Research on Community-Based Professional Development and the Politics of Profanity
November 2013
Vajra Watson, director of research and policy for equity, published an article titled “Censoring Freedom: Community- Based Professional Development and the Politics of Profanity” in Equity & Excellence in Education, Vol. 46, Issue 3, 2013. In the Special Issue: Social Justice Approaches to African American Language and Literary Practices, Watson documents the tensions rising from a program that encourages youth to write and perform poetry that taps into their lived experiences in tough neighborhoods and often contains profanity.
“Issues of propriety and language usages unveiled deep rifts between who students were as individuals and who educators wanted them to be as learners,” wrote Watson. The article is available at www.tandfonline.com.
