A Response to 'Seeking Equality of Educational Outcomes for Black Students: A Personal Account' -- A Sociological Perspective

As sociologists with a keen interest in supporting anti-racist research and educational initiatives, Dr. Taylor's paper providing Stuart Whigham and Jason Arday with an engaging and insightful interest to a contrasting disciplinary approach to achieving equality in educational outcomes for Black students through her psychologically-informed analysis. They laud her commitment her to a theoretically-driven account of her attempts to enact anti-racist practice in her field of work, with an illuminating analysis of the potential utility of Ryan and Deci's (2000) 'self-determination theory' to frame her emergent findings. Furthermore, Dr. Taylor's willingness to both acknowledge and share her privileged position as a White female within her academic field and, in particular, her appreciation of the importance of adopting a reflexive position within the course of her engagement with her Black student population and research participants. Therefore, they found Dr. Taylor's work to be a highly informative account which demonstrates the clear utility of a psychological approach to the issue at hand, their response to the paper will attempt to illustrate the contrasting benefits of a sociological analysis of the emergent data and issues accounted for in Taylor's paper. In this article, they hope to demonstrate the benefits of a multi-disciplinary approach to the study of racism and anti-racism in education, thus engaging with Dr. Taylor's account in a constructive yet contrasting analytical dialogue. [For the original article, "Seeking Equality of Educational Outcomes for Black Students: A Personal Account," see EJ1316951.]