Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

Beverly Daniel Tatum 217
Therefore, same-race students who gravitate and cling to each other are simply duplicating what
the hegemonic society has unconsciously as well as consciously set up as an accepted comfort
zone. Minorities who are thus encapsulated by various overt and covert acts of racism on a daily
basis, for example in the movies, the media, their communities, and their school environments,
are prone to gravitate toward each other in specific contextual circumstances. With a barrage of
negative information, black youth are all but commandeered to make inappropriate assumptions
about their worth and identity. The possibility to exceed seemingly predetermined boundaries
and customized zones of learning in this limited claustrophobic space is thus threatened by these
overwhelming factors. Again, the social dynamics of race profoundly shape the concerns of
educational psychology.
Lev Vygotsky espouses that it is possible to create our own Zones of Proximal Development
(ZPDs). ZPDs are zones or spaces that scaffold learners to higher-knowledge plateaus with the
capacity to be custom designed to suit the needs of the individual. They can be orchestrated to
address individual needs, with the possibility of extrapolating a variety of existing useful items
and incorporating new items for the purpose of reconstructing the existing “what is.” In a school
environment as well as in a predominately white community, blacks can customize their space
in some cases, as Tatum suggests, with bringing family members into the experience, in order
to expedite the possibility of transformative change. But if we are, in fact, to make this change
happen, we must not look at racism as a type of cancer that is incurable and prevalent throughout
the land or we might not recognize a glimmer of hope when we see it. Instead, it seems we might
have to redefine racism as a society in order to move toward change as well as encourage the field
of educational psychology to expand its racial empathy and insight and deal with issues of race
and racism.
Tatum herself defines racism as a system of advantage based on race. She uses the world like
an artist’s palate to paint a picture of this definition by discussing the advantages of race for
one group as compared to the disadvantages of another and, in doing so, she expounds on the
ever-present societal racist overtones. In addition, she erases fragmented thoughts and jargon and
concentrates on the interconnected nature of the world and how racism fits into the schemata. The
results of seeing the connected nature of little incidents is the realization that life’s patterns and
relationships are intertwined and at some point enmesh together to form a bigger picture. Thus,
insights gained from merged relationships can be the catalyst for future possibilities, and Tatum’s
work inspires this level of emergent possibilities.
In keeping with Tatum’s emergent possibilities, one might consider Kincheloe, Steinberg, and
Tippins (1998) term critical constructivism, introduced in their book The Stigma of Genius,
which involves critical consciousness of the social construction of self and society. Critical
constructivism involves taking a critical stance that is open to acknowledging the existence of
power in relation to and corresponding to the “real” world that is enveloped in the web of reality.
It equates the major conflicts and recurring issues of race as due to the lack of self-reflection and
exploration of origin as well as to the presence of the hegemonic societal umbrella that pervades
all parameters of space. In short, critical constructivism embodies principles to explore in order to
move from the “what is” and ultimately get to the “what could be” in relation to the multifaceted
aspects of race relations and racism in today’s world. I argue that tacit aspects of school culture
and damaging societal myths can find an avenue for exploration and open expression with an
alignment of critical constructivism and educational psychology.
The ability to question representatives of and sources of power is a basic tenet of critical
constructivism. In this sense, Tatum as a critical constructivist, in Kincheloe’s words, approaches
“world making” from a united, cohesive standpoint by connecting the micro, meso, and
macro world representations and thereby acknowledging the multidimensional sources of power
and their effects on selfhood. Essentially, she abandons traditional reductionistic methods of