(2024). Between Decision-Making and Potential Bias: A Mixed-Methods Exploration of Holistic Master's Admission. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Massachusetts Lowell. Existing literature finds that holistic admission practices may result in biased decision-making at the undergraduate and doctoral level. This decision-making may happen during the application review or policymaking process. Few studies directly examine master's admission processes as a unique entity. Additionally, researchers have not yet considered the connections between critical methodologies and the decision-making practices of master's admission offices. The present study relies on an author-created conceptual framework of biased admission decision-making grounded in critical race theory. Through a mixed-methods survey distributed to 43 respondents from four national higher education professional organizations and four semi-structured interviews, results indicate that minimizing bias may not be first priority during decision-making processes. Findings suggest that admission professionals are not focused on minimizing bias as a function of their work unless the minimization of… [Direct]
(2021). Teachers of Color Implementing Restorative Justice Practices in Elementary Classrooms: A DisCrit Analysis. Equity & Excellence in Education, v54 n4 p378-392. This article provides case studies of two elementary school teachers of color who enact restorative justice practices in their classrooms, which include students of color with disabilities. Although the positive effects of restorative justice practices has been well-documented for general education classrooms, less is known about how restorative justice interacts with disability justice and accounts for disability and difference. Additionally, there has been little research on the influences of restorative justice practices with young children, including those in early elementary grades. In this study, we explored these gaps and how two teachers of color envisioned and enacted restorative justice practices. Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) illuminates how teachers of color navigate structural racism and ableism through restorative justice practices in their classrooms. The article concludes with recommendations for building networks and community to resist… [Direct]
(2024). Promoting Change through the Voices of Black Graduate Students: A Qualitative Exploration of the Experiences of Black Graduate Students in MFT Programs. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, Kansas State University. This qualitative study explores the diverse experiences of Black students who are currently enrolled in, or recently graduated from, various marriage and family therapy (MFT) graduate school programs in the United States. This study uses minority stress theory and critical race theory to explore the lived experiences of Black graduate students at predominately White higher education institutions. The study sample includes 14 individuals (13 female, 1 male) that identify as Black graduate students in MFT programs across the United States. The study sample consists of seven students working towards a master's degree and seven students pursuing a doctoral degree (PhD, D.A., etc.). Results were analyzed using the thematic analysis approach. The results indicate there are several barriers Black students in MFT graduate programs face including: financial concerns, racism, difficulty practicing self-care, lack of diversity within programs, and lack of support. The results also indicate… [Direct]
(2024). 'Against the Odds': A Study into the Nature of Protective Factors that Support and Facilitate a Sample of Individuals from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Backgrounds into the Teaching Profession. Journal of Education for Teaching: International Research and Pedagogy, v50 n2 p280-294. This paper reports on a small-scale, qualitative study, located in England and Wales, with the goal of advancing fairer teacher representation. Deploying a positive lens, the research shines a light on the lived experiences of 12 individuals from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, all of whom successfully entered the teaching profession for a period of up to 5 years before the study. Against the current backdrop of unfair teacher representation, the achievements of these individuals in becoming teachers are deconstructed and analysed, to determine whether there are any commonalities in their circumstances. Drawing on the theoretical frames of capital and critical race theory, the study aims to establish whether a set of protective factors exists that may have supported and facilitated their journey into teaching. The study finds that the achievements of these individuals in joining the teaching profession can be attributed, in part, to the nature of the cultural wealth… [Direct]
(2024). Black and African American Young Adult Male Experiences: Implications for Building Resilience and Survival Skills within Educational Settings and Public Spaces. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, Antioch University. The aim of this study is to better understand, from the perspective of Critical Race Theory, the experiences of adolescent males who are Black and living in the United States and to examine how they build resilience and survival skills. Participants were between the ages of 18 and 26 and asked to recall adolescent experiences as part of a semi-structured interview with a Black Storytelling approach. There were six participants and data were analyzed using thematic analysis. According to the results, there were seven themes: (1) Policing In the United States of America Comes in Many Forms, (2) Recognizing Racism and that It's Real, (3) How You See Me: I Was Born This Way, (4) Perceptions About Racism, (5) Finding Ways to Cope, (6) Sharing Stories from Generation to Generation, and (7) Perceptions About Mental Health Treatment. The subthemes and connections to literature and the professional counseling field are also considered. This dissertation is available in open access at AURA… [Direct]
(2023). Barriers to Equality and Cultural Responsiveness in Three Urban Norwegian Primary Schools: A Critical Lens for School Staff Perceptions. Urban Review: Issues and Ideas in Public Education, v55 n1 p94-132 Mar. Literature regarding the gap between the conceptualization of inequality and school staffs' perception of it in Norwegian schools is scarce. Therefore, we explore the challenges that Norwegian school staff have experienced as they work to ensure inclusive education at three schools. We address this challenge by examining three purposefully selected maximum variation schools that are located in a large Norwegian city. This is a qualitative study based on 25 in-depth interviews with school personnel regarding their understanding of anti-oppressive education of children. A relational approach and critical theory are used to organize and explain nested contextual systems. The narratives from school staff are used to identify their perception of their roles in combatting oppression, their patterns of interaction with others within the school community, and their constructions of "otherness." The theoretical approach comprises a framework that is based on a social network… [Direct]
(2018). Latinx Education under Attack: The Implications of Immigration Policy for Education. Association of Mexican American Educators Journal, v12 n3 p148-168. This conceptual article examines the intersection between immigration law enforcement and education. We explore the following questions: How have immigration and education policy intersected in the last decade, and particularly after the 2016 presidential election? To examine this question, we make use of the interdisciplinary nature of our own academic backgrounds as a political scientist and an education policy scholar to ground our article using sociologist Herbert Blumer's sense of group position theory, Critical Race Theory (CRT), and Latina/o Critical Race Theory (LatCrit). Guided by this theoretical frame, we discuss the notion of education being used as a bargaining tool and a weapon with implications for Latino communities given the current political and anti-immigrant context. We highlight examples that represent various levels of government and that on the surface have a target population of immigrant adults or young adults–however, we argue that regardless of the target… [Direct]
(2016). Mathematics, Social Justice, and Race: A Critical Race Theory Analysis of Teaching Mathematics for Social Justice. AERA Online Paper Repository, Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (Washington, DC, Apr 8-12, 2016). Teaching and learning mathematics for social justice (TLMSJ) is a pedagogical approach to mathematics teaching and learning designed to address issues of equity within mathematics education and to teach students to use mathematics to analyze social issues. Although TLMSJ has proliferated within the mathematics education community, this work has lacked a critical analysis of race and racism. In this paper, the authors use critical race theory (CRT)–namely the tenets of interest convergence and the critique of liberalism–to analyze TLMSJ and to consider how this pedagogy can potentially reify the racist notions that it intends to subvert. With this analysis, the authors aim to identify ways in which TLMSJ tasks reify race-based assumptions using task-based examples…. [Direct]
(2018). An Exploration of the Relationships between Student Racial Background and the School Sub-Contexts of Office Discipline Referrals: A Critical Race Theory Analysis. Race, Ethnicity and Education, v21 n3 p390-406. A growing body of research indicates that exclusionary school discipline practices disproportionately impact students of color. Some scholars have theorized that racial disparities likely vary across school sub-contexts, as implicit bias in perceptions of student behavior may be more influential in locations where students and adults have weaker relationships (e.g. bathrooms and hallways, compared to the classroom). Guided by Critical Race Theory, this study used administrative data from a large urban school district (n = 20,166 discipline incidents, 9,170 students, and 185 schools) to consider the relationship between student race and the locations where youth are disciplined. Results indicate that Black, Latino/a, and Multiracial youth were no more likely than White students to have a discipline incident take place outside the classroom. These findings suggest attention is needed to the role of systemic bias and colorblind policies and practices in discipline disparities…. [Direct]
(2022). Turning Away from Anti-Blackness: A Critical Review of Adolescent Reading Motivation Research. Reading Research Quarterly, v57 n4 p1107-1127 Oct-Dec. Responding to calls for centering Black lives in our collective consciousness, this review uses Critical Race Theory to analyze researchers' inclusion of race in conceptualizing and operationalizing adolescent reading motivation. Two questions guide this review: (1) How do researchers include race in theories of adolescent reading motivation? and (2) What assumptions do researchers make about race in studying adolescent reading motivation? What conclusions do they draw based on these assumptions? Through a systematic search, articles addressing adolescent reading motivation's conceptual/theoretical foundations, measurement, and study as it relates to reading behaviors and outcomes were identified and analyzed using deductive thematic analysis. Findings emerged across three categories: (1) color-evasiveness, demonstrating reading motivation was not conceptualized with Black readers in mind; (2) modus operandi, showing business-as-usual approaches to studying reading motivation; and… [Direct]
(2021). Disciplinary Disparities by Race and Disability: Using DisCrit Theory to Examine the Manifestation Determination Review Process in Special Education in the United States. Race, Ethnicity and Education, v24 n6 p755-769. Exclusionary discipline practices in the United States are used disproportionately in the punishment of Black students with a disability compared to White and Black students with or without a disability. One potential mechanism leading to the disproportionate use of exclusionary discipline is a process called 'manifestation determination reviews' (MDR), a process mandated under the U.S. federal Individuals with Disabilities Act that is tasked with determining whether students' offending behaviours were related to their disability. Using a disability studies/critical race theory (DisCrit) lens, the MDR process can be understood as a mechanism that serves to sustain these inequities through vague guidance in critical elements of the MDR process, lack of clarity about the composition of the MDR team, and perpetuation of a race-neutral framework. Implications for policy, educators, and school psychologists within the United States are discussed…. [Direct]
(2021). Listening to Counternarratives of Faculty of Color: Studying Rural Racism in One of Most Conservative Communities in America. Urban Review: Issues and Ideas in Public Education, v53 n3 p470-490 Sep. This study reports on a qualitative narrative, counterstory of six faculty and one administrator of color (Merriam in Qualitative research: a guide to design and implementation. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2009; Yosso in Critical race counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano educational pipeline. Taylor & Francis Group, New York, 2006) teaching at a Predominately White Institution teacher education in a rural U. S. state. The study examined the experiences of how the racial hierarchy, the macro-level and the organizational-individual relations impacted diverse (i.e., Othered) faculty. Specifically, participants explained how unequal racial relations had significant professional and personal consequences. In reflecting on the findings, we theorize how future research on diversity-racial relations in teacher education programs may be enhanced by foregrounding insights from the literature on Whiteness Studies, Critical Race Theory, and examination of White organizational structures… [Direct]
(2021). "To Me, He Teaches Like the Child Learns:" Black Maternal Caregivers on the Pedagogies and Schooling Practices of a Black Male Kindergarten Teacher. Urban Review: Issues and Ideas in Public Education, v53 n3 p491-515 Sep. There is a slow but growing body of literature on the pedagogies and schooling practices of Black male teachers. However, few of these studies elicit the voices of Black maternal caregivers regarding the ways in which pedagogies and schooling practices support Black boys in early childhood classrooms. In this article, the author uses a multidimensional framework–including Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, Critical Race Theory, Critical Race Feminism, and a counterstorytelling methodology–to elicit the voices of two Black maternal caregivers who spoke about the pedagogies and schooling practices of a Black male kindergarten teacher. Findings revealed that these caregivers perceived that this Black male kindergarten teacher addressed the collective and individual needs of Black boys. They also perceived this Black male teacher as minimizing the "intergenerational racialized distrust" Black maternal caregivers have toward White teachers and other educational professionals…. [Direct]
(2021). Community Math Stories: Informal Adult Educators Exploring Mathematics Identity through Digital Mathematics Storytelling. North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (43rd, Philadelphia, PA, Oct 14-17, 2021). During the COVID-19 pandemic, many urban schools relied on community centers with existing computer labs and high-speed internet that could provide in-person support for a small number of children engaging in online learning. Using a digital storytelling approach, this research report analyzes the mathematics identities of 14 informal adult educators. Situating the stories shared though Critical Race Theory counternarratives, this study enables participants to ground their narratives within their own spaces of power–to tell and forge their own digital mathematics story. Because informal adult educators are not family members nor school-based educators, they often are invisible variables in conceptualizing a child's mathematics learning. This research seeks to elicit their mathematics stories and understand how to enactment digital mathematics storytelling through listening to how the community positions and visions math. [For the complete proceedings, see ED630060.]… [PDF]
(2021). Separate and Unequal: Harris-Stowe State University and the Paradox of State Funding in Missouri. Journal of Negro Education, v90 n2 p211-223 Spr. Harris-Stowe State University is a relatively small university located in Missouri's largest metropolitan area. Yet the students at Harris-Stowe are clearly different from the students at the other eleven Missouri public universities. The student body of Harris-Stowe is predominantly African American, over 85 percent. Harris-Stowe State University receives the lowest funding with fewer facilities than any other Missouri four-year state institution. The study examines funding and program offerings at Harris-Stowe State University within the context of critical race theory; specifically, that state appropriations, program offerings, environment, and student outcomes within the Missouri Higher education system foment inequality. The stated hypothesis is that within the Missouri higher education system Harris-Stowe State University exists within a state university system that exhibits dually the aspects of both de facto and de jure segregation…. [PDF]