(2020). From Salvation to Inquiry: Preservice Teachers' Conceptions of Race. Global Studies of Childhood, v10 n4 p368-384 Dec. Race is a marker hiding more complex narratives. Children identify the social cues that continue to segregate based on race, yet too often teachers fail to provide support for making sense of these worlds. Current critical scholarship highlights the importance of addressing issues of race, culture, and social justice with future teachers. The timing of this work is urgent as health, social and civil unrest due to systemic racism in the U.S. raise critiques and also open possibilities to reimagine early childhood education. Classroom teachers feel pressure to standardize pedagogy and outcomes yet meet myriad student needs and talents in complex settings. This study builds on the current literature as it uses one case study to explore institutional messages and student perceptions in a future teacher education program that centers race, culture, identity, and social justice. Teaching as a caring profession is explored to illuminate the impact authentic, aesthetic, and rhetorical care… [Direct]
(2023). Racial Justice Inc.: Deconstructing the Enactment of Racial Justice in DEI/Social Justice-Focused Higher Education and Student Affairs (HESA) Graduate Programs. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Massachusetts Boston. Despite efforts of faculty in Higher Education and Student Affairs (HESA) programs focused on social justice/Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) to provide equitable educational experiences for their students, studies on these programs have shown that students of color continue to face racialized experiences in the classroom (Harris & Linder, 2018; Linder et al., 2015). This dissertation employed a multiple case study to examine two HESA master's programs with a specific social justice/DEI mission and integrated the voices of both faculty and students. Using intensive interviewing, document analysis, and class observations, the goal of this study centered on understanding the extent to which faculty and students in these programs perceived the centrality of racial justice as an integral component of their espoused commitments to deliver tangible practices and experiences connected with the realization of the mission. The conceptual foundations of this study were informed by… [Direct]
(2023). Examining the Social Constructs Explained by Critical Race Theory That Affect African American Males Enrolled in New Jersey Four-Year Institutions of Higher Education. ProQuest LLC, Ed.D. Dissertation, Saint Peter's University. This qualitative research was conducted with the goals of investigating the experiences of African American male college students who have encountered instances of racial injustice and bigotry on college campuses, as well as investigating the consequences that such incidents have had on the participants' academic performance during their academic careers. One primary theoretical framework informed this study: Critical Race Theory (CRT). This theory, with its five tenets, appeared appropriate when studying the existential situations that young African American males encountered while navigating their courses through college. This study examined the experiences of young African American males in college. The following research questions were asked in the study: What barriers do African American male college students experience on their pathway to graduation? How are students who identify as African American, and male connected to the system of racism? How might CRT explain the… [Direct]
(2019). Making Moral Migrants? Exploring the Educational Aspirations of Black African and Caribbean Boys in a New York City Public School. International Studies in Sociology of Education, v28 n3-4 p237-258. Drawing on 48 in-depth interviews with Black immigrant and second-generation boys at Bridgewood secondary school in New York City, this article points out how the high educational aspirations expressed by Black African and Caribbean boys are strategically deployed as features of an ethnic project to counter anti-immigrant sentiments and anti-Black racism in US society. The findings indicate that in a context of rising xenophobia along with the historical and continual stereotypes of Black people in the US, participants' aspirations for elite higher education function as strategies to enhance their individual and ethnic reputations. High educational aspirations were also used to justify emigration to and worth within the US. At its core, this article illustrates how participants mobilized aspirations to represent themselves as moral migrants and 'worthy' ethnic minorities. Moral claims and ethnicity-based campaigns associated with aspirations are problematized because they reinforce… [Direct]
(2021). Visibilizing Our Pain and Wounds as Resistance and Activist Pedagogy to Heal and Hope: Reflections of 2 Racialized Professors. Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education, v15 n4 p241-251. This article reflects experiences of two racialized professors from a Critical Race Theory (CRT) paradigm teaching in Canadian teacher preparation and educational leadership programs across multiple universities. The analysis of their lived experiences as counter-stories through storytelling focuses on how their identities, bodies, course content, and activist pedagogies are read and received teaching predominantly white students and working with non-racialized colleagues. The authors situate the microaggressions they experienced from administrators, colleagues, students, and larger community members, while teaching about anti-black racism, white supremacy, and other equity topics in education that challenge normalized metanarratives which at times make others uncomfortable. The authors seek to disrupt and challenge these normalized policies and practices within teacher education programs and within publication processes that privilege whiteness, and disadvantage Black, Indigenous,… [Direct]
(2018). Investigating Curricular Policy as a Tool to Dismantle the Master's House: Indian Education for All and Social Studies Teacher Education. Policy Futures in Education, v16 n6 p729-748 Sep. US curricular policies frequently bolster neoliberal power structures within both pre-K to 12 schools and universities by privileging settler-colonial narratives and excluding Indigenous knowledge. However, curricular policies can also serve to enhance social reconstructionist and social justice education. In this article, we describe two case studies focused on a state-level policy–Montana's Indian Education for All–aimed at advancing understandings about Indigenous experiences and worldviews. The first study's findings demonstrate Indian Education for All's potential to support practicing teachers, including teachers with limited experience working with Indigenous communities, in their efforts to confront settler-colonialism and neoliberalism within curricula. The results from our second study suggest the potential for Indian Education for All to create space for Indigenous student leadership. However, our research also provides cautionary notes about the potential for… [Direct]
(2018). Reclaiming Racial Justice in Equity. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, v50 n3-4 p95-98. Equity, once viewed as racially divisive and associated with activism within social justice movements that academic purists disdained as advocacy work, is now being embraced on the academic scene. The author questions whether this embrace of equity signifies an embrace of its critical and anti-racist foundations or whether the proliferation of this term instead represents the appropriation and dilution of equity? She suggests that the racial justice project represented by the term equity faces two threats. One is the total omission of race and whiteness in national higher education reforms that endeavor to move the college completion needle higher–towards some definition of success that is defined primarily by graduation rates. The second is the co-optation of equity and the erosion of its racial justice agenda. She notes that equity-mindedness does not come naturally. It requires a knowledge base, and it takes a lot of practice. Generally, practitioners and leaders lack the… [Direct]
(2016). Training Educators in Anti-Racism and "Pluriculturalismo": Recent Experiences from Brazil. Race, Ethnicity and Education, v19 n1 p23-45. This article examines educator participation in training initiatives based on Brazilian federal education legislation (Law 10,639 from 2003) in one city in the state of S√£o Paulo. Law 10,639/03 represents a significant moment in the institutionalization of ethno-racial policies in Brazil over the past 15 years. It makes obligatory the teaching of African and Black Brazilian history and culture in all school subjects, and requires in-depth study of black contributions in the social, economic, and political spheres. The article first contextualizes understandings of race and racism in Brazil, followed by an elaboration of the political and epistemological underpinnings of ethno-racial educational reforms focused on Afro-descendants. The article then analyzes the contradictory processes that emerge from teacher training initiatives where the perspectives of anti-racism, multiculturalism ("pluriculturalismo"), racial democracy, and miscegenation intermingle and get reconfigured… [Direct]
(2018). Justice Pedagogy: Grade 1-3 Students Challenge Racist Statues. Social Studies and the Young Learner, v31 n2 p17-23 Nov-Dec. Located across 30 different states, there are more than 1,700 symbols of the Confederacy including 772 monuments and statues on public property, and 100 schools named after prominent Confederates. Questions about the appropriateness of keeping these tributes to the Confederacy in places of honor have become flashpoints for public controversy in many communities. Young children may encounter symbols glorifying prejudice and inequity when visiting public spaces with monuments memorializing racists, attending schools named for an avowed racist, or watching evening news reporting on the activities of white supremacists. Scholars have documented that when that happens, children need cognitive and emotional tools to process their experiences in a thoughtful and informed manner. In spite of the fact that some educators appreciate the importance of counteracting messages of racism, they can find it difficult to enact lessons (or even have informal conversations) around issues of racism and… [Direct]
(2018). The Threat of Unexamined Secondary Data: A Critical Race Transformative Convergent Mixed Methods. Race, Ethnicity and Education, v21 n2 p231-252. This article uses a critical race theory framework to conceptualize a Critical Race Transformative Convergent Mixed Methods (CRTCMM) in education. CRTCMM is a methodology that challenges normative educational research practices by acknowledging that racism permeates educational institutions and marginalizes Communities of Color. The focus of this article is to examine the quantitative component of the mixed methods to interrogate "objective" and "scientific" assumptions of the statistical practices used in analyzing secondary datasets. To demonstrate this method, we analyze the ways in which race and ethnicity are treated as a variable in a secondary higher education dataset, and highlight how the conflation of both can influence how a sample is taken. We argue that it is imperative that theoretical frameworks used in research are not only applied to the research questions, analysis or interpretation, but also the secondary datasets being used…. [Direct]
(2015). How African American, Middle Class Parents Learn and Enact a Racism Resistant Critical Race Achievement Ideology in Their Adolescents in Gifted and AP Classes. Online Submission The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine African American, middle class parents' facilitation of an academic achievement ideology that is racism-resistant in their adolescent offspring in AP and Gifted Education classrooms. Three research questions guided the study: (1) how do African American, middle class parents come to acquire or learn an achievement ideology that is resistant to racism? (2) how do African American, middle class parents of adolescents enact an achievement ideology with them that resists racism? (3) what are the consequences or results of African American, middle class parents enacting an achievement ideology with their adolescents that is resistant to racism? The method used to gather data in this qualitative study was the person-to-person, semi-structured interview. A modified version of the Seidman (2013) interview method captured rich, narrative data. A stratified purposeful sample of potential parent participants was accessed at one southeastern… [PDF]
(2019). Knowing the Past, Facing the Future: Indigenous Education in Canada. University of British Columbia Press In 1867, Canada's federal government became responsible for the education of Indigenous peoples: Status Indians and some M√©tis would attend schools on reserves; non-Status Indians and some M√©tis would attend provincial schools. The system set the stage for decades of broken promises and misguided experiments that are only now being rectified in the spirit of truth and reconciliation. "Knowing the Past, Facing the Future" traces the arc of Indigenous education since Confederation and draws a road map of the obstacles that need to be removed before the challenge of reconciliation can be met. This insightful volume is organized in three parts. The opening chapters examine colonial promises and practices, including the treaty right to education and the establishment of day, residential, and industrial schools. The chapters in Parts 2 and 3 are written alternately from within Indigenous and Western paradigms. Parts 2 focuses on the legacy of racism, trauma, and dislocation; Part… [Direct]
(2024). Communities in Action: The Early Years of the Upward Bound Program. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Massachusetts Boston. This critical historical narrative sought to understand how secondary and postsecondary educators can best engage community partners in providing access to a college education–and the opportunities associated with it–for students who have been systemically excluded. Based on extensive archival research and 21 oral history interviews with Upward Bound students and staff in the MIT Science Day Camp and the MIT-Wellesley Upward Bound program from 1966 through the mid-1970s, as well as with those who added to the national perspective, this study examined the original anti-poverty, community action framework of the Upward Bound program. The sensitizing concepts of race and class offered a lens for examining MIT and Wellesley College as racialized organizations, underscoring the deeply rooted, systemic racism and deficit ideology against "the poor" that was in place at all levels of educational institutions–and still exists today. Findings indicated that the first Upward Bound… [Direct]
(2016). A Case Analysis of the Turkish Football in Regard to the UEFA's 10-Point Action Plan against Racism. International Journal of Progressive Education, v12 n1 p136-146 Feb. Football is enjoyable and meaningful together with the fans. However, the hate crimes (racism, discrimination, humiliation, xenophobia and Islamophobia) are social diseases of some fan groups, and threaten public safety and the social life. UEFA has been determined to fight against hate crimes in football by creating a network called FARE, and by implementing a road map called 10-Point Action Plan since 2003. The purpose of this case study is to analyze the Turkish Football in relation to the UEFA's 10-Point Action Plan against Racism. The findings of this study revealed that the policies implemented in Europe with success were hardly put into practice in Turkey. No policies were developed to implement the UEFA's 10-Point Action Plan and the recommendations of the European Commission were not taken into consideration in Turkey. Although the football produces a very significant economic resource, no funds were allocated to education of Turkish football fans…. [Direct]
(2024). Black Males Teaching Toddlers?! An Examination of How Black Male Youth Participating in a Grow Your Own (GYO) Teacher Pipeline Program Made Decisions Concerning a Long-Term Career in Early Childhood Education. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee. Despite research (Cormier et al., 2022; Lindsay & Hart, 2017) highlighting the positive impact Black male educators have on Black students, and Black male students in particular, the representation of Black, non-Hispanic male teachers in the U.S. public and private K-12 teaching workforce remains notably low at 1.3% (Taie & Lewis, 2022). This scarcity is evident across the entire PK-12 education continuum, which includes early childhood education (ECE). This qualitative study examined the experiences of eight Black male youth who participated in The Young Black Male Teacher Project (TYBMTP), a grow-your-own (GYO) teaching exposure pipeline program that affords young Men of Color, ages 18-24, the opportunity to explore teaching as a viable career option by working alongside a lead or licensed certified teacher providing early literacy intervention instruction to students in PreK-3 and PreK-4 classrooms for an academic school year. The study explored how participants, known as… [Direct]