Showing papers in "Harvard Educational Review in 2018"
TL;DR: In this paper, Sepehr Vakil argues that a more serious engagement with critical traditions in education research is necessary to achieve a justice-centered approach to equity in computer science education.
Abstract: In this essay, Sepehr Vakil argues that a more serious engagement with critical traditions in education research is necessary to achieve a justice-centered approach to equity in computer science (CS) education. With CS rapidly emerging as a distinct feature of K–12 public education in the United States, calls to expand CS education are often linked to equity and diversity concerns around expanding access to girls and historically underrepresented students of color. Yet, unlike other critical traditions in education research, equity-oriented CS research has largely failed to interrogate the sociopolitical context of CS education. To move toward a justice-centered approach to equity, Vakil argues, we must simultaneously attend to at least three features of CS education: the content of curriculum, the design of learning environments, and the politics and purposes of CS education reform. While there are many avenues of critical inquiry within and across each of these topics, the focus in this essay is on the ...
145 citations
TL;DR: This paper examined how Black Caribbean youth perceive and experience stop-and-frisk and stop-search practices in New York City and London, respectively, while on their way to and from public schools.
Abstract: In this article, Derron Wallace examines how Black Caribbean youth perceive and experience stop-and-frisk and stop-and-search practices in New York City and London, respectively, while on their way to and from public schools. Despite a growing body of scholarship on the relationship between policing and schooling in the United States and United Kingdom, comparative research on how students experience stop-and-frisk/search remains sparse. Drawing on the BlackCrit tradition of critical race theory and in-depth interviews with sixty Black Caribbean secondary school students in London and New York City, Wallace explores how adolescents experience adult-like policing to and from schools. His findings indicate that participants develop a strained sense of belonging in British and American societies due to a security paradox: a policing formula that, in principle, promises safety for all but in practice does so at the expense of some Black youth. Participants in the ethnographic study learned that irrespective o...
33 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue for the necessity of a new conceptual approach and offer a three-component ecological model of college-going decisions and trajectories that incorporates the pressing conditions and shifting contexts of twenty-first-century postsecondary education.
Abstract: The past two decades have seen massive changes in the higher education landscape, including the heightened participation of post-traditional students, high reentry and mobility of students within and across sectors, and the increased visibility of open admissions institutions, such as community colleges and for-profit colleges. Despite these radical shifts, the most commonly used college choice frameworks still focus on the decisions of students who fit a stereotypical profile and are entering traditional institutions of higher learning for the first time. In this article, Constance Iloh argues for the necessity of a new conceptual approach and offers a three-component ecological model of college-going decisions and trajectories that incorporates the pressing conditions and shifting contexts of twenty-first-century postsecondary education. In doing so, Iloh also asserts that the concept of “choice” may be a limited and problematic way of understanding present-day college-going.
32 citations
TL;DR: Gilbert et al. as discussed by the authors explored the Beyond Bullying Project, a multimedia, storytelling project that invited students, teachers, and community members in three US high schools to enter a private booth and share stories of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) sexuality and gender.
Abstract: In this article, Jen Gilbert, Jessica Fields, Laura Mamo, and Nancy Lesko explore the Beyond Bullying Project, a multimedia, storytelling project that invited students, teachers, and community members in three US high schools to enter a private booth and share stories of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) sexuality and gender. While recent policy making and educational research have focused on links between LGBTQ sexuality and gender, bullying, and other risks to educational and social achievement, Beyond Bullying aimed to identify the ordinary stories of LGBTQ sexuality and gender that circulate in schools and that an interventionist framing may obscure. After offering an overview of the method in Beyond Bullying, this article connects narratives of LGBTQ desire, family, and school life to the intimate possibilities—who students and teachers are, who they want to be, and the social worlds they want to build—available to them in schools.
31 citations
TL;DR: Ashley Taylor as mentioned in this paper argues that the absence or exclusion of people with intellectual disabilities from dominant knowledge-making institutions and arenas, including within educational research, amounts to injustice and results in their tacit or overt exclusion from civic education and political membership.
Abstract: Intellectual disability may appear to many as a barrier to participation in or the production of educational research. Indeed, a common perception of individuals seen as having cognitive impairments, and especially those with minimal or no verbal communication, is that they are incapable of the reasoning or lack the deliberative capacities necessary to participate in research or policy-influencing decision making. In this essay, Ashley Taylor dismantles these assumptions, challenging both the view of intellectual disability on which they rest and the view of epistemic competence they imply. Taylor shows how the absence or exclusion of people with intellectual disabilities labels from dominant knowledge-making institutions and arenas, including within educational research, amounts to injustice and results in their tacit or overt exclusion from civic education and political membership.
26 citations
TL;DR: YPAR as discussed by the authors is a form of critical participatory action research that provides young people with opportunities to identify injustices in their current social realities, such as racism, sexism, etc.
Abstract: Youth participatory action research (YPAR) is a form of critical participatory action research that provides young people with opportunities to identify injustices in their current social realities...
23 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, Dyches investigates the ways in which inquiry models of instruction have failed to provide students with a space in which to grapple with discipline-specific histories and hegemonies.
Abstract: In this article, Jeanne Dyches investigates the ways in which inquiry models of instruction have failed to provide students with a space in which to grapple with discipline-specific histories and hegemonies. Accordingly, this study offers critical canon pedagogy (CCP) to help students problematize and disrupt the practices specific to a discipline. Drawing from critical curriculum theory and critical Whiteness studies, Dyches details the experiences of high school students who participated in a CCP unit that investigated the disciplinary practices that have marked the teaching of canonical British literature in secondary English classrooms. Dyches shows how the unit provided students with an opportunity to restory their entirely White curriculum and, in doing so, reconsider and resist the traditional narratives and voices of the canon, develop an increased sense of canonical critical consciousness, and demonstrate a sense of discipline-specific agentive identity.
20 citations
TL;DR: Hextrum's findings reveal three phases of a hidden curriculum, socialization, covert selection, and overt selection, that secure greater access to elite colleges for White middle-class communities via athletic participation as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In this article, Kirsten Hextrum considers institutional avenues that limit upward mobility opportunities by revealing a hidden curriculum of athletic recruiting that favors students from privileged backgrounds. The study's data center on forty-seven life history interviews with National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I athletes from an athletically and academically prestigious university. Hextrum's findings reveal three phases of a hidden curriculum—socialization, covert selection, and overt selection—that secure greater access to elite colleges for White middle-class communities via athletic participation. In this case, social reproduction required active effort by both representatives of higher education and representatives of White middle-class communities to protect existing class and race relations.
17 citations
TL;DR: Benbow and Hora as discussed by the authors explored the employability narrative, a view that focuses on whether colleges and universities provide students with the skills they need to be productively employed after graduation.
Abstract: In this research article, Ross J. Benbow and Matthew T. Hora explore the employability narrative, a view that focuses on whether colleges and universities provide students with the skills they need to be productively employed after graduation. Using sociocultural theory to problematize this narrative and qualitative methods to fore-ground the experiences of postsecondary educators and employers, the authors investigate conceptions of essential workplace skills in biotechnology and manufacturing fields. Their results show that though work ethic, technical knowledge, and technical ability represent core competencies valued across these communities, considerable variation exists in how members of different disciplinary and occupational subgroups value and conceptualize important skills. They found that respondents' conceptions of skills were also strongly tied to geography and organizational culture, among other contextual factors. With these results in mind, the authors conclude that skills are best viewed ...
14 citations
TL;DR: Staley as mentioned in this paper argues that in the process of pursuing complex questions about preparing educators to disrupt the cis-heteronormative context of schools, the field has created a master narrative in which the same dilemmas seem to arise.
Abstract: In this article, Sara Staley presents a conceptualization of “stuck” places in the field of gender and sexual diversity educational research. She argues that in the process of pursuing complex questions about preparing educators to disrupt the cis-heteronormative context of schools, the field has created a master narrative in which the same dilemmas seem to arise. She draws on patterns of repetition in the literature to point to three tools that specify how the field has tried to manage and control the problem of cis-heteronormativity and the role of teachers therein. Critically reflecting on her own experience, she considers how embracing the impossible aspects of questions about teaching and the study of oppression might open up generative possibilities for moving through the stuck places in which educational researchers find themselves.
14 citations
TL;DR: Xiang et al. as discussed by the authors investigated what dushu means for rural senior secondary school students in a high-poverty county in southwestern China, and drew from repeated interviews with and observations of twenty-seven students conducted over a year, Xiang used portraiture methodology to illustrate the different dimensions of meaning these rural youth attach to Dushu: the means to a future of comfort and dignity, a family responsibility and collective investment, and a path toward individual freedom and actualization.
Abstract: In this article, Xin Xiang investigates what dushu, or “schooling,” means for rural senior secondary school students in a high-poverty county in southwestern China. With the persistence of China's rural-urban education inequality and alarming reports about secondary school dropout rates, rural students' and their families' attitudes toward schooling have become a topic of academic as well as public debate. Drawing from repeated interviews with and observations of twenty-seven students conducted over a year, Xiang uses portraiture methodology to illustrate the different dimensions of meaning these rural youth attach to dushu: the means to a future of comfort and dignity, a family responsibility and collective investment, and a path toward individual freedom and actualization. This portrait also reveals the deep contradictions that define these students' experiences of dushu and how it often denies the hopes they attach to it and demands painful compromises.
TL;DR: Bausell and Glazier as mentioned in this paper used discourse analysis to examine six years of transcripts collected from a series of quarterly teacher discussion groups, during which elementary school teachers talked about their work within the testing landscape.
Abstract: Given the well-documented pervasiveness of high-stakes assessment in preK–12 schools, many researchers have investigated how testing affects students. In this article, Sarah Byrne Bausell and Jocelyn A. Glazier explore the ways that high-stakes testing influences beginning teacher socialization and the ways that teacher colleagues shape one another's responses to these policies. The authors use discourse analysis to examine six years of transcripts collected from a series of quarterly teacher discussion groups, during which elementary school teachers talked about their work within the testing landscape. Their findings indicate that high-stakes testing deeply affects teacher beliefs, practices, and socialization behaviors, thus revealing a troubling tendency to position students as numbers and a sharp decline in talk about teaching philosophies and practices develops alongside the testing policy landscape. Bausell and Glazier recommend that teacher educators prepare future teachers with an understanding of...
TL;DR: The authors examined the effect of having a teacher of the same race on various student outcomes and found that the positive effects of having teachers of different races on student outcomes varied with race. But the literature has not examined how racial match affects the everyday in...
Abstract: While research has consistently shown the positive effects of having a teacher of the same race on various student outcomes, the literature has not examined how racial match affects the everyday in...
TL;DR: While there has been a rise in human rights education at the global level, little attention has been paid to how it is integrated into schools in the United States as mentioned in this paper, drawing on qualitative and quantifiable data.
Abstract: While there has been a rise in human rights education at the global level, little attention has been paid to how it is integrated into schools in the United States. Drawing on qualitative and quant...
TL;DR: Cairns as mentioned in this paper argues that a rhetoric of effects assumes an essentialist conception of the child-as-educational-output and bolsters a neoliberal vision of social change rooted in personal transformation.
Abstract: In this essay, Kate Cairns considers the implications of assessing garden pedagogies, arguing that a rhetoric of effects assumes an essentialist conception of the child-as-educational-output and bolsters a neoliberal vision of social change rooted in personal transformation. Drawing from ethnographic research with youth gardens in Toronto, Ontario, and Camden, New Jersey, she highlights contextualized experiences of learning and labor that exceed the boundaries of an effects framework. Cairns argues that garden pedagogies must be understood in relation to specific dynamics of racial, economic, and ecological injustice. The essay closes with reflections on how feminist theories of social reproduction might reimagine pedagogies of the garden in a way that attends to young people's participation in life's work.
TL;DR: Turner and Angulo as mentioned in this paper explored how institutional theory can be applied to explain variance in higher education organizational strategies, given strong regulatory, normative, and cultural-cognitive pressures to conform.
Abstract: Lauren A. Turner and A. J. Angulo explore how institutional theory can be applied to explain variance in higher education organizational strategies. Given strong regulatory, normative, and cultural-cognitive pressures to conform, they ask, why do some colleges engage in high-risk decision making? To answer this, they bring together classic and contemporary approaches to institutional theory and propose an integrated model for understanding outlier higher education strategies. The integrated model offers a heuristic for analyzing external and internal pressures that motivate colleges to implement nontraditional strategies. Through an analysis of recent trends among outlier colleges and their approaches to the Scholastic Aptitude Test, Turner and Angulo contextualize the model and consider its potential for understanding why higher education organizations adopt characteristics that differentiate them from their peers.
TL;DR: In this paper, Fine uses portraiture to explore the undertheorized question of what it means to teach in ways that align with the values of the restorative justice framework.
Abstract: In this article, Sarah M. Fine uses portraiture to explore the undertheorized question of what it means to teach in ways that align with the values of the restorative justice framework. The piece centers around the work of Nora, a veteran teacher-leader who explored this question in the context of her own classroom and, as a result, shifted her practice in significant ways, making it more deliberate in its attention to students' social-emotional needs, more project based in its design, and more critical in its stance. In turn, these shifts helped restore and transform students' relationships to the content under study, as well as to each other and to Nora. This portrait provides a richly textured picture of what it means to be—and become—a restorative teacher and suggests that there are powerful synergies between the restorative justice frame-work and the tradition of critical pedagogy.
TL;DR: Miyazawa as discussed by the authors reflected on how she was both insider and outsider during her fieldwork in Fukushima, Japan, between 2013 and 2016, after the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power plant explosion devastated the region.
Abstract: In this essay, Karou Miyazawa reflects on how she was both insider and outsider during her fieldwork in Fukushima, Japan, between 2013 and 2016, after the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power plant explosion devastated the region. During her time in Fukushima, Miyazawa experienced the emotions of community members as well as her own, which were rooted in specific individual and collective memories. While her nostalgic memories of home pulled her inside the community, community members' anger and skepticism toward researchers, which stemmed from memories of the wartime atomic bombings, pushed her outside the community. Based on this experience, Miyazawa has reconceptualized agency as one's ability to be susceptible to various emotions that circulate in the community and to move toward and/or away from insider and outsider positions. This new approach allows researchers to recognize the agency of their participants, form dialogic relationships with them, and collaboratively give testimonies over the ...
TL;DR: The authors argue that the US public schools' sponsorship of tackle football is ethically indefensible and inconsistent with their educational aims, relying on three ethical principles and a growing body of evidence that many students who play football suffer traumatic brain injury and cognitive impairment that undermine their academic success and life prospects, whether or not they suffer concussions.
Abstract: In this essay, ethicists grounded in philosophy (Curren) and law (Blokhuis) argue that the US public schools' sponsorship of tackle football is ethically indefensible and inconsistent with their educational aims. Their argument relies on three ethical principles and a growing body of evidence that many students who play football suffer traumatic brain injury and cognitive impairment that undermine their academic success and life prospects, whether or not they suffer concussions. The authors also address educational claims made on behalf of football, the legal principles governing custodial responsibilities of schools and parents, factors that limit the moral and legal significance of children's consent to participate in football programs, and evidence that sponsorship of football programs subjects educational institutions to unsustainable financial risk.
TL;DR: This article examined the narratives of fifteen youth who participated in a US-funded non-formal arts education program in Afghanistan, which operated with the key objective of promoting national identity in its participants.
Abstract: Western development organizations frequently target youth in conflict settings to participate in peaceful, cooperative activities to promote nation-building and deter violence. In this article, Heddy Lahmann examines the narratives of fifteen youth who participated in a US-funded nonformal arts education program in Afghanistan, which operated with the key objective of promoting national identity in its participants. Using open-ended interviews coupled with an arts-based research technique, Lahmann investigates how Afghan youth perceive their identity in relation to the nation. Her research indicates that national identity arguments do not adequately address other salient intersections of identity, such as an individual's developmental stage in life and the significance of gender, and largely leave out the influence of colonialism on the way national identity is conceptualized in non-Western contexts. Lahmann argues that program designers and policy makers must incorporate the local knowledge and experienc...