bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Formalism over Function: Compulsion, Courts, and the Rise of Educational Formalism in America, 1870–1930
Authors: Hutt Ethan L.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Though the impact of the legal system in shaping public education over the last sixty years is unquestioned, scholars have largely overlooked the impact of the legal system on the early development and trajectory of public schools in America. Scholars have given particularly little attention to the period in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, when states began passing laws requiring that children attend school for some portion of the year. These laws brought an end to the era of voluntary schooling in America while posing a difficult set of legal and educational questions for judges who had to interpret and apply them. The evolving logic of these decisions subsequently shaped the role, purpose, and form of education in America.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

This article offers a legal history of compulsory education in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In doing so, it seeks to understand the role that courts played in shaping the character and development of the modern school system by examining court cases that stemmed from the passage of compulsory schooling laws. By examining decisions from both before and after the passage of these laws, it is possible to trace shifts in judicial thinking about the role and purpose of these laws and to recognize the role that these rulings played in developing a specific vision—and particular grammar—of schooling.

Research Design

This article is a historical analysis that focuses exclusively on cases brought in state courts relating to the rights of parents to control the education of their child before and after the passage of compulsory schooling laws. Though the rulings examined were issued by individual state courts and state supreme courts, attention is paid to the sharing of ideas between courts from different states and the collective vision of the purpose of compulsory school laws that resulted.

Conclusions/Recommendations

The shift from voluntary to compulsory schooling that occurred at the turn of the century was attended by an equally dramatic shift in the educational vision articulated by judges. The courts began the period with a view of the aims of education as being synonymous with learning, only to end the period with a view of education as being synonymous with attendance at school—a change that represents a shift from educational substance to educational formalism. Thus, this article argues, the history of compulsory education is also the history of the rise of educational formalism, and the courts played an important, and as yet unrecognized, role in legitimating and facilitating a vision of schooling that privileged certainty and order over substance and complexity.
School as a Context for “Othering” Youth and Promoting Cultural Assets
Authors: Borrero Noah E. , Yeh Christine J. , Cruz Crivir I. , Suda Jolene F.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Schools are cultural contexts that have the power and potential to promote students’ cultural assets or “other” youth in a way that keeps them from creating meaningful academic identities. In this study, we build on existing research and theory by defining “othering” as a personal, social, cultural, and historical experience involving (a) cultural and racial ambiguity, (b) categorization and labeling, (c) hierarchical power dynamics, and (d) limited access to resources. In addition, we further define and understand youths’ cultural assets from a collectivistic perspective. We are interested in identifying and understanding community and indigenous strengths of “othered” youth as embedded in social and ecological systems.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

We used an ecological approach to dissect the experiences of “othered” youth through an investigation of their marginalization and assets. The questions guiding this research explore how “othered” students make sense of stereotypes and racism in the school context: How are these incidents handled? What are the norms in school for dealing with racialized and cultural encounters? What are the buffers or factors that may help students maintain a sense of cultural pride in the face of marginalization? What cultural assets emerge in schools and how are they related to students’ experiences with “othering?”

Research Design

This sequential 18-month qualitative study included observations and interviews. Multi-informant data with ten Native Hawaiian adolescents and five teachers and counselors of Native Hawaiian youth were used in an attempt to give voice to their experiences in urban public schools in Hawaii. These two perspectives provide points of convergence and divergence in conceptualizing how schools “other” youth. Grounded theory and Consensual Qualitative Research (CQR) were used to generate themes that arose from student interviews that were then compared with interview data from school personnel. These separate, but related data sources offered perspectives across generations, power relationships, and cultural identities.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Our findings revealed five emergent themes: multiple identities, stereotypes, racism, coping strategies for racism, and cultural pride that highlight cultural assets and experiences with being the “other” at school. We discuss these findings in terms of how they relate to our definition of “othering” and from an ecological and relation-ally informed approach to community and cultural assets that are reciprocal and interactive. We call on practitioners and researchers alike to provide opportunities that promote and reinforce indigenous strengths in schools.
Many Educational Pasts: Conservative Visions and Revisions of American Educational History
Authors: Laats Adam
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Recent attention to Texas's revision of its state social-studies curricula has focused on the Texas School Board's conservative vision of America's history. Texas is not alone. Conservative educational activists have achieved a great deal of success in recent years in revising the historical narrative prescribed for America's schoolchildren.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

This article argues that in the past six decades conservative activists have offered not one but many visions of America's history. Educational history in particular has been the subject of energetic and conflicting attempts at revision. This article surveys the themes common among conservative educational histories from the 1950s until the first decade of the twenty-first century.

Research Design

The article first examines the broad historical outline used by most conservative educational activists. To flesh out that outline and move beyond overly simplistic generalizations, the article then looks at four specific conservative activists—Milton Friedman, Max Rafferty, Sam Blumenfeld, and Henry Morris—to examine their significant differences in close detail.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Conservatives have used these different visions of America's educational past to promote specific reform programs in their own times. This article suggests that anyone interested in understanding the contest for contemporary educational policy must understand the variety of contending conservative visions of the educational past.
Teacher Working Conditions in Charter Schools and Traditional Public Schools: A Comparative Study
Authors: Ni Yongmei
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Teachers affect student performance through their interaction with students in the context of the classrooms and schools where teaching and learning take place. Although it is widely assumed that supportive working conditions improve the quality of instruction and teachers’ willingness to remain in a school, little is known about whether or how the organizational structure of charter schools influences teacher working conditions.

Purpose/Research Question

This article compares teacher working conditions in charter and traditional public schools and among various types of charter schools. In doing so, it seeks to understand whether the different working conditions are influenced by the intrinsic institutional features of charter schools such as autonomy and competition, or by the extraneous factors such as measureable school and teacher characteristics.

Research Design

This study utilized data from the 2003–2004 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS), the nation's most extensive survey of K–12 schools and teachers, both for charter schools and traditional public schools (TPSs). This article is a quantitative analysis that involves three main steps. First, based on the responses to the SASS teacher questionnaire, confirmatory factor analysis was performed to generate multiple factors corresponding to key dimensions of teacher working conditions. Second, propensity score matching was used to pair charter schools with TPSs that are similar in terms of school location, educational level, school type, and student demographics. This matching process mitigates the confounding effects of these extraneous factors on teachers’ perceptions of working conditions. Finally, a series of weighted Hierarchical Linear Models were utilized to compare teachers’ perceptions of working conditions between charter and traditional public schools, controlling for teacher and school characteristics.

Conclusions/Recommendations

The results show that charter and traditional public school teachers perceive their working conditions to be similar in many regards, including principal leadership, sense of community and collegiality, classroom autonomy, opportunities for professional development, and adequacy of instructional supplies. However, charter school teachers perceive that they have significantly more influence over school policies, but a heavier workload than traditional school teachers. Among charter schools, district-granted charter schools show consistently more supportive working environments than charters granted by other organizations. This implies that state policy can have some indirect influence over charter school working conditions by providing substantial administrative support and oversight to charter schools authorized by independent organizations other than the established structure of school districts.
Epistemological Threads in the Fabric of Pedagogical Research
Authors: Chambliss Marilyn J. , Alexander Patricia A. , Price Jeremy N.
Published: November 2021

Context

Over the past 15 years, a philosophical renaissance has emerged within the educational research literature, raising conundrums about the nature of knowledge and how to acquire it. To date, such philosophical conundrums have not been directly posed in relation to pedagogical research, particularly our understanding of what constitutes quality in teaching.

Purpose

Our purpose in writing this article is to focus a philosophical lens on quality teaching in general, and the High-Quality Teaching (HQT) study in particular, an examination of what teachers do to help fourth- and fifth-grade students succeed in reading and mathematics. Our intent is to demonstrate how such philosophical scrutiny can lead to a fuller understanding of high-quality teaching in its varied manifestations.

Research Design

This article is an analytical essay. We first identify multiple philosophical threads (epistemological perspectives on knowledge) that can be used to characterize education broadly, and teaching specifically. We next demonstrate how these epistemological perspectives have informed our understandings of quality teaching, the nature of mathematics and reading education, and the use of different research paradigms to investigate teaching and learning. Finally, we apply these epistemological threads to the HQT study retrospectively, highlighting how identifying them helps us better understand our own work and the effects of the decisions that we made.

Conclusions

Our philosophical scrutiny leads us to conclude that efforts to engage in meaningful and informative research on teachers and teaching would be enhanced if the epistemological threads of such research were explicit and valued components in the conceptualization, design, implementation, and interpretation of research results.
Studying High-Quality Teaching in a Highly Charged Policy Environment
Authors: Valli Linda , Croninger Robert G. , Buese Daria
Published: November 2021

Context

Policy makers have long used policy tools to influence various components of the education system. The passage of No Child Left Behind increased the federal role and the focus on student outcome measures. This change in the policy environment can affect not only teachers and teaching but researchers and research on teaching as well.

Purpose

This article examines ways in which the current policy context influences teaching and explores the challenges these influences pose for research on teaching. To illustrate this potential policy impact, we focus on three core dimensions of teaching: who is the teacher, is teaching practice stable or changing, and what constitutes teaching quality.

Research Design

We draw on our High-Quality Teaching study of fourth- and fifth-grade reading and mathematics instruction. For this article, we analyzed classroom observation data, teacher logs of curriculum coverage, and focus group interviews with school personnel. We pay particular attention to changes in instruction over time and in different contexts.

Conclusions

Although we anticipated that policy pressures might influence conceptions of teaching quality, we were surprised by the scope of these influences. Our findings indicate underreported, multiple influences on student learning due to both local and federal policies; unexpected changes in what is taught and in what kind of teaching occurs within the school day, throughout the year, and across years; and narrowing conceptions of teaching quality. Policy influences on these core dimensions challenge researchers to specify more carefully who is responsible for teaching whom, maintain flexibility in data collection, retain research participants across years, and examine alternative conceptions of quality teaching.
Reliving the History of Compensatory Education: Policy Choices, Bureaucracy, and the Politicized Role of Science in the Evolution of Head Start
Authors: Beatty Barbara , Zigler Edward
Published: November 2021

In this article, Edward Zigler, interviewed by Barbara Beatty, talks about a turning point in the history of Head Start that reveals how policy choices, bureaucracy, and science came together when he was told to phase out the program in 1970. New to Washington, Zigler learned that President Richard M. Nixon's domestic policy advisor Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who had put forth the Family Assistance Plan, favored direct support for mothers and families over compensatory preschool education. Zigler saw how both the methodologically flawed 1969 Westinghouse study on the supposed fadeout of Head Start gains and Arthur Jensen's controversial 1969 article on the supposed failure of compensatory education became politicized and influenced arguments about Head Start's future. With President Nixon's veto of the 1971 Child Development Act, Zigler witnessed how competing policies, bureaucracies, and political ideologies could block support for universal child care and comprehensive services for children and families. After many years of consulting to Head Start and research on applied child development, he sees public schools as sites for coordination of social welfare programs that can improve access to high-quality health care, education, child care, and family services, as in his Schools for the 21st Century model.
The Debate over the Young “Disadvantaged Child”: Preschool Intervention, Developmental Psychology, and Compensatory Education in the 1960s and Early 1970s
Authors: Beatty Barbara
Published: November 2021

I focus on the role of preschool intervention and developmental psychology researchers in defining the concept of the “disadvantaged child” and in designing and evaluating remedies to alleviate educational “disadvantages” in young children. I argue that preschool interventions concentrated especially on compensating for supposedly deficient language acquisition patterns in interactions between low-income African American mothers and their children. The language of the discourse of the “disadvantaged child,” with its terminology of cultural deficits, thus mirrored research on supposed language deficits in young children. I begin with a brief overview of the history of psychology and social science research on deprivation and the black family. Next, I examine three pre–Head Start preschool intervention models that used different methods to enhance black children's language development: the Institute for Developmental Studies begun in New York City in 1960 by Martin and Cynthia Deutsch; the Perry Preschool Project begun in Ypsilanti, Michigan, in 1962 by David Weikart; and the laboratory preschool begun at the University of Illinois in 1964 by Carl Bereiter and Siegfried Engelmann. I also examine an influential 1965 study by University of Chicago psychologists Robert Hess and Virginia Shipman, which compared effects of the childrearing styles of black mothers from upper- and lower-income backgrounds on children's language and cognitive development. I then trace some of the critiques that emerged in the 1960s and early 1970s in which preschool intervention research was used as evidence that compensatory education was a failure, and criticized for imposing white middle- class stereotypes on poor black children. I conclude with a plea for a balanced approach to interpreting the many factors that may hinder some children's performance in school.
Making Science Homework Work: The Perspectives of Exemplary African American Science Teachers
Authors: Xu Jianzhong , Coats Linda T. , Davidson Mary L.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Despite the best intentions to close the achievement gap, the under-achievement of African American students in science is a persistent problem. It is surprising to note, however, that research on science education has often failed to consider students’ cultural diversity as it relates to science education. On the few occasions when efforts were made to link science disciplines and students’ cultural backgrounds, these studies were largely limited to classroom learning environments.

Purpose/Research Question

This study examines the perspectives of exemplary African American teachers toward science homework. Specifically, we address two research questions: What does science homework mean to exemplary African American science teachers? How do they approach science homework?

Research Design

A qualitative study was conducted, with data obtained from the following sources: (a) three open-ended, in-depth interviews with each exemplary teacher during the first year of the study, and (b) two focus group interviews with these teachers during the second year of the study. The participants were 8 exemplary African American science teachers in Grades 3–6 in the southeastern United States.

Findings/Results

Data revealed that these teachers shared a strong sense of urgency to use homework as an important vehicle in science learning. To help their students be successful with their homework, these teachers often provided additional provisions and used a variety of strategies to promote students’ interest in their homework. In addition, the teachers adapted an approach comparable to both Boykin's Afrocultural ethos (e.g., concerned with affect, expressive individualism, and verve) and “being a warm demander” (i.e., setting high expectations and insisting firmly yet respectfully that students meet those expectations).

Conclusions

These findings suggest that there is merit in integrating these two frameworks to better understand the perspectives of exemplary African American teachers toward science homework. These findings highlight the need to examine the perspectives of exemplary African American teachers toward secondary school science homework given that the poor achievement of African American students becomes more pronounced as they progress through school, and homework is found to be more strongly associated with secondary school students than elementary school students.
Mixed Motivations, Mixed Results: A History of Law, Legislation, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and Interest Convergence
Authors: Gasman Marybeth , Hilton Adriel
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

The current debate about historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs)—whether these colleges are needed in a society that “seeks” equality—is not new but is the product of a continuing controversy that dates back to the close of the Civil War. Since then, each landmark in the history of HBCUs has occasioned renewed discussions of the role of these colleges, with implications for the role of Blacks in society.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

This article will examine the legal and social forces that have had an impact on the development of HBCUs. In exploring this history, the authors will employ Derrick Bell's notion that most Whites will only accommodate the interests of Blacks in achieving racial equality when it is in the best interest of middle- and upper-class Whites—interest convergence.

Research Design

This study is historical in nature, drawing on legal cases, archival documents, legislative decisions, and past research related to the funding, classification, and state of HBCUs.

Conclusions

The authors found that in all but a few cases, legal court decisions, laws, acts, and state and federal decisions as they pertain to HBCUs also had intentional or unintentional benefits for White students and historically White institutions.
Addition by Subtraction: The Relation Between Dropout Rates and School-Level Academic Achievement
Authors: Glennie Elizabeth , Bonneau Kara , Vandellen Michelle , Dodge Kenneth A.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Efforts to improve student achievement should increase graduation rates. However, work investigating the effects of student-level accountability has consistently demonstrated that increases in the standards for high school graduation are correlated with increases in dropout rates. The most favored explanation for this finding is that high-stakes testing policies that mandate grade repetition and high school exit exams may be the tipping point for students who are already struggling academically. These extra demands may, in fact, push students out of school.

Purpose/Objective/Focus

This article examines two hypotheses regarding the relation between school-level accountability and dropout rates. The first posits that improvements in school performance lead to improved success for everyone. If school-level accountability systems improve a school for all students, then the proportion of students performing at grade level increases, and the dropout rate decreases. The second hypothesis posits that schools facing pressure to improve their overall accountability score may pursue this increase at the cost of other student outcomes, including dropout rate.

Research Design

Our approach focuses on the dynamic relation between school-level academic achievement and dropout rates over time—that is, between one year's achievement and the subsequent year's dropout rate, and vice versa. This article employs longitudinal data of records on all students in North Carolina public schools over an 8-year period. Analyses employ fixed-effects models clustering schools and districts within years and controls each year for school size, percentage of students who were free/reduced-price lunch eligible, percentage of students who are ethnic minorities, and locale.

Findings/Results

This study finds partial evidence that improvements in school-level academic performance will lead to improvements (i.e., decreases) in school-level dropout rates. Schools with improved performance saw decreased dropout rates following these successes. However, we find more evidence of a negative side of the quest for improved academic performance. When dropout rates increase, the performance composites in subsequent years increase.

Conclusions/recommendations

Accountability systems need to remove any indirect benefit a school may receive from increasing its dropout rate. Schools should be held accountable for those who drop out of school. Given the personal and social costs of dropping out, accountability systems need to place more emphasis on dropout prevention. Such an emphasis could encompass increasing the dropout age and having the school's performance composite include scores of zero on end-of-grade tests for those who leave school.
Teacher Change in Elementary Science Instruction with English Language Learners: Results of a Multiyear Professional Development Intervention across Multiple Grades
Authors: Lee Okhee , Maerten-Rivera Jaime
Published: November 2021

Background

Current classroom practices have largely been shaped by changing student demographics, including English language learners (ELLs), and evolving accountability policies. The teacher professional development intervention in this study takes place against this backdrop.

Research Questions

This study examined change in teachers’ knowledge and practices while they participated in a 5-year teacher professional development intervention designed to improve science instruction while supporting literacy development of ELLs in the context of accountability policy in science. The study also examined whether teacher change was associated with predictor variables.

Setting and Participants

The study involved all science teachers (a total of 198 teachers) in Grades 3–5 from six urban elementary schools in a large school district. Over the 5-year period of the study, each teacher could participate in the intervention for 3 years, although there were high rates of teacher mobility.

Intervention

A series of curriculum units was developed that constituted the entire science curriculum for Grades 3–5 and replaced the district-adopted curriculum in the six participating schools. Over their 3-year participation in the intervention, teachers could attend a total of 14 full-day workshops during the summers and throughout the school years.

Research Design

The study used a longitudinal design over the 5-year intervention with a treatment group consisting of six elementary schools.

Data Collection and Analysis

Both questionnaire and classroom observations were used to measure reform-oriented practices in science and English for speakers of other languages (ESOL)/bilingual education in the following areas: (a) teacher knowledge of science content, (b) teaching practices to promote scientific understanding, (c) teaching practices to promote scientific inquiry, and (d) teaching practices to support English language development. During the 3-year period of their participation, teachers completed the questionnaire prior to beginning the intervention and at the end of each school year and were observed once in the fall and once in the spring each year. A series of multilevel models was used to examine change in the questionnaire and observation scales.

Conclusions

The results from the questionnaire (what teachers reported) and classroom observations (what teachers were observed doing) indicated some improvements in teachers’ knowledge and practices in teaching science to ELLs over the intervention. Grade taught was the most pronounced predictor variable and distinguished the fifth grade, the grade at which science counted toward the state accountability policy. Despite improvements, teachers’ knowledge and practices generally did not meet the goal of reform-oriented practices.
The Education of English Language Learners in Arizona: A History of Underachievement
Authors: Garcia Eugene E. , Lawton Kerry , De Figueiredo Eduardo H. Diniz
Published: November 2021

Background

The state of Arizona has recently mandated the Structured English Immersion Model (SEI) in the state's public schools, and as a result the local flexibility that existed regarding the choice of program models for ELLs has ended. In the school year 2008-09, these regulations were made even more restrictive after the implementation of what is now called the 4-hour ELD block model.

Focus of Study

This report reviews achievement gaps in both reading and math between ELL and non-ELL students in Arizona over the period 2005-2009 and during the first year of implementation of the 4 hour ELD block, 2008-09. It also compares the progress of Arizona's ELL population towards academic proficiency relative to ELL students in two cities and states that do not place as restrictive legislation on ELL instruction: Utah and Washington, DC, two educational entities with vastly different spending policies.

Research Design

Achievement was measured using the Reading and Math subtests of the Arizona Instrument to Measure Standards (AIMS), with data from the 2005-2009 administrations. To interpret gaps in performance, differences in AIMS mean scaled scores were analyzed. Two types of comparisons were made: 1) within-grade, across-year, and 2) across-grade, within-year. This allowed a more comprehensive understanding of trends in terms of achievement gaps. The comparison amongst different states was done separately. Data were collected from two sources: Applications for Race to the Top, and incentive program offered as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, were used for Utah and Washington, DC. Data from Arizona were gathered using publicly available state report cards released annually by the Arizona Department of Education.

Findings

The study finds that Arizona has made little to no progress in closing the achievement gap between ELL and non-ELL students during this period. Here, the study argues that, notwithstanding changes in tests and proficiency thresholds in the states over this period of time, the relative position of Arizona vis-à-vis these comparison entities remains very similar, with Arizona continuing to lag behind both in percent of ELL students achieving proficiency in reading and math.

Conclusion

The study presents recent evidence that suggests that Arizona is on the wrong path for closing achievement gaps for its ELL students and that this is due, at least in part, to its highly restrictive language instruction policies.
College Student Pathways to the STEM Disciplines
Authors: Engberg Mark E. , Wolniak Gregory C.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

As concerns mount about the shortage of students entering science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) careers, policy makers throughout the United States are contemplating strategies to maintain and enhance our nation's economic vitality and international competitiveness. Within this policy and program environment, researchers have focused considerable attention on improving STEM education at different stages of the educational pipeline, yet we lack evidence on how resources from one educational setting may influence outcomes in a successive educational setting.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus

The purpose of the study is to examine individual- and school-level factors that influence students’ pathways to the STEM fields during college. Focusing on the importance of high school-to-college linkages, our research questions address the individual and institutional factors that affect students’ likelihoods of majoring in a STEM field in college.

Research Design

The study is based on data collected through the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002, a nationally representative survey of high school sophomores who were followed through high school and into college. Students who were enrolled in a four-year institution at the end of 2006 and had declared a major were included in the analytic sample.

Analysis

In addition to performing descriptive and factor analyses, we used cross-classified hierarchical general linear modeling to examine students’ backgrounds, aptitudes, attitudes, dispositions, and experiences in relation to majoring in a STEM field, as well as institutional factors that constitute students’ secondary and postsecondary environments.

Findings/Conclusions

Findings from the study revealed significant effects in relation to race, academic preparation, attitudes and dispositions toward math and science, college choice considerations, and postsecondary experiences. Although no institutional effects were uncovered at the high school level, both postsecondary sector and selectivity significantly influenced propensities toward majoring in a STEM discipline. The study concludes with several policy recommendations related to K–16 collaborations, dual-enrollment programs, and developmental considerations for teachers and counselors working with high school students.
Preservice Elementary Teachers’ Understandings of Competing Notions of Academic Achievement Coexisting in Post-NCLB Public Schools
Authors: Brown Keffrelyn D. , Goldstein Lisa S.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Since the 2002 implementation of No Child Left Behind, teaching in public school contexts has become more complex and challenging. Today, public school teachers at all grade levels are accountable for maintaining a steady focus on their students’ academic achievement. However, many teachers have found themselves wrestling with two conflicting understandings of academic achievement. These two conflicting understandings reflect two existing discourses used to frame students’ acquisition of school-centered knowledge and skills: academic progress and academic success.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of the Study

In this article, we focus on the coexisting discourses of academic achievement circulating within in our participants’ teaching credential preparation experience. We present the data, drawn from the first two sets of interviews completed for our larger study of preservice teachers’ understandings of the relationship between sociocultural factors and academic achievement, that document our participants’ confusion and uncertainty about the meaning of “academic achievement.” We draw from the notion of discourse, as theorized by Michel Foucault, to foreground the need to establish specific terminology—namely, academic progress and academic success—to clarify the various aspects of academic achievement and to facilitate discussion of this critically important construct.

Research Design

The study draws from a basic or generic qualitative methodology in which the aim is to understand a situation by exploring, analyzing, and interpreting the perspectives and understandings of individuals within that situation. The findings come from data generated across two interviews conducted with preservice teachers at the beginning and conclusion of their first semester in the professional development sequence of their elementary (pk–4) teacher education program.

Setting

The study takes place at a large urban university teacher education program in the U.S. South.

Population/Participants/Subjects

Participants are a racially and ethnically diverse set of 12 preservice teacher candidates. Ten were pursuing a elementary generalist teaching credential, and 2 were pursuing a elementary generalist-bilingual teaching credential.
Conceptualizing the African American Mathematics Teacher as a Key Figure in the African American Education Historical Narrative
Authors: Clark Lawrence M. , Frank Toya J. , Davis Julius
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Historians and researchers have documented and explored the work and role of African American teachers in the U.S. educational system, yet there has been limited attention to the specific work, role, and experiences of African American mathematics teachers. To meaningfully and responsibly conceptualize the role of African American mathematics teachers and better understand their work in U.S. schools, analytic approaches are needed to help us understand cases of African American mathematics teachers as representations of a complex and ever-evolving series of intertwined contexts, forces, and events that include critical events along historical timelines (i.e., U.S. educational system, mathematics education, technological innovation and development, African American teaching force).

Purpose/Objective

The purpose of this article is to challenge readers to consider the African American mathematics teacher as a conceptual entity that embodies characteristics, practices, and dispositions that are potentially meaningful for students, particularly African American students, in ways that support students’ capacity to participate and perform within the racialized contexts of mathematics education, the broader schooling experience, and broader society.

Design

Structured as an analytic essay, this article provides a rationale and potential directions of inquiry for historians and researchers open to explorations of relationships between race, mathematics education, teacher identity, and teacher practice.

Conclusions/Recommendations

We make two assertions about the African American mathematics teacher that help to conceptualize his or her role as a theoretical construct. First, the African American mathematics teacher is a boundary spanner with membership in multiple communities—a mathematically proficient and intellectually powerful African American person within a historically disempowered African American community with a history of inaccessibility to and underperformance in mathematics. Second, through various implicit and explicit means and micro-interactions, the African American mathematics teacher has the potential to engage in liberatory mathematics pedagogy, a pedagogy that serves to dismantle racialized hierarchies of mathematics ability. We encourage mathematics education researchers to interrogate, challenge, critique, and build on conceptualizations of the African American mathematics teacher as an entity that represents a unique confluence of experiences, perspectives, dispositions, and knowledge domains critical to the education of students. In doing so, it is our hope that theories of student learning, participation, and performance will more willingly embrace, acknowledge, and incorporate the inescapable dynamics of race, class, student identity, and teacher identity.
What Mathematics Education Might Learn from the Work of Well-Respected African American Mathematics Teachers in Urban Schools
Authors: Chazan Daniel , Brantlinger Andrew , Clark Lawrence M. , Edwards Ann R.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

This opening article, like the other articles in this special issue, is situated in scholarship that attempts to understand the racialized nature of mathematics education in the United States and to examine the racial identities of students and teachers in the context of school mathematics. It is designed to respond to the current (mathematics) education policy context that largely ignores teachers’ experiential and cultural knowledge while stressing the importance of teachers’ content knowledge and academic achievement.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

This article presents theoretical perspectives and research questions concerning the knowledge and other resources that African American teachers bring to teaching mathematics, perspectives and questions that are taken up in the five subsequent articles in this special issue.

Setting

The cases developed in this special issue were developed from observations of the introductory algebra classes of, and interviews with, two well-respected African American teachers in one neighborhood high school in a large urban school district that serves a predominantly African American student population.

Research Design

This opening article frames two case study papers and two analysis papers that report on findings from a large-scale qualitative study of the racialized identity and instructional approaches of two of the six African American mathematics teachers studied in the Mid-Atlantic Center for Mathematics Teaching and Learning Algebra 1 Case Studies Project.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Together with the other articles in this special issue, this work contributes to the development of more sophisticated attempts to integrate understandings of race into the work of the mathematics education community. It challenges taken-for-granted notions of the knowledge base and resources needed to be an effective mathematics teacher of African American students in underresourced large urban schools.
Social Capital and the College Enrollment Process: How Can a School Program Make a Difference?
Authors: Stephan Jennifer L.
Published: November 2021

Background

College attendance has become a crucial determinant of life chances in U.S. society. Besides college costs and academic preparation, college-related cultural and social capital may help explain socioeconomic differences in whether and where students attend college. While high school counselors are seen as potential agents of social capital, the standard counseling model, developed to serve middle-class students, may not translate effectively to schools serving disadvantaged students. The college coach program, introduced in 12 non-selective Chicago Public Schools (CPS) in the fall of 2004, provides an alternative model. In contrast to the standard high school counseling model, college coaches take a “community organizer” role in assisting the college enrollment process. Statistical difference-in-differences analysis suggests that coaches may have improved the kinds of colleges that students attended, particularly for less advantaged students (Stephan, 2010).

Purpose

This qualitative study describes how the coach program works and analyzes key aspects that may explain its positive relationship with college enrollment outcomes.

Participants

Interviews were conducted between the spring of 2006 and spring of 2007 with 9 current and former college coaches, 2 postsecondary specialists (to whom the coaches report), and 30 high school seniors in 2 coach schools, which, like other non-selective CPS high schools, serve students who are predominantly African American or Latino and low-income.

Research Design

Responses to semi-structured interviews with coaches and students were coded for recurring themes and according to interview questions. A model of how coaches create social capital emerged from iterations between coding interviews and studying previous research on the creation of social capital.

Conclusions

The results suggest that coaches use new advising strategies (different from typical school counseling practices) to increase students’ college-related social capital and subsequently increase the number of students completing college actions, which may explain improved enrollment outcomes. This research highlights previously tacit assumptions about how counseling should work and details new advising procedures that may benefit disad-vantaged students in the college enrollment process. More generally, this research discusses specific social mechanisms through which policy or institutions may create social capital to improve educational attainment.
The Advanced Placement Arms Race and the Reproduction of Educational Inequality
Authors: Klugman Joshua
Published: November 2021

Background

Access to Advanced Placement (AP) courses is stratified by class and race. Researchers have identified how schools serving disadvantaged students suffer from various kinds of resource deprivations, concluding that interventions are needed to equalize access to AP courses. On the other hand, the theory of Effectively Maintained Inequality (EMI) argues that schools serving advantaged students may perpetuate inequalities by expanding their AP curriculum so their graduates can be competitive in the college admissions process.

Research Questions

Between 2000 and 2002, California attempted to expand AP offerings and enrollments. This study answers whether or not this intervention narrowed inequalities in AP along class and racial lines. It also examines if community affluence affects district officials’ views of pressures to offer AP courses, which could explain any effectively maintained inequalities in AP access.

Research Design

This study uses a panel dataset of all California public high schools from 1997 to 2006. It examines the changing effects of school poverty, upper-middle class presence, and school racial composition on offerings of and enrollments in AP subjects. It supplements the quantitative analysis with interviews from 11 school district officials in California conducted in 2006.

Results

Hierarchical generalized linear models show that upper-middle class presence structures California high schools’ AP subject offerings and enrollments, much more than school poverty. California's intervention resulted in increased AP subject offerings and enrollments in high schools serving disadvantaged and less advantaged students, but these reductions in deprivation had trivial effects on inequalities, since schools serving advantaged students increased their own AP offerings and enrollments. In addition, high schools serving White and Asian students had larger increases in AP offerings and enrollments than high schools serving Black and Hispanic students. Interview data indicate that officials in affluent districts perceived a greater demand for AP subjects, and were more likely to report their school staff was proactive to initiate new AP courses than officials in districts serving working-class communities.

Conclusions

The findings document that while policies can increase AP access at schools serving low-income students, the actions of affluent schools and families will pose substantial barriers to achieving parity in AP offerings and enrollments. Moreover, studies gauging resource inequalities among schools may underestimate these inequalities if they use school poverty to measure schools’ socioeconomic composition.