No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Black Achievers' Experiences with Racial Spotlighting and Racial Ignoring in a Predominantly White High School
Abstract
Background/Context
Despite a history of racial oppression and degradation in U.S. schools, African Americans have responded to racism and discrimination in ways that promote educational attainment and school success. Many Black adolescents have been empowered to succeed academically partly because of their awareness of racist practices in education and society. This empowerment to succeed in the face of racism is also seen as resiliency. A growing body of research suggests that despite experiencing racism in schools, many African Americans possess an achievement ethos that demands a commitment to excellence; despite experiencing racism as a stressor, these students develop resilient strategies for resisting racism in the school context.
Purpose/Objective/Focus of Study
The purpose of this study was to understand the adaptive behaviors that high-achieving Black students employed in a predominantly White high school to maintain school success and a positive racial self-definition. The focus of this article is to examine how these students describe, understand, and respond to experiencing racial microaggressions in classroom, social, and extracurricular domains within their school.
Research Design
The article includes data from a yearlong qualitative investigation of high-achieving Black students in a predominantly White high school. The author analyzed interview data, participant observations, and field notes and used a grounded theory approach to analyzing the data to arrive at an understanding of how students perceived experiences with racial microaggressions in their school.
Findings/Results
Findings indicate that students experienced racial microaggressions in the form of sometimes being spotlighted because of their race (i.e., racial spotlighting) and sometimes being ignored because of their race (i.e., racial ignoring). Students managed these experiences by utilizing a variety of resilient strategies that represent varying degrees of resistance. The use of these behavioral strategies demonstrates their resilience not only to racism but also to a school climate in which racism acts as a structural barrier to potentially constrain or impede achievement. These strategies allow students to effectively navigate within and across classroom and nonclassroom domains despite experiencing racial discrimination and to acquire and maintain school success without rejecting their racial identity.
Conclusions/Recommendations
The article concludes with implications for teacher education and creating culturally inclusive school and classroom environments. The article challenges educators to critically examine the relationships between race, racism, Whiteness, and teaching and learning. Specifically, recommendations are offered for preservice teacher preparation and in-service teacher professional development.
... Researchers have documented these "microaggressions" along racial lines in different levels of our education system: middle schools, high schools, and universities. Some researchers have written that Black students yearn for a space where they can feel free to be themselves (Andrews, 2012;Henfield, 2011;Obama, 2018;Ogbu, 2003;Solorzano, 2000). ...
... However, several studies reveal that Black students are maltreated when they attend school with White students, and where the teaching staff is predominantly White (Andrews, 2012;Chapman 2013;Tatum, 2017). This has been attributed largely to racist structures set up in institutions that are not sympathetic to the plight of Black students. ...
... This has been attributed largely to racist structures set up in institutions that are not sympathetic to the plight of Black students. Andrews (2012) reported that African American students in elite high schools experienced microaggressions because of racial stereotyping and branding. As a result, they resorted to behavioral attitudes to place a façade around themselves, which gave them the latitude to escape being bitter, while ensuring their success academically. ...
Many African American parents enroll their children in boarding schools in search of stellar academic exposure, extracurricular activities, and college preparation. Students adapt themselves to the new academic rigor that abounds in the boarding schools, amidst other challenges. This study used a phenomenological research design that was rooted in critical race theory, culturally responsive pedagogy, and constructivism worldview to examine how African American graduates of boarding schools perceived the college readiness they received from their boarding
schools. Five African Americans who graduated from boarding schools in the U.S. were selected through purposive and snowball sampling techniques. The collected data were analyzed using van Manen's six-step interpretive phenomenological approach. Participants expressed a lack of intentional college preparation. The boarding school academic programs enriched the students, but college readiness was neither well-planned nor culturally responsive to the unique needs of Black students. In this study, college readiness was not limited to academic rigor. Participants identified college preparation needs that their boarding schools did not meet, including, not interfacing with their college counselors early enough, not taking prerequisite high school courses, and lack of exposure to important scholarship. This study found that college counseling must be planned effectively to support African American students to ensure success in college.
Keywords: boarding schools, African Americans, college readiness, college counseling, critical race theory, culturally responsive pedagogy, constructivism
... They struggled with responding in ways that emphasized their power and agency, demonstrating the confusion and struggle that youth experience in responding to discrimination. In another qualitative study, Carter Andrews (2012) found that high-achieving Black students used resistance strategies to oppose and respond to school-based discriminatory experiences such as, distancing (diminishing significance of the event), silence as survival (remaining quiet in an effort to protect oneself), challenging (verbal confrontation of the perpetrator), problem solving (direct action to deal manage the event), and seeking guidance and support. Students' use of these strategies helped them successfully navigate their oppressive school environment and tailor their responses to the type of discrimination they experienced. ...
... Well, that's not what she said, but that's what she meant. (Naomi) Racial spotlighting is a microaggression in which a REM individual is involuntarily made hypervisible by Whites (Carter Andrews, 2012). In this case, the teacher's comment led to other students staring at Naomi and highlighting her as the native informant of Black history. ...
... Contrary to dominant notions of silence as a passive, ineffectual response, adolescents in the study described using silence for selfprotection and prevention from further discrimination. Carter Andrews (2012) describes this as "silence as survival." This response style may be adaptive for adolescents who are likely experiencing their first exposures to discrimination. ...
Discrimination is a common experience among racially and ethnically minoritized (REM) youth and often results in negative health and psychological outcomes. However, few studies provide adolescents with opportunities to directly share their discriminatory experiences, especially within the school context. Using a critical race theory framework and phenomenological approach, the present study explored how Black middle school students experienced and responded to discrimination in school settings. Findings revealed that youth experienced both direct and vicarious discrimination at school from multiple sources. Additionally, their responses indicated developmental and adaptive challenges, as well as a nuanced understanding of discrimination in their daily lives. Implications regarding educators’ roles in affirming and supporting Black students’ experiences are discussed.
... Several instructors' survey responses described ways that discussions of AAL content might-if not taught carefully and critically-result in harm to Black or AAL-using students. As shown in Table 3, instructors sought to avoid retraumatizing Black or AAL-using students by exposing the class to many stories of linguistic racism; to avoid "spotlighting" Black or AAL-using students (Carter Andrews, 2012) in ways that made them feel singled out or burdened; to avoid exposing the class to offensive language that could directly harm Black or AAL-using students who were present, or could indirectly harm others in the future; and to avoid invalidating or devaluing the beliefs of Black or AAL-using students with internalized negative attitudes toward AAL. As mentioned above, none of the 16 student interviewees included in the current analysis identified as Black or as an AAL user; thus, their interviews did not reflect the same diversity of perspectives and experiences as the instructor survey data. ...
... Several instructors in our survey reported wishing that they taught more Black or AAL-using students or other students of color in their courses because of the invaluable insights and lived experiences these students can bring to class. We applaud the value these instructors ascribe to student insights and experiences that have historically been ignored or devalued; however, we also worry that in some cases instructors may be inadvertently "spotlighting" Black or AAL-using students, forcing them to take on the emotional and cognitive labor (and risks) of educating their peers (Carter Andrews, 2012). ...
BACKGROUND: African American Language (AAL) refers to a rich, widely used, and extensively researched language variety. Despite its importance, AAL remains widely stigmatized in the United States due to anti-Black linguistic racism. Many colleges offer courses with AAL content, and these courses have the potential to help disrupt anti-Black linguistic racism by promoting understanding and respect for this language.
PURPOSE:
Simply increasing students’ knowledge about AAL is unlikely to disrupt anti-Black linguistic racism. College instructors must also attend to a wide range of challenges involved in teaching this content. Instructors’ knowledge of such challenges, as well as strategies for addressing them, constitutes a form of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). This study contributes to the emerging scholarship on PCK for teaching and learning about AAL.
RESEARCH DESIGN:
In this qualitative study, we analyze open-ended survey data from college instructors to identify challenges faced when teaching AAL content. We also add depth and nuance to discussion of these challenges by analyzing qualitative interview data and qualitative survey responses from college students enrolled in courses with AAL content. Finally, we outline pedagogical recommendations that could potentially address these challenges.
CONCLUSIONS:
We identify three major categories of pedagogical challenges that commonly arise when teaching AAL content: protecting Black or AAL-using students from harm; managing other students’ knowledge, ideologies, and/or resistance; and addressing instructor positionality. We present six research-based recommendations to help instructors address these challenges, and identify key directions for future research on the teaching and learning of AAL.
... Okul dışı öğrenmeyi içeren eğitsel programlarla öğrencilerin şehir yaşamının gerektirdiği yaşam ve çevreye uyum becerilerini geliştirerek şehir stresiyle başa çıkabilme yeteneklerine sahip olabilirler. Ayrıca okul dışı öğrenme, okul-çevre, öğrenci-toplum ve aile-okul ilişkilerinin gelişmesine yardımcı olmaktadır (Carter Andrews, 2012;Fenzel ve Richardson, 2018;Williams ve Bryan, 2013). ...
Öğrencilerin kendilerini geliştirmelerine destek olmanın en kolay yollarından biriside, öğrenme deneyimlerini okul dışına taşımaktır. Sınıfta öğrenilen bilgi ve beceriyi sınıf dışına taşımak, öğrencilere okulda öğrendikleri kuramsal bilgilerin gerçek hayattaki uygulamalarını göstererek, öğrencinin öğrenme yaşantılarını geliştirmesine yardımcı olacaktır. Bu bağlamda araştırmanın amacı, öğretmen adaylarının okul dışı öğrenme ortamlarına ilişkin algılarının farklı değişkenler açısından (cinsiyet, sınıf düzeyi, okudukları bölümler v.s.) incelenmesidir. Araştırmada nicel araştırma yöntemlerinden tarama deseni kullanılmıştır. Nicel araştırma yöntemi, mevcut durum olduğu şekliyle betimlenmek istendiğinden tarama modeli tercih edilmiştir. Eğitim fakültesinin dokuz bölümünde öğrenim gören 599’ u kadın, 277’si erkek olmak üzere toplam 877 öğretmen adayı oluşturmaktadır. Araştırmadan elde edilen bulgular arasında; öğretmen adaylarının okul dışı öğrenme ortamlarına ilişkin algılarına baktığımızda araştırmaya katılanların büyük bir çoğunluğunun tamamen katılıyorum ve çoğunlukla katılıyorum seçeneğini işaretledikleri görülmektedir. Yine elde edilen bir başka bulgu ise öğretmen adaylarının okul dışı öğrenme ortamları dersine ilişkin algıları sınıf düzeylerine göre bakıldığında hem toplam puanlarda hem de alt faktörler bağlamında dördüncü sınıflar yine lehine anlamlı bir farklılığın olduğu elde edilen sonuçlardan anlaşılmaktadır.
... Essed (1991Essed ( , 2002 argumenterer for at studier av reaksjoner kan gi innsikt i hvordan de som opplever rasisme, protesterer eller øver motstand, og om visse reaksjonsformer er mer vellykkede enn andre. Det som er gjort av forskning, viser at det er stor variasjon i reaksjonene: fra passiv tilbaketrekning og å ikke fortelle noen om hendelsen, til mer aktive konfrontasjoner og forsøk på å motbevise fordommer (Feagin, 1991;Hyers, 2007;McNeilly et al., 1996;Andrews & Dorinda, 2012). Kontekst påvirker også hvordan diskriminerte minoriteter reagerer. ...
Mange etniske minoriteter opplever rasisme som et stort problem i Norge. Dette gjelder spesielt mikroaggresjoner basert på kulturelle forestillinger om at «det norske» er overlegent. I denne artikkelen beskriver vi ulike former for rasisme og legger vekt på hvordan disse ble motarbeidet gjennom det vi kaller hverdagsmotstand. Studien er basert på 41 kvalitative intervjuer med personer med minoritetsbakgrunn, hovedsakelig svarte, som deltok i Black Lives Matter-demonstrasjonene i Norge. Fem former for hverdagsrasisme var spesielt framtredende: skjellsord og nedsettende ytringer, forskjellsbehandling og diskriminering, antakelser om ikke å vaere «norsk», antakelser om lav sosial status og fordomsfull inkludering. Dette var i hovedsak mikroaggresjoner som fant sted i hverdagslig sosial samhandling. De fem vanligste reaksjonene på rasisme var forsøk på å motvirke den ved å ignorere, konfrontere, dele erfaringer, rapportere og demonstrere. Studien viser hvor sentralt det hverdagslige er for å forstå etniske minoriteters opplevelser av rasisme - og motstand. Vi argumenterer for at denne typen hverdagsmotstand, er viktigere enn både politisk protest og formelle rapporteringer. Dette er fordi hverdagen har en regelmessighet og kontinuerlig tilstedevaerelse som andre former for motstand mangler. Minoriteter i Norge opplever mye hets og forskjellsbehandling, men de er ikke passive ofre. Denne studien viser hvordan de aktivt forhandler, håndterer og kjemper mot rasisme.
... To overcome some of these challenges, Carter (2008), Carter Andrews (2012, and Seider et al. (2018) suggest that some parents might pressure their child to be successful through an ideology that promotes "achievement-as-resistance" (p. 761). ...
This paper focuses on the perspectives given by newcomer high school students as they discuss, through open dialogue and social media, their main challenges living in a new country. The scholars employed a collaborative action research approach and were guided by two questions: 1) How can newcomer students’ lived experiences inform best practices in the field of education? and 2) How did the social isolation brought on by COVID-19 affect the mental health/well-being of newcomer students? The results highlighted the racial, cultural, linguistic, and religious challenges these students face in their education as well as the considerable mental/emotional impact the COVID-19 pandemic had upon this demographic. The data holds major implications for best practice in the field of education, with specific emphasis on newcomer students.
Keywords: COVID-19, mental wellbeing, newcomer, educational best practices, racialization, diversity, cultural and linguistic challenges
... This skewed representation hampers integration between EMSs and Dutch-born students, reinforcing stereotypes and perpetuating discrimination [53]. In line with Carter's [54] observations, students facing discomfort due to othering, as evident in our study, encountered significant academic consequences. Notably, one participant even transferred from the medical program due to academic decline stemming from experiences of overt discrimination. ...
Racial discrimination is a global concern affecting education, including medical programs in the Netherlands. Covert racial discrimination in academia has been linked to adverse academic outcomes and unequal opportunities. This qualitative study explores the relationship between racism, well-being, and academic success among ethnic minority students in Dutch medical education. Conducted in 2021 at a southern Netherlands university, this research employed interviews to delve into the racial discrimination experiences of 11 diverse medical students. Utilising a phenomenological approach, the study conducted semi-structured interviews and applied thematic content analysis to understand how racial discrimination impacted the students' well-being. The findings revealed the prevalence of both overt and covert racial discrimination in predominantly white educational environments. Ethnic minority students encountered discrimination that negatively affected their well-being and academic performance. Racism manifested in overt and covert ways, with students often nor-malising exclusionary and racist situations. Ethnic minority students reported experiencing more racial discrimination than their white European peers, resulting in feelings of exclusion and academic challenges. The study suggests that implementing student-centred inclusivity measures through structural and institutional changes, such as support structures, mentoring programs, and inclusive course content, can mitigate racial discrimination, enhance diversity and inclusion, and improve ethnic minority medical students' mental well-being and academic performance. Addressing covert racism is crucial for fostering an equitable and inclusive educational environment. These findings underscore the importance of proactive action to combat racial discrimination in educational settings.
... A few studies have documented ways in which African American youth may engage in resistance strategies in schools. Resistance strategies in schools include how adolescents push back on structural forces (Collins, 2009), such as silence, distance, emotional expression, anger, and confrontation (Andrews, 2012;Kelly, 2018). Other forms of resistance include protesting against maltreatment, advocating for social and restorative justice to improve treatment and school conditions, and sharing their critical reflections and actions with others in and outside the school environment (Austin et al., 2022;Kelly, 2018). ...
African American families navigate not only everyday stressors and adversities but also unique sociocultural stressors (e.g., "toxic upstream waters" like oppression). These adverse conditions are consequences of the historical vestiges of slavery and Jim Crow laws, often manifested as inequities in wealth, housing, wages, employment, access to healthcare, and quality education. Despite these challenges, African American families have developed resilience using strength-based adaptive coping strategies, to some extent, to filter these waters. To advance the field of resilience research, we focused on the following questions: (1) what constitutes positive responses to adversity?; (2) how is resilience defined conceptually and measured operationally?; (3) how has the field of resilience evolved?; (4) who defines what, when, and how responses are manifestations of resilience, instead of, for example, resistance? How can resistance, which at times leads to positive adaptations, be incorporated into the study of resilience?; and (5) are there case examples that demonstrate ways to address structural oppression and the pernicious effects of racism through system-level interventions, thereby changing environmental situations that sustain toxic waters requiring acts of resilience to survive and thrive? We end by exploring how a re-conceptualization of resilience requires a paradigm shift and new methodological approaches to understand ways in which preventive interventions move beyond focusing on families' capacity to navigate oppression and target systems and structures that maintain these toxic waters.
... As such, principals should ensure that ongoing professional development occurs that creates opportunities for faculty and staff to address inherent biases while also building skills (Martin & Smith, 2017). For example, teachers, and administrators must be aware of how their perceptions of, and relationships with Black girls are influenced by stereotypes about Black femininity (Andrews, 2012;Annamma et al., 2019;Esposito & Edwards, 2018). ...
Recent studies have provided insight into the schooling experiences and lives of Black girls. These studies highlight the challenges that Black girls face in the school environment including underachievement, disproportionality in school discipline, deficit ideologies, and educator and counselor bias. The current study centers the voices on high achieving Black girls in an effort to center their unique and nuanced experiences in high school. Data was collected using in-depth individual interviews and analyzed using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis. We found that high achieving Black girls must navigate deficit thinking and negative stereotypes similar to their peers while they also pull strength and resilience from their intersecting identities. Further, high achieving Black girls were tenacious in their pursuits and found familial and teacher relationships to be paramount in their success. These findings support the importance of developing intentional and systemic supports to counter intersectional oppression to meet the needs of high achieving Black girls.
... A theory of racialized organization would suggest that schools are, therefore, critical contexts for the strategic use of racialized meanings by actors inhabiting them (Embrick & Moore, 2020;Smith, 2019,;Ray, 2019). As such, all those operating in schools, Whites and people of color, are influenced by and influence the racialized character of schools through the utilization of racial logics to achieve the goals of the racialized organization, which has traditionally privileged White and middle-class cultural orientation (Carter Andrews, 2012;Diamond & Gomez, 2004;Diamond & Lewis, 2019;Feagin, 2020;Smith, 2019). ...
This study uses latent transitional analysis to examine the longitudinal association between racial discrimination and academic self-efficacy in teacher–student interactions. Two levels of teacher–student interactions are examined: low-risk, in which students perceive no probability of racial discrimination, and high-risk, in which students perceive probability of racial discrimination. Participants were drawn from the Maryland Adolescent Development in Context Study ( N = 574: 202 White and 372 Black, mean age = 13.64 [ SD = .42]). Findings revealed that students perceiving no racial discrimination, regardless of sociodemographic factors, showed consistently strong positive academic self-efficacy as they transitioned from lower to higher grade levels compared with those perceiving racial discrimination. Accounting for racial discrimination, there were no differences in academic self-efficacy beliefs between Black and White students. Students’ perceived racial discrimination in teacher–student interactions impacted negatively on academic self-efficacy.
... Additionally, educators may discipline and grade African American students more harshly, track them to lower-ability classes, and regard them as criminals [1,18,69,70]. Although these discriminatory experiences are likely to be experienced by both boys and girls [71], our findings, which are consistent with prior work [59,72] suggest that from an intersectional lens, these experiences can be more detrimental for African American males, as well as those from lower income backgrounds relative to academic experiences and performance. Furthermore, as shown in Figure 2, income/class had an independent association with student attendance and an indirect association with academic performance through attendance or absenteeism. ...
Drawing on prior research, this study applies an intersectional framework to investigate discrimination in the context of teacher–student relationships and its influence on students’ academic outcomes. Outcomes assessed were inclusive of self-efficacy, school attendance, and grade point average (GPA). For this analysis, structural equation modeling was used with a cross-sectional sample of the Maryland and Adolescent Development in Context Study (MADICS) and the youth self-administered (YSA) questionnaires administered when the youth were in 8th grade (Wave 3). A total of 1182 students completed the survey, of whom 704 were selected for this study. Findings show teacher discrimination as a mechanism to uncover some of the ways race, gender, and income simultaneously intersect to affect students’ academic outcomes. The current study confirms and extends prior work establishing associations among race, gender, income, and teacher discrimination and academic outcomes among African American youth. African American students, especially males, regardless of income levels, may benefit directly—evidenced in visible academic performance—from more positive and race-conscious interactions with teachers. Future implications for practice are shared.
... Racialized people respond in a variety of ways to racism, including active opposition and more passive or hidden reactions (Carter Andrews 2012). A US study reports a broad spectre of emotional responses, most common were feeling disrespected and anger, followed by a feeling of being insulted, disappointment, frustration, outrage, hurt and shock (Carter and Forsyth 2010, 189). ...
Racial discrimination takes many forms and so does opposition to it. In contrast to the dominant emphasis on institutional or state efforts to counter racism, we examine how members of racially minoritized groups resist racism in their everyday lives. Drawing on forty-one qualitative interviews with young, mainly Black, people in Norway, we identify five distinct ways in which they actively counter racism, as opposed to passively accepting or adapting to it. Participants resisted racism by ignoring, confronting, sharing experiences about, reporting and protesting it. Our analysis explicates the characteristics, potential outcomes and social function of such resistance to racism. The study contributes to the literature on everyday racism and antiracism by making it evident how those at the receiving end negotiate and actively oppose racist experiences.
... Black students' experiences with institutional, interpersonal, and internalized racism within schools continue to be important topics of research (Grace & Nelson, 2019;Skiba et al., 2002). The impact of and response to these chronic racist experiences are inextricably linked to students' academic outcomes (Carter Andrews, 2012;Reynolds et al., 2010). ...
Studies show that effective partnerships between schools and families improve students’ academic outcomes. Schools often struggle to implement effective strategies with low-income families, however. This multiple case study examines family-school partnership activities at eight demographically diverse schools in the state of Hawaiʻi and examines successful family outreach strategies that cut across SES. Drawing from interview transcripts, which were selectively coded, the study identified successful modes of communication as identified by participants. Overall, participants reported that personalized, informal, and face-to-face communications were the most effective modes of communication. These findings have implications for K-12 teachers’ online communication with families.
... We propose that Black people living in the United States are bound together through the cultural experience of racial oppression, and that this oppression takes on many forms (e.g., political, economic, criminal justice). Since Black people share this cultural experience, they have developed cultural resistance strategies (Andrews, 2012) to cope with the racial oppression they have been subjugated to for centuries. One of the most strengthsbased and asset-focused cultural resistance strategies Black people have used is racial literacy-the ability to use cultural resistance strategies to cope with racial stress. ...
Racial literacy as defined by Stevenson (2014) is an important cultural resistance strategy (e.g., positive coping strategy) for Black children and youth because it provides them with the skills needed to survive in a racist society. Stevenson’s work along with his colleague’s (Anderson et al., 2019) focuses on adolescents and those in middle childhood, yet it has inspired us to postulate how racial literacy might be fostered in young children (age 3-8). We propose a theoretical model for how racial literary can be fostered within shared-reading contexts using racially-affirming storybooks coupled with conversations grounded in the principles of ethnic- racial socialization. We posit that these conversations result in both direct influence on racial literacy and indirect influence via positive ethnic-racial identity and emotion regulation and understanding.
... An additional form of self-protection involves desensitizing, avoiding, and disengaging. Several studies found support for the behavioral strategies of intentional avoidance and disengagement (e.g., Carter Andrews, 2012;Gomez et al., 2011;Yu et al., 2016). Lewis et al. (2013) identified desensitizing and escaping as deliberate strategies Black women used to minimize the stress associated with their experiences with gendered racial microaggressions. ...
In this article, we review the theoretical and empirical literature on racial microaggressions from 2007 to 2020 ( N = 138 articles). First, we refine racial microaggressions theory and update the definition to address mischaracterizations in the literature and clarify the term (i.e., “micro” refers to microlevel interactions rather than degree of harm). Next, we used four superordinate categories (i.e., pathologizing differences, denigrating and pigeonholing, excluding or rendering invisible, and perpetuating color-blind racial attitudes) in which to situate racial microaggression themes from the extant literature. Moreover, we consolidated and renamed existing themes to privilege targets’ perspectives (e.g., facing assumptions of inferior status and enduring exoticization). We then synthesized qualitative and quantitative research that shows harmful sequelae of racial microaggressions (i.e., psychological and physiological symptoms). Extending prior research on coping with gendered racial microaggressions, we describe empirical findings on collective, resistance, and self-protective strategies to mitigate the harmful impact of racial microaggressions. We conclude with directions for future research.
... Black students' experiences with institutional, interpersonal, and internalized racism within schools continue to be important topics of research (Grace & Nelson, 2019;Skiba et al., 2002). The impact of and response to these chronic racist experiences are inextricably linked to students' academic outcomes (Carter Andrews, 2012;Reynolds et al., 2010). ...
... Some teachers and students appraise these racial interactions as overwhelming, which results in maladaptive coping (e.g., teacher abuse of power or increased implicit bias; or student academic disengagement and classroom noncompliance), while others appraise these situations as manageable and cope adaptively. Adaptive coping strategies enable individuals to regulate their emotions and respond by asking intentional questions or going into deeper discussions about racially contentious topics (Carter Andrews 2012). These appraisals are influenced by previous experiences as well as the emotional and tangible resources available to address situations as benign, awkward or onerous (Folkman and Moskowitz 2000). ...
This paper reports on a curriculum designed for Black students whose school teachers and administrators sought to address concerns about students’ academic underachievement and behavioral challenges. In order to design the curriculum, we examined Black students’ reactions to race- and academic-related stress as a result of their interactions with mostly White teachers and peers in an increasingly diversifying predominantly White, middle-class community. Grounded in principles of Racial Encounter Coping Appraisal and Socialization Theory (RECAST), a paradigm for understanding the racial coping strategies utilized by individuals to contend with racial stress and well-being, the study sought to elucidate racial tensions found in schooling relationships that foster racial disparities in classrooms. Specifically, our team conducted focus group sessions with Black parents and students which were guided by our use of the Cultural and Racial Experiences of Socialization Survey (CARES), a racial and ethnic socialization measure that elicits responses from students about the kinds of messages students receive about race and ethnicity from people parents and teachers. Data from the sessions subsequently informed the design of Let’s Talk? (LT), a racial conflict resolution curriculum for Black adolescents. In this paper, we share what we learned about students’ school experiences and coping mechanism through their participation in LT.
... For example, they can provide readings that include high-achieving culturally diverse students (breaking the stereotypes). Carter Andrews (2012) argues that teachers much examine race, racism, whiteness, and how these concepts relate to teaching and learning. Lensmire and Snaza (2010) posit three suggestions for teacher education. ...
This study examines racial bias whereby preservice teacher participants pair photos of people of varying ages and races with positive or negative adjectives. Their responses are then compared to participant self-reporting of open-ended questions on how committed they are to issues of social justice. Findings indicate that participants reported to be much more racially aware and accepting than they actually were. This study has long-reaching implications for teacher education.
... I embrace humanizing students of color by striving to not engage them in racial spotlighting. That is avoiding and deflecting peer engagement with students of color that can cause students of color to be hypervisablized by Whites (Carter Andrews, 2008Andrews, , 2012. Hypervisibility is when one's race makes them seen in ways that causes "situational pressure" as they may be viewed as the "race representative" (Carter Andrews, 2012, p. 14). ...
Purpose
In this reflective essay, the authors, four educators of color, explore the relevance of humanizing practices of community in teaching and learning, school leadership and the potential challenges for equity work in education, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Design/methodology/approach
This reflective essay draws on lessons learned from the pedagogical practices of women of color, literature on teachers of color, as well as our experiences as educators of teachers and school leaders, as the authors think about new possibilities and challenges for anti-racist practice and living during the pandemic.
Findings
This essay describes community-oriented practice of women of color educators to be important in orienting teaching and learning toward more humanizing practice. The reflections highlight both possibilities and challenges that can be helpful reimagining the practice in teacher and leadership education, as the authors prepare educators for an uncertain future.
Originality/value
This essay offers valuable lessons from women of color educator practice that can offer humanizing approaches to teaching and learning as well as school leadership education.
Recent research has shifted from merely identifying established inequities to focusing on actionable solutions in gifted education, particularly for Black students. Researchers have offered insights into equitable access for Black students, while others have emphasized the need for diversification and culturally relevant improvements in gifted programs. With a practical approach, this Qualitative Evidence Synthesis integrates findings to propose strategies for fostering equity in gifted education underscoring the necessity for a collaborative, functional guide to improve gifted education. Addressing this need, the study draws on prior research findings to present five specific recommendations for school districts aiming to design inclusive and equitable gifted programs. These recommendations focus on comprehensive policy changes, professional development, curriculum reform, identification processes, and community engagement.
Immigrant and newcomer students often experience challenges as they seek to assimilate in the new country. As such, this theme remains significantly under-researched and continues to hinder our understanding of newcomer students’ most urgent needs. This article focuses on the perspectives given by newcomer high school students as they discuss, through open dialogue and social media, their main challenges living in a new country. The scholars employed a collaborative action research approach and were guided by two questions: (1) How can newcomer students’ lived experiences inform best practices in the field of education? and (2) How did the social isolation brought on by COVID-19 affect the mental health/well-being of newcomer students? The results highlighted the racial, cultural, linguistic, and religious challenges these students face in their education as well as the considerable mental/emotional impact the COVID-19 pandemic had on this demographic. The data hold major implications for best practice in the field of education, with specific emphasis on newcomer students.
Immigrant and newcomer students often experience challenges as they seek to assimilate in the new country. As such, this theme remains significantly under-researched and continues to hinder our understanding of newcomer students’ most urgent needs. This article focuses on the perspectives given by newcomer high school students as they discuss, through open dialogue and social media, their main challenges living in a new country. The scholars employed a collaborative action research approach and were guided by two questions: (1) How can newcomer students’ lived experiences inform best practices in the field of education? and (2) How did the social isolation brought on by COVID-19 affect the mental health/well-being of newcomer students? The results highlighted the racial, cultural, linguistic, and religious challenges these students face in their education as well as the considerable mental/emotional impact the COVID-19 pandemic had on this demographic. The data hold major implications for best practice in the field of education, with specific emphasis on newcomer students.
The introduction will give readers a brief history of tracking and detracking so they may situate themselves in the existing literature. This will explain how I chose the focal high schools and that the schools are all presented using pseudonyms and vague information about their whereabouts to protect participants’ anonymity. Finally, the introduction will also include a map of the structure of the book and explain why the focal high schools are included.
The historical record reveals that in the final opinion of the landmark school segregation case Cooper v. Aaron, the U.S. Supreme Court justices intentionally used the term “desegregation” rather than “integration” to soften the ire of those opposed to the Brown v. Board of Education decision. The justices believed that Southern resisters to integrations would find the former term “a shade less offensive” than the latter. In this lecture, education scholar and sociologist Prudence Carter reverses that logic and discusses why educational practices of “radical inclusion” are “a shade less offensive” today than mere desegregation in light of persistent educational disparities by race, ethnicity, and class. Carter draws on her original research and other social science evidence to show why societies marred by social and economic divides continue to struggle with the realization of integration in schools and communities. In her commentary on multiple dimensions of educational inequality, she highlights policies and evidence-based practices that have the potential to bring us closer to equity in schools and society.
Background/Context
Scholars have identified how antiblackness operates as a specific organizational culture across the educational enterprise by examining Black students in various schooling contexts. However, there remains limited empirical research exploring Black students’ unique experiences in predominantly Latinx educational settings. The presence of Black bodies in institutions like schools from which they have been historically or conceptually excluded, marginalized, or “othered” presents an intriguing context to investigate the intersection of race, place, and the politics of visibility.
Research Design
Drawing from an extensive ethnographic project on antiblackness in borderland contexts, this article interrogates Black students’ narratives of in/visibility—stories detailing moments when they felt seen and unseen. I used purposive sampling and recruited 20 Black students to participate in focus groups and individual interviews. Focus groups and interviews were semi-structured, using open-ended questions but centered on circumstances related to in/visibility. I also conducted observations in classrooms, hallways, the cafeteria, and other locations across the school campus.
Data Collection and Analysis
Data analysis for this study included coding and recoding transcripts and field notes, and writing analytic memos. The analytic memos served as a site of conversation about the data where I could think deeply about the experiences that my participants shared. Coding and writing analytic memos were concurrent data analytic activities. During analysis, I paid close attention to how students described moments of invisibility, visibility, and hypervisibility. I conducted thematic coding and analysis of the data, which generated key themes. Finally, I reorganized emerging themes several times in relation to the extant literature and theoretical framework.
Findings
Building on prior research on antiblackness in education, I use the notions of seen and unseen to describe Black students’ experiences with antiblack structures, practices, and encounters with their non-Black peers and adults. Black youth narratives reveal that their Blackness is simultaneously rendered hypervisible and invisible through the everydayness of antiblackness. The data also reveal that their racialized experiences with in/visibility were concurrently spatial and had implications for how Black students navigated the physical geographies of schools. I found that unseeing is an active process of not acknowledging the bias accompanying explicit practices that enable different people to exist differently in the same space. To unsee is a rejection of the specificity of Black that encodes how Black students navigate spaces where they are not the somatic norm. Further, this posture impacts Black bodies by making them feel simultaneously like outsiders and insiders. As a result, some bodies are deemed as having the right to belong, while others are marked as trespassers.
Conclusions and Recommendations
Racial moments have material, emotional, and educational consequences for Black students. Being “different” from the somatic norm renders Black bodies simultaneously highly visible and invisible. Research tends to collapse Black and Latinx students into a broader category of “students of color” without disaggregating the distinctive ways in which racialized school systems impact these groups differently. Further, the data presented here demonstrate how antiblack racism shapes the experiences of Black students and draws attention to the urgency of dismantling the people of color colorblindness in research analysis.
Darius O. Johnson, Briana Markoff, and Dorinda J. Carter Andrews examined data from focus groups conducted with more than 60 Black boys in midwestern high schools to learn how teachers and schools can refuse antiblackness and reimagine futures for Black boys in school. Black boys and young men want safe school environments and will create safe communal spaces when needed. They seek teachers who are culturally relevant; they want to be able to trust their teachers; and they want to be their full, authentic selves at school. Findings show how educators can work within antiblack institutions toward reducing in-school suffering while working to create better futures for Black boys in school.
Recent events in the United States have made it clear that all institutions must examine their system and engage in social change. Educators are positioned to be social advocates (with the proper training), who play a unique role in helping to implement policies that promote social justice and equity, especially for Black students in the educational system. As schools engage in efforts to promote anti-racist practices, educators can lend their expertise to ensure that these changes provide adequate support for racially and ethnically minoritized (REM) students. This paper describes how educators can use a Critical Race Theory (CRT) framework to inform school wide policies and practices that encourage positive schooling experiences and outcomes among Black students. Specific strategies are provided.
In this special issue, we focus on the resilience processes found among diverse groups of CWOC. We emphasize four key concepts: developmental perspective (emerging adulthood), resilience, resistance, and intersectionality. Included are the studies with African American and Latinx young adult women, Latina mothers, and Chinese sojourner women. Papers in the special issue appear as follows: Rana et al.’s paper on Latinx mothers attending college, then Causey et al. on African American women navigating white college spaces with typologies of success, followed by Johnson et al.’s paper, amplifying African American and Latinx women’s intersectional strivings using maternal messages as rudders, and finally, Qin et al.’s paper on international Chinese women managing their immigrant experiences as sojourners in the U.S. In each study CWOC demonstrate successful resistance and striving as the press the boundaries of gender-race constraints.
Building upon literature that has shown that Black students hold definitive beliefs about their teachers’ expectations and knowing these notions have impact on Black student achievement, we explore the experiences within a school district where diversity and inclusion efforts have been ongoing. The participants of this study were high-achieving students and their parents, a nuance that provides depth to understanding Black families’ perceptions of teacher expectations. Critical Race Theory (CRT) served as the theoretical framework and the tenets of permanence of racism, interest convergence, critique of liberalism, and whiteness as property, were employed as categorical themes to centralize the focus on how the families made meaning of their educational experiences through a CRT lens. Findings revealed that the participants were subject to unjust, low expectations that created and maintained a racial hierarchy and an anti-Black ideation on the part of teachers and school authorities. Implications include the need for teachers to raise their awareness of how their actions are interpreted, their role in creating a culture of mistrust, and the need to counter individual level and institutional racialized structures.
Feeling unsafe at school undermines student well-being and educational outcomes. Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) might feel less safe at school due to attending systemically inequitable schools and discriminatory treatment. This QuantCrit study examines two facets of this inequality of opportunity: factors explaining differing rates of feeling unsafe and ecological assets of BIPOC students. Methods include decomposition to understand differences in feelings of safety and structural equation modeling to examine relationships between safety, ecological assets, and subsequent outcomes, using data from two nationally represented, longitudinal data sets. We find that BIPOC students felt less safe at school than did White students, and these differences are more attributable to variation between schools for Black students and within-school differences for Hispanic and American Indian students. The association between feeling unsafe and early adulthood socioeconomic status was fully mediated by ecological assets for Black and Hispanic students, but only partially mediated for White students.
While a large body of literature examines Black parents’ racial socialization, few studies have employed a sociological lens to explore parents’ own racial learning and how it relates to the implicit and explicit messages they send their children. Based on an ethnographic study of Black parents’ experiences and educational engagement in a predominantly white Midwestern suburb, this article uses a racial learning framework to examine how Black parents’ own racialized, place-based experiences relate to the lessons they attempt to teach their children about race and racism. The research reveals that parents’ racial socialization practices were influenced by their own racial learning and experiences in the predominantly white suburban context, their children’s experiences in the local schools, and for some parents, the things they learned with and from other Black families in school and community organizational spaces. The research findings illustrate the importance of understanding Black parents’ own place-based racial learning and how it shapes and informs their efforts to support their children’s wellbeing and academic success, particularly in predominantly white school districts and communities.
Die vorliegende kumulative Promotionsarbeit beschäftigt sich mit leistungsstarken Schülerinnen und Schülern, die seit 2015 in der deutschen Bildungspolitik, zum Beispiel im Rahmen von Förderprogrammen wieder mehr Raum einnehmen, nachdem in Folge des „PISA-Schocks“ im Jahr 2000 zunächst der Fokus stärker auf den Risikogruppen lag. Während leistungsstärkere Schülerinnen und Schüler in der öffentlichen Wahrnehmung häufig mit „(Hoch-)Begabten“ identifiziert werden, geht die Arbeit über die traditionelle Begabungsforschung, die eine generelle Intelligenz als Grundlage für Leistungsfähigkeit von Schülerinnen und Schülern begreift und beforscht, hinaus. Stattdessen lässt sich eher in den Bereich der Talentforschung einordnen, die den Fokus weg von allgemeinen Begabungen auf spezifische Prädiktoren und Outcomes im individuellen Entwicklungsverlauf legt. Der Fokus der Arbeit liegt daher nicht auf Intelligenz als Potenzial, sondern auf der aktuellen schulischen Leistung, die als Ergebnis und Ausgangspunkt von Entwicklungsprozessen in einer Leistungsdomäne doppelte Bedeutung erhält. Die Arbeit erkennt die Vielgestaltigkeit des Leistungsbegriffs an und ist bestrebt, neue Anlässe zu schaffen, über den Leistungsbegriff und seine Operationalisierung in der Forschung zu diskutieren. Hierfür wird im ersten Teil ein systematisches Review zur Operationalisierung von Leistungsstärke durchgeführt (Artikel I). Es werden Faktoren herausgearbeitet, auf welchen sich die Operationalisierungen unterscheiden können. Weiterhin wird ein Überblick gegeben, wie Studien zu Leistungsstarken sich seit dem Jahr 2000 auf diesen Dimensionen verorten lassen. Es zeigt sich, dass eindeutige Konventionen zur Definition schulischer Leistungsstärke noch nicht existieren, woraus folgt, dass Ergebnisse aus Studien, die sich mit leistungsstarken Schülerinnen und Schülern beschäftigen, nur bedingt miteinander vergleichbar sind. Im zweiten Teil der Arbeit wird im Rahmen zwei weiterer Artikel, welche sich mit der Leistungsentwicklung (Artikel II) und der sozialen Einbindung (Artikel III) von leistungsstarken Schülerinnen und Schülern befassen, darauf aufbauend der Ansatz verfolgt, die Variabilität von Ergebnissen über verschiedene Operationalisierungen von Leistungsstärke deutlich zu machen. Damit wird unter anderem auch die künftige Vergleichbarkeit mit anderen Studien erleichtert. Genutzt wird dabei das Konzept der Multiversumsanalyse (Steegen et al., 2016), bei welcher viele parallele Spezifikationen, die zugleich sinnvolle Alternativen für die Operationalisierung darstellen, nebeneinandergestellt und in ihrem Effekt verglichen werden (Jansen et al., 2021). Die Multiversumsanalyse knüpft konzeptuell an das bereits vor längerem entwickelte Forschungsprogramm des kritischen Multiplismus an (Patry, 2013; Shadish, 1986, 1993), erhält aber als spezifische Methode aktuell im Rahmen der Replizierbarkeitskrise in der Psychologie eine besondere Bedeutung. Dabei stützt sich die vorliegende Arbeit auf die Sekundäranalyse großangelegter Schulleistungsstudien, welche den Vorteil besitzen, dass eine große Zahl an Datenpunkten (Variablen und Personen) zur Verfügung steht, um Effekte unterschiedlicher Operationalisierungen zu vergleichen. Inhaltlich greifen Artikel II und III Themen auf, die in der wissenschaftlichen und gesellschaftlichen Diskussion zu Leistungsstarken und ihrer Wahrnehmung in der Öffentlichkeit immer wieder aufscheinen: In Artikel II wird zunächst die Frage gestellt, ob Leistungsstarke bereits im aktuellen Regelunterricht einen kumulativen Vorteil gegenüber ihren weniger leistungsstarken Mitschülerinnen und Mitschülern haben (Matthäus-Effekt). Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass an Gymnasien keineswegs von sich vergrößernden Unterschieden gesprochen werden kann. Im Gegenteil, es verringerte sich im Laufe der Sekundarstufe der Abstand zwischen den Gruppen, indem die Lernraten bei leistungsschwächeren Schülerinnen und Schülern höher waren. Artikel III hingegen betrifft die soziale Wahrnehmung von leistungsstarken Schülerinnen und Schülern. Auch hier hält sich in der öffentlichen Diskussion die Annahme, dass höhere Leistungen mit Nachteilen in der sozialen Integration einhergehen könnten, was sich auch in Studien widerspiegelt, die sich mit Geschlechterstereotypen Jugendlicher in Bezug auf Schulleistung beschäftigen. In Artikel III wird unter anderem erneut das Potenzial der Multiversumsanalyse genutzt, um die Variation des Zusammenhangs über Operationalisierungen von Leistungsstärke zu beschreiben. Es zeigt sich unter unterschiedlichen Operationalisierungen von Leistungsstärke und über verschiedene Facetten sozialer Integration hinweg, dass die Zusammenhänge zwischen Leistung und sozialer Integration insgesamt leicht positiv ausfallen. Annahmen, die auf differenzielle Effekte für Jungen und Mädchen oder für unterschiedliche Fächer abzielen, finden in diesen Analysen keine Bestätigung. Die Dissertation zeigt, dass der Vergleich unterschiedlicher Ansätze zur Operationalisierung von Leistungsstärke — eingesetzt im Rahmen eines kritischen Multiplismus — das Verständnis von Phänomenen vertiefen kann und auch das Potenzial hat, Theorieentwicklung voranzubringen.
Although many scholars and practitioners continue to emphasize the benefits of a diverse workforce, discrimination remains an impediment to diversity and inclusion. For African Americans, who are uniquely stigmatized in the United States as descendants of enslaved people, merely having a “black name” or Afro-centric hairstyle can result in employment discrimination. Despite these outcomes, many African Americans remain resilient while facing discrimination. Utilizing positive organizational scholarship and the positive work-related identity typology as a framework, we propose a conceptual model that examines how African Americans' experiences enable them to shape a positive identity and serve as protective buffers against discrimination. Importantly, we suggest this identity process empowers African Americans to overcome discrimination, still perform well, and not voluntarily quit. We conclude with a discussion of our model's impact on African Americans and other stigmatized minorities and suggestions for future human resource management research and practice.
This study examined thematic patterns of parents’ engaged coping messages in response to their adolescents’ negative race‐based experiences. Ten focus groups were conducted with 73 Black parents from a Southeastern city (73% female). Using modified grounded theory, narratives that supported adolescent engaged coping were coded for three ethnic‐racial socialization messages, the perpetrator, and the setting, followed by inductive (open) coding. The majority of experiences were school‐related. Themes were informed by parents’ critical engagement, ethnic‐racial socialization, and engaged racial coping. Findings revealed that parents advised a repertoire of engaged coping strategies, from actively confronting interpersonal perpetrators (e.g., peers), to critically engaging with institutional perpetrators. Strategies to develop adolescents’ critical reflection and anti‐racism actions to dismantle racism across contexts are discussed.
Zusammenfassung. Leistungsstarke Kinder und Jugendliche sind in den letzten Jahren zunehmend in den Fokus der Bildungspolitik und der Bildungsforschung gerückt. Allerdings gibt es in der Forschung bislang kein geteiltes Verständnis darüber, was genau unter akademischer Leistungsstärke zu verstehen ist. Die vorliegende Arbeit gibt einen systematischen Überblick darüber, wie Forschende, die seit dem Jahr 2000 die Gruppe der leistungsstarken Schülerinnen und Schüler erforschten, Leistungsstärke in ihren Studien operationalisiert haben. Dabei wurde insbesondere untersucht, welche Leistungsindikatoren genutzt wurden, ob ein spezifischer Fachbezug hergestellt wurde und welche Cut-off-Werte und Vergleichsmaßstäbe angelegt wurden. Die systematische Datenbanksuche lieferte insgesamt N = 309 Artikel, von denen n = 55 die Einschlusskriterien erfüllten. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass eine große Vielfalt in der Operationalisierung von Leistungsstärke vorliegt. Die meistgenutzten Leistungsindikatoren waren Noten und Testwerte, wobei fächerübergreifende und fachspezifische Definitionen beide häufig waren. Die Cut-off-Werte der Studien waren zum Teil schwierig vergleichbar, aber dort, wo ein Populationsbezug hergestellt werden konnte, lag der Median des Populationsanteils Leistungsstarker bei 10 Prozent. Die Studie diskutiert methodische und inhaltliche Rahmenbedingungen, welche sich auf die Operationalisierung von Leistungsstärke und ihre Vergleichbarkeit über Studien hinweg auswirken. Die vorliegende Arbeit schließt mit Empfehlungen zur Operationalisierung von Leistungsstärke.
Black students’ experiences in math and science courses in urban high schools were investigated. A critical race theoretical framing of qualitative data revealed teacher characteristics that encouraged and discouraged students. Teacher characteristics that encouraged students’ interests included (1) shared racial/cultural background with students, (2) passion for students and subject matter, and (3) a caring and understanding approach to student engagement. Characteristics that discouraged student engagement included (1) lack of racial representation, (2) differential treatment of students based on race, (3) condescension and assumed incompetence, and (4) technology as a replacement for instruction. We offer recommendations to improve Black students’ experience and increase interest in pursuing future STEM careers.
This study explored the adaptive behaviors used by African American college students attending a predominantly White university. In-depth individual interviews were conducted and used as the primary method of data collection for this study. In addition, a focus group session provided member checking opportunity to strengthen the study. The analysis revealed participants utilized multiple adaptive behaviors to combat negative racialized experiences while attending a university where they were underrepresented. These adaptive behaviors were used as resistance strategies by African American students navigating a racially charged university context.
Social integration is a critical component of adolescents' positive school adjustment. Although prior scholars have highlighted how Black women and girls' social identities (e.g., race, gender, social class) influence their academic and social experiences in school, very little work has focused on how school racial diversity shapes Black girls' peer networks throughout K–12 education. To address this gap in the literature, the present qualitative study explored the narratives of 44 Black undergraduate women (Mage = 20 years) who reflected on their friendship choices in high school. We used consensual qualitative research methods to examine how Black women navigated friendships during their time attending predominantly White (less than 20% Black), racially diverse (21%–60% Black), and predominantly Black (61%–100% Black) high schools. Coding analyses revealed five friendship themes: (a) Black female friends, (b) mostly Black friends, (c) mostly interracial friends, (d) mostly White friends, and (e) White friends in academic settings and Black friends in social settings. Our findings highlight how the young women's ongoing negotiation of racialized and gendered school norms influenced their sense of closeness with same-race and interracial peers. Black girls may have challenges with forming lasting and meaningful friendships when they cannot find peers who are affirming and supportive, particularly in predominantly White school contexts. This study underscores the need to look at how racial diversity in the student population offers school psychologists and educators insight into how to better support the social and emotional development of Black girls.
Ever-increasing numbers of teachers are expressing commitments to social justice education today, but few experienced critical or democratic education in their own schooling or in their teaching practicum. Thus, teachers’ critical democratic commitments can be difficult to put into practice, especially in classrooms where students with diverse and unequal positionalities are engaged in learning together – what I call “heterogeneous” classrooms. Education that is “democratic” (that includes a range of warranted perspectives) can seem to come into conflict with education that is “critical” (that elevates and centers marginalized perspectives). We have little research depicting how educators meet such challenges.
This paper depicts an experienced and committed social justice educator wrestling with difficult problems in the enactment of critical democratic education. Mr. Crane regularly engaged his racially and linguistically heterogeneous students in discussions of social issues, and during these discussions regularly encountered practical facilitation challenges posed by inequality among students. He wrestled with how to elevate students of color's views without spotlighting them, and how to challenge dominant perspectives without shaming the students who voiced them. Drawing on qualitative data from classroom observations and interviews, I depict Mr. Crane making sense of and mobilizing emergent instructional responses to these challenges – with, by his own reckoning, mixed results. One instructional routine, an impromptu version of a critical inquiry, was flagged by Mr. Crane as a promising method for navigating some of the trickiest problems of critical democratic education practice.
This paper's findings demonstrate that enacting critical democratic education is not easy. Even experienced and committed social justice educators struggle with how to put their critical values into practice. By making visible one experienced critical democratic educator's recurring problems of practice, my research acknowledges the difficulties of this work and contributes to problem-framing. Furthermore, by deconstructing a promising routine for impromptu critical inquiry during classroom discussions of social issues, this research contributes a model of effective critical democratic education in practice.
In this article, we focus on how anti-Black logics operate within various domains of power in ways that deny Black children, including our own, their right to a just and antiracist education. We begin by describing how socialization contributes to the development and deployment of anti-Black logics by teachers and school leaders. We then discuss how antiblackness has manifested in K–12 schools and share examples of our own children’s pandemic virtual learning experiences, highlighting how such logics are at play. We conclude with ways that educators can become aware of anti-Black logics and work to eradicate them by considering antiracist education for all Black children and transgressive education as socially just.
Although many scholars and practitioners continue to emphasize the benefits of a diverse workforce, discrimination remains an impediment to diversity and inclusion. For African Americans, who are uniquely stigmatized in the United States as descendants of enslaved people, merely having a “black name” or Afro-centric hairstyle can result in employment discrimination. Despite these outcomes, many African Americans remain resilient while facing discrimination. Utilizing positive organizational scholarship and the positive work-related identity typology as a framework, we propose a conceptual model that examines how African Americans' experiences enable them to shape a positive identity and serve as protective buffers against discrimination. Importantly, we suggest this identity process empowers African Americans to overcome discrimination, still perform well, and not voluntarily quit. We conclude with a discussion of our model's impact on African Americans and other stigmatized minorities and suggestions for future human resource management research and practice.
This study provides a novel contribution by connecting two sets of literature, school engagement and multicultural university centers, in relation to late adolescent development. The aims of this mixed-method study were to: (a) quantitatively explore the relationship between student perceived cultural leadership experience and support within a multicultural center in relation to school engagement and (b) qualitatively address additional facilitators and barriers. Participants consisted of 134 college students, predominantly identifying as Latino/Hispanic (35.1%), Black/African American (34.3%), or Asian-Pacific Islander (23.9%), and first-generation (60.4%). Qualitative focus groups and a photovoice project engaged a subset of participants ( n = 57, n = 7, respectively). Regression analysis indicated youth voice, supportive staff relationships, and peer support were significant positive predictors of students’ perceived engagement within the multicultural center, however, some but not all of these predictors transferred toward sentiments of school engagement. Qualitative sources elucidated additional factors bolstering student engagement. Social, cultural, and resistance capitals were identified as key protective factors in relation to student perseverance. Findings also indicated institutional barriers against student engagement including a lack of cultural and ethnic representation throughout multiple levels of the university. Implications for expanding conceptions of social capital within late adolescent identity development theory are discussed.
This study examines a sample of African American students attending urban middle schools in a Southern city, and considers their perceptions of learning environments within mathematics classrooms. This study concluded that variables like Academic Self-Concept, Mathematics Anxiety, Satisfaction, Involvement, and Academic Aspiration varied significantly among higher and lower performing students. These variables are informed by the classic resilience literature on learning environment that tends to be less culturally affirming. In an effort to move resilience theory away from racial ideologies, we reconceptualize resilience as a cultural trait common among African American learners that should not be conceptualized dichotomously nor hierarchically
Teaching Students of Color is a concern of current and future K-12 educators mainly due to lack of exposure to students of this demographic. Using a critical race lens, this papers aims to unpack the word "urban," delving into various connotative interpretations of the term. Finally, anti-racist solutions will be proposed to defy negative stereotypes about urban students and schools.
This timely volume presents powerful stories told by Black families and students who have successfully negotiated a racially fraught, affluent, and diverse suburban school district in America, to illustrate how they have successfully overcome and strategically contested sanctioned racist practices in order to forge a path for students to achieve a high-quality education.
Drawing on rich qualitative data collected through interviews and interactions with parents and kin, students, community activists, and educators, Family Engagement in Black Students’ Academic Success chronicles how pride in Black American family history and values, students’ personal capabilities, and their often collective, pro-active challenges to systemic and personal racism shape students’ academic engagement. Familial and collective cultural wealth of the Black community emerges as a central driver in students’ successful achievement. Finally, the text puts forward key recommendations to demonstrate how incorporating the knowledge and voices of Black families in school decision making, remaining critically conscious of race and racial history in every-day actions and longer term policy, and pursuing collective strategies for social justice in education, will eliminate current opportunity gaps, and counteract the master-narrative of underachievement ever-present in America.
This volume will be of interest to students, scholars, and academics with an interest in matters of social justice, equity, and equality of opportunity in education for Black Americans. In addition, the text offers key insights for school authorities in building effective working relationships with Black American families to support the high achievement of Black students in K-12 education.
https://www.routledge.com/Family-Engagement-in-Black-Students-Academic-Success-Achievement-and/Seeberg/p/book/9780367721770
Reviews:
Returning to the research site of Shaker Heights High School and District, Vilma Seeberg inverts John Ogbu’s questions about Black underperformance to inquire into Black resilience despite formidable challenges. Armed with Critical Race Theory as their chosen lens, Seeberg and the Shaker Research and Parent Team draw our attention to Black folks’ discourses of defiance against despair and deficit orientations. Educational success for their children is precisely a form of acting Black while navigating a social system, including its schools, that does not have their best interests at heart. Family Engagement is a counter-story about education as an arc of hope for everyday people who refuse the long shadow of injustice. One can’t help rooting for them after reading the book.
Zeus Leonardo
Professor and Associate Dean of Education
University of California, Berkeley
Author of Edward Said and Education
This volume offers powerful counter narratives to prevailing deficit assumptions about Black students’ school achievement and levels of parental engagement, with nuanced stories of ways Black families used cultural funds of knowledge and demonstrated agency in actively challenging systemic racism while supporting students’ academic success. Seeberg and collaborators provide rich examples of ways Black students contested racist practices in an affluent and diverse suburban district and how community organizing for educational justice was persistent and in part successful over the long term. Blending sociology and anthropology of education in accessible and compelling ways, this book is a must read for all who are committed to building strong school-community relations with families of color and addressing persistent opportunity gaps in US educational contexts.
- Beth Blue Swadener, Professor, Justice & Social Inquiry and Social & Cultural Pedagogy, Arizona State University
Most students in the United States attend suburban schools. However, most education research focuses on urban school districts. This may be in part because many of the core issues that currently drive education research—issues of race and class inequities, social mobility, immigration, English learning—are believed to be “urban” challenges. In this article, we argue that the changing nature of suburban schools and communities, and the history of their creation as education spaces, make them advantageous locations for education researchers to study many pressing issues and expand the ways we understand the intersections of race, place and inequality. We argue that education scholarship across multiple disciplinary orientations, theoretical foci, and substantive concerns can benefit from a deeper engagement with suburban education spaces and the issues and opportunities associated with them.
In this article, Tara Yosso, William Smith, Miguel Ceja, and Daniel Solórzano expand on their previous work by employing critical race theory to explore and understand incidents of racial microaggressions as experienced by Latina/o students at three selective universities. The authors explore three types of racial microaggressions-interpersonal microaggressions, racial jokes, and institutional microaggressions-and consider the effects of these racist affronts on Latina/o students. Challenging the applicability of Vincent Tinto's three stages of passage for college students, the authors explore the processes by which Latinas/os respond to racial microaggressions and confront hostile campus racial climates. The authors find that, through building community and developing critical navigation skills, Latina/o students claim empowerment from the margins.
Previous studies have suggested that in response to occupational and educational discrimination based on race, many African American students have mentally withdrawn from the schooling process, as indicated by low levels of achievement and high levels of school dropout. By contrast, the present study's analysis of interview data collected from 28 African American urban eighth-graders indicates that some African American students with a high awareness of racial discrimination respond to this discrimination in ways that are conducive rather than detrimental to academic success. For these students, positive racial socialization was a primary factor influencing and promoting academic success. Implications for future research on the academic performance of African American students are discussed.
Many studies provide evidence for the strong influences of same-race peer networks on Black student achievement and racial identity in private and elite schools; however, research is lacking regarding these influences for Black achievers in predominantly White public schools. In this article, the author examines how nine high-achieving Black students in a predominantly White public high school created and used informal and formal same-race peer networks in their school to buffer experiences with racism and affirm their racial identity. Drawing on data ftom a yearlong qualitative investigation, the author discusses how the use of these identity-affirming counter-spaces serve as a positive resistance strategy for these students and allows them to maintain a strong racial sense of self in their maintenance of school success. Findings from this study reinforce the importance of having safe spaces in predominantly White learning environments for Black students to escape psychological, emotional, and physical stress stemming from experiences with racism.
The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
In this article, Dorinda Carter examines the embodiment of a critical race achievement ideology in high-achieving black students. She conducted a yearlong qualitative investigation of the adaptive behaviors that nine high-achieving black students developed and employed to navigate the process of schooling at an upper-class, predominantly white, suburban public high school while maintaining school success and a positive racial self-definition. Based on an analysis of interview data, participant observations, and field notes, Carter argues that these students’ conceptions of race and how race operates in their daily lives informs their constructions of achievement beliefs, attitudes, and self-definitions and informs their racialization and deracialization of the task of achieving at various times in the school context. Findings from this study indicate that students with strong racial and achievement identities may develop a critical race achievement ideology and enact resilient, adaptive behaviors in racially challenging contexts.
This study purposed to explore whether the strategies used by African American adolescents to cope with perceived discriminatory experiences were related to their racial identity and racial socialization. Results indicated that the degree to which race was central to participant's self-conceptions and identities was unrelated to both approach and avoidance coping strategies. In contrast, the frequency to which participants received socialization messages concerning racism from their parents and/or guardians was related to the use of approach coping strategies but unrelated to avoidance coping strategies. The importance of a more systematic focus on African American adolescent stress and coping is discussed.
James Anderson critically reinterprets the history of southern black education from Reconstruction to the Great Depression. By placing black schooling within a political, cultural, and economic context, he offers fresh insights into black commitment to education, the peculiar significance of Tuskegee Institute, and the conflicting goals of various philanthropic groups, among other matters. Initially, ex-slaves attempted to create an educational system that would support and extend their emancipation, but their children were pushed into a system of industrial education that presupposed black political and economic subordination. This conception of education and social order-supported by northern industrial philanthropists, some black educators, and most southern school officials-conflicted with the aspirations of ex-slaves and their descendants, resulting at the turn of the century in a bitter national debate over the purposes of black education. Because blacks lacked economic and political power, white elites were able to control the structure and content of black elementary, secondary, normal, and college education during the first third of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, blacks persisted in their struggle to develop an educational system in accordance with their own needs and desires. © 1988 The University of North Carolina Press. All rights reserved.
Many studies have shown that academic achievement is highly correlated with social class. Few, however, have attempted to explain exactly how the school helps to reinforce the class structure of the society. In this article Dr. Rist reports the results of an observational study of one class of ghetto children during their kindergarten, first- and second-grade years. He shows how the kindergarten teacher placed the children in reading groups which reflected the social class composition of the class, and how these groups persisted throughout the first several years of elementary school. The way in which the teacher behaved toward the different groups became an important influence on the children's achievement. Dr. Rist concludes by examining the relationship between the "caste" system of the classroom and the class system of the larger society.
Analysis of qualitative data reveals that the formal and informal peer networks of African American students in predominantly White elite independent schools support these students' academic success, create opportunities for them to reaffirm their racial identities, and facilitate their adjustment to settings that are otherwise difficult for Blacks to fit into. Contrasted to research showing that adopting academically successful behaviors leads Black students to being labeled as "acting White," the sampled students made social gains within school when they were academically successful. However, this success did not result in full acceptance by African American peers outside the school. The authors conclude that the dynamics and ideologies of African American peer groups are more complex than prior research has suggested.
The lower rates of college enrollment for Black students make it important to understand both how different high school environments affect college preparation and matriculation and how some students are able to succeed despite the environmental barriers faced in school. This multi-site case study explores the college preparatory processes of nine Black high achievers attending a well-resourced, suburban high school and eight academically successful Black students attending a low-resourced urban school. Findings indicate students at both schools encounter barriers (i.e., racial climate and a lack of resources) that inhibit their college preparation. Despite these obstacles, participants demonstrated resiliency, which kept them focused on their educational goals and desire to attend college.
This book considers in unprecedented detail one of the most confounding questions in American racial practice: when to speak about people in racial terms. Viewing "race talk" through the lens of a California high school and district, Colormute draws on three years of ethnographic research on everyday race labeling in education. Based on the author's experiences as a teacher as well as an anthropologist, it discusses the role race plays in everyday and policy talk about such familiar topics as discipline, achievement, curriculum reform, and educational inequality. Pollock illustrates the wide variations in the way speakers use race labels. Sometimes people use them without thinking twice; at other moments they avoid them at all costs or use them only in the description of particular situations. While a major concern of everyday race talk in schools is that racial descriptions will be inaccurate or inappropriate, Pollock demonstrates that anxiously suppressing race words (being what she terms "colormute") can also cause educators to reproduce the very racial inequities they abhor. The book assists readers in cultivating a greater understanding of the pitfalls and possibilities of everyday race talk and clarifies previously murky discussions of "colorblindness." By bridging the gap between theory and practice, Colormute will be enormously helpful in fostering ongoing conversations about dismantling racial inequality in America.
Background/Context
Despite recent gains from a number of students in U.S. schools, African American males continue to underachieve on most academic indices. Despite various interventions that have attempted to transform the perennial disenfranchisement, their school failure has persisted. Conversely, their failure in schools frequently results in poor quality of life options.
Purpose/Objective/Focus of Study
The objective of this study was to use critical race theory as a paradigmatic lens to examine the schooling experiences of African American males in PreK-12 schools. The focus of the study was to shed light on how African American males believe race and racism play as factors in their schooling experiences.
Research Design
The article includes qualitative data from a case study of African American males who offer counterstorytelling accounts of their schooling experiences. This article also explores the utility and appropriateness of critical race theory as a methodological tool to examine and disrupt the disenfranchisement of African American males in U.S. public schools.
Findings/Results
The results from this study revealed that the participants were keenly aware of how race shaped the manner in which they were viewed by their teachers and school administrators. The data also revealed how the participants explicitly fought to eradicate negative racial stereotypes held about African American males. Finally, the use of counter-storytelling within a critical race theory framework seemed to provide the participants a platform to discuss race-related issues in a manner that many of the participants felt was lacking in their school environments.
Conclusion/Recommendations
The findings from this study reveal some of the difficult obstacles that many African American males seek to overcome in order to become academically successful. Moreover, the findings suggest that educators must become more conscious of the role that race and racism plays in their schooling environments. Furthermore, educational researchers who are concerned with disrupting school failures of students of color and from low-income backgrounds should consider conceptual and methodological frames that place race, class, and gender at the center of their analysis.
In this article, Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy explores how the experiences of Tom, Debbie, and Heather, three Native American students attending Ivy League universities in the 1990s, reflect larger societal beliefs and statements about the perceived place of Native Americans in higher education and U.S. society. Brayboy posits that Native Americans are visible in these institutions in ways that contribute to their marginalization, surveillance, and oppression. In response, the three Native American students exercise strategies that make them invisible to the largely White communities in which they attend school. These strategies help to preserve the students' sense of cultural integrity, but further serve to marginalize them on campus. At times, the students in the study make themselves visible to emphasize that they are a voice in the campus community. Brayboy argues that these strategies, while possibly confusing to the layperson, make sense if viewed from the perspective of the students preserving their cultural integrity.
For more than 20 years, researchers have shown that the recognition of a limited opportunity structure on the part of marginal youth circumscribes their optimism toward the future and hence increases their likelihood of disengaging from school. This article, however, focuses on six, low-income, African-American adolescents who expected to realize their ambitions and were high achieving, all the while articulating an acute recognition of how race and class (and, in two cases, gender) operated to constrain the life chances of people like themselves. These students’ familiarity with struggle, including collective struggle, was the only biographical factor which distinguished them from the other respondents in the larger project of which they were a part. Thus, in contrast to the findings of some, their knowledge of struggle did not curtail their academic success but may have contributed to their sense of human agency and facilitated their academic motivation. Because this knowledge derived from their interaction with significant others, this article also maintains that the meanings that arise from immediate experiences and discourses are essential for understanding the diverse ways by which marginal people interpret and respond to their subjugation.
An overview of racial climate issues at four-year institutions indicates that one in four students perceived considerable racial conflict on campuses in 1989. Black, Chicano, and white students' perceptions reveal common and distinct views in the types of environments that are associated with racial tension. Developing efforts that create an environment of support for all students is an emerging principle for improving the campus racial climate.
Previous literature has failed to empirically demonstrate the conceptual distinction that social scientists make between "dominant" and "non-dominant" cultural capital. This article provides evidence of the coexistence of these two forms of capital within the social and academic lives of poor ethnic minority students. Using in-depth interviews with 44 low-income African American youth, I illustrate how these students negotiate their perceptions of the differential values placed by educators on these two forms of capital. Often, scholars research the effects of (dominant) cultural capital in social reproduction across various social classes, but not the influence of (non-dominant) cultural capital on status relations within socially marginalized communities. By taking into account the interplay between these two forms of capital in the lives of low-income minority students, researchers might develop a more complete and nuanced understanding of how culture ultimately affects the prospects of mobility for lower status social groups.
Analysis of qualitative data reveals that the formal and informal peer networks of African American students in predominantly White elite independent schools support these students' academic success, create opportunities for them to reaffirm their racial identities, and facilitate their adjustment to settings that are otherwise difficult for Blacks to fit into. Contrasted to research showing that adopting academically successful behaviors leads Black students to being labeled as "acting White," the sampled students made social gains within school when they were academically successful. However, this success did not result in full acceptance by African American peers outside the school. The authors conclude that the dynamics and ideologies of African American peer groups are more complex than prior research has suggested.
In this revision of her best-selling text, author Sonia Nieto explores the meaning, necessity, and benefits of multicultural education for students of all backgrounds. The text looks at how personal, social, political, cultural, and educational factors affect the success or failure of students in today's classroom. Expanding upon the popular case-study approach, the fourth edition examines the lives of 18 real students who are affected by multicultural education, or a lack of it. Social justice is firmly embedded in this view of multicultural education, and teachers are encouraged to work for social change in their classrooms, schools, and communities.
Through students’ own voices and perspectives, this book reveals how and why some racial minorities achieve academic success, despite limited opportunity. Based on the experiences of Black, Latino, and Vietnamese urban high school students, the author provides a revealing comparative analysis that offers insight into how schools can create opportunities and safe learning environments where youth acquire real goals, expectations, and tangible pathways for success. Offering alternatives to current practices and structures of inequality that plague educational systems throughout the nation, this sociologically informed book:
* Takes a rare look at urban school success stories, instead of those depicting failure.
* Explores the social processes that enable racial minority youth to escape the unequal structures of urban schooling to perform well in school.
* Focuses on youth’s interpretations and reactions to the schooling process to determine how schools can empower youth and promote the social mobility of low-income urban populations.
In this article we describe the results of a comparative case study of two inner-city high schools located in the southeastern United States. One school, a citywide school with high admission standards, enrolls an all-African American lower-to-middle-class population. The other school enrolls a more ethnically and racially diverse population of students from a single lower-class neighborhood. Using Grossberg's notion of identity politics, we describe how students' racial/ ethnic identity to a greater or lesser degree becomes both a means of resistance and accommodation to white hegemony.
James Anderson critically reinterprets the history of southern black education from Reconstruction to the Great Depression. By placing black schooling within a political, cultural, and economic context, he offers fresh insights into black commitment to education, the peculiar significance of Tuskegee Institute, and the conflicting goals of various philanthropic groups, among other matters. Initially, ex-slaves attempted to create an educational system that would support and extend their emancipation, but their children were pushed into a system of industrial education that presupposed black political and economic subordination. This conception of education and social order--supported by northern industrial philanthropists, some black educators, and most southern school officials--conflicted with the aspirations of ex-slaves and their descendants, resulting at the turn of the century in a bitter national debate over the purposes of black education. Because blacks lacked economic and political power, white elites were able to control the structure and content of black elementary, secondary, normal, and college education during the first third of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, blacks persisted in their struggle to develop an educational system in accordance with their own needs and desires. |James Anderson critically reinterprets the history of southern black education from Reconstruction to the Great Depression. By placing black schooling within a political, cultural, and economic context, he offers fresh insights into black commitment to education, the peculiar significance of Tuskegee Institute, and the conflicting goals of various philanthropic groups, among other matters.
This book examines and confronts the passive and often unconscious racism of white teacher education students, offering a critical tool in the effort to make education more equitable. Sherry Marx provides a consciousness-raising account of how white teachers must come to recognize their own positions of privilege and work actively to create anti-racist teaching techniques and learning environments for children of color and children learning English as a second language.
This article reviews data-based research studies on preservice teacher preparation for multicultural schools, particularly schools that serve historically underserved communities. In this article, the author reviews 80 studies of effects of various preservice teacher education strategies, including recruiting and selecting students, cross-cultural immersion experiences, multicultural education coursework, and program restructuring. Although there is a large quantity of research, very little of it actually examines which strategies prepare strong teachers. Most of the research focuses on addressing the attitudes and lack of knowledge of White preservice students. This review argues that although this is a very important problem that does need to be addressed, it is not the same as figuring out how to populate the teaching profession with excellent multicultural and culturally responsive teachers.
This research examines the impact of gender on the association between sport participation and students' educational opportunities and outcomes by comparing African American male and female eighth graders, including student background and school demographic and organization characteristics. Unlike previous studies it also investigates the link between interscholastic and intramural athletic participation and “academic resilience” for African American eight-grade females and males using educational plans, peer status, and academic investments as indicators of academic attachment. Data for these analyses are drawn from the base year of the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS, 99) conducted by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics. These data offer evidence that athletic participation can and often does have a positive impact on student motivation and engagement, and that these positive benefits accrue to both male and female athletes.
We examine how race and class influenced the lives of six African American high school seniors who attended a predominantly white, elite, independent secondary school. Race and class contributed to an organizational habitus of the school characterized by white and wealthy privilege. Interaction of that dominant habitus with the dissimilar individual habitus of the students resulted in a form of symbolic violence—symbolic violence the black students knowingly endured in exchange for the social mobility afforded by attending the elite school.
The author contends that marginalization is a major issue for graduate students of color in their doctoral studies. She explains three forms of marginalization, and suggests some strategies for how each can be counteracted. These are physical, cultural and intellectual isolation, benign neglect and problematic popularity. Her analyses are informed by insights gleaned from her personal experiences as a student and professor of color in predominantly White institutions (PWIs), her observations and interactions with graduate students of color as an instructor and doctoral studies advisor, and from the research and scholarship of other scholars. The author makes an appeal for professors of color and their European American colleagues to make their curriculum, instruction advising, mentoring and relationships more culturally responsive to ethnically, racially and linguistically diverse students. By doing so they can teach these students more effectively how to navigate the marginality they encounter en route to the professoriate, and how to be more successful in executing their roles and responsibilities as professors of color.
This study utilized critical race theory (CRT) as an epistemological framework and theoretical tool for understanding African American male student‐athletes' perceptions of racism and the potential impact racism might have on their educational experiences and overall development. This qualitative case study included a single focus group and in‐depth interviews with four African American male football players in a big‐time college sport program at a predominantly White institution (PWI) in the Midwestern United States. These males felt that racism manifested itself in terms of African Americans (1) being denied access to leadership and major decision‐making opportunities in college and professional sport, and (2) being treated differently than their White counterparts. These findings point to the need for further studies that are inclusive of the voices of this particular group and other groups of African American student‐athletes. Further, these results have implications for administrators, coaches, academic support personnel, and other educators at American universities and colleges with big‐time college sport programs.
In this article, the author argues that pre-service teachers may need to reflect about race and pursue racial competence as they are prepared to teach in multiracial schools. The question is how do teacher educators prepare pre-service teachers to pose tough questions about issues of race? Several matters are considered in the discussion, such as teacher reflection, race reflection, and some complexities of race in the teaching and learning process. The author concludes the article with an extensive discussion of critical pedagogy. In particular, the author advances two possible teaching methods (critically engaged dialogue, and race reflective journaling) that teacher educators may find useful as they attempt to facilitate reflections on race and assist pre-service teachers in pursuing racial competence through posing tough questions. In the final section, the author shares a chart that he developed and suggests that the chart be used in critically engaged dialogue and race reflective journaling as pre-service teachers pursue racial competence. Finally, the author encourages teacher educators to continue developing instructional methods and tools that allow pre-service teachers to pose tough questions about issues of race.
While much research that explores the role of race in education focuses on children of color, this article explores an aspect of the predominately White teaching force that educates them. This article explores findings from a qualitative study that posed questions about the ways in which White pre‐service teachers’ life‐experiences influenced understandings of race and difference, and how these pre‐service teachers negotiated the challenges a critical multicultural education course offered those beliefs. In keeping with the tenet of critical race theory that racism is an inherent and normalized aspect of American society, the author found that through previous life‐experiences, the participants gained hegemonic understandings about race and difference. Participants responded to challenges to these understandings by relying on a set of ‘tools of Whiteness’ designed to protect and maintain dominant and stereotypical understandings of race – tools that were emotional, ideological, and performative. This phenomenon is typically referred to as resistance in the literature on White teachers and multicultural education. The author contends, however, that these tools are not simply a passive resistance to but much more of an active protection of the incoming hegemonic stories and White supremacy and therefore require analysis to better understand when and how these tools are strategically used. Understanding how these tools of Whiteness protect dominant and stereotypical understandings of race can advise teacher education programs how to better organize to transform the ideologies of White teachers.
This study of 138 urban subjects examined the role of self-concept and motivation in aiding resilient African American high school sophomores to obtain academic competence. In this study, high school sophomoresfrom an impoverished, stressful background with grade point averages of 2.75 or above were considered academically resilient. To determine resiliency status, socioeconomic status was determined by the Hollingshead Two Factor Index and stress by a self-report measure. Self-concept and motivation were measured by the High School Assessment of Academic Self-Concept and the Assessment of Personal Agency Beliefs. Findings suggest that resilient African American high school students differedfrom their nonresilient peers in the cognitive domain: cognitive ability, cognitive environmental support, cognitive control, and cognitive importance. They also placed more emphasis on extracurricular activities and material gain.
Success in counseling African American men is discussed in terms of an invisibility syndrome and the role played by their racial identity development. Invisibility is considered a psychological experience wherein the person feels that his or her personal identity and ability are undermined by racism in a myriad of interpersonal circumstances. A therapy case is used to explain how this experience helps determine Black men’s perspective on cross-racial interpersonal encounters and supports racial identity development as fundamental to their personal identity and as a buffer against racism. Awareness of the dynamic interface between racism, invisibility, and racial identity development can help the counseling process and effectiveness of our interventions with African American men. Discussion of a therapeutic support group is used as an example.
In this study, we used cross-sectional and longitudinal data to examine the personal, situational, and contextual correlates of coping in a sample of 315 adolescents. Participants completed questionnaires at two points in time (1 year apart) that assessed approach and avoidance coping in response to the mast important focal stressor experienced in the previous year. We also assessed temperament, perceived characteristics of the focal stressor, chronic stressors, ongoing resources, and negative life events. The extent to which particular coping responses were used depended on age and sex, temperament, characteristics of the problem being managed, and conditions of adolescents' social ecology. Moreover, approach- and avoidance-coping efforts were associated with different sets of personal, situational, and contextual factors. Youth who used more approach-coping responses were older, were more active, appraised the focal stressor as controllable and as a challenge, and had more ongoing social resources. Yout...
Based on data from qualitative interviews with 50 high-achieving low-socioeconomic students of color, two clusters of important and symbiotic protective factors are identified and explored. Each cluster consists of a series of interrelated protective factors identified by the participants as crucial to their statistically exceptional academic achievement. Using resilience theory, a detailed examination of how these groups of protective factors mitigated the potential effects of risk factors, thus contributing to the process of academic resilience, is presented. Practical uses of protective factor clusters also are presented and explored.
Presents initial findings regarding the reliability and validity of a newly developed self-report coping measure for children. The study also addresses several conceptual issues (e.g., stressor appraisals, cross-situational consistency in coping). As per Roth and Cohen (1986), coping items were conceptualized as comprising approach strategies (i. e., Seeking Social Support, Problem Solving) and avoidance strategies (i. e., Distancing, Internalizing, Externalizing). Fourth through sixth graders (N = 481) rated their use of 34 strategies in response to both an academic and a social stressor. Factor analyses supported this conceptualization of the five coping strategies for each stressor. Internal consistencies and test-retest reliabilities of the coping subscales were in the .6 to .8 range, initial evidence of validity included significant correlations with peer ratings of coping and other indices.