(2024). Education Policy Is Spatial Policy: Using Spatial Imaginaries to Enhance Education Policy Research. Policy Futures in Education, v22 n5 p826-845. Education policy scholars must consider spatial theories and related methodologies. Spatial theories encourage rich understandings of education policy because education and place are intimately connected. This article shows how scholars can use "spatial imaginaries" to enhance knowledge of place and education policy. We explain these connections in three ways. First, we outline theoretical concepts and analytical considerations of spatial imaginaries. Second, we provide examples of lines of inquiry related to spatial imaginaries and education policy. Third, we consider methodological techniques. Education policy is spatial policy, so building theory and methods about place and education policy is vital to the field…. [Direct]
(2007). Situating Texas School Finance Policy in a CRT Framework: How "Substantially Equal" Yields Racial Inequity. Educational Administration Quarterly, v43 n5 p525-558. Purpose: The purpose of this article is to conduct a critical race policy analysis of Texas school finance policy. This empirical article examines three chapters of the Texas education code (TEC) and identifies the racial effects that the school funding system has on seven majority-Mexican American school districts. Methodology: Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Latina/o Critical (LatCrit) theoretical frameworks are employed in this article in which race and property are highlighted as concepts central to the analysis. The methodology allows for a critical perspective on history and the racial effects of policy to be outlined. First, a historical analysis of race and racism, schooling, and politics in Texas contextualizes the debate over school finance equity. Second, an analysis of the effects that the school finance system has on communities of color is completed. Analysis and Findings: An examination of primarily 2002-2003 school finance data, Texas Supreme Court opinions, and TEC… [Direct]
(2011). Stories of Self, Stories of Practice: Enacting a Vision of Socially Just Pedagogy for Latino Youth. Teaching Education, v22 n3 p239-254. This narrative inquiry examines how one Latina novice teacher articulates and implements a vision of teaching for social justice within the contexts of her teacher education program and her practice as a bilingual resource teacher. Informed by Latino/a critical race (LatCrit) theory, the analysis traces connections between stories of self and practice, focusing on her development of an innovative middle school literacy course for Spanish speakers. This article highlights the ways in which she recruits her experiences as a member of a marginalized group and brings them to bear on practice in the crafting of a critical pedagogy that takes learners' interests and concerns as central while encouraging social action. Findings are discussed in light of the following themes: critical questioning and resistance; analysis of systems of oppression and positioning; and encouraging social action and practicing democracy. This study has implications for teacher preparation committed to socially… [Direct]
(2021). Unpacking and Interrogating White Supremacy Educating for Critical Consciousness and Praxis. Whiteness and Education, v6 n1 p60-74. This article draws on theoretical frameworks that work to unpack and challenge white supremacy and hegemonic whiteness. The first section discusses the importance of contextualising ones' standpoint and positionality, demonstrating how both are interconnected to critical self-reflexivity, educating for critical consciousness, and praxis. Part two unpacks the "walls of whiteness," reinforcing the ways in which university education placates and upholds racial domination by failing to present and challenge systemic and institutional racism and white supremacy. Section three engages with a multi-faceted theoretical framework that aims to interrogate institutional and hegemonic whiteness discussed in section two. Here, I draw on the work of Mills, Leonardo, and Ladson-Billings, who all offer provocative arguments regarding the sustainability and omnipresent nature of racial domination through the Racial Contract and the Education Debt. Finally, section four considers some of the… [Direct]
(2023). Provincializing White Racial Ideology: Mills' Social Ontology and Philosophy of Education. Theory and Research in Education, v21 n1 p33-51 Mar. Social ontology examines the nature and mechanisms in human society of concepts that pertain to various kinds of social collectivities. A pioneer in the development of this philosophical field, Mills theorised a social metaphysics of "racial constructivism" for modern philosophy in order to explain the enduring orthodoxies of its Anglo-centric dominance. This paper invokes the term, supervenience, to further elucidate the causal bearing of race on individual and social facts. Turning to the philosophy of education, the ontological bifurcation of asymmetrical racial worlds is a salient divide to which discourses of normative individual ethics, analytic critical thinking, and generalized social justice contribute. Given the pervasiveness of supervenience, in the unwillingness to traffic in the ontology of race, educational philosophy hamstrings the creative and critical dimensions of advancing education for a racially equitable and pluralistic democracy…. [Direct]
(2023). Transformative Learning and Ideological Shifts: Implications for Pedagogy for the Privileged. Journal of Transformative Education, v21 n2 p283-302 Apr. Blood spilling into the streets in Charlottesville in August 2017 during a "Unite the Right" white supremacist rally, an August 2019 murderous rampage targeting Latinos at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, and the most recent January 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol represent only a few of the violent events that have occurred in the past 5 years initiated by far-right white supremacists. Fringe and violent behaviors do not exist in a vacuum. Every day, privileged white folks adhere to hegemonic ideals and engage in racist transgressions that stoke the fires of extreme violence. Significantly, however, some members of the privileged class eventually reject racist ideology and emerge as activists for marginalized populations. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of Pedagogy for the Privileged, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Transformative Learning Theory, and Critical Whiteness Studies, this paper asks the question: What facilitates a significant ideological shift?… [Direct]
(2023). Racial Justice and the Emotional Dichotomy: Reading Emotion in Critical Educators' Narratives on Politics and Policy amid Protest. Journal of School Leadership, v33 n4 p343-354 Jul. In this essay, we contend that there continues to be a lack of attentiveness in educational leadership and policy to addressing how critical educators "emotionally" navigate social and political issues generally, and racism particularly–both of which are emotional issues. As such, using brief examples of reflections from critical educators in urban educational leadership, we conduct a theoretical textual analysis of "emotions" in a time of heightened emotion, using the 2015 Baltimore Uprising as a case. In our critical-humanities-oriented essay, we focus on documenting narratives as large social concerns. Our theoretical treatment of emotion reveals the ways such treatments can be applied to school leadership for the purposes of praxis on critical practice in times of widespread conflict. These concerns include matters of emotional labor in educational sites (as microspaces permeated by racial turmoil unfolding in macrospaces). We foreground how racial… [Direct]
(2023). 'Demonstrable Experience of Being a "Mammy" or "Crazy Black Bitch"' (Essential). A Critical Race Feminist Approach to Understanding Black Women Headteachers' Experiences in English Schools. Race, Ethnicity and Education, v26 n3 p318-334. This paper builds on the emerging, but significant scholarship of Critical Race Feminism (CRF) in education. It adds to the literature in this area by applying the theoretical and methodological underpinnings to the British education context where such applications are vanishingly small in favour of broader critical race applications. Supported by racialised and gendered images of professional Black women in leadership roles as the analytical standpoint for understanding a Black woman Headteacher's experiences in an English school, this paper argues that Black women's tenure and trajectories are underpinned by the white racial colonial logics of the "Mammy, Crazy Black Bitch, Superwoman" and/or "Feisty Sapphire." In so doing, institutional racism continues to underpin "and undermine" Black women Headteachers' leadership potential, experiences and outcomes…. [Direct]
(2023). Reeling and Healing from Hate Speech: Student Affairs Professionals of Color Share Post-Pandemic Imaginations for Community Colleges. Educational Studies: Journal of the American Educational Studies Association, v59 n2 p163-183. Throughout history, people have united to demand change and accountability in the face of injustice. Although freedom of speech and assembly rights have been essential in uplifting and empowering marginalized communities throughout history, it is important to name the existence of speech that seeks to expand rights and speech which aims to restrict rights. Hate speech occurrences have increased dramatically since 2016 and many scholars cite college campuses as a specialized place for hate and social movements. Despite this increase in incidents and scholarly attention focused on on-campus hate speech, there is a gap in knowledge regarding those staff members who oversee hate speech incidents as people of color, especially those who work in community colleges. Utilizing a Critical Race Study lens, this study explored how student affairs professionals of color in California community college settings experience and navigate hate speech and White supremacy. Through eight collective… [Direct]
(2023). Adopting a Critical Lens: A Conceptual Framework for Analyzing Local School Resources. Journal of Education Human Resources, v41 n3 p594-623 Jul. Current studies of school finance equity focus on quantitative approaches to understanding resource disparities. Analyses of school resources that capture stakeholder perceptions and values are better positioned to critically examine the historical, cultural, and political significance of different types of school resources. The purpose of this article is to advance a framework for analyzing school resources at the site level through a critical lens. We propose a novel conceptual framework, which we refer to as the "Critical School Level Resources" framework, to capture how local school stakeholders, specifically principals, teachers, and families, understand, allocate, and use school resources. Our hope is to see this framework push the field's conceptualization of resources to include qualitative and critical approaches, in addition to quantitative or a-critical metrics, while incorporating more stakeholders in the evaluation of resources at their schools…. [Direct]
(2023). The Intersections of Individuals and Institutions: Critical Engagement, Consciousness, and Whiteness in Teacher Preparation. SoJo Journal: Educational Foundations and Social Justice Education, v9 n1 p1-23. Drawing on critical Whiteness studies (CWS) alongside theories of engagement and critical consciousness, we share the story of two student teachers (STs) who were identified as "fully engaged" during urban student teaching. At the program level, results indicate that the STs' teacher preparation program favored compliant engagement over rebellion and reinforces and recenters White-dominant norms and ideologies. Looking specifically at the STs' experiences, both engaged in relationship building, resisted curriculum, and felt a sense of responsibility to and for their students. Despite these similarities, only one of the student teacher's stories included enactments of criticality while the other displayed more dysconscious ways of doing/being in the field. Implications for how we conceptualize student teacher engagement within teacher preparation programs, including how to support student teachers to engage critically during field experiences, are shared…. [Direct]
(2023). Exploring Literary Responses to Culturally Relevant Texts through an AsianCrit Lens: A Collective Case Study of Chinese American Students in a Community-Based Book Club. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of South Carolina. Building on AsianCrit, reader response theory, and critical literacy perspective, this dissertation study investigated how second-generation Chinese American students at age eight to twelve respond to culturally relevant texts which portray contemporary and historical Chinese American people's lives and experiences in the United States. In addition, this study explored how these students negotiate their understanding of race, racism, and anti-Asian racism through associating with the stories, their everyday experiences, family traditions, and interactions with peers and researchers in a community-based book club. Specifically, this study examined how students of Chinese descent respond to xenophobia, discrimination, and racism towards Asian people, especially people of Chinese descent, during the COVID-19 pandemic through reading a text set and news related to COVID-19 and hate crimes. Situated within a critical theory paradigm, this single-site, collective case study forefronted and… [Direct]
(2006). The Meaning of "Brown"… for Now. Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, v105 n2 p298-315 Oct. The last few years (2004-05) have been filled with commemoration, reflection, and scholarship around the landmark Supreme Court decision, "Brown v. Board of Education" (1954). It was right and proper to take a 50-year retrospective at one of the more significant court rulings of the 20th century. It was also important to look at the decision in relationship to the current conditions of U.S. public schools and to ask what meaning "Brown" has for contemporary schooling. In this chapter, the author uses the theoretical lens of Critical Race Theory (CRT) to interrogate the "Brown" decisions (both 1954 and 1955) to consider what they mean for education today. The author looks at three scenarios that respond to the question of whether or not "Brown" could be decided in the same manner today as it was decided in 1954. (Contains 3 notes.)… [Direct]
(2024). Whiteness as Property in Music Education: Considering the Acceptance of Hamilton: An American Musical. Whiteness and Education, v9 n1 p105-122. In consideration of white music educators' perceptions of and engagement with matters of race and music, the purpose of this qualitative study was to problematise the acceptance and valuation of "Hamilton", and possible hypervaluation of Whiteness through the perceptions and experiences of eight White music educators who were fans of the show. The research was guided by the following questions: (1) Does this acceptance of "Hamilton" reflect the repertoire and cultures included in their music curricula?; (2) Does "Hamilton" function as propertized Whiteness thereby deeming it worthy of inclusion in music education settings?; and (3) Does the experience that is "Hamilton" pass as white, therefore making it feel comfortable and accessible to white music educators commonly uncomfortable with rap music? Interviews were analysed using a framework of whiteness as property including: rights of disposition, rights to use and enjoyment, reputation as… [Direct]
(2024). A Path toward Racial Justice in Education: Anti-Racist Policy Decision Making in School Districts. Educational Policy, v38 n7 p1526-1562. The U.S. education system has been a critical site in the nation's ongoing fight for racial equity. Yet, despite many attempts to promote equity within and across schools, efforts fall short in a system designed to uphold norms rooted in whiteness and white supremacy. We need anti-racist educational leaders who can identify and push back at the racial bias embedded in educational policies. Through a research-practice partnership with a Midwestern high school, we sought to understand how an anti-racist policy decision-making protocol can be used to redress inequitable policies to be racially just. The anti-racist policy decision-making protocol promotes social justice by empowering school practitioners to become policy agents. Implications from our findings point to the need for school practitioners to be critically introspective and identify and directly address the politics of whiteness that can ensue when working in partnership to do anti-racist policy change…. [Direct]