(2018). The Obscurity inside the Margins: The Preparation, Recruitment, and Retention of Women of Color Superintendents. ProQuest LLC, Ed.D. Dissertation, University of Southern California. The purpose of this study was to identify successful strategies for the preparation, recruitment, and retention of women of color superintendents. The superintendents selected for this study were women of color who worked in urban districts in California, and had had the traditional experience of being a teacher, site administrator, and district administrator. The school board members selected for this study were appointed women of color superintendents who served urban districts. The executive search consultant selected for this study was a former superintendent of color who conducted national superintendent searches that included diverse candidates such as women of color and who had experience in mentoring people of color in educational leadership. The thematic group of eight doctoral researchers used a qualitative method to address the research questions. The research team utilized work by Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal, Jim Collins, and Timothy Waters and Robert Marzano to develop… [Direct]
(2022). Social Studies Teachers' Conceptions of Human Rights Education. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of Wisconsin – Madison. This study examined social studies teachers' conceptions of human rights education (HRE), with a focus on the connection between HRE and global citizenship education (GCE). These conceptions were studied through a Critical Race Theory framework. This study took place in a small city in North Dakota and utilized a collective case study approach. The eight participants in this study taught social studies at the secondary level. Data for this study was collected through two one-on-one semi-structured interviews with each teacher, as well as classroom observations and document analysis (lesson plans, curricular materials, etc.).The first key finding of this study indicated that participants' conceptions of human rights centered on Western notions of rights, such as individual rather than collective rights or the right to participate in capitalist economic systems. Democratic participation was also cited as a basic human right, though few teachers elaborated beyond the act of voting on… [Direct]
(2013). "Nothing Better or Worse than Being Black, Gay, and in the Band": A Qualitative Examination of Gay Undergraduates Participating in Historically Black College or University Marching Bands. Journal of Research in Music Education, v61 n1 p26-43 Apr. This collective case study examined the experiences of four African American gay band students attending historically Black colleges or universities (HCBUs) in the southern United States. This study explored influences that shaped the participants' identities as they negotiated numerous complex sociocultural discourses pervasive and challenging to gay African American band students. Utilizing participative inquiry, participants were asked to read, reflect on, and respond to historical and current research literature concerning the schooling experiences of Black students. Their responses were analyzed within a multifaceted theoretical framework, including poststructual theory, critical race theory, critical theory, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning (LGBT2Q) studies. Present throughout the participants' descriptions was an ever-evolving and renegotiated gay African American identity within the HBCU band setting. Findings indicate that the construction of an… [Direct]
(2020). A Phenomenological Study of the Experiences of African American Males. ProQuest LLC, Ed.D. Dissertation, Ball State University. Since their early days, community colleges have maintained a pivotal role as a provider of education to the diverse populations they serve. Over the years, these institutions of higher learning have been tasked with expanding access to education to those who had been denied even the possibility on the basis of race, economic stability, and a host of other factors. As leaders of these great institutions, community college presidents are seen as visionaries who are called to serve as the bridge between their institution and the communities they serve. In the past, the presidency has been a role largely reserved for White men with significant academic experience alone; however, in recent decades, sitting presidents have begun to retire, leaving institutional decision makers scrambling to identify new talent in a decreasing pool. While the ranks of presidency have been diversifying, men and women from racially marginalized communities still struggle to break through the glass ceiling…. [Direct]
(2012). A Different View of Urban Schools: Civil Rights, Critical Race Theory, and Unexplored Realities. Revised Edition. Counterpoints: Studies in the Postmodern Theory of Education. Volume 291. Peter Lang New York The revised edition of \A Different View of Urban Schools\ updates a unique story about the realities of urban education in America and provides new insights on the origin of urban education issues; the route to a diverse and effective teaching force; and the impact of federal legislation and corporate involvement on urban schools. Dr. Epstein's analysis of problems is fascinating; her program for the creation of joyful engaging education is equally impressive. The result is a new perspective on what educational reform requires in American cities. This book will be useful to teachers, policy makers, school board members, and parents as well as in classes in multicultural education, ethnic studies, and the social foundations of education. [For the first edition, \A Different View of Urban Schools: Civil Rights, Critical Race Theory, and Unexplored Realities. Counterpoints: Studies in the Postmodern Theory of Education Volume 291,\ see ED496919.]… [Direct]
(2016). Dawning of Hope: Practice of and Reflections on Indigenous Teacher Education in Taiwan. Policy Futures in Education, v14 n7 p943-955 Oct. Teachers more familiar with students' culture tend to use culturally relevant teaching methods to smooth students' learning. Most pre-service teachers in Taiwan lack sufficient training for multicultural competence to enable them to embrace indigenous students' culture and appropriate teaching approaches. In 2013, the Education Act for Indigenous Peoples was revised thereby requiring teachers of indigenous education to comply with the act within five years. It created huge changes and modifications to indigenous teacher education and required teachers who work in indigenous areas to complete ethnic culture and multiculture courses. All levels of government have to institute the Acts requirements within five years. Given the significance of the crucial keys to success of teaching indigenous students, it is important to understand how the government values the development of teachers' multiculture teaching abilities. Following an outline of the tribal critical race theory (TribalCrit),… [Direct]
(2016). A Restorative Approach to Student Discipline: Examining a Small School's Changed Response to Student Behavior. ProQuest LLC, Ed.D. Dissertation, University of Connecticut. This study examines how restorative practice takes shape in a single, racially diverse interdistrict school in the Northeast. It focuses on two fundamental questions: what does restorative practice look like at this school; and to whom is restorative practice applied at this school? Using critical race theory as a contextual and analytical framework, I explore the relationship between P-12 public schools' race neutral policies, system-wide racially disparate student discipline outcomes, and the efficacy of restorative practice as a more equitable, socially just student discipline model. My study investigates the effect of restorative practice on one school's student discipline outcomes; and explores the potential for racially disparate treatment within restorative practice. Interviews in a small school with a sample of students and administrators, informal observations of administrators, teachers and students, and document analysis were conducted to examine how school administrators… [Direct]
(2014). Confronting Race and Colonialism: Experiences and Lessons Learned from Teaching Social Studies. in education, v20 n1 p25-39 Sum. Literature on teacher education and encounters with race highlight some of the difficulties that teacher candidates face when they confront their own racialized subjectivities. However, many of these projects focus exclusively on Whiteness studies, explicating how White teacher candidates come to witness their own racialized Whiteness in relation to their epistemological understandings of the world. In this paper, I diverge from this pattern of thought, exploring a subset of the tenets of critical race theory, that of silences and exclusions, pervading my own teaching in a primary/junior social studies methods class and exploring how these structured my lessons. Specifically, I look at how counternarratives, critiques against liberalism, and multiculturalism and encounters with racialized and colonial supremacy were involved in my pedagogical strategies. I conclude by suggesting that although these methods may seem daunting for the primary/junior classroom, they can provide valuable… [PDF]
(2014). A Critical Analysis of Anti-Discrimination Law and Microaggressions in Academia. Research in Higher Education Journal, v24 Aug. This article provides a critical analysis of microaggressions and anti-discrimination law in academia. There are many challenges for faculty claiming discrimination under current civil rights laws. Examples of microaggressions that fall outside of anti-discrimination law will be provided. Traditional legal analysis of discrimination will not end systemic inequality in higher education. Instead, a critical microaggression analysis, based on principles of critical race theory, should augment a legal approach to discrimination. This article provides a conceptual and practice framework to address microaggressions in the academic setting that fall outside of the legal definition of discrimination by encouraging academic communities to recognize that microaggressions permeate institutions of higher education and that both narrative and data are necessary to create a whole picture of the harm microaggressions cause. Additionally, universities and colleges must centralize the response to… [PDF]
(2014). Seeing What They Want to See: Racism and Leadership Development in Urban Schools. Urban Review: Issues and Ideas in Public Education, v46 n3 p420-444 Sep. This critical race theory (CRT)-framed qualitative study (n = 9) examined racism within a context of urban teacher leadership development. A series of semi-structured interviews were conducted with three White principals, who each identified one White and one African American teacher as "most promising" leadership potential. These teachers were interviewed, leading to analysis of principal support and teacher perceptions of being supported. The findings clarify principals who adopted a language of equity, while simultaneously arguing that their White teachers were more effective (based erroneously on the belief that the White teachers' students had higher test scores). The African American teachers, on the other hand, were framed as experts in culturally responsive approaches, given increased teaching responsibilities, and not provided similar leadership opportunities. This difference in opportunities and expectations had lasting impacts on the African American… [Direct]
(2014). Latina/o Youth's Perspectives on Race, Language, and Learning Mathematics. Journal of Urban Mathematics Education, v7 n1 p55-87 Jul. In this article, the author employs critical race theory (CRT) and Latino Critical Theory (LatCrit) to examine Latina/o students' narratives of learning mathematics in a multi-lingual, urban high school. Intersectionality as a tenet of LatCrit is introduced as an important way to understand how students talk about the roles of race, language, and other central identities in their mathematics identity development as well as how they believe race may or may not matter in other people's mathematics achievement. The author's analysis illustrates how mathematics identities are co-constructed in relation to racial, linguistic, and gendered narratives of Latina/o youth. In general, the study adds empirical evidence to previous research on the difficulties that high school students encounter when articulating how race matters to their own identities in academic subjects and highlights the nuanced ways Latina/o students make connections between race, mathematical achievement, and schooling… [PDF]
(2014). Identity Production in Figured Worlds: How Some Multiracial Students become Racial Atravesados/as. Urban Review: Issues and Ideas in Public Education, v46 n1 p25-46 Mar. Using Holland et al.'s ("Identity and agency in cultural worlds," Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1998) theory of identity and their concept of figured worlds, this article provides an overview of how twenty-five undergraduates of color came to produce a Multiracial identity. Using Critical Race Theory methodology with ethnographic interviewing as the primary method, I specifically focus on the ways in which Multiracial figured worlds operate within a racial borderland (Anzald√∫a in "Borderlands: La Frontera–The New Mestiza," Aunt Lute Books, San Francisco, 1987), an alternate, marginal world where improvisational play (Holland et al. in Identity and agency in cultural worlds, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1998) and "facultad" became critical elements of survival. Participants exercised their agency by perforating monoracial storylines and developed a complex process of identity production that informed their behaviors by a multifaceted… [Direct]
(2021). Building out the Edges: Reading Racial Capitalism into Jean Anyon's Political Economy of Urban Education. Teachers College Record, v123 n14 p72-94 Dec. Background/Context: For over three decades, Jean Anyon produced scholarship that revealed the deep-structural causes of educational inequality. Anyon's work in political economy includes a racial analytic; she argues that access to education does not reduce economic disparities in urban communities of color, and that schools in poor and working-class communities of color in particular often serve to reproduce inequality across generations. It is common, however, for critical scholars analyzing educational inequality to be steeped in either Marxism or critical race theory, and less knowledgeable about the other. As a result, analyses rarely place equal emphasis on both theoretical frames or synthesize race and class. Using theories of racial capitalism to extend Anyon's political economic analysis, we contend, brings forward conceptual tools and angles that capture the material and ideological work being done by current, highly racialized neoliberal restructuring in and beyond the… [Direct]
(2017). Minority Administrators' Perspectives on Leadership in Predominantly White Schools. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, Eastern Michigan University. During a period of high expectations and accountability for public schools, some minority administrators have chosen to work in predominantly White schools. The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the professional and personal experiences of minority administrators located in predominantly White suburban school districts in one affluent county located in southeastern Michigan. Through in-depth interviews, a focus group, and surveys, participants shared their experiences and perspectives on leadership as minority administrators in predominantly White schools. Using a phenomenological approach, the researcher analyzed the participants' responses through the lens of the critical race theory. Four themes emerged from the analysis of the minority administrators' responses. First, participants embraced the opportunity to change negative perceptions people may have about members of their race through positive daily interactions with faculty, parents, and students within their… [Direct]
(2017). Pressure to Assimilate: Students of Color Make Sense of Their Experiences at a Historically White College. ProQuest LLC, Ed.D. Dissertation, Northeastern University. This qualitative study examined the experiences students of color have at a historically white college campus in the Northeast. The participants studied a variety of academic disciplines and comprised a broad spectrum of ethnicities. An interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) methodology was employed to investigate the participants' lived experiences. The data was analyzed through the lens of Critical Race Theory. The study revealed that students of color experienced racism in many forms, students utilized protective factors such as assimilation to remain resilient against barriers and stressors experienced in educational and social settings. This study confirmed that students of color experience racism at historically white institutions and must acquire strategies to be successful. Moreover, this study found that inclusive classroom pedagogy and skills are necessary for faculty so that students of color can avert discrimination and feelings of isolation both in and out of the… [Direct]