(2021). South African Parents' View of Their Role in the Education of Their Young Children in South Africa as Democratic Citizens. Journal of Early Childhood Research, v19 n2 p225-238 Jun. This study addressed the knowledge gap regarding South African parents' view of their role in the education of young children as democratic citizens. The study was conducted with parents of children younger than 8 years in 2 multicultural primary schools in Gauteng, South Africa. The explanatory sequential mixed methods research design was used to collect data from parents in order to answer the research question. The quantitative data were gathered first by means of a questionnaire, and afterwards the qualitative data were gathered by means of semi-structured interviews. The research results showed that when educating their young children to democratic citizenship, participating parents consider various values of a democratic citizen as important including responsibility, respect, participation, norms and values, peacebuilding, love, loyalty, deliberations, kindness, commitment, non-racism, non-sexism, equality, reconciliation, self-control, forgiveness, compassion, tolerance,… [Direct]
(2019). Neocolonial Mind Snatching: Sylvia Wynter and the Curriculum of "Man". Curriculum Inquiry, v49 n1 p25-43. In her scholarship of the past five decades, Sylvia Wynter has woven a critique of education in Caribbean, European, African, and American societies. In addition, her work demonstrates how education globally structures a particular cultural, historical, and onto-epistemic anti-Black/anti-Indigenous worldview. In Wynter's most neglected piece of work "'Do Not Call Us Negros': How Multicultural Textbooks Perpetuate Racism" she weaponizes the second and third wave of her work to unpack and provide a fresh critique to the Black English debates that occurred in California in the 1990s. In this, she reframes debates about history curriculum and culture from a white conservative nativist one of "Man" (the status quo) to the alternative Black Studies Alterity Perspective rooted in the liminal Black socio-historical-cultural experiences. Continuing Wynter's layered excavation of education as the site of EuroAmerican cultural reproduction, I sketch out a different… [Direct]
(2023). Reflections of White Women Committed to Antiracism. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, Michigan State University. Learning about antiracism can be an emotional and isolating process for white people. With most research focusing on the experiences of undergraduates (Schooley, Lee, & Spanierman, 2019), the experiences of adults committed to this lifestyle are often ignored. This study uses narrative inquiry to examine the experiences of four white women in higher education as they commit to antiracism. Participants were vetted as committed to antiracism by Black-led antiracist educators. Participants reflected on their life experiences with race, racism, and antiracism, and participated in a focus group and individual interview. Each participant's story is shared as well as several identified themes. The theme of being a betweener helped participants navigate the emotional process of living in between different worlds; one where they are often disappointed by ignorant comments of white friends and one where they will really never understand the racist world of their Black friends. The range of… [Direct]
(2016). Rehumanizing the "Other": Race, Culture, and Identity in Education Research. Review of Research in Education, v40 n1 p723-743 Mar. In this chapter, the authors examine the trajectory of the literature on race, culture, and identity in education research through the past century. The literature is first situated within its historical and conceptual foundations, specifically the dehumanizing legacy of scientific racism, the early efforts by African American scholars to rehumanize marginalized members of society, and the emergence of identity as a construct in the social sciences. The authors then explore the body of education research–from the mid 20th century to today–focused on the relationship between cultural and racial identities and students' experiences with schooling. They close with a vision for the next era of research on this critical topic…. [Direct]
(2015). Theories of Racism, Asian American Identities, and a Materialist Critical Pedagogy. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, v13 n1 p83-102 Jun. In this article, I argue that the persistence of "race" as the central unit of analysis in most U.S. scholarship on racialized populations and education has limited our systematic understanding of racism and class struggle. I discuss British sociologist Robert Miles's notion of racialization–as a way to theorize and articulate multiple forms of racism, the specificities of oppression and lived experiences that impact historically marginalized populations in the U.S. I critique "race relations" sociology because it essentially create and reproduce a black/white dichotomy. To provide specificity to the discussion, I examine "Asian American" identities and the ways in which they have been racialized. I discuss two key components to the social and historical construction for Asian America: a critique of the "model minority" myth and the deconstruction of pan-Asian ethnicity. This article looks at the implications for a materialist critical pedagogy…. [Direct]
(2023). Systemic Issues Can't Be Fixed Overnight: How Latina Undergraduate Students Engage in Activism and Critical Hope. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, Michigan State University. The Latinx population has significantly transformed the demography of the United States and its institutions of higher education. Yet, despite the increase of Latinx students obtaining their bachelor's degrees (U.S. Census 2021) and having one of the highest college enrollment rates, Latinxs have the lowest college attainment (Ayala and Chalupa Young 2022). Despite the changing demographic compositions of universities, students from marginalized racial and ethnic backgrounds experience various forms of racism and oppression on campus (Broadhurst and Velez 2019). And so, engaging in activism is one avenue in which students challenge these forms of marginalization and oppression. Still, there is not vast research which explores Latina undergraduates' engagement in activism and more importantly how their positionalities shape their experiences. In particular, this dissertation sheds light on how the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement shaped Latina undergraduate… [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]
(2016). Not Black Like Me: The Cultural Journey of an Early Childhood Program. Early Childhood Education Journal, v44 n5 p429-436 Sep. Universities and colleges across the United States have been increasingly intentional in their effort to become educational institutions with a culture reflective of all their students, faculty and staff. However, achieving a proportionate representation of faculty for the community of students they serve seems to be a goal yet to be achieved by the higher education institutions. Closing this gap of representation of faculty and students is critical for allowing students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds to access support and mentorship from faculty with whom they can identify. This paper describes the approach employed by an Early Childhood program of a southern university with faculty from culturally diverse backgrounds significantly underrepresented. Diverse students within the institution are unable to connect with a faculty member with whom they can identify. The faculty in this program took the initiative to discuss how the learning environment offered to… [Direct]
(2021). Potential Engineers: A Systematic Literature Review Exploring Black Children's Access to and Experiences with STEM. Journal of Engineering Education, v110 n4 p1003-1026 Oct. Background: As engineering remains central to the US economy, it is imperative that the innovators of this field reflect the world in which we live. Despite decades of concerted effort to broaden participation in engineering, representation continues to lack. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide education researchers and practitioners with a clear understanding of barriers to the participation of Black American children in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Our interest is driven by the role that precollege STEM experiences play in children's likelihood of becoming potential engineering students. Scope/Method: We conducted a systematic literature review of 41 articles focused on Black children in precollege STEM contexts. Each article underwent individual review to gain deeper insight into key contextual factors that enable and constrain these potential engineers. Results: We situate our research findings in Perna's college choice model to highlight… [Direct]
(2021). Seeking Equality of Educational Outcomes for Black Students: Response to Dr Louise Taylor. Psychology of Education Review, v45 n2 p39-45 Aut. In this commentary, Festus Obiakor responds to Louise Taylor's "Seeking Equality of Educational Outcomes for Black Students: A Personal Account" (EJ1316951). He begins by describing himself as a Black man who has consistently endured racism, xenophobia, and prejudice in the United States. Growing up in Nigeria, he experienced lots of Black-on-Black crime, a regular phenomenon that corrupt African leaders are unwilling to discuss. Coming from the Ibo tribe, he experienced tribalism, hatred, nepotism, religious fanaticism, hunger, and disease during the Biafra/Nigeria war. Despite the odds, he has become a successful professor, scholar, professional, and leader; however, being Black in academia has forced him to endure unrealistic expectations, prejudicial presumptions, illusory generalisations, and measurable humiliations. The good news is that these experiences have inspired him to humanely collaborate, consult, and cooperate with others different from him. Obiakor goes on… [Direct]
(2017). Doing Feminist Difference Differently: Intersectional Pedagogical Practices in the Context of the Neoliberal Diversity Regime. Teaching in Higher Education, v22 n6 p690-704. At present there is a small, albeit growing, body of literature on pedagogical strategies and reflections which addresses the ways educators attempt to challenge the effects of neoliberalism on higher education. In this article, we reflect upon our pedagogical practices in higher education in this moment of neoliberal transformation wherein, as Sirma Bilge notes, intersectionality is being "undone" in academic feminism. As graduate students teaching in Toronto, Canada, we describe how our commitment to social justice pedagogy works against this "undoing" of intersectionality by embracing vulnerability, discomfort and the possibility of conflict in classrooms that do not simply accommodate, celebrate or include difference. Given that neoliberal renderings of diversity obscure and reinforce unequal relations of power, we demonstrate how we attend to these power relations, particularly racism which is salient to our teaching context, by employing intersectionality as… [Direct]
(2021). Factors Impacting International Students' Sense of Belonging. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of Toledo. The purpose of this study was to identify the factors that influence international students' sense of belonging. An in-depth review of existing research on sense of belonging helped me identify 18 factors closely connected to the sense of belonging of international students. I categorized these factors into four groups: (a) academic integration, (b) social integration, (c) campus climate, and (d) transition factors, and developed a 41-item questionnaire for students. I administered the questionnaire to international students attending higher education institutions in the Great Lakes region, which consists of the states of Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Ten variables connected to each of the four groups of factors emerged as statistically significant predictors of international students' sense of belonging: (a) academic involvement, (b) relationship with faculty, (c) friends/peer support, (d) learning community, (e) nationalism in… [Direct]
(2024). The Untold Story: African American Men with Learning Disabilities at the Postsecondary Level from the Perspectives of Parents and Students. ProQuest LLC, D.Ed. Dissertation, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Fifty percent of African American men with learning disabilities will not persist past their first year of college (Newman et al., 2011). A bachelor's degree for an African American man means that he is five times less likely to be incarcerated than his peers with a high school diploma and will, on average, make approximately $32,000 per year more than his counterparts without a bachelor's degree (Trostel, 2015). Frequently neglected and inadequately represented in existing literature on learning disabilities are the experiences of African American men with learning disabilities in higher education. The purpose of this phenomenological multi-case study was to examine the postsecondary educational experiences of African American men with learning disabilities by exploring the perspectives of both parents and students. Ten semi-structured interviews were conducted; six parent interviews and four student interviews. The study answered the following research questions (1) What are the… [Direct]
(2020). Improving Education the New Mexico Way: An Evidence-Based Approach. Learning Policy Institute For more than a year, the Learning Policy Institute (LPI) conducted research in New Mexico, including interviews, site visits, document review, and new analyses of data provided by the New Mexico Public Education Department (NMPED). The purpose of the study was to provide New Mexico leaders a research perspective on the challenges facing education and identify evidence-based ways that state policy can address them. The central finding is that key to system improvement is recognizing that students who face barriers to school success–including poverty and systemic racism–are not exceptions in New Mexico; rather, they are the norm. Accordingly, the state must design a system that places these students at the center and builds the state and local capacity to meet their diverse needs. Prior to COVID-19, the state had taken promising steps toward such a system. Together, the Office of the Governor, the New Mexico Legislature, advocates, and educators began moving toward a stronger… [PDF]
(2020). Social and Professional Barriers Inhibiting African Americans from Obtaining Leadership Positions in Higher Education Institutions: A Comparative Case Study Analysis. ProQuest LLC, Ed.D. Dissertation, Delaware State University. Diversity in higher education has become a valued asset; this has been seen in the use of the word "diversity" in mission statements and documents that details institutional values. The effects of this are evident in the diversification of the student population as well as the ranks of faculty and staff — though such change rates are not analogous ones. However, although diversification is occurring, the rate of change is based on the level of the position within the institution. Research has shown that white people dominate at every level within predominantly white institutions. Across the nation, many individuals question their institution's commitment to diversity. African Americans continue to be underrepresented and the rate of change for diversification is at its lowest in the ranks of administrative leadership positions. In this non-experimental, comparative case study analysis, I explore the social and professional barriers that inhibit African Americans from… [Direct]