Search

This study explores preservice teacher attributions to children's behaviors portrayed in specific emotion-laden school scenarios. Participants included 178 preservice teachers from three universities. The preservice teachers viewed video vignettes of Black and White child actors in six different school scenarios. Our team constructed two themes from the preservice teachers' narratives about what they saw: (a) context matters (i.e., different scenarios activate different preservice teacher attributions), and (b) racialization evolves (i.e., preservice teachers make different attributions about Black and White boys engaged in the same behaviors). Findings underscore the importance of teacher education and professional development for novice teachers that address racial bias in attributions of student behaviors.

This article documents collective memories of the founding, curriculum, and attendees of one of the first (1866) Reconstruction Era Quaker-Freedmen School sites in the Southeastern United States. It applies critical oral history methodology including the collection of primary documents, previous investigations into the school, and interviews of community elders. Through the close study of the school's history, including the present quest for official historical memorialization, this investigation accentuates how Whiteness as property remains across generations and contexts. What began as a historical investigation of the school necessarily evolved as an analysis of the complications in race relations in the observed college town.

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.

The author's former College of Education encouraged faculty to implement pedagogy that responded fully to the needs of citizens in diverse situations, including the urban, metropolitan community they served. Such a vision requires, by default, a sincere effort to change or "reform" schools. Research endeavors involving the social and historical contexts of education (e.g., Hughes, 2006a; Milner, 2003; Noblit & Dempsey, 1996; Valenzuela, 1999) suggest that any sincere and sustainable school reform effort must necessarily begin with critical reflexivity and subsequent individual and collective action. Results of this research also suggest that such an effort must involve a transformative caring agent to disrupt oppressive experiences and narratives of race, while remaining "intimately cognizant of the necessary intersection of ...class and gender" (Jennings & Lynn, 2005, p. 26). This article addresses how autoethnography may contribute to this effort by illustrating a promising connection of autoethnography to "critical race pedagogy" (CRP) (Jennings & Lynn, 2005) in graduate teacher education. The remaining text discusses: (1) the theoretical framework of "critical race pedagogy" and its challenges for traditional caring; (2) autoethnography and its extant connection to pedagogy; and (3) evidence and concluding thoughts regarding how the author, one Black male professor from a working poor background, connects autoethnography to "critical race pedagogy" along with a White graduate-level, urban high school English teacher named "Maggie" (pseudonym). The connection of autoethnography to critical race pedagogy is illustrated through interwoven narratives of race-, class-, and gender-related struggles and hopes voiced by Maggie and the author.

The specific purpose of this article is twofold. First, the article addresses critical teaching and learning evident in two generations of one nuanced Black family, the Foresight family, who appear to be surviving and thriving during and after the Freedom of Choice era of rural public schooling. The phrase "nuanced Black family" is intended to reflect the subtle degrees of difference in pedagogic meaning, feeling, tone, and action that may separate one Black family from another. Second, the article delves further to consider their critical teaching and learning at home within the framework of Oppressed Family Pedagogy. It explores a deceiving, and yet distinct political discursive innovation of the Post-Brown era and how one oppressed family is teaching and learning to overcome that deception by cultivating counter discursive efforts at home. The counter discursive narratives of this nuanced Black family exist in ways that could expand the purview of the possibilities of critical pedagogy as approached in the ethnographic work of "Educational Foundations." (Contains 1 chart and 1 note.)

Rationale: Family caregivers of patients with acute cardiorespiratory failure are at high risk for distress, which is typically defined as the presence of psychological symptoms such as anxiety, depression, or posttraumatic stress. Interventions to reduce caregiver distress and increase wellness have been largely ineffective to date. An incomplete understanding of caregiver wellness and distress may hinder efforts at developing effective support interventions. Objectives: To allow family caregivers to define their experiences of wellness and distress 6 months after patient intensive care unit (ICU) admission and to identify moderators that influence wellness and distress. Methods: Primary family caregivers of adult patients admitted to the medical ICU with acute cardiorespiratory failure were invited to participate in a semistructured interview 6 months after ICU admission as part of a larger prospective cohort study. Interview guides were used to assess caregiver perceptions of their own well-being, record caregiver descriptions of their experiences of family caregiving, and identify key stress events and moderators that influenced well-being during and after the ICU admission. This study was guided by the Chronic Traumatic Stress Framework conceptual model, and data were analyzed using the five-step framework approach. Results: Among 21 interviewees, the mean age was 58 years, 67% were female, and 76% were White. Nearly half of patients (47%) had died before the caregiver interview. At the time of the interview, 9 caregivers endorsed an overall sense of distress, 10 endorsed a sense of wellness, and 2 endorsed a mix of both. Caregivers defined their experiences of wellness and distress as multidimensional and composed of four main elements: 1) positive versus negative physical and psychological outcomes, 2) high versus low capacity for self-care, 3) thriving versus struggling in the caregiving role, and 4) a sense of normalcy versus ongoing life disruption. Postdischarge support from family, friends, and the community at large played a key role in moderating caregiver outcomes. Conclusions: Caregiver wellness and distress are multidimensional and extend beyond the absence or presence of psychological outcomes. Future intervention research should incorporate novel outcome measures that include elements of self-efficacy, preparedness, and adaptation and optimize postdischarge support for family caregivers. [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 Education" 4 (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.

Justice Goodwin Liu reexamined seminal affirmative action in higher education legal cases beginning with the landmark 1978 case, "Regents of the University of California v. Bakke" and leading up to the U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 decision in "Gratz v. Bollinger." Liu argued that the "Bakke and Gratz" lawsuits were grounded in an underlying causation fallacy, largely because neither case involved enough applicants of color to change the likelihood of Bakke's and Gratz's admittance. Recent lawsuits from self-identified White and Asian, rejected applicants have emerged against top-ranked universities. This article revisits Liu's assertions by applying his critical approach to those cases. Data indicate too few applicants of color to change the likelihood of recent plaintiffs' admittance. Concluding arguments name Causation Fallacy 2.0 as a useful tool for explaining the cultural politics of race surrounding affirmative action admissions cases.

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."

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.

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 1976 "Yale Law Review" emerged as a seminal foundational piece for CRT. We found that Bell's post-"Brown" litigation 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 the "Brown" decision 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-"Brown" integration goals in all aspects of African American life, including the law. His seminal 1976 "Yale Law Review" piece emerged not from theory, per se, but from very specific engagements with reasoning about post-"Brown" policies 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.

This manuscript begins by distinguishing the common structural and cultural arguments that tend to guide popular urban achievement gap research. It highlights Jencks and Phillips, and Payne, as two cases of popular texts followed by critical responses to them. It concludes by imagining a compass to guide burgeoning scholars toward reading into research "more complexly" so as to enhance and proliferate critiques of popular cultural and structural arguments and to dissuade abrupt, myopic, and polemic responses. (Contains 2 tables, 1 figure and 3 notes.)

This article uses critical theoretical methods to reconsider the potential of "Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka" in urban education. It finds "Brown" as a potentially useful tool for coconstructing critical race pedagogy of hope that involves (a) Socratic questioning of the endemic nature of racism and power dynamics of public education and the political discursive innovations of "Brown"; (b) a commitment to justice in urban education for all stakeholders, including stakeholders representing injustices linking race to class and gender; and (c) tragicomic hope--locating, critiquing, and ultimately engaging the action of hope to sustain participation in the struggle for distributive justice in public education.

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.

Educational research suggests that the response biases of educators can negatively influence student performance and aptitude (Blanchett 2006; Bloom 2001; Darity et al. 2001; Gordon 2005; and Skiba et al. 2000). This article introduces "good enough methods" for autoethnography as an alternative approach to this problem. Luttrell (2000, 13) conceptualizes "good enough methods" researchers as those seeking to understand and appreciate difference and accept errors often made because of their blind spots and intense involvement. Evidence of this approach via autoethnography is provided here from cases of graduate student-practitioners and their Intergroup/Intercultural Education professor. Moreover, the article highlights (a) a connection of autoethnography to research in Education, (b) five key decisions of a "good enough methods" approach to autoethnography, and (c) how this approach can be applied to expose and address educator biases relating to "the matrix" (Hill-Collins 1990) of race, class, and gender. (Contains 1 note.)

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 sweeping schooling in the United States. This fast paced, win/lose curriculum testing game leaves little time for burgeoning teachers to examine whether means ("approved" 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". (Contains 1 table.)

North Carolina's Mathematics Science Education Network (MSEN) pre-college program, which began in 1986, exposes predominantly African American sixth- through twelfth-grade students to mathematics- and science-based courses and careers. The state of North Carolina spent $414.42 per pupil per year (a total of $387,897) during the median four-year period that the 234 African Americans in the 1998-1999 graduating class were in the program. The cost of sending these students through the program for four years was weighed against the projected net benefits of those who are expected to enroll and/or graduate from college and work in North Carolina. Results indicate that it takes six to seven years for the estimated net benefits from the projected 38 college enrollees and graduates to exceed the program costs for their class. In fact, the net benefits of MSEN are likely to increase as long as the class members stay and work in the state. (Contains 4 charts and 10 footnotes.)