(2021). Understanding the Experiences of Black College Students in the Current Era. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, Purdue University. Mental health concerns of college students are important due to their developmental and life stages and adjustment challenges they must navigate in a new and difficult environment. Compared to students of other ethnicities, Black college students in the United States have historically reported poorer mental health outcomes with higher risk for depression and anxiety than their non-Black counterparts (McClain et al., 2016; Mushonga & Henneberger, 2019). The African American activism work done by Black college students has become increasingly visible and influential since the creation of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and student protests aimed at improving university climates for minority students. Using Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a framework, this study investigated the roles of racial identity attitudes and sociopolitical attitudes on the relationships between race-related stress and mental health, and race-related stress and African American activism for Black college… [Direct]
(2021). Creating, Passing, and Protecting a Racially Equitable Higher Education Social Policy Program: A Critical Historical Case Study of a State's Policymaking Process and Its Participants. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, Brandeis University, The Heller School for Social Policy and Management. This dissertation examines a social policy exemplar case in New York State's education policy history, the legislation that established the NY State Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge (SEEK) program. This presently upheld state legislation passed in July 1966 to increase college access, retention, and degree attainment of students of color by fully funding holistic, pipeline programming for City University of New York (CUNY) students. This historical case study explores how stakeholders, specifically CUNY staff and students, were involved in creating and preserving SEEK within state legislation. This dissertation uses Critical Race Theory and a social constructivist grounded theory and situational analysis approach to analyze and map multisite data, including: archived NY State and CUNY records and documents, newspaper articles, documentaries, autobiographies, and taped oral histories collected from key informants (including former CUNY employees, students, and elected… [Direct]
(2018). (Re)Centering Quality in Early Childhood Education: Toward Intersectional Justice for Minoritized Children. Review of Research in Education, v42 n1 p203-225 Mar. In this chapter, we offer a critical intersectional analysis of quality in early childhood education with the aim of moving away from a singular understanding of "best practice," thereby interrupting the inequities such a concept fosters. While acknowledging how injustices are intersectionally constructed, we specifically identified critical race theory as a counterstory to White supremacy, culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogies as counterstories to monocultural teaching practices grounded in deficit and inferiority paradigms, and translanguaging as a counterstory to the (over)privileging of dominant American English monolingualism. While each of these counterstories forefronts one particular dimension of oppression, together they account for multiple, intersecting systems of oppressions; combined, they expand the cartography of early childhood education and serve to (re)center the definition of quality on the lives, experiences, voices, and values of multiply… [Direct]
(2018). New Programmatic Possibilities: (Re) Positioning Preservice Teachers of Color as Experts in Their Own Learning. Teacher Education Quarterly, v45 n4 p51-71 Fall. Efforts to recruit and retain Teachers of Color are rarely accompanied by policy and programmatic changes that adequately address their unique learning needs. In this article, I propose a framework that draws on sociocultural learning theory and Critical Race Theory to examine how programmatic structures embedded in a racially structured society marginalize the learning needs of preservice Teachers of Color committed to social justice. Recognizing a need to challenge racially hierarchical learning models within teacher preparation programs, I utilize my proposed framework to consider new programmatic possibilities when preservice Teachers of Color are simultaneously positioned as experts and learners in one another's student teaching experiences. Through a qualitative analysis of the peer learning experiences between two preservice Teachers of Color, in this study, I offer conceptual tools to examine the complex intersections and tensions between learning structures, social… [PDF]
(2018). Where Is the Equity? Different States, Different Hurdles and Rules for International Students: Affordability of and Access to U.S. Higher Education for International Students. Commission for International Adult Education, Paper presented at the American Association for Adult and Continuing Education (AAACE) Commission for International Adult Education (CIAE) Annual Pre-Conference (67th, Myrtle Beach, SC, Sep 30-Oct 2, 2018). Recent reports reveal that due to many factors, the U.S. has experienced an unprecedented decline in attracting new international students (IIE, 2017) in higher education. In addition to obvious changes in the political climate and competition, national and institutional barriers contribute to this phenomenon. Other countries, specifically Australia, Canada, and England are seeing their international student population increase while the United States continues to show a consistent decline over the last 10 years. Moreover, the cost of attendance, fees, and additional charges applied to foreign students, vary by dozens of thousands of dollars on institutional or state levels (SHEEO, 2008; US News, 2012). Examining international student residency classification issues from a critical race theory perspective, this study included an institutional survey and quantitative analysis of institutional, state, and federal policies. Our objectives were to (1) examine the costs associated with… [PDF]
(2018). A Cross-Cultural Experience of Microaggression in Academia: A Personal Reflection. Education as Change, v22 n3 Artcile 3132. Microaggression is defined as subtle and often unconscious or automatic actions or statements made towards a discriminated group. It causes distress, anxiety and isolation. Microaggression can often lead to demoralisation and a feeling that one is in a constant psychological warfare. It is also ubiquitous in nature. This paper is a reflection on my experiences of microaggression as a black female academic gathered from working in six universities across five countries and two continents. I use autoethnography underscored by critical race theory thinking. The reflection has a multicultural face and is done in light of the extant literature on gendered, racial and non-native microaggression in the academic world. I find close similarities in my experiences with others. I conclude that microaggressions are ubiquitous and are inevitable in a multicultural setting. Victims need to acknowledge microaggressions and be assertive in order to mitigate the associated negative effects. Further,… [Direct]
(2018). Leaving the Barrio and Entering the Culture of College: Padilla Testimonios. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, v40 n4 p391-413 Nov. This study uses a testimonios research methodology to explore the familial origins of educational resilience and to report on the entering into the culture of college by four brothers in a Latin@ family, all of whom earned advanced degrees and pursued careers in psychology, medicine, literature, and law. In addition, LatCrit, a theoretical framework that derives from critical theory and critical race theory with added dimensions of language, immigration, ethnicity, and culture, offered an analytical lens. The matriarch of the family is highlighted to show the positive impact on the brothers' educational trajectory as a result of her advocacy for their education and her strong sense of ethnic pride. His working-class background, which created the essential family stability and which provided the economic support for a Catholic school education for his sons, characterizes the patriarch. The family testimonios address the value of education, tenacity despite an absence of college… [Direct]
(2023). "Digital Underground": A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of K-12 Black-Oriented EdTech. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, Howard University. Education technology, commonly referred to as EdTech, is used to provide an immersive mediated learning experience for students. Earlier scholarship has suggested that education technologies are more than instructional materials containing factual information (Apple & Christian-Smith (1991). They have become channels of communication (Webcrawler, 2013) that convey messages concerning political, economic, and cultural knowledge (Apple & Christian-Smith, 1991). As such, scholars have found that mainstream educational technology in its print, audiovisual, and digital media forms reinforce dominant discourses of race and contribute to the further marginalization of Black students. Conversely, Black-oriented education technology has been established to counter the marginalized status of the Black community within the education system by centering Black socio-historical realities amongst educational content (Young, 1999). Young (1999) examined Black-oriented education technologies… [Direct]
(2023). Professional Identity Development among Counselor Educators In-Training: The Impact of Privilege Awareness and the Intersectionality of Social Identities. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of Memphis. In counseling education, one learns the unique ability to help people from all walks of life with a never-ending list of human endeavors. This dissertation explored the lived experiences of counselor educators in training and how their privileged and/or marginalized social identities impacted their professional identity. Though this dissertation explored all social identities, the primary focus was race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. The importance of looking at all aspects of a person and how experiences with privilege and marginalization impact a person, including their professional identity, is explained in the literature review as well as the need for more research regarding addressing privilege and marginalization in counseling. A phenomenological qualitative method was employed to grasp the phenomenon of counselor educators' professional identity development and the undeniable impact of experience with privilege and marginalization. This research was developed and… [Direct]
(2023). Black Studies: White Students. The Impact of Black Studies in Two Predominately White High Schools in Massachusetts. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Massachusetts Boston. "Studying history will sometimes Disturb you. Studying history will sometimes Upset you. Studying history will sometimes make you Furious. But if studying history always makes you feel proud and happy, you probably aren't studying History." Author Unknown. This study occurred during a period of increased social awareness of antiracism, yet in a time of intense educational controversy. As tension rises across the United States over teaching Black studies (African American studies) and banning books by Black authors, such as Toni Morrison's "Beloved" and the classic "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by notable author, Maya Angelou, debates have sparked on whether learning the history of Black people in K-12 classrooms causes White students to feel guilty for America's past atrocities against Black people. Therefore, by focusing on the impact of White high school students enrolled in Black studies courses in Massachusetts, this study examined how the… [Direct]
(2023). Context Is Everything: How School Leaders' Experiences Impact Social, Emotional, and Academic among African American Secondary Students Living in Impoverished Communities. ProQuest LLC, Ed.D. Dissertation, The George Washington University. One of the most discussed topics in the education space is the achievement gap. More specifically, research has looked at the achievement gap between African American students and White students, which despite gains, has continued to widen (US Department of Education, 2019). Even though there is widely-cited research on the achievement gap, it places the blame for the gap on students and schools without considering students' context. Current research emphasizes the challenges of African American students living in impoverished communities, but the strategies that school leaders use to support these students are relatively under-researched. Emerging research suggests that the strategies implemented by school leaders to support their African American students living in impoverished communities have specific commonalities (Crow et al., 2014; Khalifa et al., 2016; Ladson-Billings et al., 1995; Shields, 2020). To better understand how secondary school leaders in poverty-stricken… [Direct]
(2022). Bridging Antiracist Opportunities for Inclusive Diversity with Equity, Access and Accountability (IDEAA) between Individuals and Institutions. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Colorado at Denver. Advocates for inclusive diversity with equity, access and accountability (IDEAA) are often torn between individual-level change and institutional-level change processes. Similarly, antiracist scholarship spans individual-level and institutional-level efforts towards antiracism. In discipline-based education research (DBER) in microbiology education, most of the literature is focused on the individual-level, with IDEAA efforts aimed at students and faculty. While individual-level accountability is important because, without acknowledging individual contributions to racism, those with power and privilege evade responsibility, institutional-level approaches aimed at policy change align more with antiracist scholarship such as critical race theory (CRT) and Kendi's (2019) theory of antiracism. This thesis aimed to characterize potential antiracist approaches towards IDEAA at the individual- and the institution-level as it applies to the microbiology education community. This was done by… [Direct]
(2017). Distinctiveness, Deference and Dominance in Black Caribbean Fathers' Engagement with Public Schools in London and New York City. Gender and Education, v29 n5 p594-613. In the US and UK, Black fatherhood has long been steeped in narratives of pathology. Despite the promotion of nuanced understandings of Black fatherhood in recent scholarship, research on Black fathers' positive engagement with urban schools remains remarkably limited. This article adds to the literature by highlighting the strategies Black Caribbean fathers deploy to challenge assumptions about their identities and involvement. Based on 20 in-depth interviews with 10 Caribbean immigrant fathers in London and New York City, the analysis rendered utilises Critical Race Theory to highlight how some Black men attempt to counter racial subordination through masculine domination, particularly when engaging with white female teachers. The empirical analysis reveals that groups of Caribbean immigrant fathers draw on three common strategies to offset negative stereotypes about their engagement and assert their masculinities–namely, distinctiveness, deference and dominance…. [Direct]
(2017). Becoming a Race-Conscious Social Studies Teacher: The Influence of Personal and Professional Experiences. Social Studies, v108 n6 p249-260. In this interpretive case study the researchers examined the beliefs of 13 self-identifying race-conscious secondary social studies teachers from diverse racial or ethnic, gender, and school-context backgrounds. The researchers found that the teachers' beliefs and views of practice were generally aligned with the main assertions of critical race theory. The teachers described their personal and professional experiences as a major influence on their race-conscious beliefs and views of practice. Moreover, teachers in diverse contexts described having to learn how to navigate the different racial experiences of the students in their classrooms, while teachers in racially segregated contexts (predominately White, Black, or Latino) emphasized the importance of teaching their students about others. Finally, despite the teachers' regular integration of race-related issues into their required and elective courses, they expressed a desire to have more opportunities to teach about race…. [Direct]
(2017). Disrupting Equilibrium: Working for Equity and Social Justice in Education for English Learners. International Journal of Multicultural Education, v19 n1 p7-23. Many states in the western United States have seen an increase in the immigrant population. One state, in particular, has seen its foreign-born population increase 64.7% from 2000 to 2013. This increase in cultural and linguistic diversity foregrounds the 2013 passage of a specific Senate bill that "enacts provisions providing English language learning for students" in this state. The Senate bill also calls for the creation of a council to make recommendations to the appropriate governing boards on how best to meet the instructional needs of English Learners (ELs) in the state. LeChatelier's principle of equilibrium and Bell's interest convergence are used to analyze the recommendations. In addition, I use autoethnography and Latino critical race theory to interrogate the complexity of my dual membership, as an EL and an academic, in a cultural, political, and educational context…. [PDF]