When Love is Action: A Critical Love Ethic Praxis Framework for Educator Practice in Secondary Schools

Abstract

This qualitative study examined how educators and school-based staff understand and enact a love ethic as a framework for supporting Black and Latino boys in secondary education. Grounded in bell hooks' conceptualization of a love ethic and CRT's structural critique of inequitable schooling, this study responds to the persistent misinterpretation of student behavior among Black and Latino boys and the overreliance on punitive, compliance-driven disciplinary practices in schooling contexts shaped by layered stressors and traumas, including homelessness, immigration fear, family instability, and mental health crises. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and reflective journaling with five secondary educators and school-based staff, using a narrative inquiry design guided by the six tenets of a love ethic: care, commitment, trust, responsibility, respect, and knowledge. Four findings emerged: Relational Presence and Emotional Attunement as the foundation of all engagement; A Love Ethic as Disruptive and Counter-Systemic Practice, in which educators actively challenged compliance-driven norms and deficit-based interpretations of Black and Latino boys; Emotional Labor and Boundaries in Loving Work, naming the structural cost of this work and the necessity of boundary-setting as a condition of sustainability; and Centering Identity and Humanity Through a Love Ethic, which positioned affirmation not as supplemental care but as a corrective to disproportionate misinterpretation and exclusion. This study introduces Critical Love Ethic Praxis, a framework that intertwines hooks' love ethic with CRT's structural analysis, contributing to existing scholarship on love, care, and equity in education by demonstrating that relational presence, enacted daily through the six tenets, is not supplemental to equitable schooling but its foundation.