PACTS: critical dispositions necessary for a culturally responsive and transformative school, family, and community partnership for Black Pan-African immigrant students and families
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This study highlights a culturally responsive transformative school, family, and community partnership in the Western Region of the United States. The partnership served over 100 students and 300 parents of Black Pan-African immigrant descent responding to persistent school alienation. Using Critical Race Theory, Community Cultural Wealth, and a critical participatory action research design, we explored the structural forces shaping these experiences and the community-based responses that sought to resist them. Data sources included professional development sessions, counter-storytelling, Theater of the Oppressed, asset mapping, and semi-structured interviews. Findings revealed key partnership members centered five dispositions—Prophetic Activism, Asset-Based Ideology, Critical Consciousness, Trust, and Solidarity—collectively theorized as PACTS, in response to multiple forms of alienation intersecting Black Pan-African families experienced in schools. These dispositions represent a spiritually, culturally, and politically grounded praxis that disrupted systemic marginalization and help reimagine school, family and community partnerships as sites of collective care, resistance, and justice. Theoretically, we advance “spiritual wealth” as a justice-contingent extension in Community Cultural Wealth. Methodologically, we recommend Black Indigenous approach’s centering African knowledge producers. Practically, we provide an audit tool to assess weather partnerships are transformative.
Institutions: Michigan State University, Portland State University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7154752014