical love
aligned pedagogical practices:
● Common language for clear communication
● Clear expectations and consistency of teacher
behavior
● Using empathy in conversations with students
● Legitimizing students’ life and community
knowledge and experiences outside of school as
valuable
● Teacher is encouraging, high expectations
communicated to students
2. How do teachers who engage in radical
love practices perceive the impact that
pedagogy has on students'
psychological safety and sense of
belonging?
How do you perceive your students feel at school?
How would you describe the atmosphere of your classroom?
What, if any, common phrases do you hear your students using
within your classroom to communicate with you? To
communicate with each other?
How do you see the pedagogical approaches you use to
practice radical love in your classroom impacting students’
psychological safety and sense of belonging, if at all?
Can you give me a couple of specific examples of this?
112
3. How and where, if at all, do teachers
share these practices among their
colleagues to spread radical love?
Where do you feel you spend the most time discussing
classroom practices with other teachers?
For example, mostly informal conversation, teachers
lounge etc. or more formal settings such as PLCs?
Follow up: What do you discuss?
To what extent do you feel like your colleagues are open to
sharing ideas about how to create belonging and
psychological safety among students in their classrooms?
How and where, if at all, do you share the practices we have
discussed today with your colleagues?
Appendix C
Interview Protocol and Script
Protocol
“Good afternoon. I wanted to extend my gratitude for your participation in this study. I
understand that you have other commitments and appreciate you granting me the time and
113
thought to answer my interview questions. Our interview will likely take between 40 and 60
minutes, is now still a good time to talk?
As we begin, I would like to state again what the inquiry of this study is intended to
provide insight into. I am a current student at University of Southern California and am
conducting research for my dissertation to understand how elementary school teachers create
safe learning environments for their students. I have chosen to interview because of your role as
a classroom teacher, and your scored responses on the results of the survey you received via
email from your principal. If I have your consent, I would like to record our conversation so that
I may ensure I analyze your responses with fidelity. The recording is not shared with or played
for anyone outside of myself, without your consent, and will not be submitted with the
dissertation. If you are uncomfortable with any of what I have outlined, please let me know.
Before we engage in this conversation, I want to reassure you my role today in our
interview is solely as a researcher. I will not be evaluating your responses with any judgment to
how you perform in your position as a teacher. Instead, my goal through these questions is to
understand your perspective and experience as well as how you perceive the experiences of the
students within your classroom. Our interview will be confidential and your identity will be
protected throughout the research process. All information gathered from our conversation and
regarding your identity will be deidentified throughout the analysis and writing process to protect
your privacy and identity. If at any point in our interview you would like to ask a question, stop
the recording or cease the interview, please let me know. You have the right to revoke your
consent to the interview or to being recorded at any time. Do you have any questions for me
before we begin?
Closing
114
I want to express my gratitude again for your time this afternoon. I appreciate the energy
and thought you put into your responses, as well as your openness to this interview. The insight
you have shared will be very helpful in furthering research that will provide teachers with
potentially promising practices for work with elementary aged students. Do I have your
permission to follow up with you, through your preferred contact method, should any
clarification questions arise about a part of our conversation? If you have any questions or
concerns, please reach out to me via phone or email, and thank you very much again for your
time.
Abstract (if available)
Abstract
This study applies radical love theory and emergent strategy to understand how elementary school teachers can create positive, affirming classroom environments for students from currently and historically marginalized communities. The purpose of this study was to understand what radical love pedagogical practices look like, how teachers who implement radical love aligned pedagogy may observe students experiencing more psychological safety and belonging at school, and how these practices are and can be shared with others. Using data collected from a screener tool distributed to five schools in Spring County, Florida participants were selected and interviewed based on self-reported alignment with radical love practices. Data collected from interviews were explored for potential positive practices towards achieving all elementary students experiencing psychological safety at school. Findings from this study will provide teachers working in contentious political environments with pedagogical tools to promote students’ well-being at school. Data suggested that teachers who practice pedagogy aligned with tenets of radical love, such as empathy and understanding, report increased perceptions of students’ belonging and comfort in their classroom environment. The study conclusions encourage further exploration of how pedagogical practices aligned in radical love have a positive impact on particularly vulnerable and marginalized students’ sense of psychological safety in the classroom.
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Schwartz, Maria
(author)
Core Title
Impact of elementary grade teachers practicing radical love in Florida classrooms
School
Rossier School of Education
Degree
Doctor of Education
Degree Program
Educational Leadership (On Line)
Degree Conferral Date
2024-08
Publication Date
08/14/2024
Defense Date
08/06/2024
Publisher
Los Angeles, California
(original),
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
belonging,elementary teachers,emergent strategy,OAI-PMH Harvest,pedagogy,psychological safety,radical love,teacher collaboration
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theses
(aat)
Language
English
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Electronically uploaded by the author
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Advisor
Krop, Cathy (
committee chair
), Gothold, Paul (
committee member
), Green, Alan (
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)
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Tags
belonging
elementary teachers
emergent strategy
pedagogy
psychological safety
radical love
teacher collaboration