Black girl embodied motivation: A critically, race-gender reimagined motivation theory

There is a pressing need to re-evaluate current motivation theories to incorporate race and gender in non-trivial and celebratory ways. In this paper, we address a longstanding gap in the educational psychology literature by introducing a critically, race-gender reimagined motivation framework created specifically for investigating the academic motivation of Black girls. We call this framework Black Girl Embodied Motivation (BGEM). BGEM consists of five core concepts that are grounded and bounded within matrices of domination governed by gendered racism: (1) multiplicative identities, (2) multiplicative consciousnesses, (3) expectancies for the social and material conditions of success, (4) Black Girl Joy, and (5) embodied decisions. In this work, we explore these five components of BGEM, offer a systematic process for critically, race-gender reimagining other educational psychology theories, and discuss the implications of our theory for anti-racist research, practice, and policy in educational psychology.