(2019). Liberating the Read-Aloud: Supporting Teachers' Critical Literacy Practice around Race, Ethnicity, and Equity. ProQuest LLC, Ed.D. Dissertation, Rutgers The State University of New Jersey, School of Graduate Studies. This study followed the course of a professional development intervention to support kindergarten teachers in using a critical literacy approach to teach their students about race, ethnicity, and equity. The purpose of the design-based intervention, which took place in a diverse but somewhat racially segregated school district, was to empower students to critique discrimination, racism, and systems of inequity. The research itself aimed to gain insight into how and to what degree teacher-participants took on an anti-racist teaching role through participation in a collaborative professional learning community "study group." The study that found that White participants employed many and various rationales to demarcate boundaries around what they were comfortable with and willing to teach. Despite White participants' ambitious goals for societal change through shaping student attitudes, their avoidance and resistance limited the curriculum they ultimately taught. Implications… [Direct]
(2017). 2015 AERA Presidential Address: Morally Engaged Research/ers Dismantling Epistemological Nihilation in the Age of Impunity. Educational Researcher, v46 n5 p211-222 Jun-Jul. This article presents Joyce E. King's 2015 AERA presidential address, which artfully combined scholarly discourse with performance elements and diverse voices in several multimedia formats. In discussing morally engaged research/ers dismantling epistemological nihilation, the article advances the argument that the moral stance, solidarity with racial/cultural dignity in education praxis, policy, and research, is needed to combat discursive forms of racism. The lecture opened with African Americans and Native Americans performing culturally affirming traditional ritual practices. An African drum processional and a libation honored revered Black ancestors–scholars, artists, and activist intellectuals–Maya Angelou, Ruby Dee, Amiri Baraka, Vincent Harding, and Asa G. Hilliard, III (Nana Baffour Amankwatia II). An intergenerational Native American delegation offered a traditional welcome prayer, gifting of tobacco, and ceremonial drumming and dance performance. Dr. King began her… [Direct]
(2017). Moral Education and the Aboriginal Peoples of Taiwan: From Sino-Centrism to the Ethic of Multiculturalism. Journal of Moral Education, v46 n1 p69-78. Taiwan is not only inhabited by ethnic Chinese, as many who are not so familiar with this island might think; it also has a substantial number of aboriginal peoples who have lived on the island for millennia, long before the Chinese, Europeans and finally the Japanese colonisers arrived. The aboriginal peoples of Taiwan are Austronesian, with linguistic and genetic ties to ethnic groups found in the Pacific nations of the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, New Zealand, the islands of Oceania, and also on Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. This article looks at some of the challenges faced by this indigenous population, due in large part to the ethnic or racial prejudice of the Taiwanese which was reinforced by the national government. It also examines recent curriculum reforms and the educational discourses that reject racism and affirm the ideals of ethnic and cultural freedom and equality, thereby exemplifying moral education in the truest sense…. [Direct]
(2014). Living Proof: Transnational Black Youth Theorizing Racism, Justice, and Education. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. Based on eighteen months of ethnographic research in a high school E.L.L. classroom, this study contributes to the fields of new literacies studies and critical pedagogy by showing how transnational Black youth theorize and negotiate intersections of racism, justice, and education. Drawing on a multidimensional approach for understanding how racism is reproduced and resisted across various domains of power (Collins, 2009), I show on how two young men from Haiti theorize the U.N. and INGO occupation of post-earthquake Haiti; a disjuncture between how Africa and Haiti are (mis)known in the U.S. and students' lived realities in their respective countries of origin; and finally, students' analysis of structural racism in the U.S. through a Justice for Trayvon unit I co-taught from March-May 2012, when Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, and Stand Your Ground became household names. I conclude by suggesting that we move toward a global l.a.w.s. (lessons against white supremacies) framework… [Direct]
(2018). Mentoring Latinx Students through Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies at a Predominately White Institution. ProQuest LLC, Ed.D. Dissertation, University of Missouri – Kansas City. Latinx students are enrolling in four-year higher education institutions at a rapidly increasing rate. However, an alarming low number complete their degrees. Institutional barriers such as racism, language discrimination, cultural conflict, privilege of citizenship, and lack of role models present challenges to degree completion for Latinx students. One important yet understudied mechanism of support is mentorship. Within a Latinx-dedicated mentoring program, this qualitative case study identified mentoring practices perceived by Latinx student mentees and their program mentors as facilitating degree completion. This study also determined the alignment of the identified practices with the framework of culturally sustaining pedagogies. Using culturally sustaining pedagogies as a framework can offer a theoretical based for mentoring programs supporting Latinx mentees' persistence toward degree completion. Culturally sustaining mentoring based on the concepts from this study may be… [Direct]
(2016). The Experiences of College-Educated African-American Mothers Navigating the Way. ProQuest LLC, Ed.D. Dissertation, Northern Arizona University. This study was intended to provide a better understanding of the experiences of a purposeful sample of five college-educated African-American mothers and the impact of those experiences in college. They made meaning of their collegiate experiences and in turn, understanding from their experiences enhanced my knowledge as a better leader, and practitioner in higher education, assisting those like their sons in pursuit of a degree. This qualitative study used the conceptual framework of self-authorship and narrative inquiry to research the meanings of participants' experiences, collecting data through Grounded Theory, and analyzing these experiences into the theme of race that holds across all of the stories. Two open-ended, dialogical, one-on-one interviews were given to the five African-American women, whose ages ranged from 51 to 57 that divulged how they claimed their voice to overcome obstacles such as racism/stereotype while pursuing degrees and professional careers in law, art,… [Direct]
(2016). Subversion and Critical Distance: Black Speculative Fiction, White Pre-Service Teachers, and Anti-Racist Pedagogy. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, Michigan State University. This dissertation examines representations of black lives in adolescent speculative fiction and explores what the genre offers to anti-racist teacher education. Situating my study at the intersections of literacy education and children's literature studies, I interrogate assumptions surrounding genre conventions adopted in multicultural education. I argue that the genre of black speculative fiction offer tools to the anti-racist educator because it tackles difficult issues surrounding systemic racism and privilege, yet does so in a manner that offers the potential for navigating white resistance strategies through the creation of literary spaces of inquiry. My framework, which theorizes the ability of multicultural speculative literature to critique systemic oppression, is built off two forces of the fantastic–subversion and critical distance. These competing and complementary forces provide readers with space in which to reflect on systemic oppression and hegemony. My dissertation… [Direct]
(2022). Who's Sick of What? Belonging in Pandemics, the Pandemic of Unbelonging. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of Iowa. This two-article dissertation explores and exploits the heterogeneity of the social world that becomes visible at times of crisis–in this case, the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic created a portal to study the dynamics of race and capitalism. In this dissertation, I conduct critical analyses of systems of oppression at the institutional level in article one and at the structural level in article two. In the first article, using critical qualitative research, particularly critical discourse analysis, I interrogate the ideological work of the rhetoric of science, technology, and medicine when the University of Iowa communicated its public good purpose at a time of crisis. I find that the University of Iowa communicated its scientific and medical research to advance a vision of the world where the COVID-19 crisis will be overcome by science, facilitated by professionals trained at the school, and the knowledge delivered from the university to the outside world. I critique the… [Direct]
(2022). "Going Back to School Online Was a Very Scary Decision, but I Pushed My Fears Away and Went for It": A Critical Race Feminism Analysis of Adult, African American/Black Women's Experiences in Online Health Programs. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, State University of New York at Buffalo. While there is research in the online environment on women's experiences (Muller, 2008), and African American/Black students more generally, (Kuo, 2014; Okwumabua, 2011), there is a critical gap with regards to the experiences of African American/Black women (Young, 2020; Ashong & Commander, 2012; Okwumabua, 2011). To address this gap, this qualitative narrative case study documented the nuanced experiences, interactions, and opportunities of African American/Black women enrolled in undergraduate online health programs at for-profit and public colleges, in a major Northeastern city. The focus on for-profit and public colleges informed how these contexts of online learning benefit and/or stagnate the potential and opportunities of African American/Black women. This study was framed by understandings of Critical Race Feminism and Andragogy. Data collection involved a two-part, semi-structured, in-depth interview, participants' multimodal online journals, and digital… [Direct]
(2016). Devalued Black and Latino Racial Identities: A By-Product of STEM College Culture?. American Educational Research Journal, v53 n6 p1626-1662 Dec. At some point most Black and Latino/a college students–even long-term high achievers–question their own abilities because of multiple forms of racial bias. The 38 high-achieving Black and Latino/a STEM study participants, who attended institutions with racially hostile academic spaces, deployed an arsenal of strategies (e.g., stereotype management) to deflect stereotyping and other racial assaults (e.g., racial microaggressions), which are particularly prevalent in STEM fields. These students rely heavily on coping strategies that alter their authentic racial identities but create internal turmoil. Institutions of higher education, including minority-serving schools, need to examine institutional racism and other structural barriers that damage the racial identities of Black and Latino/a students in STEM and cause lasting psychological strain…. [Direct]
(2020). Bandwidth Recovery for Schools: Helping PreK-12 Students Regain Cognitive Resources Lost to Poverty, Trauma, Racism, and Social Marginalization. Stylus Publishing LLC Are students coming to your class lacking focus, having difficulty connecting with you and their peers, falling behind, or acting out when you instinctively feel they could do better? Do you sometimes feel like you don't have the capacity as a teacher or school leader to give students the support they need to learn and thrive? This book makes the case that societal realities–such as poverty, racism, and social marginalization–result in depleted cognitive resources for students and for those who are trying to help them succeed. Each of us has a finite amount of mental bandwidth, the cognitive resources that are available for learning, development, work, taking care of ourselves and our families, and everything else we have to do. These "attentional resources" are not about how smart we are but about how much of our brain power is available to us for the task at hand. When bandwidth is taken up by the stress of persistent economic insecurity or the negative experiences of… [Direct]
(2014). Is There Cultural Safety in Australian Universities?. International Journal of Higher Education, v3 n2 p153-166. This paper examines the cultural safety offered to Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students within their university environments. In the context of this paper, cultural safety includes cultural competency, as recently subscribed by Universities Australia, and "extends beyond (to) cultural awareness and cultural sensitivity" (Bin Sellik, 2003, p. 210) and includes putting in place explicit measures to address racism of all types. Informing this study were interviews and an online survey conducted with Aboriginal students and staff members of Aboriginal centres which formed part of a larger study investigating the "Transition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Students into Higher Education" (Oliver et al., 2013a; 2013b). Their responses provided evidence suggesting overt and covert experiences of racism, exclusion and cultural isolation indicating that there is still much to be done before cultural safety is truly attained in our… [PDF]
(2015). Teacher Transculturalism and Cultural Difference: Addressing Racism in Australian Schools. International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives, v14 n2 p51-62. The increasing cultural diversity of students in Australia's schools is one of the salient changes in education over the last 30 years. In 2011, nearly half of all Australians had one or more parents born overseas, with migration from China, the Indian subcontinent and Africa increasing during the early 2000s (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2012). However, despite these long established patterns of exposure to a multicultural environment, the incidence of racism experienced by children in Australian schools remains highly problematic. Recent research has shown that around 70% of school students witness or experience some form of racism (Mansouri, Jenkins, Morgan & Taouk, 2009). This paper argues that, although the reasons for this persistent marginalisation of cultural difference are multivariate, the background attitudes of teacher educators cannot be ignored. It posits that, in line with recent research (Casinader, 2014), the development and awareness of transcultural modes… [PDF] [Direct]
(2016). Racism in Interracial Dating: A Case Study in Southern Culture and Fundamentalism. Christian Higher Education, v15 n3 p140-152. This article presents a case study of Bob Jones University (BJU), a fundamentalist Christian institution located in South Carolina that is known within the context of U.S. higher education for its conservatism on multiple levels. Our analysis traces the beliefs of the institution's founder and subsequent leaders, in addition to particular religious, cultural, and social influences, all of which shaped BJU's institutional policies, including the university's racial practices. We believe that BJU's policies can best be understood from the contexts of two primary influential forces: its Southern cultural heritage (specifically, the culture-of-honor that has existed within the Deep South of the United States) combined with its fundamentalist moorings. Although BJU's policies have historically differed markedly from other Christian institutions regarding racism, we believe that the present study may be helpful in illustrating important historical lessons that possess potential… [Direct]
(2018). The Southern Mind and the Savage Ideal: Deconstructing Identities of Place in the Cracker State. Teaching Education, v29 n4 p407-420. This qualitative study discusses one Southern college of education and its engagement with White supremacy. This research stemmed from the Institution's publication of an offensive catalog cover and the subsequent reactions to its inherent racism. Following this incident, our institution was dubbed 'Cracker State' in the media, informing our decision to analyze the historical connotations of this term for our pre-service educators. Utilizing Critical Whiteness Studies and Southern epistemology frameworks, we reconceptualize White Fragility while pulling from this experience and data collected to advance a strategy for confronting Southern White supremacy. Participants included 154 majority White and female students. Data stemmed from document analysis and two years of empirical data drawn from classroom discussions and student assignments. Due to the demographics and location of our college, we utilize the autobiographical demand of place and pay particular attention to understanding… [Direct]