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Whiteness in Higher Education: The Invisible Missing Link in Diversity and Racial Analyses: Whiteness in Higher Education
... In this study, we utilize CRT grounded theory analysis to demonstrate and identify how racism continues to drive political stratagem in the US. We also realize that there is a blind spot or 'missing link' (Cabrera, Franklin, and Watson 2017) in CRT analyses of educational policy and practices. We believe that a CRT analysis of policies and practice is sufficient to examine the institutional aspects of racism. ...
US Republican lawmakers continue their nationwide crusade
against Critical Race Theory because it unsettles the racial state.
We argue that the partisan attacks on Ethnic Studies and CRT are
motivated by White American fears of racial reconciliation. An
honest review of our racial past and present through a critical
race lens would upset the United States’ centuries-long colonial
racial project, whose maintenance and containment are dependent
on an enduring system of a hierarchical racial order grounded in
White supremacy. Attacks on Ethnic Studies and CRT are about US
political society preserving racial meaning in the US, by which
safeguarding their entitled position within the racial order. The
latest political tactic in educational policy to maintain White privilege
is to empty meaning from racial categories, particularly the
term ‘White’, through a colorblind linguistic subterfuge we call
‘arrested semantics’. As members of civil society, students and
community members continue to mobilize to wrestle away political
control over their education. Civil society continues to be a potent
force against White supremacy, especially in the struggle for Ethnic
Studies – whose curriculum is grounded in the premise that race
has been the central organizing principle in US nation-state building.
Indeed, US political society’s wealth-building capacity – and
therefore sociopolitical and economic positioning, is predicated by
the current racial order. We believe the reconciliation of racism will
only occur by naming those agents who perpetuate racist policies
and practices. Critical Race Theory and Ethnic Studies employ
unequivocal language that can help us to identify the agents
upholding White supremacy.
... In the future research implications, Like Cabrera et al. (2017), we, researchers, see the need for bridging different research fields to engage in a deeper understanding within education. Also, in combination with perspectives on race, the Norwegian educational system needs to include critical perspectives on diversity and disabilities within the existing framework of Nordic universalism. ...
This article explores children's understanding of social exclusion within their school contexts through a critical race theoretical lens and how social exclusion and repression occur in a country whose policy is typically linked with equality and diversity. Our research was conducted in two primary schools in a big city in middle Norway, where urban segregation creates significant differences in school composition. This qualitative study research was made up of fifteen focus group interviews with 46 children from the age of 9 to 12 in two cases of two public schools, one urban and one suburban school. In terms of school demography, the Urban school was in the central part of the city, where local Norwegian origin families have been part of the same neighbourhood for years. The suburban school is located in a high-poverty area and highly segregated along racial, ethnic, and cultural aspects. As previous studies stated, there are structural inequalities in Norwegian schools, still there is a gap on the description of its consequences. This study pay attention to the voice of children and describe school discrimination, isolation, and unsupported processes in both schools. This innovative study shows that children in both school contexts need additional recognition. In addition, we add that educational policies need to be revised by including aims for collaboration, coordination and capacitation of children and families in their school communities and outside the structural limits. Further, we add that local schools should be part of global communities.
... Students' perceptions of the campus environment or climate vary by students' identities (Hurtado et al., 2008(Hurtado et al., , 2012, which then results in different levels of belonging and chances of success. For instance, Cabrera et al. (2017) explain how spaces, climate, programs, and policies in predominantly White institutions (PWI) frequently create conditions for White students' success while negatively affecting Students of Color. Students' socioeconomic background can shape what experiences are available to them at institutions that are often designed to serve students from more advantaged backgrounds (chapter 8, this volume). ...
This essay examines the discourse around the trigger warning through the analytic paradigm of racial literacy and the rhetorical frames of colorblind racism to illuminate how the trigger warning as currently conceptualized, even when framed as a means of equitable engagement, is mediated by and upholds the racial status quo.
It is unsurprising to say that feminist pedagogy and institutional ethnography (IE) are mutually constitutive forms of praxis as they are developed from and contribute to the creation of critical knowledges for social change. In the first part of the chapter Nancy Naples reflects on her experience teaching and mentoring graduate students in IE praxis over thirty years in three different university settings and shares her students’ experiences applying IE in their dissertation research. The latter half of the chapter features recent PhD. Ashley Robinson’s analysis of learning and implementing IE in her dissertation research. Both reveal ways that IE praxis moves the approach forward through pedagogical and critical reflexivity. We highlight how the students’ personal experiences with these different arenas before graduate school and their desire to produce research for social change led them to identify IE as the most appropriate approach. In turn, becoming IE practitioners led to greater understanding of the complex structural and discursive context which contributed to the replication of the social problems they had identified and inhibited social change efforts. With this new understanding students were able to deepen their knowledge about the phenomena as well as make IE their own by site specific application.
Background
It is well known that earning a bachelor's degree in engineering is a demanding task, but ripe with opportunity. For students from historically excluded demographic groups, this task is exacerbated by oppressive circumstances. Although considerable research has documented how student outcomes differ across demographic groups, much less is known about the dynamic processes that marginalize some students.
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to propose a conceptual model of student navigation in the context of undergraduate engineering programs. Our goal is to illustrate how localized, structural features unjustly shape the demands and opportunities encountered by students and influence how they respond.
Scope/Method
We developed our model using an iterative, four‐stage process. This process included (1) clarifying the purpose of the development process; (2) identifying concepts and insights from prior research; (3) synthesizing the concepts and insights into propositions; and (4) visualizing the suspected relationships between the salient constructs in the propositions.
Results
Our model focuses on the dynamic interactions between the characteristics of students, the embedded contexts in which they are situated, and the support infrastructure of their learning environment.
Conclusion
The resulting model illustrates the influence of structural features on how students a) respond to demands and opportunities and b) navigate obstacles present in the learning environment. Although its focus is on marginalized students in undergraduate engineering programs, the model may be applicable to STEM higher education more broadly.
What do teachers learn ‘on the job’? And how, if at all, do they learn from ‘experience’?
Leading researchers from the UK, Europe, the USA and Canada offer international, research-based perspectives on a central problem in policy-making and professional practice – the role that experience plays in learning to teach in schools. Experience is often weakly conceptualized in both policy and research, sometimes simply used as a proxy for ‘time’, in weeks and years, spent in a school classroom. The conceptualization of experience in a range of educational research traditions lies at the heart of this book, exemplified in a variety of empirical and theoretical studies. Distinctive perspectives to inform these studies include sociocultural psychology, the philosophy of education, school effectiveness, the sociology of education, critical pedagogy, activism and action research. However, no one theoretical perspective can claim privileged insight into what and how teachers learn from experience; rather, this is a matter for a truly educational investigation, one that is both close to practice and seeks to develop theory.
At a time when policy-makers in many countries seek to make teacher education an entirely school-based activity, Learning Teaching from Experience offers an essential examination of the evidence-base, the traditions of inquiry – and the limits of those inquiries.