Education Commons^™

The Santa Ana Youth Media Project: Ypar And Media Advocacy, Jorge F. Rodriguez

Education Faculty Articles and Research

The Santa Ana Youth Media Project (SAYMP) was born during the summer of 2019 and grew from a need, expressed by youth, for more critical media literacy that could further amplify and focus on narratives that reflect how youth navigate their personal, cultural-social, and economic environments. Our media projects consist of intentional participative research and journalistic designs that document stories using tools such as narrative inquiry, Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) and video/media production to visually capture the narratives of youth and community within the city of Santa Ana and its larger Orange County context. Our goal is to develop …

Are Deficit Perspectives Thriving In Trauma-Informed Schools? A Historical And Anti-Racist Reflection, Cora Palma, Annmary S. Abdou, Scot Danforth, Amy Jane Griffiths

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Mental health research concerning adverse childhood experiences and neurocognitive trauma has prompted many school districts to pursue the development of trauma-informed schools that attend specifically to the emotional and instructional needs of affected students. Researchers and practitioners are fast proliferating trauma-informed professional practices. Given research findings indicating disproportionate impacts of trauma on students of color and those living in poverty, in this article, we examine the risks of trauma-informed educational programs reanimating cultural deficit theories from the 1960s about marginalized students and families. Educators are challenged to thoughtfully fortify trauma-informed schooling by increasing awareness of deficit perspectives and incorporating critical …

Nurturing Cultural Humility And Responsiveness Through Restorative Pedagogy In Graduate Education, Annmary S. Abdou, Kris T. De Pedro, Arantxa De Anda, Ivette Merced, Karen Mao

Education Faculty Articles and Research

In an increasingly diverse world that is characterized by significant social and educational inequities, the development of educators and leaders who embody cultural humility and culturally responsive practices is necessary and transformational. Moving beyond individual and deficit-centered models of student support systems towards ecological and relational paradigms of education are critical to the goals of equity and justice. In order to make progress on these goals, training programs must prioritize and embed the values of cultural humility and culturally responsive practice as foundational constructs for future educators. This multi-authored reflective paper describes the use of Restorative Pedagogy, an approach grounded …

Ever-Present “Illegality:” How Political Climate Impacts Undocumented Latinx Parents’ Engagement In Students’ Postsecondary Access And Success, Stephany Cuevas

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Using the ecological systems theory, this study highlights the significant impact the political climate in the United States (i.e., anti-immigrant sentiments and violence) has on undocumented Latinx parents’ engagement in their children’s education. Drawing from a larger qualitative, interview-based study that explored how undocumented Latinx parents were involved and engaged in their children’s postsecondary access and success (Cuevas, 2019; 2020), this study focuses on undocumented parents’ experiences and processing of the 2016 Presidential Election. Findings illustrate how the explicit racist, anti-immigrant, and nativist narratives then-Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump campaigned under and won forced undocumented Latinx parents to (re)evaluate how …

Challenging Whiteness At Claremont High School, Terri Nicol Watson, Angel Miles Nash

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Ebony Wright was slated to graduate from Claremont High School in the spring. She was on the honor roll, captain of the girls’ varsity softball and swim teams, and recently awarded an academic scholarship to attend a highly ranked university in the fall. Ebony was a “model” student. How she found herself sitting in the principal’s office several weeks before graduation was a shock to everyone. This case study challenges the function of whiteness in school policies. Aspiring school and teacher leaders are provided with the opportunity to consider the impact of a seemingly race-neutral school dress code policy.

I’M Every Woman: Advancing The Intersectional Leadership Of Black Women School Leaders As Anti-Racist Praxis, April L. Peters, Angel Miles Nash

Education Faculty Articles and Research

The rallying, clarion call to #SayHerName has prompted the United States to intentionally include the lives, voices, struggles, and contributions of Black women and countless others of her ilk who have suffered and strived in the midst of anti-Black racism. To advance a leadership framework that is rooted in the historicity of brilliance embodied in Black women’s educational leadership, and their proclivity for resisting oppression, we expand on intersectional leadership. We develop this expansion along three dimensions of research centering Black women’s leadership: the historical foundation of Black women’s leadership in schools and communities, the epistemological basis of Black women’s …

For Us: Towards An Intersectional Leadership Conceptualization By Black Women For Black Girls, Angel Miles Nash, April L. Peters

Education Faculty Articles and Research

This article is based on a STEM education case study that illumines the work that three Black women school leaders do specifically on behalf of Black girls, and in examining their asset-based approaches, conceptualises their work by articulating an intersectional leadership framework. By historicising and explicating the rich legacy of Black women school leaders, and specifically including the theoretical dispositions in which their pedagogy is rooted, we shine a light on the lacuna that exists in educational leadership that specifically articulates their praxes when working on behalf of students with whom they identify – that is, Black girls. Black women …

Change-Makers: A Grassroots Approach To Culturally Responsive Leadership And Teaching, Abigail Amoako Kayser, Angel Miles Nash, Brian Kayser

Education Faculty Articles and Research

While achievement and opportunity gaps and systemic racism exist in the majority of school districts across the United States, not every school district authentically acknowledges and addresses these issues. In this case study, researchers examine a PreK–12 school district situated in a racially and economically diverse mid-Atlantic city in which race- and class-based discrimination have been well documented and recent episodes of extreme racial violence have affected the community. The school district, which employs 1,300 teachers and serves over 14,000 students, developed and implemented a grassroots approach by forming a district-wide culturally responsive leadership team. Through interviews with 10 culturally …

Culturally Responsive Interviewing Practices, Michael Hass, Annmary S. Abdou

Education Faculty Articles and Research

As communities and school populations continue to become more culturally, economically, and linguistically diverse, the need for comprehensive training and explicit guidelines for culturally responsive school mental health practices also grows. School Psychologists are both expected and ethically responsible to competently assess and serve diverse student and family populations, regardless of potential language or cultural barriers. The current article is focused on describing background and rationale for culturally responsive interviewing practices as they pertain to the roles and responsibilities of School Psychologists. Building on the guidelines and principles of the Cultural Formulation Interview (CFI), developed by the American Psychiatric Association, …

“In A Position I See Myself In:” (Re)Positioning Identities And Culturally-Responsive Pedagogies, Noah Asher Golden

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Culturally-responsive pedagogies require moving beyond blanket assumptions about learners to focus deeply on local meaning-makings. This narrative analysis case study examines the ways a 20-year-old African American man challenges the negative educational identity with which he is forced to contend as he navigates a large and complex urban public school system. The ways in which Jamahl, a seeker of a High School Equivalency, refuses interpellation as an uneducated learner destined to be “nothin'” provides insight as to how formal education might be more responsive to learners' negotiation of deficiency discourses. Embracing agency, specifically through awareness of the ways Jamahl employs …

Interview With Peter Mclaren: “Critical Education Must Transform The World”, Javier Collado-Ruano, Peter Mclaren

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Javier Collado-Ruano interviews Peter McLaren about his views on critical pedagogy and how to transform traditional formal education away from capitalist structures.

Math Is More Than Numbers: Beginning Bilingual Teachers’ Mathematics Teaching Practices And Their Opportunities To Learn, Cathery Yeh

Education Faculty Articles and Research

In this article, the author provides results from a 3-year, longitudinal study that examined two novice bilingual teachers’ mathematics teaching practices and their professional opportunities to learn to teach. Primary data sources included videotaped mathematics lessons, teacher interviews, and field notes of their teacher preparation methods courses. Findings revealed that the teachers were oriented toward differing views of learning that shaped how they organized students’ learning of language and mathematics during classroom instruction. While both teachers used similar teaching strategies to support students’ development of mathematics specific literacies, there were variances in how the learners were positioned within the classroom …

Educational Leadership And Social Justice In The United States, Margaret Grogan

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Principals and superintendents of public schools are under intense pressure to raise the level of student academic achievement. The No Child Left Behind Act (2001), mandated the reporting of student test scores disaggregated by race, socio-economic status, English language proficiency, and participation in special education. The aim of the legislation was to eliminate the test score gap between middle class white students and under-represented minorities. However, too many recent graduates still demonstrate very weak literacy and numeracy skills. They are not likely to lead fulfilling lives. School leaders have a moral imperative to address this injustice. Research shows that the …

Pedagogía Crítica Y Decolonial En Tiempos De Trump. Entrevista A Peter Mclaren, Peter Mclaren, Pablo Cortés-Gonzálezener

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Se trata de una entrevista que versa en los siguientes tópicos: Panorama internacional de las políticas sociales y educativas de corte neoliberal y los discursos sociales respecto de las minorías étnicas, identidades y migración; las implicaciones del cambio de discurso en las políticas sociales y educativas hacia los sistemas y modelos educativos; los estudios culturales y la transformación social en América Latina.

This is an interview that deals with the following topics: International panorama of social and educational policies of neoliberal and social discourses regarding ethnic minorities, identities and migration; The implications of the change of discourse in the social …

Pedagogías Críticas Para Nuevos Horizontes Emancipadores, Peter Mclaren

Education Faculty Articles and Research

En una sociedad como la nuestra fuertemente marcada por los efectos de la globalización neoliberal, ¿cuál es el papel de una educación crítica para contribuir a un cambio cultural que acabe con todas las visiones androcéntricas, eurocéntricas y productivistas que tan profundamente han calado en nuestro pensamiento?

‘When I Am Being Rushed It Slows Down My Brain’: Constructing Self-Understandings As A Mathematics Learner, Rachel Lambert

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Understanding learning disabilities (LDs) as constructed through multiple cultural practices including discourse, this paper focuses on a Latino middle school student with a LD named Elijah. This study documents both the discourses and practices used to position Elijah as a mathematics learner, as well as his use of similar discourses as he constructs a complex set of self-understandings as a mathematics learner. Elijah is positioned by discourses that prioritise speed as an indicator of mathematical ability, as well as discourses that construct students with LD as having both intelligence and differences such as processing speed. An analysis of interview and …

Revolutionary Critical Pedagogy: Staking A Claim Against The Macrostructural Unconscious, Peter Mclaren

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Critical pedagogy currently exists today as precariously as a shabby lean-to room added to a typical American hall-and-parlor house. I am referring to the type of house that formed the basic English prototype for the classic American building we see everywhere in New England and on the East Coast. If the hall-and-parlor house represents education in the main, then we critical educators are as rare as hen’s teeth, shunted to the rear of the house, squatters huddled under a slanted roof, wearing fingerless gloves, clutching our tin cups of broth, spearing biscuits and dreaming of the day when we will …

Design, Participation, And Social Change: What Design In Grassroots Spaces Can Teach Learning Scientists, Miguel Zavala

Education Faculty Articles and Research

hile a science of design (and theory of learning) is certainly useful in design-based research, a participatory design research framework presents an opening for learning scientists to rethink design and learning as processes. Grounded in the autoethnographic investigation of a grassroots organization's design of a local campaign, the author traces the successive transformations of design artifacts, delineating a narrative character to design within grassroots spaces. One major lesson is that centering the question of participation is not just about including historically marginalized peoples at the core of design; it has the potential to “desettle” projects at a fundamental level, challenging …

Remaking Selves, Repositioning Selves, Or Remaking Space: An Examination Of Asian American College Students' Processes Of "Belonging", Michelle Samura

Education Faculty Articles and Research

"Only a few studies have examined Asian American students’ sense of belonging (Hsia, 1988; Lee & Davis, 2000; Museus & Maramba, 2010). Scholars who study Asian American college students have suggested that Asian Americans are awkwardly positioned as separate from other students of color vis-à-vis the model minority stereotype (Hsia, 1988; Lee & Davis, 2000). Furthermore, Asian Americans often are viewed as overrepresented on college campuses, yet they remain under-served by campus support programs and resources and overlooked by researchers. Many Asian Americans have gained access to higher education, but the ways in which they belong on campuses is unclear. …

A Latent Class Analysis Of School Climate Among Middle And High School Students In California Public Schools, Kris T. De Pedro, Tamika D. Gilreath, Ruth Berkowitz

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Research has shown that a positive school climate plays a protective role in the social, emotional, and academic development of adolescent youth. Researchers have utilized variable centered measures to assess school climate, which is limited in capturing heterogeneous patterns of school climate. In addition, few studies have systematically explored the role of race and gender in perceived school climate. This study utilizes a latent class approach to assess whether there are discrete classes of school climate in a diverse statewide sample of middle and high school youth. Drawing from the 2009–2011 California Healthy Kids Survey, this study identified four latent …

Cultivating Literacy And Relationships With Adolescent Scholars Of Color, Noah Asher Golden, Erica Womack

Education Faculty Articles and Research

The authors explore strength-based learning projects that value the lived realities and literacies of adolescent scholars of color, setting the stage for the powerful relationships through which meaningful learning happens.

Critical Pedagogy And Participatory Democracy: Creating Classroom Contexts That Challenge “Common Sense”, Lilia D. Monzó, P. Zitlali Morales

Education Faculty Articles and Research

In this response to “The Political Nuances of Narratives and an Urban Educator’s Response,” the authors applaud Pearman’s critical approach to deconstructing and challenging narratives of heroic figures who single-handedly change the world and agree with him that these narratives restrict the sense of agency that may propel citizens to become actively involved in social change efforts. We argue that it is important to question why these narratives exist and to understand them in light of the hegemonic capitalist structure that exploits the masses in service to the capitalist class. Although we agree with Pearman that democracy is best served …

Culturally Responsive Contexts: Establishing Relationships For Inclusion, Mere Berryman, Therese Ford, Ann Nevin, Suzanne Soohoo

Education Faculty Articles and Research

As our education systems become more culturally, ethnically and linguistically diverse, rather than benefiting and learning from each other, we still expect all students to be represented within the same curriculum, pedagogy and testing regimen or we form separate enclaves resulting in marginalizaton. When diverse students have physical and/or learning disabilities, marginalization is further exacerbated and problematized. In this paper, the authors theorise within an alternative framework that we have termed relational and culturally responsive inclusion. Based on key understandings from our own research, much of it derived from Kaupapa Māori and Freirean philosophies, we encourage a framework where establishing …

Constructing And Resisting Disability In Mathematics Classrooms: A Case Study Exploring The Impact Of Different Pedagogies, Rachel Lambert

Education Faculty Articles and Research

This study demonstrates the importance of a critical lens on disability in mathematics educational research. This ethnographic and interview study investigated how ability and disability were constructed over 1 year in a middle school mathematics classroom. Children participated in two kinds of mathematical pedagogy that positioned children differently: procedural and discussion-based. These practices shifted over time, as the teacher increasingly focused on memorization of procedures to prepare for state testing. Two Latino/a children with learning disabilities, Ana and Luis, used multiple cultural practices as resources, mixing and remixing their engagement in and identifications with mathematics. Ana, though mastering the procedural …

Wrestling With Expectations: An Examination Of How Asian American College Students Negotiate Personal, Parental, And Societal Expectations, Michelle Samura

Education Faculty Articles and Research

This research draws on a broader study that situates Asian American college students within larger sociohistorical and political contexts. I examined Asian American college students’ experiences and what it means to be “Asian American” in and through these experiences. Two types of expectations emerged from the data: students’ internal expectations—the expectations that they have for themselves as well as their college and postcollege experiences, and external expectations from family and society. The various ways that students negotiate internal and external expectations translate into particular understandings of freedom and possibility they carry into college. I also discuss students’ precollege racial awareness …

Attitudes Toward Using Social Networking Sites In Educational Settings With Underperforming Latino Youth: A Mixed Methods Study, Keith Howard, Margaret Sauceda Curwen, Nicol R. Howard, Anaida Colon-Muñiz

Education Faculty Articles and Research

The researchers examined the online social networking attitudes of underperforming Latino high school students in an alternative education program that uses technology as the prime venue for learning. A sequential explanatory mixed methods study was used to cross-check multiple sources of data explaining students’ levels of comfort with utilizing a social networking site platform as a supplemental communication tool in connection with their schoolwork. Students were found to be significantly less comfortable using social networking sites than other online communication tools in connection with their schoolwork, and females were significantly more uncomfortable than males using such sites in school.

Con Respeto: A Conceptual Model For Building Healthy Community-University Partnerships Alongside Mexican Migrant Families, Miguel Zavala, Patricia A. Pérez, Alejandro González, Anna Díaz Villela

Education Faculty Articles and Research

In this paper we grapple with the question of how healthy community and university partnerships can be formed in order to support migrant students’ access to higher education. Employing autoethnographic and narrative research, and drawing from our work within the context of the migrant family conference at California State University, Fullerton from 2011 to 2013, we outline a conceptual model for building healthy partnerships. The first section of this paper offers a general overview of the literature on community-university engagement and collaboration as well as provides background information about the migrant farmworker community. The next section puts forward a new …

Culturally Responsive Methodologies At Work In Education Settings, Mere Berryman, Suzanne Soohoo, Ann Nevin, Te Arani Barrett, Therese Ford, Debora Joy Nodelman, Norma Valenzuela, Anna Wilson

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe culturally responsive methodology as a way to develop researchers. The aim is to illuminate the dimensions of culturally responsive methodology such as cultural and epistemological pluralism, deconstruction of Western colonial traditions of research, and primacy of relationships within culturally responsive dialogic encounters. An overarching question is: “How can we maintain the original integrity of both participants and researchers and their respective cultures and co-construct at the same time something new?”

Design/methodology/approach – Five case study narratives are described in order for readers to understand the range and types of studies …

Organizing Against The Neo-Liberal Privatization Of Education In South Los Angeles: Reflections On The Transformative Potential Of Grassroots Research, Miguel Zavala

Education Faculty Articles and Research

This auto/ethnographic study narrates how members of the Association of Raza Educators (ARE), a grassroots teacher-led organization, came together in undertaking action-research within what eventually became a stalled campaign to defend South Los Angeles Elementary from corporate takeover. Most of the work within the campaign involved action-research, including what I term organic popular education. In this paper I analyze the ways in which action-research functions as public pedagogy, further arguing for studies conducted from the vantage point of people immersed in grassroots organizations.

A Wink Or A Nod, Mr. President? A Call For The President’S Consideration Of Race, Lilia D. Monzó, Suzanne Soohoo

Education Faculty Articles and Research

"Dear Mr. President... We ask now that you pour some attention to race and racism in America, and we submit that your leadership in this area is critically important for people of all colors."