Education Commons^™

Conversations About Food Insecurity: Examining College Campus Climates, Crystal Eufemia Garcia

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

This qualitative critical narrative inquiry study explored the experiences of 19 students within four universities in a single Southern state that used campus food aid resources such as a food pantry. Using Hurtado et al.’s Multicontextual Model for Diverse Learning Environments (MMDLE), this paper sheds light on how participants discussed the campus climate for students experiencing food insecurity within their respective campuses. Findings unpack students’ reflections on a lack of awareness and discussion about food insecurity and food aid resources within the campus community, the role that stigmas played in participants’ perceptions and use of campus food aid resources, and …

A Catalyst For Learning Or Reinforcement Of Inequities: Using A Critical Hope Lens To Understand The Potential And Limitations Of Short-Term Study Abroad In Fostering Students’ Ability To Effectively Interact Across Differences, Gudrun Nyunt, Elizabeth Niehaus, Mac Benavides

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

Study abroad is often hailed as a unique and important learning experience that fosters students’ ability to engage in effective and appropriate interactions in a variety of cultural contexts. Scholars, however, have not only questioned the learning that occurs in study abroad but have also highlighted problematic aspects such as the potential miseducation of participants and harm to host communities, particularly for short-term study abroad (STSA) experiences. Utilizing the lens of critical hope, the purpose of this study was to critically assess the potential of STSA in fostering cross-cultural learning, while also examining its limitations and potential harm. Based on …

Ambivalence Toward Bureaucracy: Responses From Korean School Principals, Hyun-Jun Joo, Taeyeon Kim

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

Purpose – Given the context of accountability-driven policy environments, research has shown that school leaders perceive bureaucratic rules and protocols in negative ways, but they also utilize organizational structures and routines to lead changes. To better understand both enabling and hindering mechanisms of bureaucracy in schools, this study explores how Korean school principals understand and perceive bureaucratic structures using a lens of ambivalence. The authors draw on Weber’s theory of bureaucracy, with a particular focus on the paradoxical aspect of bureaucracy that might be experienced by individuals within the system.

Design/methodology/approach – This study analyzed qualitative data collected from 26 …

Uncovering The Potential Learning In Short-Term Study Abroad, Elizabeth Niehaus, Gudrun Nyunt

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

The purpose of this quantitative study was to identify the facets of intercultural learning that might be achievable through faculty-led, short-term study abroad. Exploring changes in various facets of students’ intercultural competence pre- to post-study abroad, we found that the largest gains were in the cultural knowledge domain. Findings also point to vast differences in how individual students do, and do not, show gains across multiple measures of intercultural competence after studying abroad.

What Sorority And Fraternity Life (Sfl) Professionals Learn About Navigating Their Positionalities When Advising And Advocating For Culturally Based Sfl Organizations, Hannah L. Reyes, Antonio Duran, Crystal Eufemia Garcia

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

Despite the growing literature on culturally based sororities and fraternities, little research has examined how practitioners on college campuses support these organizations. This constructivist narrative study addressed this gap by centering the stories of fifteen sorority and fraternity life professionals who advised culturally based sororities and fraternities. In particular, this research project examined how participants reflected on their social identities and affiliation statuses as they built the multicultural competence needed to advise these organizations. Findings revealed how participants attempted to establish connections with students through shared experiences and marginalization, as well as how they also recognized the limitations of their …

Troubling Unintended Harm Of Heroic Discourses In Social Justice Leadership, Taeyeon Kim, Courtney Mauldin

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

We aim to problematize the ways in which school leaders who seek social justice conflate heroic leadership discourses in their practices. Using qualitative data collected from an urban school principal, this study examines heroic metaphors utilized by the principal when describing social justice leadership and how heroic-centered approaches contradict with achieving social justice goals in school. The findings suggest that the principal’s idea of social justice leadership relies on discourse around “battles to win”, a savior complex, and seeing herself as the central model for driving change. Such heroic discourses reflect the principal’s sole reliance on herself as a savior …

Negotiating Incomplete Autonomy: Portraits From Three School Principals, Taeyeon Kim, Jennie Weiner

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

Purpose: This study builds on research scrutinizing school autonomy in policy and school governance by shifting the focus from a formal structural view of autonomy to examining how principals negotiate autonomy in their daily work. Drawing on multiple dimensions of autonomy and street-level bureaucracy, this study examined how principals, as both professionals and bureaucrats, work to expand and strategize their autonomy in practice.

Research Methods/Approach: We used portraiture to document and interpret the experience and perspectives of three principals at urban, suburban, and rural PK-12 traditional public schools in the Midwest of US during the 2018–2019 school year.

Findings: Principals …

Beyond The School Walls: Collective Impact In Micropolitan School-Community Partnerships, Sarah Zuckerman

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

Research suggests that the time students spend outside of school, as well as the communities in which they spend it, impact educational outcomes. Inequitable educational outcomes are the result of complex, interdependent problems in the public and private sector, suggesting the need for approaches that bring together schools with other organizations to address problems in the ecological and developmental systems of family, school, out-of-school programs, and communities. Collective impact has gained prominence as a strategy for such cross-sector partnerships. This qualitative study uses a comparative approach to extend knowledge of collective impact into rural and micropolitan communities using civic capacity …

Sorority And Fraternity Life Professionals’ Perspectives On Challenges Faced By Culturally Based Sororities And Fraternities, Antonio Duran, Crystal E. Garcia, Hannah L. Reyes

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

Featuring the perspectives of 15 sorority and fraternity life (SFL) professionals, this qualitative study highlights the challenges culturally based sororities and fraternities face on college campuses. Guided by a framework grounded in concepts of organizational culture, findings revealed three issues that culturally based SFL organizations encounter: a predominant emphasis on historically white sororities and fraternities in SFL communities, a lack of human and financial capital, as well as inadequate advisor support and training. Implications for research and practice are offered.

Regulating Sexualities Through Gender-Based Rhetoric: The Experiences Of Queer Women Of Color In Culturally-Based Sororities, Crystal E. Garcia, Antonio Duran

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

Culturally based sororities emerged on college campuses in order to combat the race-based discrimination faced in historically white sororities. Despite their historic mission to attend to racial issues, questions remain of how culturally based sororities attend to other identities and forms of oppression in these spaces. Centering the stories of 20 Queer Women of Color, this critical narrative inquiry study sought to understand how members of culturally based sororities used gender-based rhetoric to regulate sexual minorities in these spaces. Findings revealed how organizations constructed what it meant to be a Woman of Color, how they used gendered stereotypes and sexuality …

Community-Centered School Leadership: Radical Care And Aperturas During Covid-19, Leticia Alvarez Gutiérrez, Taeyeon Kim, Sonny Partola, Paul J. Kuttner, Amadou Niang, Alma Yanagui, Laura Hernández, Gerardo R. López, Jennifer Mayer-Glenn

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

We share school leaders’ perspectives on Zoom videos concerning the needs of immigrant and refugee families in Title I schools. In these videos, participants crafted and shared personal narratives about their leadership experiences during the COVID-19 era of education. Rooted in participatory design research methods, the process of designing these videos were both a research project and an intervention to assist families and school leaders to better understand each other. We present a close analysis of administrators’ perspectives and describe how our codesigned video methodology enabled participants to coconstruct new meanings of school-community relationships during the pandemic through a radical …

Reimagining Accountability Through Educational Leadership: Applying The Metaphors Of “Agora” And “Bazaar”, Taeyeon Kim

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

This study aims to explore reimagined accountability through collective efforts initiated by school leaders and to challenge the fixed notion of accountability prescribed by policy scripts. Drawing on studies highlighting humanizing leadership and the metaphors of “agora” and “bazaar,” I investigate how school leaders (re)construct and (re)define meanings of accountability in their daily practices. Using portraiture as research method, I analyze qualitative data collected through observation, interviews, and artifacts in a rural school in the United States, over the course of the 2018–2019 school year. In contrast to prevalent discourses around technical, performance-driven approaches to accountability, the principal and teachers …

Revisiting The Complexity Of Racial Understandings And Subjective Experiences Of Race Among Students Of Color In Stem Higher Education: Toward A Racial Reappraisal Framework, Elvira Abrica

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

Despite significant investment in expanding post-secondary access and success for racially minori­tized populations within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, persistent educational disparities remain. While the literature has importantly identified and described the myri­ad ways in which students of color experience exclusion within STEM fields on the basis of race (and, perhaps, other social identity statuses), this area of scholarship is not always theoretically grounded in an understanding of racial hierarchies, processes of racialization, or theories of race and racism. That is, despite the abundant literature on students of color in STEM, there is comparatively limited theo­retical attention to …

Competence And Challenge: Sorority And Fraternity Life Professionals’ Preparation To Advise Culturally Based Sfl Organizations, Crystal Eufemia Garcia, Hannah L. Reyes, Antonio Duran

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

This qualitative narrative inquiry examined the professional preparation of sorority and fraternity (SFL) professionals working with culturally-based sororities and fraternities. Using narratives drawn from 15 professionals and guided by our conceptual framework, we unpacked important findings in terms of ways participants referenced their limited educational experiences, how they navigated learning within the confines of their professional roles, and distinctions in the value that professional associations and networks offered them. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

A Path Forward: Critically Examining Practitioners' Role In Addressing Campus Racial Climate, Kaleb L. Briscoe, Crystal Eufemia Garcia, Ashley L. Swift

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

Student affairs professionals (SAPs) have long grappled with the pervasiveness of whiteness within predominantly white institutions (PWIs). In this paper, we bring together our perspectives to offer insight into how whiteness informs SAPs’ response to racialized incidents and advocacy for Students of Color.

Nphc And Mgc Sororities And Fraternities As Spaces Of Activism Within Predominantly White Institutions, Crystal E. Garcia, William R. Walker, Ciera A. Dorsey, Zachary W. Werninck, Jessie H. Johns

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

This study explored how Students of Color within National Pan-Hellenic Council and Multicultural Greek Council sororities and fraternities engaged in activism and in what ways this involvement connected to their membership. Using a qualitative critical narrative approach, we examined the journeys of ten participants. Findings unpack ways participants engaged in activism and resistance aimed at educating individuals and increasing awareness of societal injustices, addressing inequities through service, and inciting disruption and cultivating institutional and societal level change.

Giving A Lot Of Ourselves: How Mother Leaders In Higher Education Experienced Parenting And Leading During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Laura E Boche

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

This qualitative interpretative phenomenological analysis explored the lived experience of mother executive administrators in higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic. Utilizing the philosophical underpinnings of the Heideggerian phenomenological approach, the following research question guided this study: What are the lived experiences of mother executive administrators in higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic? Participants included nine self-identified mother executive administrators from one Midwest state at a variety of institution types and locations within the state. Data collection involved two focus groups and individual interviews with all nine participants. After data analysis, three recurrent themes emerged from the data: (1) Burnout and …

How Campus Space Becomes White Place: Advancing A Spatial Analysis Of Whiteness In Higher Education, Antonio Duran, Zak Foste, Crystal Eufemia Garcia, Jeremy T. Snipes

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

Space and place are central to understanding the production and maintenance of racial inequality in the United States. Though examinations of the racialized dynamics of space are present in other disciplines, higher education scholars have infrequently interrogated how space becomes racialized on college campuses. This conceptual paper functions as a much-needed intervention, articulating how the racialization of space at historically white colleges and universities occurs and the subsequent consequences for Students of Color. In particular, we describe how physical campus spaces historically become racialized as white, how such spaces are maintained and fortified, and the consequences of racialized space on …