Basketball as Pedagogy: A Black Feminist Narrative Inquiry Rooted in the Perspective of a Point Guard in Toronto, Canada

Abstract

This article employs Black feminist narrative inquiry to examine basketball as a pedagogical and worldmaking space in the life of a Black queer woman academic in Toronto. Drawing on lived experiences as a former point guard, the study traces how experiences cultivated through basketball can build leadership, resiliency, community, and social advocacy. The narrative documents how basketball skills have influenced and shape pedagogical practice, scholarly identity, and approaches to mentorship. Situating the game of basketball as an informal educational site, the article explores how learning on the basketball court translates into relational teaching, student-centered pedagogy, and knowledge creation within higher education. Basketball emerges as a sanctuary, pedagogy, and site of resistance and possibilities amid intersecting structures of anti-Black racism, gendered exclusion, and academic precarity. The article engages on broader questions of sport, education, and identity formation, particularly in relation to Black girls’ participation and belonging. By centering Black women lived experiences as legitimate knowledge, this narrative inquiry contributes to scholarship on critical pedagogy, Black Feminist thought, and sport-based education. The article argues that exploring the game of basketball can expand how educators and researchers rethink learning, leadership, and worldmaking within and beyond formal schooling contexts.