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This research addresses the guiding autoethnographic question: "What three key institutional incidents/conditions inform my Black scholar-activism for predominantly White education in this historical moment?" Moreover, it applies autoethnography to illuminate three key incidents/conditions involving: (1) predominantly White undergraduates; (2) top-level predominately White male university administrators; and (3) White school community leaders in this historical moment (i.e. within the last 4 years). The research is organized to begin with a new poem and proceed to illuminate: (a) the current, observed historical context, (b) the application of critical race theory for illuminating my lived experiences of this context, (c) the rationale for applying autoethnography in this research, and (d) the three key incidents/conditions. It concludes by returning to the guiding question, critical race theory, related implications and rationales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite questions about autoethnography in the ethnography and education research family, autoethnography is published in selective peer-reviewed journals in education and in the social and health sciences. Even critics of autoethnographic studies note their ‘rising acceptance in the past 15 years’ [Delamont, S. 2009. “The Only Honest Thing: Autoethnography, Reflexivity and Small Crises in Fieldwork.”Ethnography and Education4 (1): 51–63]. However, there has been less effort towards qualitative meta-synthesis to learn what other insights might be gained from collections of studies. With the advent of meta-autoethnography [Ellis, C. 2009.Revision: Autoethnographic Reflections of Life and Work. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press], each author can find a way to synthesise her/his own autoethnographic works, however, synthesising autoethnographies of different authors has received no attention. This article examines a critical, systematic approach to the meta-ethnography of autoethnographies and offers a worked example of the method using educational studies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There is a long history indicating that during times of reform, the interests and needs of Black children are in many ways dismissed. This history culminated in 1990’s to what is described today as the ‘Math Wars.’ The underlying narrative focuses on America’s national security, technological interests, social efficiency, and the perpetuation of White privilege. There are intense debates focusing on curriculum, teaching, learning, and assessment but little debates on understanding the realities of children’s lives. Through a hybrid historical-critical race theory (CRT) lens informed largely by the work of Derrick Bell, this article makes the case that Black children have not benefited from reform agendas in mathematics which are often situated in the larger political and social space. Moreover, the CRT analysis coupled with the historical critical methods of this article attempt to unveil the underpinning of the ‘mathematics for all’ message, often touted in policy documents, as having done little to understand that influence of mathematics teaching and learning for Black children. The article also draws from Bell’s work to offer counter-narratives through examples of the brilliance of the Black children who are thriving with mathematics, even within a context that tends to ignore them. The article concludes with implications for considering and addressing what we name the ‘opportunity to learn mathematics gap.’ [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The late Professor Derrick Bell is renowned as the intellectual architect who drafted the blueprints that guided the initial development of critical race theory (CRT). Prior to the advent of CRT, Professor Bell wrote extensively on initiatives designed to improve the lives of African Americans. Among his most influential scholarship, ‘Serving Two Masters’ from the 1976Yale Law Reviewemerged as a seminal foundational piece for CRT. We found that Bell’s post-Brownlitigation and frustrations were captured in several powerful law review journals from 1970–1976. During this time, he wrote extensively on minority admissions programs, school litigation strategies, racial remediation, equal employment, and of course theBrowndecision and its aftermath. These early works attended to the details of how legal remediation for racism in various forms could be considered and approached, but more often were ignored and denied. These same works showed the contradictions built into legal strategies. By working through the details of specific racial remediation strategies, Derrick Bell realized the ubiquity of the negative influences of post-Brownintegration goals in all aspects of African American life, including the law. His seminal 1976Yale Law Reviewpiece emerged not from theory, per se, but from very specific engagements with reasoning about post-Brownpolicies and practices that failed to serve the interests of most African American families. For Bell, hope seemed to wax and wane as clarity emerged. This article analyses Bell’s law review articles that were published between 1970 and 1976, when he began full-fledged writing that ultimately provided a blueprint for the CRT movement in the academy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we attempt to honor the rich legacy of Derrick Bell by detailing how exploring his specific contributions to critical race theory (CRT) provided lessons for developing and refining critical race pedagogy (CRP). We examine Bell’s racial realism thesis in connection with his pedagogical work. In doing so, we find that he was as committed to developing a ‘community-based’ law classroom as he was to articulating a strong critique of the law (Radice 1991). As part of his teaching philosophy, Bell wrote extensively about the value and importance of a student-centered humanist pedagogy (Bell 1980, 1982, 1997; Bell and Edmonds 1993; Delgado and Stefancic 2005). We draw parallels between Bell’s humanist student-centered pedagogy and the tenets of CRP as a way to expand the accessibility of this framework. Finally, as the ultimate homage to the work of Derrick Bell, we end with a futuristic mini-chronicle that takes place in a school district boardroom. The chronicle features a fictitious character who happens to be a distant relative of Bell’s. As we will discuss, we believe that the use of chronicles and storytelling hold the possibility for helping us to name extant challenges and illuminate further possibilities of CRP as a tool for battling globalized oppression at the intersection of race, class, gender and sexuality in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to revisit Brown as a paradigmatic understanding of social justice and its barriers, by reconsidering Brown in light of the three moral pillars of democracy identified by Cornel West (2004). West maintains that authentic deep democracy is grounded in three fundamental capacities and dispositions, or pillars: (a) Socratic questioning, (b) a prophetic commitment to justice, and (c) tragicomic hope. West's articulation of these pillars constitutes 20 a philosophical framework for the exploration of the basic demands of justice in a democratic society. These moral pillars can also offer useful insights into this phase of living exploration of Brown and its central place in educational studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Preservice and novice mathematics teachers are often guided to look toward the Internet as a toolbox of good lesson plan templates plans tailored to prepare students for the high-stakes accountability standardized test-driven curriculum that is swee-ping schooling in the United States. This fast paced, win/lose curriculum testing game leaves little time for burgeoning teachers to examine whether means ('appro-ved' or good lesson plans) have the potential to lead to the crucial ends of balancing the democratic rights of individuals with the democratic ideals of intergroup education. The Hughes Two- Phase Evaluation (HTPE) model is introduced here to evaluate plans from Lesson Plan America (a pseudonym for one premier state-endorsed database). Phase I of HTPE implies that an average of two-thirds (67%) of observed third-grade mathematics lesson plans are replete with messages that offer limited attentiveness to canary individuals. Phase II of HTPE suggests a need to re-evaluate such state-endorsed lesson plan databases for possible encroachment upon the democratic ideal education of canary groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the editor discuss the theme of the issue as it is dedicated to late professor Derrick Bell and his contributions to critical race theory (CRT) and education.