bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Interruptions: Thinking-in-Action in Teacher Education
Authors: Furman Cara , Larsen Shannon
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

This paper is a part of the special issue “Reimagining Research and Practice at the Crossroads of Philosophy, Teaching, and Teacher Education.” We center what follows on a practice used in undergraduate methods courses that we have termed Interruptions. Interruptions are a form of inter-class visitation in which faculty plan together, visit one another's classes, and publicly interrupt the teaching of the other with a variety of both pre-planned and spontaneous questions relating to the day's lesson.

Research Design

We weave together a conceptual analysis and qualitative research, drawing from a larger qualitative study conducted in one early childhood and one elementary undergraduate math methods course in Spring 2016. For the study, we co-planned eight lessons together (four in each course), and observed one another teach each of those lessons, while taking notes and purposely interrupting instruction. We collected survey data from students at the end of each classroom observation and interviewed two students from each class at the end of the term. We also kept reflective journals of our work. In this paper we deploy a narrative format to document teacher inquiry drawing upon our reflective journals and classroom observation to describe the development, enactment, and our response to Interruptions.

Outcomes

Our use of Interruptions pushed us to examine our own philosophical beliefs and how they were, or were not, enacted in our teaching practice. We highlight that the connections that emerged between philosophy and teacher education provided us with the necessary time to care for our ethical selves both in and out of the classroom. Specifically, we share how this exercise allowed us each to become more deliberately reflective about the work that we do and why and how we do it.

Conclusions/Recommendations

In addition to giving us time to slow down our teaching in order to think carefully about our choices while in the midst of teaching, we found that we also considered instructional implications long after the Interruptions were complete. Interruptions helped us think more deliberately about the ethical choices we made as educators and in the service of our students. Interruptions proved to have deep and long-lasting effects on our practice as teacher educators. Other practitioners who ground themselves in both philosophy and methods may benefit from similarly systematic approaches for examining their own practice with an eye towards improvements in teaching and understanding of the self.
Afterword: The Need to Re-Balance Our Portfolio of Education Means and Ends
Authors: Crocco Margaret Smith
Published: November 2021

The author responds to several themes that emerge across the articles in the special issue, considering them in light of contexts of schooling, teacher education, and the contemporary historical moment in the United States. The articles raise salient concerns about what the reform movements of the last twenty or so years have meant for scholars, practitioners, and students who are involved in schooling and teacher preparation.
Short-Cycle School Improvement Planning as a Lever to Launch School Turnaround: A Descriptive Analysis of Plans
Authors: Vangronigen Bryan A. , Meyers Coby V.
Published: November 2021

Background

School improvement planning is a common school leadership practice built on assumptions that schools increase organizational performance if rational yearly plans are developed and then enacted with fidelity. A quality school improvement plan (SIP) should position subsequent critical leadership and instructional moves in a more holistic change initiative. Although multiple studies suggest that positive relationships exist between SIP quality and student achievement outcomes, all studies of SIPs have focused on the traditional, yearlong approach to school improvement planning. An alternative approach operates on shorter cycles of approximately one semester, a model that could be beneficial for low-performing schools engaged in turnaround efforts in which altering goals and strategies might need to occur more frequently to be situationally responsive.

Purpose

In this study, we analyze short-cycle SIPs from three cohorts of low-performing schools participating in a university-based program focused on improving systems leadership to rapidly increase school performance and student achievement. We determine overall SIP quality and whether it changes over time. Furthermore, we analyze plan quality by planning domain (e.g., vision, action steps) over time. To our knowledge, this is the first study that analyzes short-cycle SIPs specifically.

Research Design

We employ a conventional content analysis approach to examine 389 short-cycle SIPs submitted by 136 schools across three cohorts of school principals attempting to lead school turnaround. To analyze the short-cycle SIPs, we developed a rubric that includes 12 planning domains and is based on previous analyses of SIPs since 2001. Our descriptive analyses of short-cycle SIPs show easily identifiable patterns.

Conclusions

Overall plan quality is weak. Although most planning domains and overall plan quality scores improve over time, their increases are mostly nominal. Results suggest that principals attempting to lead turnaround efforts do not often set compelling turnaround visions or engage in deep root cause analysis to identify meaningful focus areas. Although we believe there is great potential in short-cycle SIPs, results further suggest that principals must be strategic in what they prioritize, especially in low-performing schools facing myriad challenges. Last, service providers, school districts, and state education agencies would be wise to recognize that principals will typically develop SIPs that are directly responsive to templates and/or policies.
Does Neighborhood Gentrification Create School Desegregation?
Authors: Mordechay Kfir , Ayscue Jennifer B.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Race and class inequality have long governed patterns of residential and school segregation across America. However, as neighborhoods across the country that have historically been home to residents of color experience an influx of White and middle-class residents, new questions arise as to whether these demographic shifts in neighborhoods correspond to school-level demographic changes. Purpose: This study examines Washington, DC's, most gentrifying areas, and the impact on racial diversity in local public schools.

Research Design

This quantitative study draws on data from the decennial census, the American Community Survey, and the National Center for Educational Statistics. Findings/ Results: This study finds evidence that school enrollment patterns in Washington, DC's, most rapidly gentrifying areas have seen a reduction in racial segregation, more so in traditional public schools than in charters. Although this trend is promising, a high level of racial segregation remains, and progress is still needed to ensure that newly integrated neighborhoods also mean desegregated schools.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Given barriers to school desegregation efforts, gentrification is offering a unique opportunity to create racially and economically diverse schools. However, managing the process of gentrification such that it supports school desegregation requires coordinated and targeted policies that underscore the fundamental relationships among housing, communities, and schools.
“Airplanes Not Walls”: Broaching Unauthorized (Im)migration and Schooling in Mexico
Authors: Gallo Sarah , Ortiz Andrea
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

This article builds on U.S.-based research on undocumented status and schooling to examine how an elementary school teacher in Mexico successfully integrates transnational students’ experiences related to unauthorized (im)migration into the classroom.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

Drawing on a politicized funds of knowledge framework, we focus on an exceptional fifth-grade teacher's curricular, pedagogical, and relational decisions to provide concrete examples of how educators on both sides of the border can carefully integrate students’ politicized experiences into their classrooms.

Setting

This research took place in a semirural fifth-grade classroom in Central Mexico during the 2016–2017 academic year, when Donald Trump was elected president of the United States.

Population/Participants/Subjects

This article focuses on the routine educational practices within a single fifth-grade classroom in a highly transnational Central Mexican town. Participants included a binational student who had recently relocated to Mexico because of U.S.-based immigration policies, her peers from transnational families with ties to the United States, and their fifth-grade teacher.

Research Design

This school-based ethnographic study involved weekly participant observation and video recording of routine activities in Profe Julio's fifth-grade classroom during the 2016–2017 academic year. Observations were triangulated with additional data sources such as interviews (with educators, binational students, and binational caregivers) and artifacts (such as homework assignments and student writing).

Findings/Results

Through a close examination of a fifth-grade classroom in Mexico, we illustrate how the teacher brought students’ (im)migration experiences into school by leveraging openings in the curriculum, developing interpersonal relationships of care, and engaging in a range of pedagogical moves.

Conclusions/Recommendations

We discuss how this teacher's educational practices could be carefully tailored to U.S. classrooms within the current anti-immigrant context. These practices include building relationships of care, looking for openings in the curriculum, providing academic distance, prioritizing teachers as learners, and working with school leadership for guidance on navigating politicized topics under the current U.S. administration.
Researching the Neighborhood and Schooling Experiences of Black Male High School “Students who Play Sports” in Atlanta and Chicago
Authors: Adeyemo Adeoye O. , Morris Jerome E.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

The corpus of scholarship on Black male students who play sports focuses on students at the collegiate level, thus ignoring the regional, neighborhood, and K–12 educational backgrounds and experiences of these young people before some matriculate into a college or university. This omission suggests the need for more robust investigations that (a) focus on Black males during K–12 schooling, (b) place Black male students’ experiences within the larger geographic (e.g., regions, neighborhoods and schools) and social and historical contexts in which they live and go to school, and thereby, (c) seek to understand how these contexts shape students’ experiences and beliefs about race and the role of academics and athletics in their lives and future.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

We investigated two research questions: (1) For Black male students who play high school sports, how do the social contexts shape their experiences and their beliefs about race and the role of academics and athletics in their lives and future? (2) And, what are the consequences of Black male students’ experiences and beliefs for their academic and athletic outcomes? This investigation across geographically and economically contrasting cities, neighborhoods, and schools in the U.S. South (metro Atlanta, Georgia) and Midwest (Chicago, Illinois) offers empirical, theoretical, and practice-related evidence about young Black males’ experiences and beliefs about race, academics, and athletics, while providing a window into the complex social and cultural worlds in which they live, go to school, and play sports.

Research Design

This article emanates from research studies that employed ethnographic research methods such as interviews and observations, while embedding the researchers within the communities where Black people resided. The research design used a cross-case analysis to investigate participants’ experiences and beliefs. The constant comparative method allowed for the synthesizing of data collected from two different research sites.

Description of Main Findings

Key findings revealed the importance for researchers to consider place and its implication in the experiences of Black male students who play sports, particularly their perceptions of the role of academics, athletics, and race in their lives.

Conclusions/Recommendations

This article moves the scholarly understanding of the study of Black male “students who play sports” forward by illuminating the centrality of places, whether a particular country, region, city, neighborhood, or school—in shaping participants’ experiences and beliefs. We offer insights for research, theory, and practice.
Equity Advocates Using Equity-Mindedness to Interrupt Faculty Hiring's Racial Structure
Authors: Liera Román
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Education scholars have recommended steps for college and university leaders to take toward creating a more racially diverse professoriate. However, the majority of the scholarship is neither empirical nor focused on faculty actively negotiating barriers during search committee meetings to create equitable practices.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

The study examined faculty within search committees who received formal training to interrogate exclusionary hiring procedures and create race-conscious and equitable hiring practices. My goals were to understand the strategies and efforts to advance racial equity of faculty trained on equity-mindedness to negotiate and use practices to change exclusionary hiring procedures. Thus, I answer the following research questions: (1) How do professors enact their agency to create equitable hiring practices during faculty search committee meetings? (2) What challenges do professors encounter when using equity-minded practices during faculty search committees? How do professors overcome such challenges?

Setting

The study site was a religiously affiliated private liberal arts university with a predominantly White student and faculty population. Senior administrators invested resources in a ten-month intervention to train 17 faculty to advance racial equity in faculty hiring.

Population/Participants/Subjects

Study participants consisted of 10 faculty members whose university leadership designated them as advocates of racial equity on search committees.

Research Design

Data for this critical narrative analysis were collected through eight interviews with faculty equity advocates, observations of two faculty search committees, and documents of hiring materials such as hiring criteria, interview questions, and evaluation rubrics.

Findings/Results

Ultimately, faculty enacted their agency to deactivate exclusionary practices and inscribe new rules for search committees to follow. The findings illustrate that faculty agency for racial equity is an effort to establish positional power, to use equity-minded practices, and to informally strategize to overcome resistance as members of faculty search committees.

Conclusions/Recommendations

I conclude that faculty advance racial equity by manipulating and subverting practices (e.g., recruitment strategies, evaluation criteria), rules (e.g., conversations about race), and roles (e.g., legitimate roles as committee members, who have the knowledge to integrate equity-mindedness) that historically excluded racially minoritized professors from the hiring process. Study findings suggest for senior administrators to train faculty search committee members on taking active steps to create an equity-minded evaluation system, including the appointment of people who are explicitly trained to advocate for equity in the evaluation process.
Capacity-Building for District Reform: The Role of Instructional-Coach Teams
Authors: Galey-Horn Sarah
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

This study contributes to our growing understanding of coaches’ role in district reform by introducing instructional-coach teams as a potentially important concept for understanding coaching activities that support systemic reform. Prior research shows that instructional coaches leverage their position between the district office and schools to coordinate policy implementation. This study builds on that analysis by adding a group dimension to instructional coaching at the district level. No other study to date has focused on the collective behaviors of coaches that facilitate reform efforts.

Purpose/Objective/RQ/Focus of Study

The purpose of this study is to examine the practices of effective instructional-coach teams and conceptualize the role of coach teams in district reform.

Research Design

I used cross-case analysis that relied on social-network, questionnaire, interview, and observational methods as sources of evidence to analyze how instructional coaches work together to build capacities for district reform. I identified two successful district-level coach teams with an explicit mandate to support reform efforts that were, however, operating in very different district contexts. The focus of this analysis was to identify and compare the circumstances that present in both cases and help explain why these districts have effective coach teams.

Findings

My findings describe how coach teams develop institutional capacities that enable districts to respond to policy demands. I find that differences in curriculum policy, district reform context, and professional collaboration are associated with differences in the teams’ relational structures. I link these differences to common process gains resulting from the collective working of coach teams. I found three important process gains: intranet systems, collaborative problem-solving, and collective expertise. Although both teams produced all three, they implemented process gains in very different ways.

Conclusions/Recommendations

This comparative study demonstrates the conceptual utility of instructional-coach teams for understanding the link between coaching and systemic district reform. More theory and research are needed to better understand the behaviors of teams of educators, and particularly instructional coaches, engaged in collective work to support district reform.
Accelerating to Success: The Impact of Florida's Developmental Education Reform on Credit Accumulation
Authors: Mokher Christine G. , Park-Gaghan Toby J. , Hu Shouping
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Underprepared students at community colleges are often assigned to a sequence of developmental education courses that can substantially delay, or even halt, their progress to degree completion. In 2014, Florida implemented a comprehensive reform under Senate Bill (SB) 1720 that allowed the majority of incoming students to enroll directly into college-level courses, while remaining developmental education courses were offered in new instructional modalities that were designed to be completed more quickly than traditional semester-long courses. Colleges provided extensive advising and academic support services intended to help students succeed while progressing at a more accelerated pace.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

In this study, we examined the impact of Florida's developmental education reform on early momentum. More specifically, we defined early momentum as student success in early outcomes (such as the number of credits attempted and earned), which may set students on a promising long-term trajectory on subsequent postsecondary outcomes.

Population/Participants/Subjects

Our sample included all first-time-in-college students enrolled in all 28 public state colleges. We included three cohorts of students before the reform and up to three cohorts of students after the reform. Each cohort consisted of approximately 70,000 students.

Research Design

We used an interrupted time series design to compare student outcomes three years before the reform with those up to three years after the reform. Our outcome variables, measured one and three years following initial college enrollment, represented continuous indicators for the number of college-level credits attempted and the number of college-level credits earned. We also examined whether the data revealed heterogeneity in the reform's impacts by race/ethnicity, family income status, and level of high school academic preparation.

Findings/Results

We found small positive effects on all outcomes, indicating that the reform accelerated student success in both the short term and longer term. The impacts of the reform were even greater for Black, Hispanic, Indigenous, low-income, and underprepared students (particularly in the first year), thus reducing existing achievement gaps.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Florida's SB 1720 consisted of a complementary set of reform efforts that may together have a larger impact than any single component alone. The results suggest that initial momentum gains in the first year may have set some students on a more successful long-term trajectory, particularly those most likely to be assigned to developmental education before the reform. Colleges should continue to provide comprehensive student support services to help students succeed while progressing at a more accelerated pace.
Effects of a Longitudinal School Development Program on Primary Teachers’ Attitudes toward Inquiry Teaching and Their Inquiry Teaching Practices
Authors: Post Tim , Van Der Molen Juliette H. Walma
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

International education policy documents increasingly promote the implementation of inquiry-based pedagogy in primary education. However, helping whole primary school teams to acquire the competencies that meet these new education standards is complex and requires extensive teacher professionalization programs. Unfortunately, such programs are still relatively scarce. Little is currently known about what it takes to help primary schools integrate inquiry-focused pedagogy into their school curriculum and which teacher and school factors might foster or hinder teachers’ professional development in this regard.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

To help fill this void in the literature, the present article describes the effects of a two-year school improvement program in which the complete school staffs of six Dutch primary schools were trained to integrate inquiry-focused pedagogy into daily school practice. We measured (changes in) teachers’ and school principals’ performance before, immediately after, and one year after the treatment to gain insight into what professionalization features and what school and teacher factors may enhance the sustained implementation of inquiry-focused pedagogy in primary schools.

Research Design

A delayed treatment pretest-posttest control group design was used to investigate the effects of the program on teachers’ attitudes toward inquiry teaching and their inquiry teaching behavior. In addition, differences in these program effects were explored based on differences in school leadership between the schools. Therefore, program effects were examined at the treatment level and at the individual school level by means of attitude questionnaires and interviews.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Results indicate that the program significantly improved teachers’ attitudes and inquiry teaching behavior of the first treatment group and that teachers’ improved practices persisted to one year after training. However, school leadership remained largely moderate throughout the program and appeared to explain little variation in teachers’ inquiry teaching development among the participating schools. In addition, results reveal positive but limited effects of the same program on the attitude and behavior development of the delayed treatment group. Findings indicate that a combination of extensive attitude-focused and didactical training provides primary school teams the (minimal) preparatory training to adopt inquiry-based pedagogy. More longitudinal quantitative and qualitative research is needed to evaluate the impact and explore the processes of implementation, while considering the complexity of schools as organizations and refraining from overly prescriptive approaches to encouraging and assessing teachers’ inquiry-pedagogy.
Identity Negotiation in Multilingual Contexts: A Narrative Inquiry into Experiences of an African Immigrant High School Student
Authors: Kiramba Lydiah , Oloo James
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Inclusion of African immigrant youth voices in educational and research discourses remains rare despite the steady growth of this population in the United States over the past four decades. Consequently, the multilingual abilities of these youth remain typically unnoticed or ignored in the classroom, and little is specifically known about their histories, cultures, expectations, and achievements.

Purpose

Using the narrative inquiry approach and the Natural, Institutional, Discursive, Affinity, Learner, and Solidarity (NIDALS) theoretical lens, we explore the lived experiences of one African immigrant high school student in the midwestern United States.

Research Design

Using narrative inquiry, we qualitatively explored the lived cultural, racial, and ethnic identities and self-images experienced by a Ghanaian-born female high school student, Akosua (pseudonym), as she navigated and resisted identities ascribed to her in the midwestern U.S.

Findings

The student's narratives speak to issues of culture, identity, and self-image, as well as her literate life in multiple languages and literacy contexts in and out of school. The findings reveal narratives of ascribed identities, racialization, and perceived language hierarchies in the participant's daily life and indicate a need to challenge such narratives about African immigrant students and disrupt the reproduction of linguistic and racial inequality in the school system.

Recommendations

While school systems do follow state-sanctioned linguistic norms and ideologies, when educators draw on students’ experiences and funds of knowledge as resources already in the room in order to find ways of negotiating and disrupting language hierarchies and the ascribed identities they support, it allows all students, including multilinguals, to have their identity affirmed, even in school systems that have historically marginalized them. This, in turn, supports educational achievement, broadly realized, not only psychologically for all students but also economically and nationally for the country—a critical accomplishment in an era when educational quality in the U.S. is losing ground to foreign achievements.
Justice for All: Realities and Possibilities of Black English Learners in K–12 Schools
Authors: Cooper Ayanna
Published: November 2021

Background

The number of students identified as English learners (ELs) in the U.S. has risen in the last two decades. Approximately 10% of the K–12 student population is identified as ELs. These students are not a monolithic group. They come from diverse ethnic groups, home languages, socioeconomic statuses, backgrounds, and experiences. Ultimately, schools that serve them are to provide equitable access to education. Included in that population are ELs who either become Black upon their arrival in the U.S. or have an additional identity that includes being Black in the U.S. In 2013, the United States Department of Education Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA) and the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans (WHIEEAA) listed the top languages spoken by Black ELs as Spanish, French Creole, and French. Additionally, states with the highest concentration of Black ELs include Maine, Vermont, and Mississippi.

Purpose

This article explores the experiences of Black ELs, whether foreign born or native to the U.S., as they strive to achieve academic language necessary for becoming proficient in English. Recommendations for educators who serve Black ELs will be included since creating and sustaining a shared sense of responsibility for this traditionally marginalized student population is imperative.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Implications and recommendations for educators of Black English learners include a focus on critical pedagogy, an increase in educator awareness and intentional advocacy.
Who is (Not) Protected by Title IX? A Critical Review of 45 Years of Research
Authors: Meyer Elizabeth J. , Quantz Mary
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

This is the first published systematic literature review with an exclusive focus on Title IX scholarship. This article aims to offer a holistic view of the existing knowledge base in this field presented in peer-reviewed scholarly publications.

Purpose

This review of the literature identifies key trends in this body of research and highlights strengths, as well as gaps and oversights, that future research should address.

Research Design

This descriptive literature review systematically collected 169 peer-reviewed articles to identify the conceptual boundaries of the field and the current gaps.

Data Collection and Analysis

Authors applied Booth, Sutton, and Papaioannou's SALSA approach (Search, AppraisaL, Synthesis, and Analysis) to this systematic review to identify and analyze the 169 articles included in the study. We applied an intersectional feminist lens and Queer of Color critique to the analysis of the included articles.

Findings/Results

Peer-reviewed scholarly publications on Title IX (169) have generally focused on analyses of legal decisions (93) and studies of athletics (75), with little attention to other aspects of the law. Most studies lacked intersectional analyses of how “sex discrimination” has been understood in K–12 and higher education contexts, which leaves experiences of students of color, transgender students, and LGBQ students missing from most of the scholarship in this field.

Conclusions/Recommendations

This review of the literature is intended to help scholars interested in issues of sex discrimination and gender equity in educational institutions in the United States have a clear overview of scholarship that already exists related to Title IX in order to ask more focused and critical questions about its impacts and implementation. More research is needed to understand the ways in which educational institutions interpret and apply their responsibilities under this law—particularly through the lenses of intersectional feminism and Queer of Color critique. Contemporary issues, including campus sexual assault, and the negative experiences documented about gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender students in schools underline the importance of staying current with Title IX, and the current body of literature indicates scant attention to collecting and analyzing data about this law's application in practice and implications for diverse groups of people.
Disassembling Efforts to Legalize Opting-Out in Arizona: A Case Study of Legislative Politics
Authors: Szolowicz Michael A.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Opt-out is a national movement based on local efforts as most notably expressed in New York. While studies have addressed opt-out demographics and local impact, fewer studies address the political activism that extends beyond the act of refusing specific tests to changing standardized testing policy.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

This case study extends understanding of the opt-out phenomenon by examining and disassembling a case of efforts to legalize opting-out of state-mandated testing through a state legislative process. The policy reform efforts are framed and disassembled through the discourse of the New Right and elements of the political spectacle.

Setting

This study is set in the Arizona State Legislature's 2015 and 2016 sessions.

Population/Participants/Subjects

This study follows the efforts of state legislative policy actors including state legislators, state department of education officials, the state teacher association, and parent opt-out activists.

Research Design

This is a qualitative case study examining three bills intending to legalize opting-out introduced across two state legislative sessions.

Data Collection and Analysis

Data were collected utilizing progressive theoretical sampling to identify key legislative policy actors and collect public statements regarding the pending legislation. Data focused on legislative hearings and floor votes publicly archived on the legislature's website. Text of the bills along with contemporary social and traditional media statements were also collected, as were interviews with two state legislators. Data were analyzed for themes arising from the participants themselves, for elements of the New Right discourse, and for elements of the political spectacle.

Findings/Results

The generally White and affluent demographics of this case's opt-out movement leadership reflect national patterns. Likewise, the movement leadership focused on themes of local control and privacy rights. This vaguely symbolic language combined with casting big government as enemies suggests a fluency in the spectacle of modern legislative politics. Ultimately, opt-out proponents compromised in favor of a new policy initiative reflecting themes of neoliberalism and neoconservatism, the Menu of Assessments.

Conclusions/Recommendations

The compromise with the experimental Menu of Assessments policy to gain more local control over tests while keeping the expectation of testing in place suggests a limited victory for democracy. However, the Arizona opt-out movement's legislative efforts might also be understood as tension within the hegemonic New Right coalition.
Racial Capitalism and the Black Student Loan Debt Crisis
Authors: Mustaffa Jalil B. , Dawson Caleb
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Student loans reflect a larger shift in U.S. society in which people are forced to go into debt for basic needs. Student loan debt in the United States has been recognized as a political economic crisis that disproportionately devastates Black people. Scholars have statistically reported on racialized and gendered stratification in student loan outcomes and several name the racial wealth gap as the main contributing factor to the Black student debt crisis. Yet minimal attention has been dedicated to examining, let alone theorizing, the logics and systemic forces that racialize debt in higher education.

Purpose

Drawing on a theory of racial capitalism, this article fills analytic and theoretical gaps in the study of the Black student debt crisis by detailing how the crisis has been arranged as well as how it functions to constrain, dispossess, and exploit Black people.

Research Design

This article offers a corrective history, systematic analysis, and theoretical explanation of the Black student debt crisis.

Findings/Results

The paper draws on racial capitalism to account for how student loans as a policy has relied on anti-Black racial logics and systemic forces. The authors address how Black educational desires are co-opted, the government configures inclusion according to predatory terms, and the student loan industry forms a debt trap that exploits repayment struggles. While the majority of Black people who enroll in higher education never secure the promise of college as always “worth it,” the arrangement continues to be worthwhile for student loan profiteers. Student loans are perfect for racial capitalism because they answer demands for social access and inclusion (which are already reduced to mean credentialism) and reproduce both the disposability and dispossession of Black people's everyday lives.

Conclusions/Recommendations

The authors call for the full cancellation of student loan debt. This call forms part of a larger mobilization to abolish the racist logics, processes, and policies that make the Black student debt crisis and Black precarity possible in the first place.
Packaging the Promise: Money, Messaging, and Misalignment
Authors: Kim Debbie H. , Rifelj Kelly Krupa
Published: November 2021

Background

Promise programs are a quickly spreading policy tool in the free college movement. Despite their rapid spread, promise programs remain generally untested and there is even less information about how they are implemented.

Research Questions

(1) In what ways were The Degree Project's (TDP) theory of change and intents represented in messaging materials to students and to school staff? 1(a) In what ways did these messages shape conditions (or not) for sensemaking? (2) In what ways did these messages support (or not) students and school staff in changing their practice? (2a) What changes in practice did we see (or not) for students and school staff?

Intervention

TDP, which was implemented in Milwaukee Public Schools between 2011–15, is the nation's first randomized control trial of a promise program. Freshmen in the treatment group were offered $12,000 for college if they met particular requirements (e.g., average 2.5 GPA, 90% attendance). TDP leaned heavily on marketing materials and personalized letters to students, families, and school staff to communicate its requirements and to provide college access tips.

Research Design

We analyze messaging materials, climate and exit survey data, and student and school staff interviews to understand how TDP's theory of change and intents were packaged into messaging materials and ultimately enacted among target students and staff.

Findings

TDP implementation was successful to a point. School staff handed out messaging materials; students understood the requirements and demonstrated an increase in motivation and desire to go to college. However, TDP failed to meet its goal of sending more students to college. Expectations for school staff (hand out flyers and speak to students) versus students were misaligned, contributing to a lack of substantive conversation and structures for students to convert their increased motivation to go to college into actionable practices over time. School staff were already stretched thin and, with no added structural support, were unable to interact more meaningfully with students.

Conclusion

TDP failed to send more students to college because it targeted change at the individual rather than organizational level. Students exhibited change in their motivation to attend college, but this was not met with the support needed to convert this motivation to meaningful action. To achieve their full potential, such programs will have to not only address financial barriers, but also leverage broader structural supports in schools to help channel increased student motivation in more productive directions.
Open Houses from Etic to Emic Perspectives: Casa Aperta in Early-Modern and Nineteenth-Century Italy
Authors: Sarti Raffaella
Published: November 2021

What did early-modern and nineteenth-century Italians mean when they used the expressions tener casa aperta or aver casa aperta, literally to keep open house and to have an open house? In this article I will try to answer this question, which is far less trivial than one might imagine.

Before tackling the topic, a premise is necessary. In some previous works, I used an etic category of ‘open houses’, i.e. a category I elaborated to interpret the implications of the presence, in many households, of domestic staff from different classes, places, races than their masters/employers. Such a presence made those houses open. The border between different peoples and cultures was inside the houses themselves that were places of exchanges, confrontations and clashes.

In this article, I will develop a different approach: I will map the emic uses of the ‘open-house’ category, i.e. I will analyse how early-modern and nineteenth-century Italians used the expressions tener casa aperta or aver casa aperta. While some uses had to do with hospitality and sociability, others had legal meanings, referring to citizenship rights and privileges, the status of aristocrats, the differences between foreigners and local people and taxpaying. I will pay particular attention to the latter, also suggesting possible geographical differences and changes over time. This will present an opportunity to delve into the cultural and legal world of early-modern and nineteenth-century Italians, and to unveil the importance of houses for one's status.
The Organization and Use of Household Space for Work in Early Modern England: 1550–1750
Authors: Flather Amanda
Published: November 2021

This paper explores the neglected topic of the organization and use of household space for work (paid and unpaid) during the early modern period. It engages critically with the concept of ‘the open house’ in relation to recent arguments about processes of spatial and social closure of houses and households in the early modern period associated with the development of a capitalist socio-economic system. Drawing on a variety of sources including diaries, autobiographies, inventories and court records the analysis considers how work was organized in the domestic context and how experience varied according to gender, age, status and location as well as time of day, week or year. The paper argues that a perceived dichotomy between an open house and a closed home secluded from the social and business world of community and commerce is inadequate in the consideration of space and attitudes in this period. Individuals in larger houses could control access to certain spaces at specific times and work could be concentrated in certain rooms. But in practice in most households the complicated demands of the household economy required openness to outsiders that rendered the boundaries of houses more permeable and potentially more unstable than they are today. The analysis considers the case of England and compares rural and urban homes in a particular regional context, but it opens up several ways for historians to think about the relationship between work and home in other European regions.
Religion and Misconduct Among Prison Inmates in South Korea
Authors: Kim Sohee , Choi Myunghyun , Woo Youngki , Jang Sung Joon
Published: November 2021

Although faith-based programs are present in most prisons for offender rehabilitation, the effect of religion on prison inmates remains an understudied topic. In addition, existing research shows mixed results about the religious effect. The present study intends to not only advance the understanding of inmate’s prison misconduct but also examine whether religion is likely to contribute to reducing the risk of misconduct using a non-Western sample of inmates. To assess the relationship between inmates’ religion and prison misconduct, we applied negative binomial regression to analyze survey data from 986 Korean adult male inmates. Results showed that inmates who had a religious affiliation with Catholicism or Buddhism were less likely to report prison misconduct than those who had no religion. In addition, the inverse relationship was observed whether inmates had participated in religion before incarceration or came to participate in religion while incarcerated, depending on religious denomination.
“Take It One Day at a Time and Try to Adjust to What's Going on”: Exonerees’ Advice to the Newly Exonerated and Future Exonerees About Life Post-Release
Authors: DeShay Rashaan A.
Published: November 2021

Wrongful convictions have received increased attention from both scholars and the media over the past several decades. Most of the research on this topic has focused on the factors that contribute to wrongful convictions and policy changes that may help prevent future miscarriages of justice. Scholars have also explored the post-release experiences of those who have been exonerated. Less attention has been paid to the advice exonerees would share with those who have been recently exonerated to help them navigate their new lives. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with individuals who were wrongfully convicted in the southern United States to explore this issue. While acknowledging that the post-exoneration transition could be challenging, the participants noted that they would advise those who are newly exonerated that faith, talking to other exonerees, learning how to be patient with the process, and finding a way to enjoy their new lives were important to navigating this process. This study highlights the value of exploring the perspectives of exonerees to increase our understanding of their experiences, while also using their insight to inform policy that will assist the wrongfully convicted after being exonerated and released from prison.
Untangling collegiality and distributed leadership: Equality versus utility. A perspective piece
Authors: Jarvis Adrian
Published: November 2021

Both ‘collegiality’ and ‘distributed leadership’ have, as terms, occasioned a good deal of debate. Conceptually elastic, they are often used interchangeably, or not appreciated as embodying a range of leadership styles and relationships. Spurred by an unanswered query from a research project, this theoretical article attempts to clarify what the two words mean – especially in relation to each other. Collegiality is defined as an approach, characterised by equality, whereas distributed leadership is seen to be much more closely aligned to the goals of a team or organisation, thus making it more to do with utility. While formal distributed leadership is indifferent to collegiality - although not hostile to it - informal distributed leadership, it is argued, requires collegiality to be in place before it can exist, much less thrive.
Effect of defocusing distance on the forming quality of inner structure parts manufactured via selective laser melting
Authors: Duan Weipeng , Wu Meiping , Han Jitai , Ma Yiqing , Lu Peipei , Miao Xiaojin
Published: November 2021

A systematical work was studied to illustrate the influence of defocusing distance on the forming quality of inner structure fabricated by selective laser melting for Ti-6Al-4V alloy. The relationship between defocusing distance and dimensional accuracy, surface roughness as well as flatness was investigated, finite element analysis (FEA) was used to show the temperature distribution. The results show that defocusing distance not only had an impact on laser energy density, but also showed a significant influence on the surface pressure of the metal powder. Smaller defocusing distance (0.0 mm) accompanied with higher molten pool maximum temperature (3262.96°C), powder melting and splashing at the same time. On the contrary, larger defocusing distance leading to unmelted powder and powder bonding, which influences the forming quality of samples. Dimensional accuracy was less affected in 0.0, 1.0, 2.0 mm defocusing distance (5%), but changed dramatically when it is 3.0 mm (22%). In the same condition, similar variation trend of surface roughness (Ra) and flatness was observed, and varying from 5.1 to 27.3 μm and 0.05 to 0.26 mm, respectively. Simultaneously, the bottom surface is less affected, while the other three sides have the opposite situation. Pores and unmelted powder can be seen on the surface, it is the comprehensive effect of laser energy density and surface pressure. It proves that it is feasible to manufacture inner structure by controlling this process parameter during SLM process, the influence mechanism of defocusing distance on forming quality was also illustrated in this work.