Envisioning a Critical Race Praxis in K-12 Education Through Counter-Storytelling


Book Description

While critical race theory is a framework employed by activists and scholars within and outside the confines of education, there are limited resources for leadership practitioners that provide insight into critical race theory and the possibilities of implementing a critical race praxis approach to leadership. With a continued top-down approach to educational policy and practice, it is imperative that educational leaders understand how critical race theory and praxis can assist them in utilizing their agency and roles as leaders to identify and challenge institutional and systemic racism and other forms/manifestations of oppression (Stovall, 2004). In the tradition of critical race theory, we are charged with the task of operationalizing theory into practice in the struggle for, and commitment to, social justice. Though educational leaders and leadership programs have been all but absent in this process, given their influence and power, educational leaders need to be engaged in this endeavor. The objective of this edited volume is to draw upon critical race counter-stories and praxis for the purpose of providing leaders in training and practicing K-12 leaders with tangible narratives that demonstrate how racism and its intersectionality with other forms of oppression manifest within K-12 schooling. An additional aim of this book is to provide leaders with a working knowledge of the central tenets of critical race theory and the tools that are required in recognizing how they might be complicit in the reproduction of institutional and systemic racism and other forms of oppression. More precisely, this edited volume intends to draw upon and center the lived experiences and voices of contributors that have experienced racism in K-12 schooling. Through the use of critical race methodology and counter-storytelling (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002), contributors will share and interrogate their experiences while offering current and future educational leaders insight in recognizing how racism functions within institutions and how they can address it. The intended goal of this edited volume is to translate critical race theory into practice while emphasizing the need for educational leaders to develop a critical race praxis and anti-racist approach to leadership.




Envisioning Critical Race Praxis in Higher Education Through Counter-Storytelling


Book Description

While critical race theory is a framework employed by activists and scholars within and outside the confines of education, there are limited resources for leadership practitioners that provide insight into critical race theory and the possibilities of implementing a critical race praxis approach to leadership. With a continued top?down approach to educational policy and practice, it is imperative that higher education leaders understand how critical race theory and praxis can assist them in utilizing their agency and roles as leaders to identify and challenge institutional and systemic racism and other forms/manifestations of oppression (Stovall, 2004). In the tradition of critical race theory, we are charged with the task of operationalizing theory into practice in the struggle for, and commitment to, social justice. Though higher education leaders and leadership programs are often absent in this process, given their influence and power, higher education leaders need to be engaged in this endeavor. The objective of this edited volume is to draw upon critical race counter?stories and praxis for the purpose of providing higher education leaders?in?training and practicing higher education leaders with tangible narratives that demonstrate how racism and its intersectionality with other forms of oppression manifest within higher education. An additional aim of this book is to provide leaders with a working knowledge of the central tenets of critical race theory and the tools that are required in recognizing how they might be complicit in the reproduction of institutional and systemic racism and other forms of oppression. More precisely, this edited volume intends to draw upon and center the lived experiences and voices of contributors that have experienced racism in higher education. Through the use of critical race methodology and counter?storytelling (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002), contributors will share and interrogate their experiences while offering current and future higher education leaders insight in recognizing how racism functions within their respective institutions, and how they can address it. The intended goal of this edited volume is to translate critical race theory into practice while emphasizing the need for higher education leaders to develop a critical race praxis and anti?racist approach to leadership.




Community-Based Participatory Research


Book Description

Members of communities of color in the United States often struggle for equity, autonomy, survival, and justice. Community-Based Participatory Research is an edited volume from activist-scholars who present personal testimonies showcasing how community-based participatory research (CBPR) can lead to sustainable change and empowerment. Editor Natalia Deeb-Sossa has chosen contributors whose diverse interdisciplinary projects are grounded in politically engaged research in Chicanx and Latinx communities. The scholars’ advocacy work is a core component of the research design of their studies, challenging the idea that research needs to be neutral or unbiased. The testimonies tell of projects that stem from community demands for truly collaborative research addressing locally identified issues and promoting community social change. Contributors share their personal experiences in conducting CBPR, focusing on the complexities of implementing this method and how it may create sustainable change and community empowerment. Along with a retrospective analysis of how CBPR has been at the center of the Chicana/o Movement and Chicana/o studies, the book includes a discussion of consejos y advertencias (advice and warnings). The most knowledgeable people on community issues are the very members of the communities themselves. Recognizing a need to identify the experiences and voices (testimonios) of communities of color, activist-scholars showcase how to incorporate the perspectives of the true experts: the poor, women, farmworkers, students, activists, elders, and immigrants.




Confronting Racism in Higher Education


Book Description

Racism and ignorance churn on college campuses as surely as they do in society at large. Over the past fifteen years there have been many discussions regarding racism and higher education. Some of these focus on formal policies and dynamics such as Affirmative Action or The Dream Act, while many more discussions are happening in classrooms, dorm rooms and in campus communities. Of course, corollary to these conversations, some of which are generative and some of which are degenerative, is a deafening silence around how individuals and institutions can actually understand, engage and change issues related to racism in higher education. This lack of dialogue and action speaks volumes about individuals and organizations, and suggests a complicit acceptance, tolerance or even support for institutional and individual racism. There is much work to be done if we are to improve the situation around race and race relation in institutions of higher education. There is still much work to be done in unpacking and addressing the educational realities of those who are economically, socially, and politically underserved and oppressed by implicit and overt racism. These realities manifest in ways such as lack of access to and within higher education, in equitable outcomes and in a disparity of the quality of education as a student matriculates through the system. While there are occasional diversity and inclusion efforts made in higher education, institutions still largely address them as quotas, and not as paradigmatic changes. This focus on “counting toward equity rather” than “creating a culture of equity” is basically a form of white privilege that allows administrators and policymakers to show incremental “progress” and avoid more substantive action toward real equity that changes the culture(s) of institutions with longstanding racial histories that marginalize some and privilege others. Issues in higher education are still raced from white perspectives and suffer from a view that race and racism occur in a vacuum. Some literature suggests that racism begins very early in the student experience and continues all the way to college (Berlak & Moyenda). This mis-education, mislabeling and mistreatment based on race often develops as early as five to ten years old and “follows” them to postgraduate education and beyond.




The Emperor Has No Clothes


Book Description

The Emperor Has No Clothes: Teaching About Race and Racism to People Who Don’t Want to Know offers theoretical grounding and practical approaches for leaders and teachers interested in effectively addressing racism and other oppressive constructs. The book draws both on the author’s extensive experience teaching about race and racism in classroom and community settings and from the theory and practice of a wide range of educators, activists, and researchers committed to social justice. The first chapter looks at the toxic consequences of our western cultural insistence on profit, binary thinking, and individualism to establish the theoretical framework for teaching about race and racism. Chapter two investigates privileged resistance, offering a psycho/social history of denial, particularly as a product of racist culture. Chapter three reviews the research on the construction and reconstruction of dominant culture both historically and now in order to establish sound strategic approaches that educators, teachers, facilitators, and activists can take as we work together to move from a culture of profit and fear to one of shared hope and love. Chapter four lays out the stages of a process that supports teaching about racist, white supremacy culture, explaining how students can be taken through an iterative process of relationshipbuilding, analysis, planning, action, and reflection. The final chapter borrows from the brilliant, brave, and incisive writer Dorothy Allison to discuss the things the author knows for sure about how to teach people to see that which we have been conditioned to fear knowing. The chapter concludes with how to encourage and support collective and collaborative action as a critical goal of the process.




Adult Intentions, Student Perceptions


Book Description

Restorative justice (RJ) is an idea whose time may have finally arrived. Although the concept has ancient roots and the term has existed in Western societies since the 1970s, only recently has it gained general public recognition. In schools, RJ’s popularity is rising world-wide. In fact, education is the fastest growing area for the practice of RJ. Despite an increasing number of schools embracing the approach, it is not clear what educational RJ practitioners are trying to achieve. Adult Intentions, Student Perceptions: How Restorative Justice is Used in Schools to Control and to Engage focuses on the use of RJ in one school in Scotland and one in Canada. While important to understand the intentions of educators in using RJ in schools, those aims must be examined alongside the actual impact that such practices have on students. RJ can be understood and experienced in dramatically different ways by those implementing it. For some, RJ is about creating an environment of and for student engagement that challenges traditional systems of discipline and facilitates learning. For others, RJ is simply another tool for solidifying compliance and meting out punishment, albeit in a kinder, gentler way. Adult Intentions, Student Perceptions provides the opportunity to delve deeply into the stories of two schools and the adults and young people who inhabit them, and consider the broad impact that differing educator understandings of RJ have on students. Adult Intentions, Student Perceptions is a timely book for RJ advocates and critics alike. It challenges a common assumption of some RJ advocates that implementing RJ necessarily creates a classroom environment of social engagement (where students are empowered to engage with one another and think critically, and school relationships and hierarchies are transformed). The student experience relayed in this book shows that RJ can as readily be mobilized to create classroom environments of social control (where students are taught obedience and compliance, and authority and hierarchy are reinforced). Reimer argues that RJ, by itself, does not guarantee certain qualities of relationship, but RJ does allow us to examine relational qualities and ask questions of how school relationships are used to engage and/or control students.




Restorative Practice Meets Social Justice


Book Description

Restorative Practice Meets Social Justice: Un-silencing the Voices of “At-Promise” Student Populations is a collection of pragmatic urban school experiences that focus on restorative approaches situated in the context of social justice. By adopting this approach, researchers and practitioners can connect and extend long-established lines of conceptual and empirical inquiry aimed at improving school practices and thereby gain insights that may otherwise be overlooked or assumed. This holds great promise for generating, refining, and testing theories of restorative practices in educational leadership and will help strengthen already vibrant lines of inquiry on social justice. The authors posit that a broader conceptualization of social and restorative justice adds to extant discourse about students who not only experience various types of daily oppression in US schools but also regularly live on the fringes of society. Chapters are written by a combination of researchers and practicing school leaders who believe in the power of healing and restoring relationships within school communities as opposed to traditional punitive structures. The dynamic approaches discussed throughout the book urge school leaders, teachers, school community members, and those who prepare administrators to look within and build bridges between themselves and the communities in which they serve.




Crossing the Bridge of the Digital Divide


Book Description

Crossing the Bridge of the Digital Divide: A Walk with Global Leaders explores the combined effect of the rapid growth of information as an increasingly fragmented information base, a large component of which is available only to people with money and/or acceptable institutional affiliations. In the recent past, the outcome of these challenges has been characterized as the "digital divide" between the information “haves” and “have nots” along racial and socio economic lines that seem to widen as time passes. To address the issues of digital equity and digital inequality in an effort to bridge the digital divide, educational scholars, researchers and practitioners are in positions to ensure equitable opportunities are made available for people of all ages, races, ability, sexual orientation, and ethnicity in support of social justice for bridging the digital divide. The digital divide addresses issues concerning equal opportunity, equity and access that have an effect on the development of marginalized and otherwise disenfranchised populations within and across systems nationally and internationally. The contributing authors- representing Unites States, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, and the UK - posit that education institutions can serve as the bridge to close the digital divide for students who do not have access to information technology in their homes. At a time when more computers are made available in schools than ever before, the digital divide continues to widen and fewer people in the lowest SES groups are given the opportunity to join the world of computer technology and the internet. As a result, the influence of leadership activity on institutional racism, gender discrimination, inequality of opportunity, inequity of educational processes, digital exclusion, and justice have gained currency and attention. The contributing national and international authors examine the digital divide in terms of social justice leadership, equity and access. It is within this context that the authors offer discussions from a lens of their choice, i.e. conceptual, review of literature, epistemological, etc. By adopting an educational approach to bridging the digital divide, researchers and practitioners can connect and extend long established lines of conceptual and empirical inquiry aimed at improving organizational practices and thereby gain insights that might be otherwise overlooked, or assumed. This holds great promise for generating, refining, and testing theories of leadership for equity and access, and helps strengthen already vibrant lines of inquiry on social justice.




School Leadership in a Diverse Society


Book Description

With the increasing amount of diversity taking place in the United States and in our K-12 schools, this book will help school leaders become prepared. It is the school principal who sets the tone for the school culture and provides the vision as to the direction of the organization. Therefore, school principals will ultimately have a great impact in promoting cultural and social diversity. School Leadership in a Diverse Society: Helping Schools Prepare all Students for Success (2nd Edition) will help scholars and practitioners have a better understanding of the increasing amount of diversity that is occurring in American society. This book will give them the tools needed to lead schools to ensure that all students, regardless of their life circumstances and status, are provided a school experience that promotes high academic achievement and a sense of belonging. Today, multiculturalism and diversity preparation are needed in our society, seemingly more so than when schools first made an earnest effort to integrate twenty years after Brown V. Board of Education. Just as it seemed the United States was making significant progress dealing with issues that have plagued this country for hundreds of years, recently, there has been a surge in diversity-related issues (the killing of unarmed African Americans, the unwarranted attacks on Asians, immigration debates, the recent rise of groups that support white supremacy, blackface incidents, increasing wealth divide between the ultra rich and the poor, religious backlash, etc.). These issues should remind us that the struggle for social equity continues into the present moment. Communities must work together to help fight rising intolerance and prejudice within our country and schools.




Within Reach


Book Description

Within Reach is a text for anyone interested in improving instructional practices with their students, and in expanding those practices from classroom to classroom. The multifaceted sections of the text broaden the audiences: teacher leaders, administrators, practicing teachers, and teacher/administrator preparation programs in higher education. The content from Within Reach can be used to build systems and practices to increase instructional effectiveness to address diverse students’ learning needs. The text offers research?based, effective, instructional practices and how they relate to diverse learners and Common Core, as well as to understand how to employ teacher leaders to network such practices. Within Reach is an excellent match for district and federal funding because it focuses on professional development to bridge the achievement gap, instructional accountability measures, and making connections to the Common Core. Districts can access funding through Title 1, Common Core funding initiatives, and federal grants. It can also be adopted in higher education teacher and administrator preparation programs. For example, in teacher preparation programs, Within Reach covers topics such as Teaching Multiculturalism Education, Teaching Students with Mild to Moderate Disabilities, Teaching English Language Learners, and Language Acquisition and Development Certification Courses, and Teacher Leadership.