(2021). Using Critical Race Theory to Reframe Mentor Training: Theoretical Considerations Regarding the Ecological Systems of Mentorship. Higher Education: The International Journal of Higher Education Research, v81 n5 p1043-1062 May. This article offers a theoretical and critical analysis of race-dysconscious mentorship involving students of color and white faculty. Inspired by ecological systems theory, critical race theory, and the NIH-funded program, "Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity: Promoting Opportunities for Diversity in Education and Research," our analysis considers the ecosystems that promote student pushout and hinder diversification of the scientific workforce, which call for "critical" alternatives to traditional research mentorship. We first examine the historical, social-political, institutional, interpersonal, and intrapsychic ecosystems of traditional mentor-prot√©g√© relationships. Two areas are reviewed: (a) "diversity" as it operates in universities and research laboratories and (b) the discursive properties of a dysconscious dialog that rationalizes modern racism. Next, we connect the five ecosystems of mentorship by integrating literature on critical… [Direct]
(2002). Race Equality Policies and Practice: Resources on the Internet, Summer 2002. Race Equality Teaching, v21 n1 p38-41 Aut. Presents resources available on the Internet that deal with racial equality policies and practice. Topics include legal requirements in education; institutional racism; community cohesion; diversity; curriculum; national identity; citizenship education; race and identity; suppliers, booksellers, and publishers; links with schools in other countries; refugee education; dealing with bullying and conflict; and language and bilingualism. (SM)…
(2018). "I Wish They Would . . .": The Role White Student Affairs Professionals Can Play in Disrupting Systemic Racism in the Supervision of People of Color in Higher Education. ProQuest LLC, Ed.D. Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. The purpose of this study was to understand the role that White people can play in dismantling systemic racism and oppression in the supervision of people of color in student affairs. The primary goal of the study was to better understand, from the perspectives of people of color, how systemic racism and bias in the supervision of people of color could be disrupted and what role, if any, White people can play in the disruption. Using a critical race theory (CRT) framework, the study sought to outline how White people can demonstrate allyship and engage in dismantling systemic racism. This was a qualitative research study using a CRT framework. The researcher conducted 20 interviews with participants who all identified as student affairs professionals of color about their experiences with workplace racism, what inclusive workplaces would look like, and how White folks can play a role in contributing to an inclusive environment. The findings showed that workplace racism was prevalent… [Direct]
(2020). A Critical Race Examination of the Lived Experiences of Persistent African American Students at a Predominantly White Community College. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of North Dakota. For well over a century, African Americans have fought for equal rights to employment, prosperity, political power and freedom. Earning an education was the way forward. Over time, legislative and institutional policies have created greater access to education for racialized individuals. Yet, African American students remain the most underserved population, and among the lowest in degree attainment across ethnic groups. Decades of research literature places blame on students and families, highlighting student deficiencies. Far fewer explanations in the literature point to institutional barriers that perpetuate practices that place African American students at a disadvantage. Critical Race Theory (CRT) offers a lens to examine ways in which race continues to be a prominent component of inequality throughout education, and allows researchers to critique deficit theorizing that may be limited by the exclusion of voices of people of color. Using CRT as a theoretical framework, and… [Direct]
(2020). Unrelenting Inequality at the Intersection of Race and Class. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, v52 n2 p32-35. Racially separate and unequal schooling is alive and thriving today. School districts are typically segregated by income, with non-White school districts getting 23 billion dollars less than White districts. Higher education is increasingly stratified by both race and class, and children of the wealthy are almost assured that they will attend top-tier colleges and universities. The wealth divide is worsening, with people of color being a large part of the wealth underclass. It is getting harder for low-income people to attain upward mobility. In this article, Laura Rend√≥n describes how race and class inequities are connected to a history of exclusion and racism, a segregated educational system, and gross wealth disparities. The result is one of the highest levels of inequality ever seen in America, which virtually assures that a mostly White, elite ruling class endures across generations while social mobility for the poor continues to fall (Hobbes, 2019; Reeves, 2017)…. [Direct]
(2020). Troubling "The Problem" of Racial Overrepresentation in Special Education: A Commentary and Call to Rethink Research. Educational Review, v72 n5 p567-582. Despite decades of research, there has been limited reduction in the overrepresentation of students of colour in high incidence special education categories. This commentary article seeks to problematise the notion of overrepresentation as it is currently conceptualised in educational research, and serves as a call to rethink how, why, and for whom we do this research, contextualised within a history of both racism and ableism in the United States. First, we assert that the field of special education, as epistemologically configured, has framed the problem of overrepresentation in ways that it cannot resolve, leaving us to call for a much needed change in how we research this phenomenon. Second, we challenge some basic assumptions within existing research practices to date, countering them with alternative knowledge claims. Third, to engage with, and potentially reframe researchers' understanding of overrepresentation, we pose a variety of questions to contemplate within the… [Direct]
(2021). Culturally Relevant Coaching: Empowering New Teachers. English in Texas, v51 n1 p33-41 Spr-Sum. An achievement gap exists in the United States between children of color and their white peers. This gap is most prevalent in literacy. Achievement in literacy is pertinent to student success in other content areas. To address this problem, educational researchers have identified a conceptual framework, culturally relevant pedagogy, that provides educators with strategies to integrate students' cultural experiences, understandings, and beliefs to encourage student success as well as foster cultural competence. The tenets of culturally relevant pedagogy were designed to address the impact of racism in the educational system. This article examines the use of culturally relevant pedagogy by novice teachers to address the needs of students of color. Using a narrative inquiry structure, the investigator collected data from seven beginning teachers. Data collection consisted of interviews using semi-structured, open-ended questions as well as constructed response journal entries. The… [PDF]
(2024). Teacher Efficacy and Impacts of Justice Centered Inclusive Settings on Multiply Marginalized and Underrepresented Preschool Students. ProQuest LLC, Ed.D. Dissertation, The University of Arizona. Within educational systems across the nation, traditionally marginalized and "multiply marginalized and underrepresented (MMU)" groups, composed of students of color, students with dis/abilities, students living in poverty and/or emergent bilinguals, continue to be excluded and segregated, perpetuating discriminatory practices both inside and outside of school spaces. Inclusive systems however, provide a more equitable and higher quality education for all children and are instrumental in shifting discriminatory attitudes beyond classroom walls. Preschools provide the first context where children interact with the world and people outside their homes. They are prime spaces to develop social relationships and a sense of belonging rooted in seeing the value of diversity. When students of diverse abilities, backgrounds and ethnicities play, socialize and learn together, respect and understanding grow. The interplay of race, language, ability, class, and age are examined through… [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]
(2018). On the Utility of Asian Critical (AsianCrit) Theory in the Field of Education. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education (QSE), v31 n10 p935-949. Despite the powerful influence of race and racism on the experiences and outcomes of Asian Americans in US education, coherent conceptual frameworks specifically focused on delineating how White supremacy shapes the lives of this population are difficult to find. The AsianCrit framework, grounded in Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the experiences and voices of Asian Americans, can begin filling this gap. In this article, we review an AsianCrit framework and examine Asian American issues in education through seven AsianCrit tenets to demonstrate their utility in the analysis of and advocacy for Asian Americans in U.S. education. We end by discussing implications of how AsianCrit can provide a framework to guide future research, policy and practice, as well as a foundation for discourse around the racialized experiences of Asians Americans and other racially marginalized groups in education…. [Direct]
(2021). Reimagining Isolated Literacy Classrooms as Interdependent Networks: Tracing Rituals, Repetitions, and Technologies. Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, v70 n1 p181-201 Nov. Recent literacy scholarship increasingly seeks to center and value the literacies of systematically marginalized youth in response to deficit-oriented narratives that locate oppressed communities as incompetent or delayed. Often, this reframing leans on a contextualization of literacies as culturally, historically, and socially situated acts that people do. Located alongside recent literacy research combatting racism, homophobia, transphobia, linguicism, xenophobia, and the invisibilizing of indigenous peoples, this piece reimagines the active and rich literacies produced in an isolated (i.e., self-contained) special education literacy classroom. While theoretically utilizing situated literacies, this article also directly responds to critiques of situated literacies as too human-centric, an especially relevant criticism for classrooms with students who have complex support needs. Actor-network theory, as a theoretical and methodological lens, provides entry into the analysis of… [Direct]
(2020). Power Relations, Knowledge Productions, and Teaching against Oppression in an Elementary Classroom on the Canadian Prairies: A Self-Study. Studying Teacher Education, v16 n2 p204-221. This article is inspired by my experience of aiming to teach against oppression on my return to an elementary school classroom after completing doctoral studies in education. The tensions that surfaced as I attempted to disrupt oppressive school knowledge in my second and third grade classrooms motivated me to engage in self-study. Locating my work within the context of the Canadian Prairies, I answer the question of how power relations both constrained and opened up possibilities for disrupting oppressive discourses circulating in everyday life at school by offering a power/knowledge analysis of three critical incidents. My analysis traces how power was always at play through competing discourses of Whiteness, femininity, and colour-blindness as I aimed to resist traditional norms around school discipline; work against the privileging of White, male students; and accept the discomfort of talking to my young students about race and racism. By demonstrating how anti-oppressive… [Direct]
(2020). A Typology of Pakeha "Whiteness" in Education. Review of Education, Pedagogy & Cultural Studies, v42 n4 p296-310. The concept of "Whiteness" forms part of contemporary debates about racism, which acknowledge the structural levels at which racism works, over and above the attitudes and beliefs of individuals (Bonilla-Silve, 2005). Whiteness acts as an umbrella concept for a number of cognate terms, including White Privilege (McIntosh, 1989), White Supremacy (Dorrien, 2018; McGettigan, 2019), White Fragility (DiAngelo, 2018), etc. Fundamental to the meaning of all Whiteness terms is the recognition that being White is the norm still operating today, in Britain and its settler excolonies, in particular Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the US (collectively known as the CANZUS countries). Thus, White Privilege is inherent in the concept of Whiteness, since being White accrues advantages to a person, without any effort or merit on their part–hence the idea of "privilege." This research is centered in Aotearoa New Zealand. Based on a lifetime of personal experience of… [Direct]
(2019). White D√©j√ Vu: Troubling the Certainty of the English Canon in Literary Education. English in Australia, v54 n3 p53-59. This paper is prompted by the author's experience as a researcher of English literary education in three different geographies over the past three years: Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. Affect theory, as discussed in this paper, concerns atmospheres, surfaces, bodies, emotions, moods, vicinities and capacities. Drawing on affect theory, critical race scholarship and discussions of whiteness, the author argues that despite continued local attempts at diversification of English literary education, whiteness continues to circulate through and cling to many of the core texts, narratives and messages that make up English literary education (Bacalja & Bliss, 2019; McGraw & van Leent, 2018; McLean Davies, Truman & Buzacott, 2020). This whiteness is general and specific, global and local, obvious and hidden. Rather than attempting to discuss the literary canon as a whole, the author focuses on a specific literary text as an example of how whiteness circulates as neutral… [Direct]
(2022). Going beyond Anti-Racist Pedagogical Practices: Co-Constructing a Pro-Black Classroom. Journal for Multicultural Education, v16 n3 p259-271. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore the means, rationale, challenges and opportunities of shifting focus from anti-racist to pro-Black educational practice. The authors argue that while anti-racism is necessary, it is insufficient in addressing the deeply entrenched anti-Blackness in US society. The instructor and three student members of a graduate course on Black girlhoods reflect on their time together to better understand the process of developing a classroom specifically for Black students. Design/methodology/approach: Through a process of collaborative autoethnography, the authors used their reflections as data to identify the practices that served to establish their space as pro-Black and consider how these practices may apply to other contexts. Findings: The data presented indicate that co-construction, intentionality and care and love are integral to developing a pro-Black classroom. The implementation of these practices in the authors' graduate course allowed… [Direct]