Making moral migrants? Exploring the educational aspirations of Black African and Caribbean boys in a New York City public school

ABSTRACT

Drawing on 48 in-depth interviews with Black immigrant and second-generation boys at Bridgewood secondary school in New York City, this article points out how the high educational aspirations expressed by Black African and Caribbean boys are strategically deployed as features of an ethnic project to counter anti-immigrant sentiments and anti-Black racism in US society. The findings indicate that in a context of rising xenophobia along with the historical and continual stereotypes of Black people in the US, participants’ aspirations for elite higher education function as strategies to enhance their individual and ethnic reputations. High educational aspirations were also used to justify emigration to and worth within the US. At its core, this article illustrates how participants mobilized aspirations to represent themselves as moral migrants and ‘worthy’ ethnic minorities. Moral claims and ethnicity-based campaigns associated with aspirations are problematized because they reinforce the hierarchical racial order that informs US society.     

Show Us the Love: Revolutionary Teaching in (Un)Critical Times

In the wake of racial violence in urban schools and society, we question, “Can the field of urban education love blackness and Black lives unconditionally and as preconditions to humanity? What does it look like to (re)imagine urban classrooms as sites of love? As educators, how might we utilize a pedagogy of love as an embodied practice that influences holistic teaching? How might we utilize a pedagogy of love to include Black youths’ racialized and gendered life histories and experiences and their language and literacy practices? We outline and discuss five types of violence in schools (physical, symbolic, linguistic, curricula/pedagogical, and systemic school violence) which interfere with the creation and sustainability of revolutionary love in urban schools. We present examples of ‘fake love’ and provide the current backdrop. We operationalize revolutionary love and offer Afrocentric praxis and African Diaspora Literacy as antidotes to anti-Black types of violence that many students experience in urban schools.

     

Exploring teachers’ beliefs and feelings about race and police violence

ABSTRACT

In this article, the authors analyzed White teachers’ open-ended responses to three critical items on the Teachers’ Race Talk Survey (TRTS). The authors focused on: (1) teachers’ beliefs about the importance of discussing race in the classroom with their students; (2) teachers’ feelings of preparedness to have race conversations in the classroom with their students; and (3) teachers’ beliefs about discussing, in class, police violence against Black people. Findings showed that while most White teachers believed race was important to discuss in order to unlearn and disrupt their prior beliefs, the majority described fear as a primary factor for feeling unprepared to actually discuss race in the classroom. Despite their beliefs about the importance of race, teachers’ beliefs about police violence against Black bodies reflect a color-blind approach by either viewing police violence as a natural occurrence or minimizing the role that race plays. To continue developing teachers’ critical knowledge related to race, the authors discuss implications for examining the quality of race-centered curriculum in teacher education programs and they pose broader questions related to the evolving knowledge base for teaching.     

Racially liberatory pedagogy: a Black Lives Matter approach to education

Abstract

In this study, we sought to understand how Black lives matter (BLM) epistemology, as displayed through six months of social media content from official accounts, can inform a racially liberatory pedagogy in higher education for Black and other racially minoritized students. We found BLM, through Facebook and Twitter, situated intersectional Black culture in the contemporary struggle for liberation. BLM also offered information that can raise its followers’ intersectional critical consciousness. Additionally, BLM content highlighted actions that can support Black liberation. Lastly, BLM content supported the building of relationships and naming of emotions as Black people work toward their liberation. In this sense, BLM connected with elements of a racially liberatory pedagogy and offered nuances that advanced the framework. We discuss the implications of this framework for teaching in higher education.     

“Compulsory Schooling” Despite the Law: How Education Policy Underpins the Widespread Ignorance of the Right to Home Educate in France

ABSTRACT

Everyone in France takes for granted the existence of compulsory school attendance (“école obligatoire”) while home education remains very exceptional. Yet school attendance is not, and has never been, legally compulsory in France. How can one explain the fact that the right to home educate is little known and practiced? This article researches how public policies may foster this widespread ignorance. Drawing mainly on archival records of French Parliament debates about compulsory instruction in 1882, 1936, and 1998, it depicts various ways for lawmakers to contribute to this ignorance.     

We Are Still Here: Declarations of Love and Sovereignty in Black Life Under Siege

Since our brutal arrival on America's shores through the transatlantic slave trade, Black people have understood and experienced constant and continual oppression, in the US context and around the globe. The recent deaths of unarmed Trayvon Martin and Sandra Bland at the hands of the police are flashpoints and exemplars of such hatred—and the call of Black lives matter a resistant declaration of love, an act of sovereignty in a time of siege. In this article, I explore how, in Black history and contemporary times of escalating violence against our bodies, minds, and spirits worldwide, Blacks in diaspora and on the continent are still here. Utilizing three stories of Black women's powerful declarations of love and sovereignty (that is how Black women's lives matter) moves us toward a place where all lives matter. For those in educational studies who seek to center our work in spaces that embody and produce diversity, equity, and justice, recognizing and truly hearing these declarations of love and sovereignty, that is how Black women's lives matter, moves us toward a place where all lives matter.     

A message for faculty from the present-day movement for black lives

Abstract

The present-day movement for Black lives calls attention to the antiblackness that is supported and reinforced in White America. Antiblackness ostensibly contextualizes what it means to Learn While Black at predominantly White institutions. This article presents a content analysis of the demands that pertain to faculty and faculty work Black students submitted to institutional leaders in the aftermath of Ferguson and the campus rebellion led by Concerned Student 1950 at the University of Missouri. Study findings point to the classroom as a pedagogical site of Black Liberation; that is, interrogating Whiteness. This article concludes with recommendations to help faculty, especially White faculty, in interrogating whiteness and advancing Black Liberation in higher education.     

Revealing a hidden curriculum of Black women’s erasure in sexual violence prevention policy

This article aims to challenge the framework by which rape and sexual assault prevention in higher education are being constituted by centring Black women’s experiences of sexual violence within a prevention and response policy framework. Numerous research studies exist in the literature regarding the specific experience of sexual violence for Black women within a national context that remains deeply committed to White supremacy [Buchanan, N. T., and A. J. Ormerod. 2002. “Racialized Sexual Harassment in the Lives of African American Women.” Women & Therapy 25 (3/4): 107–124; Crenshaw, K. 1989. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” University of Chicago Legal Forum 140: 139–167; Donovan, R., and M. Williams. 2002. “Living at the Intersection: The Effects of Racism and Sexism on Black Rape Survivors.” Women & Therapy 25 (3/4): 95–105; McNair, L. D., and H. A. Neville. 1996. “African American Women Survivors of Sexual Assault: The Intersection of Race and Class.” Women & Therapy 18 (3/4): 107–118; Omolade, B. 1989. “Black Women, Black men, and Tawana Brawley – The Shared Condition.” Harvard Women’s Law Journal 12: 11–23; West, C. 2002. “Battered, Black, and Blue: An Overview of Violence in the Lives of Black Women.” Women & Therapy 25 (3/4): 5–27]. Using the critical pedagogy principle of ‘hidden curriculum’ or how what is directly communicated through educational processes also conveys unstated values, judgments, and regulatory norms, the author analyses the first report of the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault [2014. Not Alone: The First Report of the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault] for race-neutral language that contributes to the silencing of the sexual violence that Black college women experience. The necessity of race-conscious sexual assault policy is discussed.     

Confronting White privilege: the importance of intersectionality in the sociology of education

Abstract

This article explores how White privilege and a hierarchy of oppression have resulted in competing identities in which gender has been given greater importance compared to race. I argue that the sociology of education needs to adopt an intersectional approach that travels in different directions if it is to remain valid. The article examines how gender, perpetuated by White privilege, continues to play a key role in the positioning of Black and minority ethnic staff, students and pupils within a range of stereotypes that operate to marginalise their life trajectories. The article argues that if sociologists of education are unwilling to challenge White privileged populist discourses and their own positions of White privilege, then they will become complicit in maintaining a socially unjust status quo.     

Marking time,making methods: temporality and untimely dilemmas in the sociology of youth and educational change

Abstract

This article explores how temporality and temporal regimes might be engaged in qualitative research in the sociology of education, proposing that such questions matter in relation to how research is done, not only to the topics and themes researched. The article shows how temporality enters into research designs, practices and imaginaries, arguing that research methodologies mobilise intersecting temporalities. Debates in the philosophy of history regarding the collision of temporalities are canvassed, and approaches are outlined for conceptualising temporality in reference to qualitative studies. To illustrate these arguments, an account is offered of theoretical and methodological approaches framing a new qualitative longitudinal study of young people and secondary schooling in Australia; to highlight the historicity of methodologies, comparisons are also drawn between this study and an earlier related longitudinal study undertaken in the 1990s. The article concludes by inviting a re-consideration of the possibilities for a renewal of historical sociology of education.     

A Long-Term Effect of Perceptual Individuation Training on Reducing Implicit Racial Bias in Preschool Children

This study tracked the long-term effect of perceptual individuation training on reducing 5-year-old Chinese children's (N = 95, M_age = 5.64 years) implicit pro-Asian/anti-Black racial bias. Initial training to individuate other-race Black faces, followed by supplementary training occurring 1 week later, resulted in a long-term reduction of pro-Asian/anti-Black bias (70 days). In contrast, training Chinese children to recognize White or Asian faces had no effect on pro-Asian/anti-Black bias. Theoretically, the finding that individuation training can have a long-term effect on reducing implicit racial bias in preschoolers suggests that a developmentally early causal linkage between perceptual and social processing of faces is not a transitory phenomenon. Practically, the data point to an effective intervention method for reducing implicit racism in young children.     

Creativity and Equity: The Legacy of E. Paul Torrance as an Upstander for Gifted Black Males

Nationally, Black males are more under-represented in gifted programs than all other groups (United States Department of Education Office of Civil Rights, Civil rights data collection. Author, Washington, DC, 2006, 2009); at no time in the history of gifted education can data be found to indicate otherwise (Ford in Multicultural gifted education. Waco, Prufrock Press, 2011a). Before, during, and after segregated schools became unconstitutional, a prolific scholar challenged educators to respond to the severe and pervasive under-representation of Black students in gifted education. This article illustrates how E. Paul Torrance was an upstander (Grantham in Roeper Rev 33:263–272, 2011) who confronted the crisis of under-identified talent among Black students which was, in part, due to narrow race- and class-based conceptions of intelligence. Specifically, this article calls attention to how Torrance valued different types of intelligence and used his scholarship to highlight Black male students’ creative gifts. Using Torrance’s body of work as a guide, implications for research, policy and praxis on creativity from an equity and social justice perspective will be discussed.     

Talking back in cyberspace: self-love,hair care,and counter narratives in Black adolescent girls’ YouTube vlogs

ABSTRACT

While the ‘natural hair movement’ has grown in popularity and criticism, educational researchers have not attended to how Black adolescent girls with all textures of natural hair are navigating the implications of foregoing chemical alterations to their curl patterns. This article reports on an investigation of self-talk in 56 internet video logs constructed by Black adolescent girls with natural hair, describing the messages of self-love, hair care, and counter narratives to dominant discourse that emerged from an in-depth ethnographic content analysis. Hair politics may seem irrelevant to the field of education, but findings suggest that the topic should matter to anyone who cares deeply about the social and academic worlds of Black adolescent girls.     

Surviving Being Dark: A Pedagogy of the Sacred for Survival in a Divided Society

Abstract

Historically, Blacks have out of necessity prioritized survival in educating their younger generations for existence in the racially hostile and divided context of the U.S. This education and religious education has occurred formally and informally in homes, schools, community organizations, and in congregations. This paper examines three aspects of survival: survival and emancipatory education, survival and justice, and survival with emerging Black generations. Three examples will be offered that highlight each aspect of survival. The examples will demonstrate how education generally and religious education in particular have undergirded pedagogies of the sacred for the survival of Black life.     

Implicit Bias in the Era of Social Desirability: Understanding Antiblackness in Rehabilitative and Punitive School Discipline

Recent research provides evidence that teachers’ implicit bias may impact school discipline but has poorly defined discipline. This research examines if implicit bias impacts 7 discrete types of disciplinary decisions, ranging from punitive to rehabilitative. A survey featuring racial priming was administered to teachers (n = 287). Results suggest that implicit racial processing has more impact on punitive disciplinary decisions over rehabilitative ones. Interestingly, teachers were harsher against White students, which is counterintuitive to what we know about anti-Black implicit bias and racial disparities in discipline. Results suggests that social desirability is a powerful force that attempts to override anti-Black bias in certain contexts but could lead to a harmful lowering of expectations for Black students.

     

Teacher Agency in South African Education Policy Related to School Safety

Abstract

Safety in and around schools is an on-going concern in South Africa. Current education policy related to school safety institutes mechanisms to reduce violence as a measure of promoting safety. The highest rate of violence reported by learners occurs in the classroom. By implication, how teachers are either enabled or constrained to respond to violent incidents in classrooms is critical. With the aim to determine how education policy related to school safety either enables or constrains teacher agency in South African education policy related to school safety, the article reports on a study that examined the mechanisms of the National School Safety Framework (NSSF) together with the context at schools. The study found that the NSSF mechanisms and school context find little enabling teacher agentic action, where learning is concerned. Although the NSSF mechanisms require teachers to perform many roles as measures of reducing violence to promote school safety, none involve pedagogic strategies or techniques. Given that teachers’ greatest challenge in the context of violence is the disruption of teaching and learning, the NSSF mechanisms are inadequate as an education policy related to school safety within the current context of insecurity in South African schools.     

Adult Education: Russell and After

Abstract

This article is concerned with recent developments in the university systems in Britain and West Germany. In particular it attempts to analyse how financial restrictions and conservative policies have affected the quality and the functioning of the two systems and how the institutional dependency on the state has increased or is being enlarged through changes in the politics of higher education. The article reviews the recent history of the two systems of higher education, describes their structural and functional transformation and gives an account of the present organisational and political problems facing them. With regard to Britain, it concludes that the radical process of personnel reduction, imposed by the government, seriously endangers fundamental functions of the universities. In Germany, on the other hand, the civil service status of the professors seems to offer a better protection against state intervention than tenure in Britain.     

The banality of exclusion in Australian universities

ABSTRACT

The systematic exclusion of asylum seekers from Australian higher education reveals much about present day Australia. This essay begins with a brief context and outline of the international refugee crisis and Australia’s reaction. Next, consideration is given to how this nation has identified itself historically and how it has behaved in recent times towards refugees. Australia’s values are then discussed in relation to those of Canada, a similar country in many ways. With this context established, this article then turns to examine the specific issue of access to higher education for young people seeking asylum. Implications of this exclusion and what it means for national identity is discussed. Arendt’s theory of bureaucratic indifference is employed to interpret and understand Australia’s behaviour. The main contribution of this article is the connections made between asylum seekers, educational exclusion, higher education, national identity and Arendt’s theory, that may have application in other contexts.     

Intercultural Competence: Physical Education Teacher Education Recommendations

ABSTRACT 

The increasing diversity of the K-12 student population presents challenges and opportunities for growth in the physical education profession. To address the cultural gap in today’s classroom, many people highlight the need to improve the intercultural competence of teachers. The focus of this article is to summarize the shifting demographics of American society, its impact on K-12 education, and how one California physical education teacher education (PETE) program is preparing pre-service teachers for the multicultural classroom. The article also outlines recommendations for PETE programs to address intercultural competence.