(2021). Broader, Deeper, Fairer: Five Strategies to Radically Expand the Talent Pool in Early Education. Bellwether Education Partners The U.S. faces a confluence of crises: a pandemic, economic destabilization, and a long-coming reckoning with systemic and historic racism. The early childhood workforce is a linchpin to a stronger, more resilient future for our country, but educators are often under-prepared and under-supported. Published by the National Head Start Association in partnership with the HeadStarter Network and Bellwether Education Partners, "Broader, Deeper, Fairer: Five Strategies to Radically Expand the Talent Pool in Early Education" explores how early childhood educator preparation could be improved for the educators themselves, as well as for the children and families they serve. A critical question for decision-makers across sectors will be: "Who all is going to teach the next generation of learners, and how can we ensure they are prepared and supported in their work?" Building on ideas from the Early Childhood Workforce Catalyst participants and several in-depth conversations… [PDF]
(2018). A Narrative Study of Black Males' Sense of Belonging in Graduate Counseling Programs. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of South Carolina. The purpose of this narrative study was to understand the experiences of Black males in doctoral counselor education programs. The study aimed to build a dialogue based on participants' experiences growing up as Black males, and how they experienced sense of belonging in their counselor education programs. This narrative study utilized a purposive and homogenous sampling selection. Black males who were selected to participate in this study attended Predominantly White Institutions and were in the process of earning their doctoral degrees in counselor education. Each male was a full-time student, in either their second, third or fourth year of their program. Narrative Theory, Critical Race Theory, and the Historically Black College and University (HBCU) Educational Models were identified as theoretical frameworks to understand participants' experiences. Participants' narratives were constructed using a Three-Dimensional Space Approach and told in Chronological order structured with a… [Direct]
(2019). Stereotypes of a Black Male Misunderstood (And It's Still All Good): Exploring How African American/Black Male Students Experience and Perceive Racial Microaggressions at a Community College. ProQuest LLC, Ed.D. Dissertation, Northeastern University. The purpose of this study was to understand African American male students' experiences and perceptions of racial microaggressions at a community college. The qualitative study, through the use of in-depth interviews with six African American male identified students, sought to answer the following research questions: (1) How do African American males attending a community college perceive and interpret individual and institutional forms of racial microaggressions? (2) In what ways can perceptions and experiences of racial microaggressions be linked to retention, persistence and completion rates of African American males attending a community college? (3) What are the experiences of African American male participants with racial microaggressions within a community college with predominately White faculty and how do they make sense of these experiences with respect to their academic and social achievement? The paper concludes with recommendations for future research on Black males… [Direct]
(2022). Connection, Antiblackness, and Positive Relationships That (Re)Humanize Black Boys' Experience of School. Teachers College Record, v124 n1 p111-142 Jan. Background/Context: Black people continue to be popularly imagined as lacking humanity and, as such, are often the disproportionate subjects of unceasing racegender terror and state violence. A vast body of scholarship has documented the failure of schools to adequately serve Black youth in general, and Black boys and men in particular. There is compelling evidence, however, that consistently humanizing interactions with adults in school lead to positive relationships that in turn may protect against Black boys' experience of school as fundamentally dehumanizing. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: This study examined the significance of positive relationships between Black boys and adults in school as they move(d) across the P–16 education pipeline. The study is guided by the following primary research question: How do young Black men and boys describe and understand their interpersonal relationships with adults in P–16 schools? Research Design: A descriptive… [Direct]
(2018). "No One Knows": Untold Narratives of Southeast Asian American Student Success. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of Utah. This study explores how Southeast Asian American college students experience success in college despite systemic and institutional barriers. The underrepresentation of Southeast Asian American perspectives in higher education research has created a deficit in understanding this population's experiences on college campuses. This dissertation highlights four narratives of Cambodian American and Vietnamese American college students by telling their stories of racism and racialization, support, relationships, and personal and familial resilience as they strived to find educational success on their college campus. Through Critical Race and AsianCrit frameworks and a narrative inquiry methodology, a number of significant findings emerged. Based on the stories of Vincent, M, Isaiah, and B, three themes and 11 subthemes comprise the dissertation's findings. The first theme underlines the importance of intersectionality regarding social identities. The theme is broken into four subthemes to… [Direct]
(2024). To Look for a Better Life: Examining the Experiences of Undocumented Latina/o Youth on Their Higher Education and Employment Aspirations. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, Rutgers The State University of New Jersey, School of Graduate Studies. There are eleven million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. Approximately two million are young people under the age of twenty-four. Although they came to the United States as children and were essentially raised and educated here, they remain without a pathway to legal permanent citizenship. Relatively little is known about the experiences of undocumented immigrant young people who are growing up and living their daily lives in the United States. They are busy going to school, taking care of their families, and working demanding jobs, while also trying their best to pursue their hopes and dreams. Although they were born in other countries, they are being incorporated into U.S. society as young adults. Institutions, such as the U.S. immigration enforcement regime, present legal challenges for undocumented immigrants, while restrictive economic and social structures affect their participation in the economy and society. The study fills a gap in the immigration… [Direct]
(2022). Nurturing Black Girl Imagination: Using Portraiture to Disrupt the Omnivisibility of Black Girlhood and to Illuminate Black Girls' Childhoodness, Creativity, and Criticality in Science Learning Spaces. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Michigan. This study explores how Black girls express their "Black girl imagination" while participating in a critical, informal science learning program, Empowering Girls Through Art & Science, designed to prioritize the positive visibility of Black girls and promote the critical exploration of scientific histories. The goal of the research was to identify ways Black girls actualize their "Black girl imaginations" through expressions of childhood, criticality, and creativity. Three questions structured the study: (1) How do adolescent Black girls express their "Black girl imaginations" when participating in a critical, informal science learning space designed with them in mind? (2) What do their expressions of "Black girl imagination" reveal about their articulations of self? (3) What do their expressions of "Black girl imagination" reveal about their meaning making in science? The framework for the study is constructed from three… [Direct]
(2022). Outsiders Within: A Phenomenological Qualitative Study of How Black Female Faculty Navigate Race and Gender in Predominately White Institutions. ProQuest LLC, Ed.D. Dissertation, Baylor University. The purpose of this study was to obtain greater insight into the experiences of Black women who work as full-time faculty at two and four-year colleges and universities. This phenomenological qualitative study investigated the formal and informal interactions that full-time Black female faculty have with colleagues and students alike. Additionally, this study investigated how full-time Black female faculty manage self-care in the aftermath of racist and sexist experiences. Black Feminist Thought was used as the framework for analysis in this study. Black Feminist Thought is the study of how the political and economic status of Black women results in a distinctive set of experiences that lead to a different view of reality than that of other groups (Collins, 1989). Black Feminist Thought asserts that, through self-definition, Black women claim the power to reject externally-defined negative stereotypes about Black women (Collins, 1986; Stevens, 2019). As well, through self-valuation,… [Direct]
(2022). "I Want to Be a Better Person and a Better Teacher": Exploring the Constructs of Race and Ability in a Music Educator Collaborative Teacher Study Group. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, Michigan State University. The way teachers engage with dis/ability and race in their classrooms links to their underlying belief systems (Heroux, 2013; Ryan, 2020). Unfortunately, substantial evidence connects teacher beliefs and perceptions to the reification of hegemonic norms, which upholds barriers for students in educational settings (Annamma, 2015b; Heroux, 2013; Ryan, 2020). The purpose of this study was to examine a music educator collaborative teacher study group (CTSG) focused on exploring and unpacking narratives of race and dis/ability in music education. Research questions were: (1) How do teachers conceptualize issues of race and ability in both their belief systems and stated classroom practices?; (2) How, if at all, did participants' beliefs about race and ability change as a result of participating in the CTSG?; and (3) What conditions facilitated changes in mindset and behavior for participants? I designed and completed a descriptive, collective case study (Stake, 1995; Yin 2018) that… [Direct]
(2016). Softly, Softly: Genetics, Intelligence and the Hidden Racism of the New Geneism. Journal of Education Policy, v31 n4 p365-388. Crude and dangerous ideas about the genetic heritability of intelligence, and a supposed biological basis for the Black/White achievement gap, are alive and well inside the education policy process but taking new and more subtle forms. Drawing on Critical Race Theory, the paper analyses recent hereditarian writing, in the UK and the USA, and highlight a strategy that I term "racial inexplicitness"; this allows hereditarian advocates to adopt a colorblind fa√ßade that presents their work as new, exciting and full of promise for all of society. The paper is in two parts: the first exposes the racism that lies hidden in the small print of the new geneism, where wildly misleading assertions about genetic influences on education are proclaimed as scientific fact while race-conscious critics are dismissed as ignorant ideologues. The second part of the paper sets out critical facts about the relevant science, including the difference between the mythic and real meaning of… [Direct]
(2023). Exploring Successful Student Support Services in Higher Education for Black Males with Histories of IEPs. ProQuest LLC, Ed.D. Dissertation, Chicago State University. Black men within the United States with learning disabilities have difficulty navigating the collegiate environment (Jackson, 2016) because they are not academically prepared when taking developmental courses (Abreu et al., 2016; Bouck & Joshi, 2017). Researchers have studied Black men's lived experiences with Individualized Education Plans (IEPs), from national research to local district-wide studies (Ford & Russo, 2016). It is unrealistic to believe that only in the United States do students with learning disability attend a four-year institution. A recent national assessment implies that other countries are less inclusive with students identified as having an intellectual disability (Douglas et al., 2016). This study investigated the question: What support services are needed to assist African American males with histories of IEP services in attaining a college degree at an identified four-year institution in Illinois? Research depicting the experiences of Black males in… [Direct]
(2018). Indigenous Graduate Research Students in Australia: A Critical Review of the Research. Higher Education Research and Development, v37 n4 p805-820. Over the last decade, there has been a steady increase in the number of Indigenous graduate research students in Australia, yet research and pedagogy has not kept pace with changes underway in the sector. From an extensive search of literature published between 2000 and 2017, 15 papers (representing 10 research projects conducted by seven teams or authors) were identified that addressed Indigenous graduate research student experience. Overall, the literature tends to focus on identifying barriers to completion, noting in particular the impact of financial difficulties, social isolation and racism. A research degree is a key site for the assertion and legitimation of Indigenous knowledges, and it is here that Indigenous students are navigating tensions between legitimated disciplinary practices of the centre and the peripheral status of Indigenous knowledges. We, therefore, adopt Herbert's 'centre-periphery' model to interpret the research, arguing that this framework explains the… [Direct]
(2018). Students' Physical Education Experiences in a Multi-Ethnic Class. Sport, Education and Society, v23 n7 p694-706. As western countries have become increasingly diverse, education is often emphasized as one of the most important arenas for social integration. However, research within physical education over the past decades has highlighted how students with non-western backgrounds experience processes of 'othering', exclusion, and marginalization in the subject. In the Norwegian context, we have little knowledge about how these processes work within multi-ethnic PE lessons. In addition, scholars have pointed to the tendency of PE research on race/racism and ethnicity to focus on the minoritized 'other', while leaving out the complexity of the multi-ethnic encounter. By applying an intersectional lens, our aim is to investigate students' experiences in a multi-ethnic co-educational PE context. Specifically, we ask how the students' multiple identities may influence their experiences within PE, and what processes of inclusion and exclusion are revealed through their narratives. The study is based… [Direct]
(2024). Toward a Theory of Black Woman Math Pedagogy. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Washington. Black women have a legacy of pedagogical expertise. However, Black women teachers' mathematics pedagogy remains woefully under-theorized and under-researched. This is to the detriment of Black and Brown mathematics students. Mathematics education in the U.S. mirrors our broader society, which continues to reinscribe patterns of intellectual and socioeconomic whiteness, elitism, and masculinity (Joseph et al., 2021). I bring together scholarship on Black women teacher knowledge, research on pedagogical content knowledge, and Black feminist theory to generate a theoretical framework to study Black women's pedagogical expertise in mathematics: Black Woman Math Pedagogy. From a Black feminist perspective, Black Woman Math Pedagogy is the dialogical relationship between politically conscious Black women mathematics teachers' thoughts and actions about their day-to-day mathematics teaching. The first construct of my framework is Black Woman Pedagogy, which I identified by analyzing the… [Direct]
(2020). College Capital and Constraint Agency: First-Generation Immigrant Emergent-Bilingual Students' College Success. Teachers College Record, v122 n1. Background/Context: Language-minoritized and emergent-bilingual (EB) students have historically and frequently been underexamined in the context of research on minoritized students' pathways in higher education. Understanding the school to college pipeline for emergent bilinguals (EBs) is becoming a critical area of study to help identify and address the barriers that they experience as they attempt to transition to and navigate postsecondary education. Despite there being a greater knowledge of the barriers experienced by EBs in getting to college, less is known about the resources they bring and their agency, the way they actually mobilize the resources that they possess in negotiating their success to get to and complete college. Purpose/Research Question: This study examines why and how some EB students can successfully navigate their environments in order to apply for, get into and complete a selective four-year college. It is guided by two overarching questions: (1) What forms… [Direct]