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This systematic review of literature on race in rural educational scholarship addresses the research question: "How are race and racism typically represented (defined, discussed) in rural education literature? And two subquestions: What factors have been explored at length in regard to race and racism? and Where are the predominant gaps in the research literature? In answering these questions we reviewed literature published in three rural education journals from 2001-2022 and used a systematic approach to the data collection, extraction, and analysis. The overall findings about race yielded four themes: Race as--" descriptor, located within a racial hierarchy, socially constructed, and an element of diversity/race as multicultural/cultural. "Similarly, the overall findings about racism yielded three themes: Racism as--" systemic and institutional, a factor, and structural. "These themes provided an organizing framework to discuss the findings from the relevant studies. Each theme included the citation of articles representing the theme and illustrations of each theme. This approach allowed for a comprehensive display of what themes arose while also providing examples of how these constructs were articulated within the scholarship review. We then used CRT to analyze the overall findings related to race and racism focusing on two tenets, social construction theory, and colorevasiveness. We end with a call to increase focus on research that disrupts white supremacy, examines structural and institutional racism as it operates in rural education, and takes race-conscious approaches to research in rural scholarship."

In this paper the co-authors discuss and describe the challenges of community engaged scholarship. Using an ongoing long-term project about the school prison nexus as an exemplar, the authors propose ways that EdD student DiP's can be connected with the community. Lessons learned and implications for other EdD programs are shared.

The state takeover of schools in predominantly Black communities has not disrupted the racial subjugation of Black girls. Using proportional analyses and Detroit, Memphis, and New Orleans as research sites, we find that the takeover of school districts does not produce statistically weaker associations with the use of harsh disciplinary practices against Black girls. This finding is important in the context of education reform, as researchers begin to question the motives and outcomes of education reforms. Moreover, this study is important to literature that considers the civil rights that Black communities must forego for the promise of better schools. Finally, this finding is relevant to extant conversations in urban education, especially as those conversations consider the school-to-prison pipeline and disparate disciplinary outcomes for Black girls.

This research article explores the socio-historical and contemporary context of Black home education within the Black Belt of the American South through a literature review. This literature review aims to uncover the historical evolution, socio-cultural dynamics, and contemporary challenges and opportunities associated with Black home education in this region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reframing notions of parent involvement (being present in the school building) to parent engagement (viewing multiple constructions of how parents are involved) is the purpose of this paper. The authors highlight the knowledge gained from data collected from a series of family and staff focus groups regarding parent and staff perceptions of barriers to family involvement and from families' suggestions as to what could be done differently to increase engagement. Using applied thematic analysis, five themes common to both families and staff are discussed: providing opportunities for involvement, improving communication, welcoming families into the building, making time, and moving from involvement to engagement. Findings show that, generally, parents and school staff agree on barriers to parent involvement but offer contrasting solutions. While parent solutions directly address the barriers identified and support parent engagement, staff frequently offered disconnected solutions, reiterating parent involvement--the necessity of parents being present in the building, rather than parent engagement--multiple constructions of how parents are involved.

African American students are being suspended/expelled at a greater rate than their peers, a phenomenon that scholars have come to call the "discipline gap." As the gap has grown, so have instances of African American student suspension and expulsion for "defiance." This article offers a revision of the Baker framework, which troubles deficit notions of overrepresentation in the disciplinary category of defiance by offering a different conceptualization of African American students being labeled defiant. The author argues that the very acts classified as defiant are often a response to microaggressions. A framework is presented to explain why African American students are overrepresented in terms of suspension/expulsion for defiance.

In this conceptual article, we posit that Black life matters in the Black Belt of the American South. We connect two current trends in rural educational research--a return to questions of place and sincere attention to race as a crucial conversation in the field--and provide readers with an introduction to Black Geography as a means to inform rural education research. By offering this theoretical lens, we hope to build capacity in the field to take on inquiries related to spatial and educational equity issues related to race in rural education. Taking our queues from McKittrick, we present four areas as lines of inquiry for rural educational research: (a) interrogating quantitative research designs, (b) creating critical topographies of local geography and history, (c) mapping education policy and implementation, and (d) collecting stories about the educational debt owed to Black students. We invite rural educational scholars to consider concepts from Black Geography and employ these lines of inquiry in order to ask better research questions, strengthen research designs, and enhance the contributions drawn from research findings. We view these lines of inquiry as holding the potential for humanizing rural educational spaces by centering Black livingness within the Black Belt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been widely documented that the characteristics of behavior, students, and schools all make a contribution to school discipline outcomes. The purpose of this study is to report on a multilevel examination of variables at these three levels to identify the relative contributions of type of behavior, student demographic variables, and school characteristics to rates of and racial disparities in out-of-school suspension and expulsion. Results indicated that variables at all three levels made a contribution to the odds of being suspended or expelled. Type of behavior and previous incidents at the behavioral level; race, gender and to a certain extent SES at the individual level; and percent Black enrollment, school achievement levels, and principal perspectives on discipline at the school level all made a contribution to the probability of out-of- school suspension or expulsion. For racial disparities in discipline, however, school level variables, including principal perspective on discipline, appear to be stronger predictors of disproportionality in suspension and expulsion than either behavioral or individual characteristics. These results indicate that school suspension and expulsion are not simply an inevitable result of student misbehavior, but are rather determined by a complex set of factors, including irrelevant factors such as race, and the school principal’s belief in the necessity of suspension and expulsion. For racial disparities in particular, these results suggest that a focus, in policy and practice, on changing characteristics of the way schools carry out discipline may be the course most likely to reduce inequity in school suspension and expulsion.

Compared to all other options, homeschooling provides parents with the most control over their children’s educational experiences. The COVID-19 pandemic led to a surge in the U.S. homeschool population. Black families had the largest increase in home educators from 3.3% to 16.1% between April 2020 and October 2020. The emerging literature on Black home education has focused almost entirely on urban areas. This paper presents findings from a pilot study designed to begin to address the omission of rural setting representation in Black home education research literature. This qualitative study employed conceptual frameworks that value Black women’s ways of knowing (e.g., Black Feminist Theory, Endarkened Feminist Epistemologies, and Critical Race Theory) to emphasize the role of participating mothers who represented a single-parent household or a household where the mother maintained primary responsibility for the home education of children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of a national conversation about exclusionary discipline, we conducted a multilevel examination of the relative contributions of infraction, student, and school characteristics to rates of and racial disparities in out-of-school suspension and expulsion. Type of infraction; race, gender, and to a certain extent socioeconomic status at the individual level; and, at the school level, mean school achievement, percentage Black enrollment, and principal perspectives all contributed to the probability of out-of-school suspension or expulsion. For racial disparities, however, school-level variables, including principal perspectives on discipline, appear to be among the strongest predictors. Such a pattern suggests that schools and districts looking to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in discipline would do well to focus on school-and classroom-based interventions.

Educational research and public narratives decry the urgent need to strengthen the preparation of teachers who work in urban schools. This article offers a critical analysis of the authors' course as a material response to a need to radically reimagine how we prepare teachers, presenting a Critical Race Praxis approach that focuses on the social construction of race. In an attempt to move theory into practice this article describes and analyzes approaches used to counter the whiteness of teaching in a diversity course. To create a picture of what these countermoves might look like in action, the authors share stories from a pilot project. Three pedagogical approaches were conceptualized and implemented: diversity by design, reflective practice and relational learning. The article discusses relevant literature for developing these pedagogical approaches. Then, we provide a snapshot of ourselves as teacher-researchers and motherscholars, and the context of the GHS221 project. Next, we offer our framework for counter-movements against the white racial frame. Finally, we offer lessons learned to scholars and teacher educators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]