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What It Means To Be Critical: Beyond Rhetoric and Toward Action
Abstract
In what ways, and on whose terms, might we expect a theory from 'outside' to have theoretical and analytic power for understanding inequality in education? As the first of two responses to Zeus Leonardo's chapter, Ladson-Billings reflects on the various misuses and abuses of Critical Race Theory in the scholarship of educational inquiry. Through telling contrasts with Leonardo's exegesis, she highlights a lack of deeper connection and criticality that may be detected in other, fundamentally superficial works. Setting aside questions of theoretical propriety and semantics, her response argues that the lived realities of racism compel both theoretical and practical development of research in education that confront - rather than sidestep - the structures of injustice and oppression. In short, if the texts and textures of educational research do not address this, do our questions of context and contextualization become little more than the willful persistence of 'eyes wide shut'? © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht. All rights are reserved by the Publisher.
... Further, its practice can offer opportunities to learn "in ways that are deeply meaningful and influential to the development of a positive mathematics [and science] identity" (Leonard et al., 2010, p. 261). Developing a strong mathematics and science identity through culturally responsive teaching and social justice pedagogy is critical for students' academic success and understanding of their world (Bartell, 2013;Gay, 2010;Ladson-Billings, 2014;Leonard et al., 2010;Tate, 2013). There are multiple contemporary empirical studies that provide examples of this work in different contexts. ...
... The findings of this study indicated that, ideologically, teachers were well aware of culturally responsive teaching as an educational construct but struggled to explain how it existed pedagogically and in translation from theory to practice (Brown et al., 2019). Teachers need to connect theory and practice with the principles of culturally responsive teaching-providing support in the form of collaboration to promote success in planning, creating opportunities to adopt languages that elicit the role of educators to engage students in knowledge, as well as finding personal relevance and developing critical awareness to deepen students' understanding (Gay, 2010;Ladson-Billings, 2014;Mensah, 2011;Tate, 2013). ...
Teaching mathematics and science embedded in social justice is not a familiar concept for many teachers, especially pre-service teachers. This qualitative, descriptive, and interpretative study examines the experiences and reflections of 26 middle grade and secondary pre-service mathematics and science teachers on teaching and learning mathematics and science through the social justice lens as they took a semester-long course concurrently with their student-teaching. The primary research question was, “How may a semester-long course focusing on teaching and learning mathematics and science with social justice awareness provide pre-service teachers with opportunities to reflect on and change their teaching practices?” Data included researchers’ field notes and participating pre-service teachers’ verbal discussions, written reflections, and classroom presentations. The findings suggest that teaching mathematics and science in the context of social justice enhanced the pre-services teachers’ awareness of educational opportunity and equity. The findings also indicate teaching mathematics and science from the social justice perspective requires a paradigm shift in teaching and learning. Furthermore, the study exposes the limitations of the current school structure and culture for meaningful learning, the limitations of existing curricula and state-mandated texts, and the lack of adequate resources in teaching mathematics and science in social justice contexts.
... I analyzed the participants' counternarratives using a CRT theoretical framework. CRT is an approach for examining and understanding the role of racism in producing and maintaining racialized asymmetries of power, including the systematic marginalization of people of color (Delgado, 2000;Ladson-Billings, 2014). One of the core principles of CRT is that racial inequality and racism remain deeply and permanently entrenched in all facets of U.S. society (Bell, 1979). ...
... One of the core principles of CRT is that racial inequality and racism remain deeply and permanently entrenched in all facets of U.S. society (Bell, 1979). Without this focus on uncovering and theorizing racism, or racisms, the social process of Whiteness, such as the normalization of White cultural hegemony, remains protected and adapts to meet the needs of Whites (Ladson-Billings, 2014). Although originating in law, CRT scholars contend that racism operates in, and across, multiple spaces, especially schools. ...
Diversifying the student body in teacher education programs (TEPs) remains an elusive goal. Despite recruiting efforts, few men of color complete programs leading to teaching credentials. To problematize this phenomenon, this study examines the experiences of three men of color enrolled in a predominantly White teacher education program (PWTEP). Participants were interviewed using a narrative inquiry protocol with emphasis on providing a space for counter-storytelling. Analysis of their narratives was conducted using a critical race theory (CRT) framework. Findings from the narratives highlight the way racism intersects with gender to reproduce, reinscribe, and protect dominant conceptions of “who belongs” in TEPs.
... It should be emphasized here that not all theories that consider race are consider critical. Criticality refers to naming and analyzing structural forms of oppression, objecting to their ordinariness, and challenging the status quo through action and social transformation (19,20). Among the most widely known critical race theorizations is Critical Race Theory (CRT). ...
Introduction:
Public health has declared a commitment toward diversity as a whole, with a commitment toward addressing and dismantling racism being at the forefront. Although public health has admirably taken on this mission, and the foundational principles of public health align with social justice and health equity, public health as a discipline is vastly behind other fields in integrating and utilizing critical race theorizations. Of particular concern is the lack of critical race theorization within public health education materials. Public health education serves as a precursor to public health practice and situates topics and competencies that are essential to one's foundational public health knowledge and skillset, thus the use of strong theoretical groundings is critical in public health education.
Objectives:
Therefore, to explore the current landscape of public health educational research that employs critical race theories, this study sought to conduct a scoping review investigating the current literature of public health pedagogical, instructional, and curricular efforts that utilize race and antiracist theorization principles as a means to administer public health education. More specifically, we sought to investigate how have faculty and instructors published their integration of race theorization in public health curriculum/instruction within the United States since 2011.
Results:
We found 18 examples from peer-reviewed literature of curricular, pedagogical, or instructional practices and strategies that integrate critical theories of race, including contemplative pedagogy (n = 1), antiracism (n = 3), Public Health Critical Race praxis (n = 4), Critical Race (n = 5), critical service-learning/community engagement (n = 2), ethnic studies (n = 1), and intersectionality (n = 2).
Conclusion:
These articles present a wide breadth of innovative approaches to infusing critical race studies within public health higher education, ranging from individual assignments to course design and implementation to institutional culture change, thus demonstrating the multifaceted nature of critical race studies within micro-learning communities and macro-discipline practices. Identifying theoretically grounded, exemplary models and scholarly recommendations of pedagogical, instructional, and curricular practices provides readers the opportunity to borrow from successful practices and implement concepts of race, racism, antiracism, intersectionality, and more into their classrooms.
... Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a framework for contextualizing the epistemology experience of Black women in organizations (Bernal, 2013;Ladson-Billings, 2014). CRT focuses directly on the effects of race and racism, while simultaneously addressing the hegemonic system of white supremacy. ...
This qualitative research study examines Black women’s leadership experiences in Canadian banks and their perceptions about opportunities for mobility and advancement to executive management positions. The purpose of this research study is to explore and contextualize the epistemic complexities of Black women’s leadership experiences in the Toronto banking sector. The study’s data are collected through in-depth interviews and focus groups with Black women working in leadership positions. Further, this study seeks to examine: (1) the lived experience of Black women’s leadership in Canadian banks; (2) the perceived incongruity between Black women as leaders and those who are seen as possessing characteristics, qualities, and social capital for leadership roles; and (3) how the discourse of multiculturalism, employment equity policies, and corporate climate has impacted Black women’s mobility and advancement opportunities to executive management positions. This study utilizes theoretical frameworks of Critical Race Theory, Black Canadian Feminist Thought, and Intersectionality Theory to explore and examine Black women’s leadership experiences. My analysis engages with discussions of race, gender, class, sexism, and how the construction of whiteness is manifest in institutional power, and how that construction is written and read upon Black women’s leadership to understand the absence of Black women in executive management positions. The findings indicate that being Black and a woman in banking sector negatively impacts their career mobility and advancement. Black women remain locked out of leadership opportunities as they encounter institutional climate of anti-Black racism and sexism, which deems them unfit and incompetent for senior and executive roles based on negative racial stereotypes and lack of sponsorship. Ultimately, these findings relate to the factors and conditions that make Black women’s executive leadership in the Toronto banking sector so exceedingly rare. This study is one of the few Canadian examinations of Black women’s leadership experience in the banking sector.
... Although CRT was initially met with skepticism by educational researchers (Ladson-Billings, 1998 it has now become the most visible analytic theory for analyses of race and racism in education (Leonardo, 2013). While this may seem progressive, the over-and misuse of CRT in educational research threatens the criticality of the theory as it continues to stray further from its legal underpinnings (Ladson-Billings, 2014;Leonardo, 2014). Our use of CRT is intended to keep with its original tenets that derive from the legal field and were originally touted in educational research (Ladson-Billings, 2013). ...
... Although CRT was initially met with skepticism by educational researchers (Ladson-Billings, 1998, it has now become the most visible analytic theory for analyses of race and racism in education (Leonardo, 2013). While this may seem progressive, the over-and misuse of CRT in educational research threatens the criticality of the theory as it continues to stray further from its legal underpinnings (Dixson & Rousseau Anderson, 2018;Ladson-Billings, 2014;Leonardo, 2014). We did not engage CRT as a default theorization as is often the case in educational research (Ladson-Billings, 2013). ...
Current research in teacher education has turned a gaze toward recruiting students of color into teacher preparation programs. Yet teacher education programs fail to deconstruct the intersectional racial grammar of teacher education to provide meaningful learning experiences for preservice teachers of color, who often endeavor to teach in the very underserved communities of color that educator preparation programs fetishize. Moreover, there is a need to position the recruitment of pre-service teachers of color alongside research on first-generation college students, who also tend to be students of color from economically underserved communities. Drawing from critical race theory in education as a conceptual framework, we use an intersectional narrative methodology to foreground how four first-generation women preservice teachers of color-U.S. Black and Latina-navigate the racial grammar of teacher education. Similar to prior studies, findings indicate that racial incongruence underscores preservice teachers' of color experiences in teacher The Racial Grammar of Teacher Education 34 education programs. Furthermore, students' experiences speak to how race, class, and gender function together to form a grammar of teacher education that creates barriers of entry for educators of color. In light of our findings, we call for greater attention to discourses of Black and Latinx educator recruitment that consider gender, race, and class within contexts of first-generation college attendees.
... In this work, I also must recognize that as a white, upper-middle-class American woman, I do not hear all stories the same way either. While not as central to my work, drawing on Critical Race Theory, particularly in connection to education (Ladson-Billings, 2014Lynn & Dixson, 2013;Parker & Lynn, 2002, Milner, 2013, Crichlow, 2013 has helped me situate myself and my students within a framework that recognizes the importance of history, racialization, and identity, particularly as I analyzed and reflected on the stories related to urban education (Chapter Five). This theoretical approach to research reminds me to be humble, self-reflective, and aware of the intimate trust that is inherent in any gathering of stories, especially around issues of race, gender, and justice in the world. ...
Fieldwork has historically played an important role within teacher education. Most often these experiences in schools are depicted as sites for developing teachers to gain insight into the practice of teaching. Research into fieldwork as a context for teacher learning, however, has traditionally focused on the learned outcomes, and less on how teachers have experienced and self-described these places of study (Zeichner, 2010, 2012; Cochran-Smith & Zeichner, 2005; Ball & Forzani, 2009). This year-long study explored how students in a literacy education program conceptualized the space of fieldwork as part of their teacher education program. Specifically, the study explored how students made sense of - individually and collectively within an inquiry community -field experiences in relation to coursework, to their own ongoing inquiries, and to their developing identities as teachers. I approached this work from a conceptual framework grounded within three strands: literacy as sociocultural practice; narrative inquiry; and critical feminisms. Data sources included fieldnotes, analytic memos, interview transcripts, and artifact analysis.
The research provides insights into how fieldwork is conceptualized as a space of learning within teacher education. During their participation in an inquiry group, and in individual interviews, participants routinely described their goals for fieldwork, their impressions for what was expected of them, and how classroom experiences influenced their perspectives on literacy education, urban education, and teaching more broadly. In particular I analyzed how fieldwork functioned as a space that was both integrated and separated from other spaces of learning in the teacher education program. I critically examined how these narratives were embedded within larger discourses around schooling, teacher education, and school-university partnerships; these stories offer new insights into how fieldwork experiences are integrated into teacher learning, and present a far more complicated image of fieldwork learning than is often reflected in the literature. Furthermore, the collaborative learning within the inquiry group demonstrates the importance of creating spaces for sustained, critical dialogue in connection to field experiences. The study offers new ways of conceptualizing fieldwork that takes into account the inherently relational work of these spaces, highlighting the importance of how fieldwork is integrated and framed within teacher education.
... As a corollary, race and racism are necessar ily functioning in the lives of those who benefit from institutional arrangements as much as in the lives of those who may not. Accord ing to Ladson-Billings (2014), "[race] is not a construct of the pow erless or the dispossessed. It functions to keep a particular set of power relations in place and to make whiteness hegemonic and positioned as the site of normativity" (p. ...
What is teaching and learning mathematics for social justice (TLMSJ)? How has TLMSJ been taken up in mathematics education-- both historically and contemporarily? Along with unpacking these two central questions, another purpose of this article is to assess the current capacity and stance ofTLMSJ toward addressing issues of racial injustice. We begin with an overview ofTLMSJ as an epistemic perspective and introduce an analytical lens based on selected tenets of critical race theory. We then use this analytical lens to examine extant TLMSJ scholarship toward broadening the possibilities of justice-oriented scholarship in mathematics education.
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Since its introduction as an analytic and theoretical tool for the examination of racism in education, CRT scholarship has proliferated as the most visible critical theory of race in educational research. Whereas CRT’s popularity can be viewed as a welcome sign, scholars continually caution against its misappropriation and overuse, which dilute its criticality. We draw from the cautionary ethos of this canon of literature as the impetus for examining CRT’s terrain in social studies education research. Starting from Ladson-Billings’s watershed edited CRT text on race and social studies in 2003, this study provides a comprehensive theoretical review of scholarly literature in the social studies education field pertinent to the nexus of CRT, racialized citizenship, and race(ism). To guide our review, we asked how social studies education scholars have defined and used CRT as an analytic and theoretical framework in social studies education research from 2004 to 2019, as well as how scholars have positioned CRT within social studies education research to foreground the relationship between citizenship and race. Overall, findings from our theoretical review illustrated that contrary to the proliferation of CRT in educational research, CRT was slow to catch on as a theoretical and analytic framework in social studies education, as only seven of the articles in our analysis were published between 2004 and 2010. However, CRT emerged as a viable framework for the examination of race, racism, and racialized citizenship between 2011 and 2019, with a majority of these studies emphasizing (a) the centrality of race as a core tenet of CRT, (b) idealist interrogations of race, (c) the perspectives of teachers of color and White teachers in learning how to teach about race, and (d) the role of race and racism in curricular analyses that serve as counternarrative to the master script of the nation’s linear social progress in social studies education.
Our current moment is abundant in examples of global antiblackness whereby racial violence visibly signals the quotidian elimination of Blackness, or the making of Black people into an object or abstract discourse to be terminated. That antiblackness is global is nothing new. In fact, antiblackness has been and continues to be central to the making of Western empire and modernity as we know it. However, until this point, the social studies education discipline has yet to fundamentally advance a critical analytic that captures the specificity of global antiblackness and the invention of Black as non-human and anti-citizen. In this article, we aim to problematize vernacularized conceptualizations of citizenship in social studies education that sidestep the socio-historical significance of anti-Black world systems in the creation of human/non-human and, consequently, citizen/anti-citizen. More specifically, we argue that BlackCrit interlopes antiblackness in the intellectual apprehension of taken-for-granted concepts such as Blackness, globality, citizenship, and racism. In drawing from BlackCrit, we suggest that social studies education, and educational research in general, must reconcile that the world operates on the premise that to be human is to be distant from Blackness and to be citizen is also to be distant from Blackness. Overall, this article serves as a provocation to rethink our philosophies, theories, and paradigms of global citizenship within the domain of anti-citizen and non-human.
As demonstrated through the disregard for Black humanity and respondent Black social movements throughout Latin America, anti-Black systemic racism is a transnational phenomenon birthed from global White supremacy. Across the Americas, the hemispheric parallels undergirding collective resistance to anti-Black racism and state-sanctioned violence lend themselves to multifaceted interdisciplinary scholarly examinations. Using transnational anti-Black racism in Latin America as a point of departure, we advance a theorization of critical race theory in education capable of interrogating racist structures of coloniality, modernity, and White supremacy that operate globally to suppress Black humanity and humanness in general. To that extent, we draw from and reposition critical race theory (CRT) from its sociohistoric heritage in the United States and instead conceptualize transnational anti-Black racism vis-à-vis a Black Diaspora reading of CRT. Finally, we return to education as a key site of contestation for transnational anti-Black racism and draw implications for the meaning of this global theorization of CRT in urban education, praxis, and educational research. We end by charting new and old directions for CRT in educational research.
Singing and dancing for diversity examines a series of professional development workshops ostensibly centred on racial equity designed for secondary school teachers. Using the concept of neoliberal multiculturalism to critique the implementation of the workshops, this article illustrates how superficial multicultural curriculum distorts anti-racism and reproduces whiteness. The analysis focuses on the social and affective dimensions of racialization that emerge and converge during the workshops to instantiate white epistemological ignorance of race. Epistemological ignorance is established through the construction and sequencing of a watered-down curricular approach to multiculturalism in combination with a diversity concert that functions to persuade white teachers to embrace a non-critical definition of racial equity.
This article asserts that despite the salience of race in U.S. society, as a topic of scholarly inquiry, it remains untheorized. The article argues for a critical race theoretical perspective in education analogous to that of critical race theory in legal scholarship by developing three propositions: (1) race continues to be significant in the United States; (2) U.S. society is based on property rights rather than human rights; and (3) the intersection of race and property creates an analytical tool for understanding inequity. The article concludes with a look at the limitations of the current multicultural paradigm.
Critical race theory (CRT) first emerged as a counterlegal scholarship to the positivistand liberal legal discourse of civil rights. This scholarly tradition argues against the slow pace of racial reform in the United States. Critical race theory begins with the notion that racism is normal in American society. It departs from mainstream legal scholarship by sometimes employing storytelling. It critiques liberalism and argues that Whites have been the primary beneficiaries of civil rights legislation.Since schooling in the USA purports to prepare citizens, CRT looks at how citizenship and race might interact. Critical race theory's usefulness in understanding education inequity is in its infancy. It requires a critique of some of the civil rights era's most cherished legal victories and educationalreform movements, such as multiculturalism. The paper concludes with words of caution about the use of CRT in education without a more thorough analysis of the legal literature upon which it is based.
In challenging orthodoxy, questioning the premises of liberalism, and debating sacred wisdoms, Critical Race Theory scholars writing over the past few years have indelibly changed the way America looks at race. This book contains treatment of all the topics covered in the first edition, along with provocative and probing questions for discussion and detailed suggestions for additional reading. In addition, this anthology collects writings about various aspect of social theory -- crime, critical race practice, intergroup tensions and alliances, gay/lesbian issues, and transcending the black-white binary paradigm of race. In each of these areas, groundbreaking scholarship by the movement's founding figures as well as the brightest new stars provides immediate entre to current trends and developments in critical civil rights thought.
Gloria Ladson-Billings revisits the eight teachers who were profiled in the first edition and introduces us to new teachers who are current exemplars of good teaching. She shows that culturally relevant teaching is not a matter of race, gender, or teaching style. What matters most is a teacher's efforts to work with the unique strengths a child brings to the classroom. --from publisher description
This chapter delineates the criteria for a critical study of race in education. In particular, it poses the central problem of whiteness in education within a general critical study of race. In doing this, the chapter does not engage race paradigmatically. It is an affirmation of criticality that does not locate it in any particular school of thought and subject to its assumptions but instead recruits multiple positions on the matter of race. It is guided by the spirit and claim that race in education is a complex issue that requires a critical framework that testifies to this very complexity. It is an attempt to build a project around race criticality that is less possessive and more dialogic. First, it introduces the main frameworks for a critical study of race, mainly Critical Race Theory, Critical Theory of Race, and Race Critical Theory. Second, it frames race work as the dialectic between explaining racial oppression and projecting racial utopia. Third, it presents a synthesis between particularities in racial experience and the universal features of racial oppression. Finally, it ends by arguing that race scholars immerse ourselves in critically understanding the racial formation as a prerequisite to any attempt to abolish it. As such, the ultimate sign of race criticality is imagining the disappearance of one's craft, the eventual obsolescence of one's racial interventions. © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht. All rights are reserved by the Publisher.
The souls of black folks. Penguin Books
- Web Dubois
Écrits: the first complete edition in English (trans: Fink B)
- J Lacan