bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Relational Challenges and Breakthroughs: How Pre-Service English Teachers’ Figured Worlds Impact Their Relationships with Students
Authors: Salerno April S. , Kibler Amanda K.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Figured worlds have been conceptualized as spaces, or “realms,” where individuals assign meaning and significance to actors and characters or come to understand what they take as “typical or normal.” This study applies a lens of figured worlds to descriptions that pre-service teachers (PSTs) give of themselves and their relationships with students they said were challenging to teach.

Purpose/Objective

Research focused on two questions: (1) How do PSTs describe their own figured worlds in relation to those of their students? (2) What challenges and breakthroughs do PSTs describe in their efforts to understand students’ figured worlds through relationship building?

Setting

Data are from a cohort of secondary English education PSTs during teacher preparation at a large public university in a South Atlantic state.

Population/Participants/Subjects

At graduation, the cohort consisted of 15 members, all of whom participated in our study. All of the participants were women of typical university student age. Participants described their race/ethnicity as White (11), Korean (1), Filipino-American (1), Chinese-American (1), and Hispanic (1).

Research Design

This qualitative study uses open-coding analysis to consider ways PSTs talked about their figured worlds and their student relationships across their two-year English education teacher preparation. Data include field notes of course discussions and practice-teaching observations, interviews, course presentations, lesson plans, and course assignments, especially from three teaching inquiry projects that PSTs completed during their program. The researchers take a practitioner-inquirer stance, as they were both involved in helping prepare the cohort.

Findings/Results

Among Question 1 findings, PSTs reveal various individual figured worlds in addition to several group-defined figured worlds, including group identities such as: women; students who had themselves excelled in school; new, young, and inexperienced teachers; people identifying strongly with English content; and people of privilege. Among Question 2 findings, PSTs overwhelmingly viewed relationships with students as important; however, they experienced many challenges and breakthroughs in building those relationships.

Conclusions/Recommendations

PSTs entered their preparation and their student-teaching classrooms with their own figured worlds about themselves and what teacher–student relationships should look like. In practice teaching, however, they experienced many challenges to building the types of relationships they expected. And they also experienced breakthroughs in improving these relationships. For teacher educators, it is important to understand the figured worlds that PSTs bring to teacher–student relationships and to help them in understanding that students’ figured worlds might not align with their own.
Clinging to the Edge of Chaos: The Emergence of Practice in the First Year of Teaching
Authors: Strom Kathryn J. , Martin Adrian D. , Villegas Ana MarÍa
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

New teachers must cope with various instructional, personal and organizational challenges, an experience that often leads to difficulties enacting innovative, student-centered instructional practices learned in their preservice programs and contributes to high rates of teacher attrition.

Purpose

Drawing on complexity theory, this review of empirical research takes an organizational or “systems” perspective on the experiences of first-year teachers as they transition from preservice education to the teaching profession. In so doing, we aim to shift away from constructions of the teacher as an autonomous actor and instead build a more complex, nuanced, and layered understanding of the multidimensional influences that work together to shape the practices of novice teachers.

Research Design

We conducted a metasynthesis of 46 studies that met the following criteria: (a) were focused on first-year teachers, (b) offered sufficient description of participants’ professional practices, (c) featured participants who attended a university-based preparation program, and (d) were conducted since 1990. We first recorded each study's methods, findings, and descriptions of first-year teacher practices. As a second level of analysis, we used a complexity lens to identify the systems comprising first-year teacher practices, noting how those systems and their component or elements interacted to shape first-year teaching.

Findings/Results

We found that common patterns of interactions between and among systems of first-year teaching—including the teacher herself, the classroom, the school, and the larger district, state, and federal environments—tend to reinforce traditional, teacher-centered practices. Yet, in some studies, conditions surfaced that enabled participants’ to enact student-centered and equity-minded teaching practices learned in their preservice programs.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Authors suggest that taking a complex systems view of beginning teaching, rather than singularly focusing on the teacher's actions out of context, can reveal opportunities for fostering more supportive, enabling conditions for new teachers to enact innovative practices that many preservice programs promote and experience a smoother transition into teaching.
The Role of Teacher Educators’ Personal Histories and Motivations in Shaping Opportunities to Learn about Social Justice
Authors: Metz Mike
Published: November 2021

Background

As social-justice-focused teacher education programs continue to gain prominence, a wealth of research explores approaches for preparing teachers for social-justice-minded teaching. This study looks closely at a key aspect of teacher education programs frequently absent from the research—the teacher educators (TEs) themselves.

Focus of Study

The study intentionally expands the consideration of TEs’ identities beyond reductive demographic characteristics to explore how the personal histories and motivations of TEs impact teacher candidates’ (TCs’) opportunities to learn about teaching for social justice.

Setting and Participants

The study follows two parallel sections of a single teacher education course taught by two different TEs. Because the TEs taught from the same syllabus, within the context of the same program, the impact of each TE's instructional choices is revealed.

Research Design

Using a comparative case study design, data sources included field notes, audio recordings of class meetings, course readings and materials, and two interviews with each TE. Audio recordings were transcribed and analyzed following a micro-ethnographic discourse analysis approach. The second interview took place after initial analysis of the data, allowing the TEs to respond to initial findings.

Findings

Although both TEs focused on social justice topics, in alignment with the program goals, their choices of what topics to focus on differed greatly. One TE used the course readings to open up discussions of gender and sexuality, critically examining heteronormative ideals and a dismissive attitude toward adolescent relationships and sexuality. The other TE used the same readings and assignments to create inquiry into complicated issues of racial and ethnic identity with implications for classroom teaching. In each case, the choices by the TEs in how they framed discussions and assignments and what ideas they took up and built on during class interactions shaped the curriculum in unique ways. These instructional choices corresponded to each TE's own personal experiences and motivations.

Conclusions

The findings suggest that research on teacher education programs must look beyond course syllabi or the structural components of a program to understand the opportunities to learn provided to TCs. Decisions by TEs during classroom instruction shape very different opportunities to learn. These decisions are based, at least partially, on TEs’ unique personal histories and motivations. When considering how teacher education programs address the issue of social justice, a TE's own history and motivations will impact the enacted curriculum as much as, if not more than, the written curriculum. As we continue to wrestle with how to prepare teachers for a diverse and inequitable society, teacher education programs and teacher education research would benefit from more nuanced consideration of the role TEs play in what gets taught in teacher preparation courses.
Classroom Contexts and the Construction of Struggling High School Readers
Authors: Learned Julie E.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

In high schools, student readers navigate different classrooms, disciplinary domains, teachers, peer groups, and texts. Research suggests that through these ever-shifting contexts, youths demonstrate varying literacy skills and identities. Yet, schools assign static labels to students (e.g., struggling reader), and little research has examined how youths’ reading changes across classroom spaces.

Purpose/Objective

During this school year-long study, I shadowed youths identified as struggling readers across their classes to examine (a) how their reading-related skills, practices, and identities varied and (b) what classroom contexts appeared to mediate their reading.

Participants

Focal participants were 8 ninth graders identified as struggling readers, 14 comparative peers, 8 teachers, and the school literacy coach.

Research Design

I conducted a two-phase qualitative study in a culturally and linguistically diverse high school. During an initial ethnographic phase from September to November, I conducted open-ended ethnographic interviews and made observations to identify contexts that appeared important in mediating youths’ reading. Then, during a structured phase from December to June, I used protocols to conduct semistructured interviews and weeklong shadow observations of eight students identified as struggling readers, and I compared their experiences to those of youths not labeled as such.

Data Collection and Analysis

Data sources were 425 hours of observation, 66 interviews with youths and teachers, reading assessments, and school artifacts and records. I used constant comparative analysis to systematically and iteratively code across all data sources.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Analysis showed that students’ and teachers’ interactions with particular classroom contexts not only identified reading difficulty but also constructed “struggling readers” regardless, sometimes, of students’ skilled, engaged reading. Overall, youths tended to participate in limiting contexts that positioned them as deficient readers. However, when classroom contexts focused on disciplinary literacy and building trusting relationships, youths positioned themselves as readers and learners. I discuss these promising, albeit rare, classroom contexts with attention to the pivotal role that student-teacher interactions played in constructing the contexts over time. Findings have implications for the reconceptualization of adolescent reading difficulty, the organization of secondary literacy programs, and future directions for adolescent literacy research.
Making Publics: Mobilizing Audiences in High School Makerspaces
Authors: Stornaiuolo Amy , Nichols T. Philip
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Researchers, policy makers, and practitioners are paying increasing attention to the educational opportunities afforded by the maker movement—a growing public interested in do-it-yourself designing, remixing, and tinkering using physical and digital tools. While education research on “making” has often focused on informal learning contexts, this article examines the possibilities and tensions that surface as a new urban public high school brings making to the center of its teaching and learning.

Focus of Study

This research examines the learning opportunities that emerged as students engaged in their school's Media Production Makerspace. Focusing on the ways students created, remixed, and shared individual and collaborative media texts in the classroom, the study asks: What are the resources and constraints of the Media Production Makerspace's learning ecology for students from nondominant communities, and what practices, tools, and knowledge do students draw on and develop as they engage in school-based making activities and extend those to other audiences?

Setting

The study is situated in the Collaborative Design School, a non-selective urban public high school organized around principles of making and the maker movement.

Research Design

This study was a social design experiment that followed 45 high school freshmen in the Collaborative Design School's media makerspace over three design cycles during the 2014–2015 school year.

Conclusions/Recommendations

The study revealed that the work of cultivating and mobilizing audiences was central to young people's making activities. However, the ways these audiences were cultivated and mobilized depended on a number of historical, cultural, social, and political factors and involved significant labor by multiple stakeholders. To mobilize audiences into meaningful publics oriented toward collective action, young people needed to see themselves as civic actors who could contribute to broader public conversations and whose opinions, perspectives, and experiences mattered. In tracing the tensions that arose in this process of making publics, the authors suggest that integrating makerspaces in schools can lead to powerful learning opportunities and serve as generative routes to civic action for some students but also that makerspaces should not be positioned as panaceas that can be inserted into schools as an autonomous fix.
Teacher Unions, Charter Schools, and the Public/Private Distinction in Education Law and Policy
Authors: Superfine Benjamin M. , Woo David S.
Published: November 2021

Background

Over the past decade, courts and administrative agencies increasingly have considered cases that involve clashes between charter school proponents and teacher unions. While these cases have focused on a range of education policy issues, some cases have focused on arguably the most important legal and policy distinction applicable to charter schools— whether a charter school should be considered public or private.

Purpose

This study examines the intersection of the public/private distinction in U.S. law and policy, and the shifting political positions of teacher unions and charter school proponents, in courts and agencies. We examine the history of the public/private distinction in U.S. law and policy and specifically in education, in addition to conducting an in-depth analysis of three recent decisions involving charter schools and teacher unions in which courts and agencies determined whether charter schools were public or private organizations.

Research Design

This article is a legal analysis and historical case study.

Findings

Three recent and high-profile education cases in agencies and courts reflect the continuing breakdown of the public/private distinction in law and policy. Courts and agencies have hinged their decisions about the applicability of federal and state collective bargaining laws on this distinction and have grounded decisions about the basic constitutionality of state charter school laws in this distinction as well. However, there is little consistency in how the public/ private distinction has been applied in legal clashes between teacher unions and charter schools.

Conclusion

Our analysis underscores the limitations of the current debate over the public/ private nature of charter schools and teacher unions, particularly in the institutional settings of courts and agencies, because this debate is largely untethered from issues of teaching and learning. However, our analysis also suggests that the public or private nature of charter schools still appears “up for grabs” in the legal arena. As such, courts and agencies might offer reformers a useful venue compared to the legislative arena for influencing how the public/private distinction applies to charter schools.
Are Achievement Gap Estimates Biased by Differential Student Test Effort? Putting an Important Policy Metric to the Test
Authors: Soland James
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Achievement gaps motivate a range of practices and policies aimed at closing those gaps. Most gaps studies assume that differences in observed test scores across subgroups are measuring differences in content mastery. For such an assumption to hold, students in the subgroups being compared need to be giving similar effort on the test. Studies already show that low test effort is prevalent and biases observed test scores downward. What research does not demonstrate is whether test effort differs by subgroup and, therefore, biases estimates of achievement gaps.

Purpose

This study examines whether test effort differs by student subgroup, including by race and gender. The sensitivity of achievement gap estimates to any differences in test effort is also considered.

Research Design

A behavioral proxy for test effort called “rapid guessing” was used. Rapid guessing occurs when students answer a test item so fast, they could not have understood its content. Rates of rapid guessing were compared across subgroups. Then, achievement gaps were estimated unconditional and conditional on measures of rapid guessing.

Findings

Test effort differs substantially by subgroup, with males rapidly guessing nearly twice as often as females in later grades, and Black students rapidly guessing more often than White students. However, these differences in rapid guessing generally do not impact substantive interpretations of achievement gaps, though basic conclusions about male–female gaps and changes in gaps as students progress through school may change when models account for test effort.

Conclusions

Although the bias introduced into achievement gap estimates by differential test effort is hard to quantify, results provide an important reminder that test scores reflect achievement only to the extent that students are willing and able to demonstrate what they have learned. Understanding why there are subgroup differences in test effort would likely be useful to educators and is worthy of additional study.
Every Student Can't Succeed If Every Voice is Not Heard: Equity Perspectives from STEM Educators
Authors: Young Jamaal , Capraro Mary Margaret , Capraro Robert , Cason Marti
Published: November 2021

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) provides numerous provisions to support science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). These provisions do not necessarily address persistent achievement and opportunity gaps. We contend that if states, districts, and local schools capitalize on the autonomy provided in the ESSA, access, equity, and achievement in STEM can be attainable to traditionally underserved populations of learners. The purpose of this article is to review the enumerated provisions pertinent to STEM and, based on these provisions, present recommendations to support access, equity, and achievement in STEM content areas. Our review indicates that the ESSA presents provisions in five areas related to STEM education: (1) standards, (2) assessments, (3) accountability, (4) teacher effectiveness, and (5) well-rounded education. Using these five areas as an organizational framework, we provide recommendations to support enduring challenges related to equity, access, and achievement in STEM education. These recommendations are based on current high-yield practices used to support equity, access, and achievement in STEM content.
Examining the Every Student Succeeds Act's Impact on African American Students’ Mental Health Access
Authors: Walker Larry J.
Published: November 2021

African American students from underserved communities throughout the United States are exposed to a variety of traumas, including community and intrafamilial violence. Far too often, members of the school-based staff misinterpret combative student behaviors, which are viewed as acts of defiance. However, the factors that contribute to academic and/or emotional problems are not properly contextualized. Ensuring that students have access to comprehensive mental health services is critical. Historically, school districts have depended heavily on federal resources to address the mental health needs of students from minority and low socioeconomic backgrounds. For this reason, examining the Every Student Succeeds Act's (ESSA's) new block grant program, the Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grant, is important. Under ESSA, several programs were consolidated or eliminated. The grant funds the Safe Schools/Healthy Students initiative, which focuses on mental health, among other issues. This article examines how a shift in federal policy could affect mental health access among African American students from underserved backgrounds.

“We must, by including special school aid funds as part of our education program, improve the quality of teaching, training, and counseling in our hardest hit areas.”

— Lyndon B. Johnson, January 8, 1964
Locating Black Girls in Educational Policy Discourse: Implications for the Every Student Succeeds Act
Authors: Evans-Winters Venus , Hines Dorothy E. , Moore Allania , Jones Teresa Lawrence
Published: November 2021

The enactment of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015 by President Barack Obama increased accountability requirements and was designed to reduce achievement and opportunity gaps, and racial disproportionality in school discipline. Despite the implementation of ESSA, Black girls still continue to experience hypercriminalization and policing, and when disaggregated by race and gender, they still receive the highest rates of disciplinary punishments in school and out of school. In this article, we discuss how Black girls in the Pk–12 public school system are invalidated and ignored in educational policy discourse and in school reform. In our discussion, we argue that ESSA tends to focus on identity categories (such as race, gender, class, and linguistics), and not on the intersectionality thereof, or how race does not operate as a silo (race, gender, social class, and other parts of our identity are layered and form a mosaic).

We draw from literature on Black girls, zero tolerance, and critical race feminism to examine Black girls’ disciplinary punishments in Chicago Public Schools, and ESSA's effect on a national scale. In our analysis of quantitative data from Chicago Public Schools, we find that, in the third largest district in the United States, Black girls are disproportionally the recipients of out-of-school suspensions. Black female students received 78% of all female out-of-school suspensions during the 2016–2017 school year. A majority of the actions that Black girls were punished for were minor in nature and not due to violence or criminal offenses. We find that when Black girls are made invisible during the policy process and made visible when they are recipients of bias punishments, they will be more susceptible to receiving hyperpunitive disciplinary outcomes. Therefore, this article recommends that schools, policy makers, and researchers examine how harsh discipline and exclusionary policies affect Black girls as racialized and gendered beings while not ignoring the needs of Black female students during the school reform process.
The Every Student Succeeds Act and Multicultural Education: A Critical Race Theory Analysis
Authors: Beachum Floyd D.
Published: November 2021

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is now the educational law of the land. It replaced and revised what was known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB). ESSA represents a movement from more federal oversight to more state and local control. Although this transitional time period is one of great potential and excitement, educators and policy makers might also want to remain cautious. This next educational era of ESSA is still plagued by the problems of the past era. Teachers and administrators are still struggling to turn around low-performing schools in many U.S. urban areas; many urban educational issues, like high-dropout rates, gang influence, and low student engagement, are still inextricably linked to the socioeconomic problems that exist in local communities. This analysis first seeks to explain the purpose of ESSA. It then outlines the current plight of many students of color in the United States. Next, critical race theory is used to contextualize and categorize persistent problems that face the implementation of ESSA for these students of color. Finally, the author proposes ways to address the stated problems for school leaders and policy makers.
Anti-Racist Change: A Conceptual Framework for Educational Institutions to Take Systemic Action
Authors: Welton Anjalé D. , Owens Devean R. , Zamani-Gallaher Eboni M.
Published: November 2021

To achieve racial equity in education not only do individuals’ mindsets need to be shifted to a more anti-racist ideology, but the institutions in which they work need to make profound anti-racist changes as well. Therefore, we revisit two sets of literature, research on anti-racism and organizational change, to explore what actions and leadership attributes could foster actual institutional change for racial equity. However, we do acknowledge the limitations of each body of research. Anti-racism research is more so ideological and theoretical and does not operationalize specifically how to take action against racism, and the organizational change research largely overlooks equity discussions, especially race. Yet, when combined, the two sets of research offer a more actionable framework for educational leaders. Thus, we merge key concepts from anti-racism and the organizational change literature to present a conceptual framework that leaders in both PK–12 and higher education institutions can use to be accountable for facilitating broad level systemic anti-racist change.
Leadership with and for Undocumented and Unaccompanied Minor Students: Resiliency, Resistance, and School Change for Racial Equity
Authors: Wiemelt Joseph T. , Maldonado Lucia
Published: November 2021

This chapter will examine the role of leadership for institutional change and racial equity as it relates to supporting undocumented and unaccompanied minor students in PK–1-12 schools. By utilizing Latin@ critical race theory (LatCrit), we will explore how the intersection of race and immigration influences how these students experience school. We will uncover the challenges and systemic oppression that students face while also highlighting the various forms of resilience and resistance that these students exhibit. By highlighting one school district, we will provide examples of what educational leaders can do to support undocumented and unaccompanied students and lead to institutional changes that result in creating more welcoming, supportive, and equitable schools and communities.
Positionality as Prologue: Encountering the Self on the Journey to Transforming Latina/o/x Educational Inequities
Authors: Espino Michelle M.
Published: November 2021

Positionality is an often overlooked but strategic practice for analyzing race and racism within the organizational bounds of predominantly White institutions of higher education. Positionality is critical self-reflection that uncovers the tensions and areas of strength found in relationships among the researcher, the research topic, the study participants, and the data analysis process. I argue that the researcher's practice of interrogating and articulating their personal and professional knowledge, values, beliefs, experiences, and embedded assumptions about race and racism can also be applied to a practitioner who plans to engage in dismantling systemic racial inequities in higher education. This chapter will illustrate how individuals embedded within institutions of higher education can interrogate their own positions within racist organizational contexts; attend to power dynamics as educational leaders, narrators, and subjects of inquiry; and commit to transformational practice that can address Latina/o/x educational inequities.
College Completion, the Texas Way: An Examination of the Development of College Completion Policy in a Distinctive Political Culture
Authors: Gándara Denisa , Hearn James C.
Published: November 2021

Background

College-completion policies dominate state higher education policy agendas. Yet we know little about how policy actors make decisions—and what sources of evidence they use—within this policy domain.

Focus of Study

This study explores the use of evidence in college-completion policymaking in depth, focusing on Texas. In addition to exploring policymakers’ use of different types of information, this study examines the role played by intermediaries.

Research Design

We employed a qualitative case study design drawing on interviews with 32 policy actors engaged in college-completion policy in Texas. Our analysis consisted of both deductive coding (based on our a priori coding scheme) and inductive coding (based on emerging themes) to arrive at our four major findings.

Findings/Results

The analysis revealed four primary findings. The first theme suggests an insular culture of college-completion policymaking: Policymakers at various levels preferred Texas-based data and rejected the notion that external groups contributed to setting the college completion agenda in Texas. Second, business groups and a business ethos permeated college-completion policymaking in Texas. Third, research evidence was seldom employed in this policy process, partly because policymakers prefer concise and timely information. Finally, the study uncovered a new tactic for supplying research employed by certain intermediaries: punchy messaging, which was effective at garnering attention but also yielded unintended consequences.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Overwhelmingly, higher education policy actors tended to prefer Texas-based data. Respondents cited three major reasons for this preference: the high quality of the state higher education coordinating board's data, Texas's unique demographics, and the accessibility of statewide data. These findings reflect the mediating role that is played not only by state structural characteristics, but also by culture. Perceptions of Texas's distinctive inward-looking nature permeated our interviews and set the stage for the role that intermediaries played in the state and the preferences for information. Intermediaries wishing to inform college-completion policy activity at the state level should consider the uniqueness of the state context in supplying information. For states that are more insular, like Texas, working through internal (in-state) intermediaries may be an effective strategy. In light of our findings of preferred types of information, those intending to influence policymaking should consider making information—especially research evidence—concise and easily accessible and establish relationships with policymakers and their staff members.
“A Ditcher and a Scholar”: Figuring College-Going Identities in an Urban Magnet High School
Authors: Duncheon Julia C. , Relles Stefani R.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

To enhance postsecondary completion and minimize equity gaps, researchers have focused on defining, measuring, and developing students’ college readiness, or the preparation required to persist in higher education. While this work has been useful to identify the ingredients of postsecondary success, the emphasis on individual achievement runs the risk of portraying marginalized students as deficient. Culturally relevant studies that highlight institutional accountability for college readiness are needed to inform policy and practice.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

Using Holland and colleagues’ (1998) figured worlds theory, this study examines college readiness through the lens of student identity in an urban magnet high school. We investigate how first-generation, low-income students of color interpreted and negotiated local discourses and artifacts to “figure” college-going identities—that is, who they should become and how they should behave to earn a college degree. The purpose of this empirical approach is to contribute information that can inform college readiness efforts nationwide.

Research Design

The study utilizes an ethnographic approach that focused on how students conceptualized and developed their identities within the figured world of the magnet school. Data collection took place over the course of one school year and included over 200 hours of participant observation, in-depth interviews with 25 students and school staff, and document analysis.

Findings

The figured world of Jackson Magnet fostered and reinforced a hierarchy that consisted of magnet students (“scholars”) and their counterparts in the regular school (“ditchers”). A local feedback loop implied that the magnet school provided more rigorous college preparation than the regular school and, by extension, magnet students figured they would be ready for college. However, real-world feedback (standardized test scores) suggested magnet course rigor did not accurately reflect postsecondary standards. The result was that magnet students were underprepared but did not know it, an outcome that positioned them to experience a drastic identity reckoning in college.

Conclusions/Recommendations

While most college-readiness research focuses on academic skills preparation, our findings reveal the need to consider how high schools prepare students in terms of identity. In particular, our data suggest the threat of well-intentioned achievement discourses on pre-college identity development. Salient questions include whether and how to increase postsecondary opportunity without socializing students either to discriminate against their peers or to figure a false identity that undermines preparation and future cognitive stability.
Navigating the Quicksand: How Postsecondary Administrators Understand the Infuence of Affrmative Action Developments on Racial Diversity Work
Authors: Garces Liliana M. , Bilyalov Darkhan
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Seeking to avoid litigation or a legal threat, many postsecondary institutions are responding to a legal and policy environment that seeks to end the consideration of race in education policies by adopting race-neutral policies and practices in admissions, even when not explicitly required to do so by law. Yet, such responses may introduce new barriers and challenges for administrators seeking to promote inclusive campus environments and support students of color, not only within admissions but in other areas of campus life after students enroll. Understanding the consequences of these institutional responses is critical for those addressing the potential limitations a race-neutral approach puts on diversity-related policies and practices.

Purpose/Objective

In this study, we examine how key players charged with implementing diversity-related policies and practices understand legal developments around affirmative action and the institutional responses to these developments, in particular, how they influence their efforts to support racial and ethnic diversity. To explore the wide-ranging influence of the current race-neutral policy climate, we focus our study on a public flagship university that has opted to employ race-neutral admissions policies and practices as a matter of institutional policy—not by law.

Participants

Informed by a bottom-up policy implementation framework, we examine the influence of the legal environment from the perspective of administrators who are tasked with carrying out the institution's mission as it relates to diversity. We particularly target administrators who are engaged in outreach and recruitment efforts and who help support students after they enroll.

Research Design

In this qualitative study, we draw from document analysis and semi-structured interviews of 13 administrators charged with implementing diversity policy at a public flagship institution to investigate how this legal and policy climate has shaped racial diversity work in areas outside admissions.

Findings

Our findings illustrate how a colorblind approach in policy-making takes hold through seemingly innocuous practices and responses that are called race neutral. These practices, which start in admissions, spill over into other areas of university policy, and shift the nature of diversity-work.

Conclusions

Findings point to the importance of intentional efforts to implement diversity policy through a race- and racism-conscious lens, develop narratives that counter distorted narratives about racial discrimination, and address legal terms and definitions that do not reflect a realistic understanding of inequality or discrimination.
The Duplicity of Equality: An Analysis of Academic Placement in a Racially Diverse School and a Black Community
Authors: Lofton Richard
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

For more than four decades, researchers have shown that African American students are overrepresented in lower-track classes, while their White peers tend to be in advanced courses. In the past twenty years, school districts have implemented detracking reforms that stressed self-selection policies as an alternative to separate academic paths, yet quantitative data still show that most African American students are not attending upper-level or advanced classes in racially diverse schools.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of study

This study explores how African American parents come to terms with academic placement, and the mechanisms that impact their child's educational experiences in a racially diverse school while coming from a segregated high-poverty African-American community.

Setting

Research took place in a racially diverse suburban school and city. The suburban city is a microcosm of the United States, not only because of the racial and economic diversity of its school district, but also because its story encapsulates the plight of many African Americans in relation to the Great Migration, segregation, disinvested neighborhoods, and systemic inequalities.

Population/participants/Subjects

Participants included 26 African American parents, many of whom attended the same school district and experienced their own lower-track placement.

Research Design

Ethnographic methods, which include interviews and observations, were used to explore the research questions. African American parents were individually interviewed about their own educational experiences, children's academic placement, family background, interactions with the school system, community issues, and perceptions of the middle school and city.

Findings/Results

African American students and their parents were a product of intergenera-tional tracking. Parents and their children had experienced lower-track courses. In addition, the exposure of African American students and parents to systemic inequalities in their home and community heavily influenced their academic placement and overall educational experiences. Moreover, tracking in this school was not necessarily about abilities and skills but also about separating African American students and creating a formal semblance of equality that actually reinforced systemic inequalities, a reality captured in the phrase “duplicity of equality.”
Leadership for “The All of It”: Formalizing Teacher-Leader Networks
Authors: Smith Betsann
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Research underscores that school improvement relies on leadership that stretches beyond a principal, but significant developments to the design of school level leadership lags. This paper shares data and interpretations of school leadership organized as a network of formalized teacher-leader roles that are ranked, titled, and differently paid.

Purpose/Research Question

The study examined the functions, tasks, and boundaries of different teacher-leader roles as well as teachers’ perceptions of their legitimacy and value. It also explored whether formal roles generated negative side effects on school climate or teacher relations.

Focus of Study

Ongoing skepticism of role formalization and ranking within teaching directed the study's attention to an extensive empirical case of formalization.

Setting

Data were collected from eight secondary schools in England, where formalized teacher-leader roles are long established and associated with school performance.

Research Design

The study was designed as a descriptive investigation of a leader system. It was conceptually framed by perspectives on schools as organizations and literatures on role formalization, leadership, and school improvements.

Data Collection and Analysis

Observation, artifact, and interview data were collected. Description and analysis focused on the design of leader roles, the activities and conditions they generated, and school member perceptions of their legitimacy and value.

Findings/Results

Formal roles that blend teaching with instructional and managerial leadership gain legitimacy and pass tests of goodness and value for teachers when they directly contribute to teachers’ day-to-day work and success, as when they elevate working conditions, bring disciplinary knowledge and local understandings to learning and problem solving, and contribute to individual and collective efficacy.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Networks of formal teacher-leader roles can bring more substantial and reliable resources to the conditions of teaching and school organizations than informal leadership or targeted coaching roles. Fears of negative social and professional consequences do not emerge when roles remain rooted in teaching, when leaders’ tasks flow across logistical, instructional, and social dimensions of teachers’ work, and when norms emphasize help and reciprocity.
Reproducing Sports Stars: How Students Become Elite Athletes
Authors: Hextrum Kirsten
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

School-sponsored sports programs are seen in both the public and policy spheres as meritocratic mobility institutions. In the U.S. context, athletic participation can yield access to college via sports performance. Meritocratic mobility would be achieved as individuals use their athletic ability and effort to enter universities and in turn improve their social standing. Yet few existing studies empirically examine the extent to which interscholastic athletic participation yields mobility. As a result, little is known about how individuals access colleges via athletics.

Purpose/Objective

This study's purpose was to understand how individuals began a path to college via sports. In doing so, it asks: what larger social forces influence how youth become top-level college athletes? It draws upon social reproduction theory—how publicly funded educational entities ensure the maintenance rather than the reduction of class inequality—to determine whether youth sports participation facilitates mobility.

Research Design

This qualitative study examined the athletic and academic trajectories of 47 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I student-athletes from one university classified as Research-1, Tier-1, and as a member of a power-five athletic conference. Data include semistructured life history interviews, an original database, and institutional reports.

Population

Participants were recruited from four teams to investigate the athletic selection process: men's and women's track & field and rowing. The teams offered multiple comparisons in macro- and micro-social processes. Rowing draws from White and elite communities, because it requires tremendous resources to participate. Conversely, track & field requires fewer resources and draws more participants from marginalized communities.

Findings

Research reveals a sports-track-to-college pipeline and a correspondence between White middle-class communities and greater access to elite universities via athletics. Access to the sports-track-to-college pipeline is co-constructed through interactions at the individual, familial, and institutional levels. Five reproductive mechanisms are discussed—community access, bureaucracies, social access, knowledge, and enacted knowledge—all of which emerged as greater determiners for college athletic recruiting than individual athletic merit.

Conclusions

Recommendations offer policy and programmatic changes at the high school, college, and NCAA levels that make athletic recruiting more transparent and systematic to lessen the reproductive effects.
Silencing Racism: Remembering and Forgetting Race and Racism in 11th-Grade U.S. History Classes
Authors: Wills John S.
Published: November 2021

Background

The continuing significance of race in U.S. society and culture begs the question of what role history and social studies education can and should play in preparing students to critically and constructively address race and racism in contemporary U.S. society and culture. However, research on history and social studies curriculum and practice continues to demonstrate significant problems in meaningfully including and representing race, racism, and racial violence in U.S. history, underscoring the need for additional research to improve how we address race and racism in history and social studies education.

Purpose

I examined how teachers’ understandings of race and racism, which informed their use of curricular materials, and the content, focus, and framing of race and racism in the formal curriculum shaped the inclusion and representation of race and racism in the enacted U.S. history curriculum in their classes.

Research Design

Qualitative methods were used to study U.S. history instruction in three teachers’ classes at a suburban high school. This included daily observations in each teacher's class over a 7-month period, observation of weekly teacher planning meetings, individual interviews with teachers and group interviews with students, and collection of all curricular materials, and samples of student work.

Findings

Race and racism were addressed in lessons on U.S. imperialism in the late 1800s and early 1900s in a U.S. foreign policy unit and in a civil rights unit that focused on the civil rights movement. In both units race remained an elusive concept, for example referencing skin color but also culture and nationality, and racism was represented as shared beliefs in the superiority of whites over nonwhites. However, during the civil rights unit, the representation of racism as an individual psychological phenomenon of prejudice and stereotyping came to be privileged over other representations and, coupled with ambiguous understandings of race, this enabled the decoupling of race from representations of racism. Additionally, race was eventually forgotten in accounts of civil rights movement events as teachers’ use of the formal curriculum deflected attention away from discussions of race and racism.

Conclusions

More robust understandings of race as a process of racialization and representations of racism as structural and systemic would assist teachers in presenting a continuous history of racism in the United States that would better outfit students to constructively engage racism in the present.