Showing papers in "The Urban Review in 2009"
TL;DR: This article conducted a self-study that presents the experiences of four faculty of color navigating the tenure process in a predominately white Research Institution and found that marginalization, racism and sexism manifested as unintended barriers are some of the barriers faculty of colour face in successfully navigating the process.
Abstract: Through a comprehensive literature review, this article identifies and discusses barriers to recruitment and retention of faculty of color. Marginalization, racism and sexism manifested as unintended barriers are presented as a few of the barriers faculty of color face in successfully navigating the tenure process. Informed by this literature review, we conducted a self-study that presents the experiences of four faculty of color navigating the tenure process in a predominately white Research Institution. The purpose of this study was to share the experiences of three junior faculty of color as they navigate the tenure process, and one tenured faculty of color who is informally mentoring them through the process. This article highlights the findings of one component of a broader study: focus group discussions about how diversity efforts and activities are subsequently evidenced in teaching, research agendas and service. Four themes are presented: Academic Identity; Confronting Diversity, Mentoring, and Safe Spaces. A discussion of the consequences of these findings on faculty of color retention and recruitment is included. Recommendations are made to other predominately white institutions on how to address issues facing faculty of color.
151 citations
TL;DR: The authors explored the possibilities for research embedded in the theoretical, ethical and methodological overlaps between participatory action research and critical race theory, using the Echoes project as a case study, a participatory collective of intentionally diverse youth from New York and New Jersey brought together in the long shadow of Brown, to document and perform educational injustice in their schools.
Abstract: Drawing on the intersections of a justice oriented participatory action research and critical race theory, this essay explores the possibilities for research embedded in the theoretical, ethical and methodological overlaps between the two. Using the Echoes project as a case study, a participatory collective of intentionally diverse youth from New York and New Jersey brought together in the long shadow of Brown, to document and perform educational injustice in their schools, the essay asks social scientists what it means to engage research that takes seriously the idea of mutual implication, or what Anzaldua (Borderlands/La Frontera, The New Mestiza, 1999) calls nos-otras—whereby research is designed to seek knowledge at the nexus of everyday lived experience and intricate social systems; to ask questions that allow individuals to hold multiple, even opposing, identities; to provoke analyses that requires historical re-memory; to destabilize naturalized power hierarchies. Research that calls for socially engaged questions that demand to be answered collectively through research and action.
147 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the limits of the reform/revolution paradox on actions and theories of change in participatory action research and show that when met with such a paradox, one can only move to a new vantage point.
Abstract: This article observes that participatory action research (PAR), by nature of being collaborative, necessitates making explicit theories of change that may have otherwise gone unseen or unexamined. The article explores the limits of the reform/revolution paradox on actions and theories of change in PAR. Citing examples from two recent youth PAR projects on educational issues, the author submits that when met with such a paradox, one can only move to a new vantage point. Four alternative vantage points, drawn from Indigenous epistemologies, are illustrated; they are sovereignty, contention, balance, and relationship.
143 citations
TL;DR: The authors explored how African American male teachers working with black male students performed their pedagogy and found that teachers' performance was contingent on diverse ways they imagined African American males should engage within their social and political worlds.
Abstract: Drawing from ethnographic data, this paper explores how African American male teachers working with African American male students performed their pedagogy. This paper highlights how teachers’ understanding of African American males social and educational needs shaped their pedagogical performance. Interestingly however, teachers’ performance was contingent on the diverse ways they imagined African American males should engage within their social and political worlds. These findings suggest then that African American male teachers’ pedagogic performances were both complex and multifaceted.
108 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe the challenges of using PAR methods to revise Paulo Freire's notion of critical consciousness in the context of a parent organizing group and a youth research project, while taking seriously the speed bumps, multiple subjectivities, implicit racism, sexism, classism and politics of knowledge production that are too often obscured behind published academic writing.
Abstract: Participatory Action Research (PAR) and its many variants are rapidly gaining prominence as viable research tools and methodological alternatives to address histories of exploitation, surveillance, and social exclusion, deeply embedded in mainstream research. However, it is at this transgressive intersection of theory, action, expertise, power, and justice that a host of new challenges to the conduct of research in collaboration with and not just on, or for subordinated people, emerges. This article attempts to intimately describe the challenges of using PAR methods to revise Paulo Freire’s notion of critical consciousness in the context of a parent organizing group and a youth research project, while taking seriously the speed bumps, multiple subjectivities, implicit racism, sexism, classism, and politics of knowledge production that are too often obscured behind published academic writing.
99 citations
TL;DR: This paper examined home schooling among Black parents by providing insight to Black families' beliefs, concerns, and desires for their children's education, and found that parents' motivations to home school included issues related to race and home-school interaction.
Abstract: This study examines home schooling among Black parents by providing insight to Black families’ beliefs, concerns, and desires for their children’s education. To date, the literature remains void of empirical work related to home education among African American families. However, the present study directly addresses this void. Findings demonstrated that parents’ motivations to home school included issues related to race and home-school interaction. In addition, Black parents reported that religious beliefs influenced their decisions to home school. But, unlike their Caucasian counterparts, Black home educators described a more liberatory form of religion.
74 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, an exploratory study investigated how six practicing school principals responded to the requirements of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law (United States Congress Public Law 107-110, 2002, January, No Child left Behind Act, http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/107-110.pdf ) in light of the multicultural leadership demands presented by an urban setting.
Abstract: This exploratory study investigated how six practicing school principals responded to the requirements of the No Child Left Behind law (United States Congress Public Law 107–110, 2002, January, No Child Left Behind Act, http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/107-110.pdf
) in light of the multicultural leadership demands presented by an urban setting. It examines perspectives of principals on the legal aspects of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and what they did to manage its requirements. Multicultural leadership literature provided a framework to understand the perspectives of school leaders. The findings suggest three principals were engaged in meaningful and practical work to both fulfill the requirements of NCLB and meet the needs of their students. Three principals were focused on the requirements of the law and did not see the connection between multicultural leadership and NCLB. The study’s recommendations include a multicultural leadership approach to current NCLB school reform.
65 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigate how two-way immersion schools address other dimensions of diversity, including race, ethnicity, class, and disability, in the recruitment and retention of ESL learners.
Abstract: Two-way immersion schools provide a promising model for service delivery to students who are English language learners. With the goals of bilingualism, academic excellence, and cross cultural appreciation, these schools are designed to build bridges across linguistically heterogeneous student bodies. Yet while empirical evidence demonstrates that the two-way immersion model can be effective in these regards, we know little about how such schools address other dimensions of diversity, including race, ethnicity, class, and disability. This study contributes to filling this gap by critically analyzing these dimensions in the areas of recruitment and retention in two two-way immersion schools.
64 citations
TL;DR: The authors examined how urban high-school students responded to increased academic expectations, which included increased expectations for reading and writing, collaboration, and the completion of multi-day assignments, and found that students approached lessons with learning versus performance orientations, and they could not transfer classroom successes to their outside of school studying efforts.
Abstract: This study examined how urban high-school students responded to increased academic expectations. The intervention included increased expectations for reading and writing, collaboration, and the completion of multi-day assignments. Twenty-four students (8 lower, 8 average, and 8 higher performers) from 4 classrooms were interviewed across a 9-week period to evaluate their reactions to the increased expectations. While students approached lessons with learning versus performance orientations, they were unsuccessful because they could not transfer classroom successes to their outside of school studying efforts. Their difficulties were related to a lack of strategies, a failure to manage distractions, or an inability to monitor studying behaviors. Discussion focuses on the difficulties among students based on performance levels and on the challenges of increasing academic expectations within a climate of high-stakes testing.
64 citations
TL;DR: The Center for Tactical Magic as discussed by the authors shopdropped stacks of homemade T-shirts into Wal-Mart and Target stores in the San Francisco Bay Area, with the faces of Karl Marx, Che Guevara and Mikhail Bakunin.
Abstract: This week an arts group in Oakland, the Center for Tactical Magic, began shopdropping neatly folded stacks of homemade T-shirts into Wal-Mart and Target stores in the San Francisco Bay Area. The shirts feature radical images and slogans like one with the faces of Karl Marx, Che Guevara and Mikhail Bakunin, a Russian anarchist. It says, ‘‘Peace on Earth. After we overthrow capitalism.’’ New York Times, 12/24/07, A5
54 citations
TL;DR: This paper found that students from general, special, and honors programs experience a wide range of interactions based on academic services received, gender, and ethnicity, while Hispanic students indicated a greater frequency of perceived supportive feedback.
Abstract: Students’ satisfaction with school experiences has been linked to their sense of belongingness, connection to school, and achievement. Though the extant research addresses students’ perceptions of school climate and sense of belonging, there is a paucity of research about students’ views of teacher–student interactions. Five hundred and seventy-seven students from one ethnically and academically diverse urban high school were surveyed and interviewed about the nature of teacher talk with students. Findings from this mixed-methods investigation indicate students from general, special, and honors programs experience a wide range of interactions based on academic services received, gender, and ethnicity. More frequent perceived punitive feedback was reported by all students in special education as well as males in general and honors education programs, while Hispanic students indicated a greater frequency of perceived supportive feedback. Findings also reflect a wide range of attitudes and feelings about teachers, the educational system, and learning.
TL;DR: The authors examined the role of language and discourse when conducting counter-hegemonic research with people who are predominantly privileged and within institutions designed to reproduce those privileges, and found that their strategic use of language to broadly define bullying helped us capture interesting data and interrupt power.
Abstract: Rooted in feminist philosophy, critical race theory, and participatory action research (PAR), I partnered with four faculty and four students at an elite, private, college preparatory day school for boys in order to examine bullying. In this article I closely examine the role of language and discourse when conducting counter hegemonic research with people who are predominantly privileged and within institutions designed to reproduce those privileges. I briefly describe the co-construction of our theory and instrument to illustrate that our close attention to language in regards to bullying both helped us understand our work and changed how we went about conducting the study. I describe how our strategic use of language to broadly define bullying helped us capture interesting data and interrupt power. And finally, I discuss our political use of language to others and suggest that while it paved a safer space for us to conduct our work it also may have restricted our work from having the power to resist co-optation and promote sustainable, systemic change.
TL;DR: This paper examined theoretical linkages between Anzaldua's borderland scholarship and participatory action research, in particular the notion of mestiza consciousness, and two studies with high school and college co-researchers falling along different points of the PAR spectrum.
Abstract: This paper examines theoretical linkages between Anzaldua’s borderland scholarship, in particular the notion of mestiza consciousness, and participatory action research. Two studies with high school and college co-researchers falling along different points of the PAR spectrum are described to illustrate these conceptual linkages. Points in the process including critical decisions in crafting questions and conducting actions, reflections on who are the knowledge holders and producers, and struggles with responsibilities and vulnerabilities doing this work, are discussed through a lens of mestiza consciousness.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that current efforts at reform are maintaining historical inequities, while also depriving those that enjoy social and economic advantages of the education needed to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing world.
Abstract: We offer a theoretical and ecological argument for the preparation of citizens in U.S. public schools. This democratic education draws legitimacy from the concern of the nations founders for a populace educated to govern itself. We also emphasize the need for new democratic skills and knowledge in the face of today’s challenges, and our responsibility to prepare the young for the 21st century. A critique of the current school reform movement is provided because of its undemocratic nature. We issue a call for the transformation to democratic schools. We specifically argue that current efforts at reform are maintaining historical inequities, while also depriving those that enjoy social and economic advantages of the education needed to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing world. The democratic education proposed is based on three goals: citizenship preparation, inclusion, and an optimum learning environment. Seven well established principles of democracy and their relationship to schooling are presented. These include; the nature of authority, inclusiveness, equal availability of the understanding required for deliberating the most serious challenges to democracy and livability, equal access to centers of political decision-making, guaranteed inalienable rights, equality, and universal access to an optimum learning environment. We offer a fundamentally different approach to educational reform: calling for a reassessment of the role of public schools in a democracy that recognizes the importance of citizenship preparation, and a “bottom up” reform model that starts in the classroom and can be implemented by individual teachers.
TL;DR: This paper explored the experiences of new teachers in urban schools at the intersection of three major policy agendas (alternative certification, new teacher retention, and small schools movement) and examined alternatively certified teachers' perceptions of the rewards and challenges of teaching in small schools, the support neophyte teachers seek and receive in these unique educational settings, and the reality of small school implementation in a modern urban environment.
Abstract: In this study we explore the experiences of new teachers in urban schools at the intersection of three major policy agendas—alternative certification, new teacher retention, and the small schools movement. We examine alternatively certified teachers’ perceptions of the rewards and challenges of teaching in small schools, the support neophyte teachers seek and receive in these unique educational settings, and the reality of small school implementation in a modern urban environment. The findings have implications for policy-makers, urban school reformers, teacher educators and professional developers, administrators and teachers working to create and implement effective policy for twenty-first century urban schools.
TL;DR: The authors conducted a survey with teachers in two poor, urban districts during the 2005-2006 academic year and found that teachers reported a variety of positive and negative views regarding their classrooms, their students, and the students' social worlds.
Abstract: This article discusses urban educators’ views of their teaching experiences. The article is based upon survey research conducted with teachers in two poor, urban districts during the 2005–2006 academic year. The teachers reported a variety of positive and negative views regarding their classrooms, their students, and the students’ social worlds. The data illustrate the importance of classroom processes for the teachers, and how they believed that their students’ social locations, behaviors, and attitudes impede the delivery of educational content. We believe this research raises interesting challenges regarding the need for urban educators to incorporate students’ perspectives into both instructional processes and curriculum content. Furthermore, this research should contribute to the empirical foundation needed for the creation of better teacher preparation programs.
TL;DR: In this paper, a qualitative study examines the collaboration and leadership practice that influences the education of homeless students in a large Mid-Atlantic city and the perspectives of administrators and staff members from three homeless shelters are analyzed with insights from Spillane's distributed leadership theory.
Abstract: This qualitative study examines the collaboration and leadership practice that influences the education of homeless students in a large Mid-Atlantic city. The perspectives of administrators and staff members from three homeless shelters are analyzed with insights from Spillane’s (Distributed leadership, 2006) distributed leadership theory. Findings from the study indicate that differences in shelter and school structures and cultures present significant obstacles to productive communication that would facilitate homeless children’s schooling. Several structural and programmatic recommendations are made towards developing more effective leadership practice among schools and shelters.
TL;DR: The authors examined instantiations of literacy instruction in the shadow of the late activist poet June Jordan and with the support of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker, focusing on culturally responsive pedagogy to understand not only their work but also the work of teachers and other educators.
Abstract: This article builds upon more than 6 years of critical research in urban schools in northern California to offer a particular perspective on teaching for social justice. Concerned with prevailing issues in adolescent literacy, this article examines instantiations of literacy instruction in the shadow of the late activist poet June Jordan and with the support of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker. It focuses on culturally responsive pedagogy to understand not only their work but also the work of teachers and other educators. Central to the discussion are two kinds of pedagogical innovations, one based on a school-community partnership and the other a district-wide sponsored writing contest. Implications for classroom practice and key lessons useful for teachers interested in similar work are also discussed.
TL;DR: In this paper, an ethnographic study reveals that small schools size does not always lead to relationship-building between teachers and students, and that teachers need support and training which is currently missing from NCSI's theory of action.
Abstract: This article examines a recent reform effort that has opened hundreds of small high schools in poor urban communities in New York City, The New Century Schools Initiative (NCSI). Founders hoped that the small schools strategy would create personalized environments where relationships could develop between teachers and students, leading to improved outcomes for poor students and students of color. Looking at three of the NCSI high schools in the Bronx, this ethnographic study reveals that small schools size does not always lead to relationship-building between teachers and students. Teachers need support and training which is currently missing from NCSI’s theory of action. The study suggests that NCSI can be strengthened with incentives and support for teachers to develop relationships with their students.
TL;DR: The authors studied 364 narratives about personal experiences with conflict written by urban 4th, 5th, and 6th graders and found a relationship between children's response to conflict and their narrative skills, moral evaluations, and descriptions of emotion, intentions, and mental states.
Abstract: We studied 364 narratives about personal experiences with conflict written by urban 4th, 5th, and 6th graders. Narratives were examined in terms of children’s narrative and perspective-taking skills and the responses to conflict they described. Several features of narrative were reliably coded, including level of violence described in the story, children’s descriptions of internal states, moral evaluations, and responses to conflict. Children described the use of communication as a response to conflict more than any other response. Qualitative analyses revealed a relationship between children’s response to conflict and their narrative skills, moral evaluations, and descriptions of emotion, intentions, and mental states. Children who reported the use of communication in response to conflict wrote stories containing very low levels of violence and also displayed attentiveness to others’ internal states and strong narrative form. In contrast, children whose narratives reported the use of retaliation in response to conflict were unlikely to report about internal states or to display strong narrative form. Recommendations are given for dealing with conflict in the classroom, for focusing on narrative skill development, and for creating a narrative culture within schools.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that this testing approach to school change is based on myths about the role of assessment, the information testing can provide and the impact high stakes testing has on urban schools.
Abstract: Believing that accountability could be a vehicle for change, the California Department of Education (CDE) requires all high school students to pass the Calfornia High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) in order to graduate In doing so, California joins many others states in mandating a high school exit exam as a current or future requirement for graduation In this essay, the authors will argue that this testing approach to school change is based on myths about the role of assessment, the information testing can provide and the impact high stakes testing has on urban schools Although California is the focus of this analysis, these issues are salient across the county Testing as a solution to poor student achievement is based on faulty assumptions It is these assumptions this piece seeks to address
TL;DR: This paper found that notions of street love extend out a critique of community professionals (e.g., community researchers/interventionists, social workers, etc.) as being unable and unwilling to produce real help in the local community.
Abstract: This Participatory Action Research (PAR) project worked with four active street life oriented U. S. Born African men, to document how a community sample of street life oriented U. S. Born African men between the ages of 16–65, frame and use “street life” as a Site of Resiliency (Payne, Dissertation, 2005; Journal of Black Psychology 34(1):3–31, 2008). Qualitative data was collected in the form of 20 individual and two group interviews. These data reveal an inter-generational, conceptualization and use, of the term “street love” in street life oriented U. S. born African men. Also, these data reveal that notions of “street love” extend out a critique of community professionals (e.g., community researchers/interventionists, social workers, etc.) as being unable and unwilling to produce “real help” in the local community. Examples of street love, revealed in the study, include the men offering advice/counsel, money or “free turkeys” during Thanksgiving to one another as well as other members of the local community. Results support Payne’s (2005) three-dimension conceptualization of “street love”: (1) individual, (2) group and (3) communal level expressions of “street love”.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on the experiences of Leila, Maricela, and Esperanza who were three sixth-grade girls actively recruited by their teachers to attend the district's magnet school program for their upcoming seventh grade-year instead of their neighborhood middle school.
Abstract: Drawing on data collected during the second year of a longitudinal qualitative study that followed over 10 Latino/a bilingual students, this article foregrounds the experiences of participants during their sixth-grade year. The principle data sources included structured and unstructured interviews with teachers and students, school observations, and weekly small-group conversations in a courtyard outside of their classrooms. We focus on the experiences of Leila, Maricela, and Esperanza who were three of the sixth-grade girls actively recruited by their teachers to attend the district’s magnet school program for their upcoming seventh grade-year instead of their neighborhood middle school. We found that much of the reasoning behind their decision-making process centered around issues of status (e.g., how the magnet school offered better academic, economic, and professional opportunities for their future) and solidarity (e.g., attending the neighborhood school with their friends and siblings). In conclusion, we problematize the very nature of these so-called educational ‘choices’ for bilingual Latino/a youth.
TL;DR: The authors studied the ways administrators and teachers at an urban middle school worked to create a relational web, a system that supported multiple connection points across the school community, including codes of practice, grouping strategies, organizational structures and discourses of diversity.
Abstract: This article looks closely at the ways in which administrators and teachers at an urban middle school worked to create a relational web; that is, a system that supported multiple connection points across the school community. As such, it illustrates and analyzes four strands of this web including codes of practice, grouping strategies, organizational structures, and discourses of diversity. Taken collectively, these strands helped to develop and sustain relationships within and across the school, and worked to define the character of the school. Because of the opportunities that become possible through the enactment of such a web, I argue that it can play a critical role in creating an asset-based school community. This article is based on ethnographic data collected over a year and a half (2001-2002), including interview and focus group transcripts with administrators, teachers, and students; fieldnotes taken during class, meeting, and free times; and curricular and administrative materials gathered from across the school.
TL;DR: This article explored how incarcerated youth and adult supervisors contest claims to identity via language of representing, and explored the constrained universe of discourse within which both groups work to express identities and on the basis of which we counsel, mentor, and educate young people.
Abstract: This article explores how incarcerated youth and adult supervisors contest claims to identity via language of “representing”. Comparing how youth and adults “represent” in discussions of their own past and future selves sheds light on the constrained universe of discourse within which both groups work to express identities and on the basis of which we counsel, mentor, and educate young people. Acknowledging these constraints can contribute to understanding what I call exceptionalism—the idea that only exceptional poor and raced young men, through great personal effort and sacrifice, may resist the lure of the “street”. I conclude by discussing implications of this work for education and youth development work both inside and beyond the juvenile justice system as well as for research across lines of difference by committed “outsiders”.