(2024). Navigating Advocacy and Ethics: Social Justice Educational Leaders' Perspectives. Education Leadership Review, v25 n1 p6-27. Equity and inclusion efforts have increased at educational institutions in the United States. However, equity and inclusion leadership has been fraught with political challenges, as well as a lack of resources, clear strategic direction, and campus support and engagement. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study aimed to examine the lived experiences of educators and leaders working for social justice in educational contexts in the United States. The researchers interviewed seven participants, focusing on the research question: How do educational leaders describe the ways they navigate the ethical dimensions of advocacy? The researchers underpinned their analysis using a conceptual framework based on established frameworks for social justice leadership and Critical Race Theory; both emphasize contextual analysis and seek to challenge systemic inequities. The researchers used an inductive and iterative process that produced the following emergent theme: leaders'… [Direct]
(2020). Racial Complaint and Sovereign Divergence: The Case of Australia's First Indigenous Ophthalmologist. Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, v49 n2 p145-152 Dec. This is a reflective piece that examines the nature of racial complaint with reference to Dr. Kris Rallah-Baker's concerns about the racism that characterised his medical education. It will further examine the anti-racist campaign that sprung up in support of Rallah-Baker with a view to illustrating the limits of conventional critical race theory in understanding the course of events. Using the work of Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Gramsci and Stuart Hall, it will be argued that the Rallah-Baker case illustrates that Australian hegemonic formations can never quite command total legitimacy because sovereign formations, anti-racist in outlook, erupt with a frequency and facticity that lay bare the conceit of settler-colonialism. In so doing the paper will work towards an understanding of the critical Indigenous/race paradigm that goes beyond critical race insights borne of other places and experiences. As will be seen, what followed Rallah-Baker's complaint, the campaign that supported him… [Direct]
(2024). Virtual Connections: Teacher Beliefs and Practices Enacting Culturally Relevant Practices in a Virtual Freedom School. Urban Review: Issues and Ideas in Public Education, v56 n2 p285-312. Despite well-documented benefits for students–particularly students belonging to minorized groups–all tenets of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP) are rarely fully enacted in practice. This study examines the interrelationship between the race-related beliefs of Servant Leader Interns (SLIs) who facilitated class sessions during a summer, Children's Defense Fund (CDF) Freedom School program and their subsequent instructional practices. We also documented the relationship between these beliefs, practices, and students' self-reported exeriences. In particular, we drew on the interest convergence and understanding of racism tenets of Critical Race Theory (CRT) to inform our grounded theory analysis using constant comparative methods to integrate data collected through SLI interviews, virtual classroom observations, and student surveys. We observed high alignment between SLI's race-related beliefs and their instructional practices. However, despite some slightly more positive… [Direct]
(2021). What Are "Social" and "Emotional Learning" and "Culturally Responsive" and "Sustaining Education" – and What Do They Have to Do with "Critical Race Theory"? A Primer. WestEd Ensuring equity in education, whereby all student groups attain comparable positive outcomes, is an ongoing challenge for policymakers and practitioners. While there is no single strategy for meeting this challenge, two broad approaches have gained traction among those committed to equity: social and emotional learning (SEL) and culturally responsive and sustaining education (CRSE). Both approaches have recently been called into question in some states and districts for their perceived connections to critical race theory (CRT), which is itself the subject of contentious political debate. This brief explains each of these three concepts, how each one relates to addressing issues of equity, and how SEL and CRSE are distinct from the academic framework of CRT…. [PDF]
(2023). The Role of Racial Literacy in US K-12 Education Research: A Review of the Literature. Race, Ethnicity and Education, v26 n1 p94-111. The pursuit of racial justice in education continues to demand research that employs critical race theory (CRT). Underscoring the importance of such scholarship, this review of K-12 literature examines the trend of racial literacy in educational research. Using an interactive and recursive systematic review of research, this paper ultimately analyzed 22 peer-reviewed articles that employed racial literacy as a theory and/or method–many connected to CRT–for the possibilities they offered in upending racial liberalism in K-12 teaching and schooling. In this review, racial literacy was categorized into themes: as a process, as disrupting white supremacy and internalized racism, and as working toward curricular transformation, intersectional analysis, and centering youth voice. We conclude by discussing ways that racial literacy research can continue to work within and beyond the academy to disrupt racial liberalism and work toward anti-racist transformation in K-12 education…. [Direct]
(2023). Wu-Tang for the Children: Swarming Elsewhere for Aesthetic (Re)Imaginings of Community, Theory, & Praxis. Equity & Excellence in Education, v56 n3 p395-408. The work in this article (re)traces the nuances embedded within the aesthetics of the Wu-Tang Clan to draw attention to two theoretical, Wu-based concepts: "Shaolin" and "swarming." This article leans into fugivity and critical race theory (CRT) to demonstrate how hip-hop music can be a capacious avenue for theorizing alternate ways to disrupt hegemonic, oppressive, and racist educational structures and master narratives. In particular, we use two Wu-Tang tracks (e.g. "Can it be all so simple," "Triumph") to demonstrate how static approaches to hip-hop–specifically the Wu-Tang–reduce and flatten engagements with hip-hop music in educational contexts. Central to our argument is that the aesthetics of the Wu-Tang Clan are more than economically damaged narratives that tether various culture entities together: Wu-Tang "is" theory…. [Direct]
(2023). The Influence of Advisors' Advising Style on the Career Interests of Black and Latinx Students in STEM Graduate Programs. Journal of STEM Education: Innovations and Research, v24 n1 p68-76. The advisor-advisee relationship can influence students' career choices, yet little is understood as it pertains to Black and Latinx graduate students in STEM (German et al., 2019). The purpose of this study is to investigate how graduate advisors' actions influenced the career interest of Black and Latinx students in STEM graduate programs. Critical Race Theory (CRT), specifically storytelling, was used to explore the experiences of Black and Latinx students at Predominantly White Institutions as it provides an in-depth understanding of the issues in postsecondary settings (Patton, 2006). Using a qualitative research approach, data were collected through six individual semistructured interviews over three years with each participant. The interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed with emergent coding. This study's findings illustrated that Black and Latinx students benefited from advisors asking about career interests, discussing career options, being a role model,… [Direct]
(2023). "Yardie Get Di Blame": Exploring Positionality, Transnationalism, and Cultural Capital in Social Justice STEM Education. Cultural Studies of Science Education, v18 n3 p577-587 Sep. This paper is in dialogue with Lisa Marco-Bujosa's article titled, "Soul searching in science teaching: an exploration of critical teaching events through the lens of intersectionality" where the author takes up the ways that Faith's Jamaican immigrant Black woman identities are shaped and how she understood and enacted teaching for social justice. We share ideas that add more nuance to the author's analyses of Faith's beliefs and practices. In doing so, we reframe key concepts on (1) seeing immigrant background as cultural capital in the classroom rather than as an impediment to science teaching, (2) understanding the myth of meritocracy from a critical race theory lens, and (3) expanding transnational notions of the ideological and practical underpinnings inherent in teaching for social justice. We further examine how minoritized forms of cultural capital can work to disrupt oppressive ideology and practices in STEM education…. [Direct]
(2023). Counter Stories: Life Experiences of Refugee Background Mature Students in Higher Education in Ireland. Race, Ethnicity and Education, v26 n7 p936-953. Refugee Background Mature Students, with many having come from the global South to seek asylum, form a minority group in higher education. This qualitative study uses a Critical Race Theory framework to examine the lived experience of four Refugee Background Mature Students from Angola and Nigeria with a focus on microaggresions, the everyday occurrences of racism. On campus, their learning is informed by past experiences, asylum systems, including time spent in Direct Provision. Repeated microaggressions in Direct Provision silence or attempt to silence in the face of power. These students encounter the assaults of further microaggressions on campus, horizontally from peers and vertically from lecturers. These negative experiences occur in tandem with support from individual academics they meet during their degree courses. The unevenness of experience suggests that higher education institutions need to incorporate the specific needs of RBMSs across an institution to fully support… [Direct]
(2023). "It Was Just My Name!": A CRT/CRF Analysis of International Female Graduate Students' Perceptions and Experiences Regarding Their Ethnic Name. Journal of International Students, v13 n2 p172-188. Although international female students accounted for 44% of the enrolled international students in the United States (U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, 2020), their experiences regarding their ethnic name are relatively understudied in the onomastic literature. This study considers the experiences of eight international female graduate students of Color who are studying at a Midwestern predominantly White university. Utilizing critical race theory (CRT) and critical race feminism (CRF) as the theoretical and analytical lenses, this qualitative phenomenological study collected data through semistructured, in-depth interviews. We explore the meaning of ethnic names and their connection to participants' multidimensional identities. The findings include experiences with microaggressions, discrimination, and racism among students in relation to their ethnic name and point to underlying factors. Finally, implications are offered for… [PDF]
(2023). Integrating Intersectionality, Social Determinants of Health, and Healing: A New Training Framework for School-Based Mental Health. School Psychology Review, v52 n5 p563-585. Social justice-centered training has progressed in school psychology, yet training and practice still do not adequately address systems-level influences on mental health, let alone focus on dismantling the systemic inequities that adversely affect the wellbeing of marginalized children and youth. An equity- and intersectional justice-minded framework for training future school psychologists in school-based mental health is presented, informed by the theories of intersectionality, critical race theory, social determinants of health, and radical healing. The proposed framework is based on reflective practice and incorporates three pillars that emphasize the importance of decentralizing psychodiagnostic assessment, centralizing systems-level work, and renewing focus on strengths and healing. To advance training that critically evaluates social factors that affect child wellbeing while honoring children's identities and strengths, various ways in which graduate programs can enact this… [Direct]
(2023). Enrolling or Serving?: Interest Convergence in Institutional Support of Writing Programs at HSIs. Composition Forum, v51 Spr. Much of the research in composition about Hispanic-serving institutions focuses on the tripartite of writing program administrators, faculty, and students and the complexities of multilingual learner pedagogies. This article draws on conversational interview methods and data to analyze the servingness of three Floridian HSIs through critical race theory's interest convergence thesis. The interest convergence thesis advances that institutional efforts toward racial equality will persist only so far as those efforts also preserve the interests of racial dominance in social institutions. Guided by an institutional critique and racial methodological approach, this interest convergence analysis examines the impact of culturally White institutional ideologies on general education writing curriculum choices, professional development, and the ethnic-racial cultural composition of institutional governance. Interviews with WPAs from the three institutions detail how the institutional… [Direct]
(2022). The Layered Toll of Racism in Teacher Education on Teacher Educators of Color. AERA Open, v8 n1 Jan-Dec. To systematically explore the structural racism that teacher educators of Color endure, this article uses a critical race theory lens to analyze the findings from qualitative questionnaires with 141 Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and Asian American teacher educators who work in diverse universities across the United States. We learned that many of the participants in our study were hired to teach race and racism among race-evasive colleagues and predominantly white students that are enabled to protect and leverage their whiteness. As we frame their experiences, we argue that teacher education programs are, in fact, structured for teacher educators of Color to experience racial stress and harm. We end by suggesting steps teacher education programs can take to advance racial justice…. [PDF] [Direct]
(2023). A Quantitative Study of Mathematics Identity and Achievement among LatinX Secondary School Students. Journal of Latinos and Education, v22 n5 p1953-1968. Using data from the National Center of Educational Statistics' (NCES) 2009 High School Longitudinal Study, this article studies the relationship between mathematics identity and mathematics success for LatinX students by relying on critical race theory and intersectionality as theoretical frameworks. The quantitative analysis relies on hierarchical regression modeling to examine the relative impact of demographic variables, school characteristics, parents social capital, and parental involvement on the mathematics grade point averages at the conclusion of 11th grade of a national sample of LatinX students. The article concludes with a discussion of the ways in which we as educators, policy makers, and researchers can work toward supporting positive mathematics identity development and, by extension, mathematical attainment and success for LatinX students. Specifically, the article discusses ways in which the experiences, cultures and abilities of these students can be acknowledged,… [Direct]
(2023). Disabled Girls of Color Excavate Exclusionary Literacy Practices and Generate Promising Sociospatial-Textual Solutions. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education (QSE), v36 n2 p247-270. Disabled girls of color have unique intersectional schooling experiences. Yet, they are underrepresented in educational research, and often unheard. Grounded in Disability Critical Race Theory and sociocultural learning theory, this study expands current understandings of how academic and social opportunities are afforded or constrained in schools for disabled girls of color from their perspectives. Through their narratives, photographs, and maps, focal participants in middle and high school described how social and spatial practices interacted with texts and technologies and in doing so, positively and negatively impacted their literacy opportunities at school. This study adds to the current literature with an intentional focus on the gifts, strengths, and solutions of disabled girls of color. Implications for future research (e.g. conducting student-led photovoice research with disabled girls of color) and generative teacher practices (e.g. using photovoice to learn about student… [Direct]