Off the Record: Police Surveillance,Muslim Youth,and an Ethnographer’s Tools of Research

Surveillance practices are becoming increasingly insidious, finding their way into nearly every aspect of public and private life in the United States. Surveillance by state policing agencies have particularly targeted and criminalized communities of color. Such practices are not simply a new context, but are part of a broader carceral state, structuring all aspects of social life. Drawing upon a year and a half of ethnographic fieldwork with Muslim youth in New York City, I attempt to engage in a practice of “uncomfortable reflexivity” to ask how living within a carceral state that actively surveils Muslim communities affected the ways in which Muslim youth engaged me, a social researcher, and the tools I used to collect data. This research recognizes that youth are not simply there for researchers to take knowledge from, even if “insider” researchers have meaningful relationships with them. Rather, this research depicts that young people are carefully engaged in thoughtful and creative ways to ensure their own safety is protected. Ultimately, this study points to the necessity of research that is both self-reflective in its design as well as in its ability to make claims about youth experiences.     

Ending the School-to-Prison Pipeline/Building Abolition Futures

Placing prison abolition on the horizon for scholars committed to interrupting the flow of young people toward prisons and jails, this article offers movement analysis, frameworks and associated questions surrounding advocacy and engagement. First, I offer a brief state of the field of research and advocacy surrounding school-to-prison work. Building from this assessment, I identify four ongoing tensions within this field that is, by definition, theoretically explicitly linked to advocacy for justice. Our challenges include exceptionality, specifically our desires to center children and youth in our analysis and organizing, and concurrently how carceral practices continue to change the face of the state and require us to track how alternatives to incarceration are defined and organized. We also struggle to build sustainable and viable decarceration initiatives and to develop ways to make schools and communities safer, without augmenting a carceral state, and to address state and interpersonal violence, while integrating an intersectional analysis that includes lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and queer lives and feminist standpoints. Finally, I close with a push for scholars to continually evaluate professional investments, and invite readers to consider how our scholarly locations augment or constrain our ability to participate in building transformative schools and communities.     

Critical Race Studies in Education: Examining a Decade of Research on U.S. Schools

In this article, the authors critically synthesize how Critical Race Theory (CRT) as an emerging field of inquiry has been used as a tool of critique and analysis in K-12 education research. The authors point out that CRT has been used as a framework for examining: persistent racial inequities in education, qualitative research methods, pedagogy and practice, the schooling experiences of marginalized students of color, and the efficacy of race-conscious education policy. The authors explore how these studies have changed the nature of education research and stress the need for further research that critically interrogates race and racism in education.Marvin Lynn is an Assistant Professor of Department of Curriculum & Instruction in University of Maryland, College Park. He completed his B.S., at DePaul University, Chicago, IL, M.A. at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY and Ph.D. at University of California, Los Angeles. He has published articles in the area of Critical Race Theory and education and critical race pedagogy. He has also written a number of articles that explore the work and lives of Black male teachers.Laurence Parker is Professor in the Department of Educational Policy Studies in University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He completed his B.A., at Earlham College, Richmond, IN, M.A. and Ph.D. in University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His current research examines Critical Race Theory and its connection to educational research, policy and practice in the k-12 and post-secondary settings. His research also examines social justice perspectives in educational administration, leadership and policy, particularly with respect to race and social class     

Toward a Tribal Critical Race Theory in Education

In this article, I outline the central tenets of an emerging theory that I call Tribal Critical Race Theory (TribalCrit) to more completely address the issues of Indigenous Peoples in the United States. TribalCrit has it roots in Critical Race Theory, Anthropology, Political/Legal Theory, Political Science, American Indian Literatures, Education, and American Indian Studies. This theoretical framework provides a way to address the complicated relationship between American Indians and the United States federal government and begin to make sense of American Indians’ liminality as both racial and legal/political groups and individuals. Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy is an Assistant Professor in the University of Utah.     

‘They might as well be Black’: the racialization of Sa’moan high school students

This article explores the processes of racialization imposed on Sa’moan youth through policy and practice in one urban, US school district and at one high school in particular. Specifically, I use the methodological practices of defamiliarization and counter‐storytelling to examine the contradictory practices of racialization and the simultaneously oppressive and transformative potentials these practices catalyze. The analysis of this process is framed by the Critical Race Theory concepts of colorblindness and Whiteness as property, which powerfully illustrate how this racialization both disrupts and reifies reigning local and national racial norms and hierarchies.     

Wasting Talent: Using Counter-Storytelling to Narrate Dismal Educational Outcomes

A recent study illustrated that the educational attainment of Latina/o students has been dismal during the past decade and that many Latinas/os continue to “fall through the cracks” of the educational pipeline. Through storytelling, I juxtapose my educational trajectory as a high school graduate with that of my third-oldest brother, who “fell through the cracks” of the educational pipeline as an underclassman in high school. I provide examples of how being reprimanded for minimal misconduct negatively impacted my older brother’s overall school experiences, which ultimately prevented him from finishing high school despite his potential to succeed.     

Mean girls,homosociality and football: an education on social and power dynamics between girls and women

Relationships between girls and women have typically been explored through the lexicon of ‘friendship’ or, where there is a presence of sexual desire, ‘lesbian’. This article suggests the complexity and impact of female (same-sex) sociality, and its relationship to heteronormativity and power dynamics between girls and women runs deeper than the terms ‘friendship’ or ‘lesbian’ give rise to. Exploring social and power dynamics amongst girls and women, this article explores how gender is policed and negotiated within a framework of homosociality. Drawing on empirical research within a women's Australian Rules football team, I explore the complexity of female same-sex bonds, the negotiation of gender embodiment and performance within female homosocial spaces, and the emergence of women's own lexicons in making sense of their relationships with other women in this particular social sphere, further considering how this might be applied to other female homosocial spaces, including same-sex educational and sporting sites.     

Fugitive Practices: Learning in a Settler Colony

In this article, I connect the ways that learning is fundamental to life, for human and nonhuman beings. I write this article at a time of crystalline xenophobic backlash, the rise of several totalitarian regimes across the planet, as well as the formation and action from many social movements. I argue that in this moment, it is even more important for education and education studies to distinguish between the achievement-measured desires of a settler state from what learning itself is and how it is intertwined with live and sovereignty. To highlight learning as fugitive practice, I connect the ways that learning has been maintained and protected even when it has been forbidden, foreclosed and seemingly withered through colonialism.     

How gender norms are reinforced through violence against adolescent girls in two conflict-affected populations

Violence against women and girls is a global concern, and particularly salient in humanitarian settings. Successful efforts to prevent gender-based violence in humanitarian settings must address a wide range of issues, from discriminatory laws to explicit community support for violence, and yet, at the core of these efforts is reducing oppressive gender and social norms. This study examined local attitudes towards and social norms around responding to physical and sexual abuse of girls through interviews conducted with adolescent girls (n = 66) and with caregivers (n = 58) among two conflict-affected populations: villages in South Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudanese and South Sudanese refugees in Ethiopian camps. The findings suggest how communities use violence as a tool to enforce the importance of girls practicing community-defined “good” adolescent girl behavior, and have implications for gender-based violence programming among other conflict-affected populations.     

Una Perspectiva Crítica Racial de la Opresión Lingüística Desde el Lente de Voces Chicanas

En este artículo los autores recurren a voces de personajes chicanos para analizar y discutir la opresión lingüística del méxico americano durante las décadas de 1920 a 1960. Utilizando la teoría racial crítica y la teoría latina del racismo (CRT y LatCrit por sus siglas en inglés) los autores hacen referencia específica a pasajes, documentos históricos y piezas de la literatura para argumentar que cuestiones de poder y racismo han impactado la restricción en el uso del idioma español en los Estados Unidos. De manera específica, se hace referencia a los castigos sufrido por varias generaciones de hispanoparlantes.

In this article, the authors analyze and discuss the linguistic oppression faced by Mexican-Americans from the 1920s to the 1960s as narrated by Chicano voices. Critical Race Theory and Latino/a Critical Race Theory permeate the argument that issues of power and racism have impacted the use of Spanish in the United States. This oppression is reflected in historical documents, passages, and segments of Chicano literature. Specifically, the article describes instances of punishment suffered by several generations of Spanish speakers.     

A Never‐Ending Painting: The Generosity of Time Spent Making and Learning with Others through Artistic Research

This article examines the role of spending time with others in and through artistic research and practice. I draw from my doctoral work which took me on a cross‐Canada journey visiting 125 artists in their studios. Following the studio visits, I made a series of paintings of artists’ studios, however a year later these same paintings were cut up and rearranged to create collaborative studio assemblages on the walls of the Tate Exchange Gallery in Liverpool. Drawing on the metaphor of a never‐ending‐painting to examine never‐ending pedagogies, this article examines the evolution of this project through three iterations of the studio paintings. With each iteration, I explore different ways of knowing others through making thus proposing the performative and relational qualities of artistic research. The first iteration allowed me to spend time with artists even in their absence, as I engaged with our conversations through painting their studios, thus blurring the lines between solitary and social art practices. The second iteration allowed me to give up my art to others through asking them to create collages with fragments of my studio paintings. And the third iteration allowed my work to merge with other arts‐based researchers. Through this process, I propose that making art allows for multiple conversations to emerge through spending time getting to know others through art making.     

Single‐sex Education for Girls: heterosexuality,gendered subjectivity and school choice

Single‐sex education for girls constitutes a focal point around which issues of gender, choice and educational decision‐making coalesce. My concern is not to enter the debate about the merits of single‐sex education for girls per se, but to examine the relationship between discourses of femininity and discourses around single‐sex schooling to see how they interact in the choice of single‐sex schools by girls and their parents. In this paper, I explore the ways in which aspects of feminist poststructuralist theory can be used to offer a more dynamic and complex account of the processes of school choice than that assumed by neo‐liberal theorists. The theory I develop is illuminated by interviews with three girls and their parents, from different social‐class backgrounds, at the point at which they were making decisions about which secondary school to apply for. A focus such as this enables me to do two things: firstly, to develop a more adequate understanding of the relationship between gender and educational decision‐making; and secondly, to critique the underlying theory of instrumental rationality, and its relationship to school choice, which has underwritten the marketisation of education in Aotearoa/New Zealand.     

‘Cruel Optimism’ and Contemporary Australian Critical Theory in Educational Research

Abstract

‘Cruel optimism’ is a term coined by Lauren Berlant. In conceptualizing this term, Berlant draws on the resources of critical theory to interrogate people’s desires for things they think may improve their lot, but actually act as obstacles to flourishing. This notion may be useful for analysing the current state of education in Australia, and the desire to believe that My School, and the associated data it provides, will enable schools to address social inequalities. For Berlant, the promise of such technologies is problematic because it diverts our attention from important ethical, social and political questions, some of which are highlighted in the contributions to this special issue. Using ‘cruel optimism’ as a point of departure, I interrogate how the notion of critical theory has been conceptualized in educational research by briefly looking at scholarship within and outside education relating to critical theory. Following on from this, I consider how what I am terming critical theory is put to work in each of the articles that make up this special issue on My School.     

“I Think About It All The Time”: A 12-Year-Old Girl’s Internal Crisis With Racism and the Effects on her Mental Health

I conducted an ethnographic study, situated within the conceptual framework of Critical Race Theory, which illustrates one child’s experiences with racism. The study was conducted in an urban after-school program, and explores issues of racism in both the school and community settings. Utilizing the storytelling aspect of Critical Race Theory, I explore the racial experiences of a 12-year-old African-American girl, and the dichotomous emotions of sadness and anger that emerge. I describe the risk to this child’s emotional well-being, and suggest a need within the mental health field to create a framework to deal with the trauma caused by racism. Amy L. Masko is affiliated with the Grand Valley State University. She is a professor of English Education, preparing pre-service teachers to teach elementary literacy. Dr. Masko’s research interests are in urban education, after school programs, and multicultural education. She is also an educational consultant in the area of diversity in education and literacy education. Address correspondence to Amy L. Masko, Grand Valley State University, 221 Lake Huron Hall Allendale, MI 49401; e-mail: maskoa@gvsu.edu     

Performing intelligible genders through violence: bullying as gender practice and heteronormative control

The purpose of the present study was to analyse adolescents’ perception of bullying and particularly of the ways intelligible masculinities and femininities are performed through violence in the framework of Queer Theory. We conducted a qualitative study using focus groups. The sample was composed of 93 Spanish adolescents (48 girls and 45 boys, mean age 13.7 years) who attended 4 compulsory secondary education schools in Spain and participated voluntarily in the study. Students’ statements revealed that bullying is a strongly gendered phenomenon and an additional way of ‘doing gender’, that is, of performing hegemonic femininities and masculinities at school, imitating and reproducing gender norms and punishing those who transgress them.     

Moving the goalposts: Education policy and 25 years of the Black/White achievement gap

Drawing on a secondary analysis of official statistics, this paper examines the changing scale of the inequality of achievement between White students and their Black British peers who identify their family heritage as Black Caribbean. We examine a 25‐year period from the introduction of the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), in 1988, to the 20th anniversary of the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 2013. It is the first time that the Black/White gap has been analysed over such a long period. The paper reviews the changing place of the Black/White gap in education debates and notes that, despite periods when race equality has appeared to be high on the political agenda, it has never held a consistent place at the heart of policy. Our findings shed light on how the Black/White gap is directly affected, often in negative ways, by changes in education policy. Specifically, whenever the key benchmark for achievement has been redefined, it has had the effect of restoring historic levels of race inequity; in essence, policy interventions to ‘raise the bar’ by toughening the benchmark have actively widened gaps and served to maintain Black disadvantage. Throughout the entire 25‐year period, White students were always at least one and a half times more likely to attain the dominant benchmark than their Black peers. Our findings highlight the need for a sustained and explicit focus on race inequity in education policy. To date, the negative impacts of policy changes have been much more certain and predictable than occasional attempts to reduce race inequality.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Passing Time</Emphasis>: An Exploration of School Engagement among Puerto Rican Girls

This article presents data from an ethnographic study focused on the school engagement of Puerto Rican girls. I explore the school engagement of Puerto Rican girls through the metaphor of passing. The findings demonstrate that despite variation between individual girls in academic achievement, all of the girls in the study suffered negative consequences from the limited ways that school engagement was constructed at their school. I argue that to understand and address the opportunity and achievement gap between Puerto Rican girls and other students, we must pay close attention to how this group of students is passing their time at school and to what passes as school engagement.     

From Desegregation to Privatization: A Critical Race Policy Analysis of School Choice and Educational Opportunity in North Carolina

ABSTRACT

School choice policies and the movement to privatize education have become the currently preferred school reform methods on both the state and federal levels under the guise they will provide equal educational opportunities and access for all students. The 1954 school desegregation decision in Brown v. Board of Education arguably paved the way for equal educational opportunities, including school choice; however, we contend that the present-day school choice and privatization movements may be a part of a larger social, political, and legal cycle of inequality that has established residence in the American educational system for more than a century. We conduct a critical race theory policy analysis using a framework that has been effective in previous work with examining cyclical inequalities, the convergence-divergence-reclamation cycle (or C-D-R cycle). In this article, we are focusing our analysis on the state of North Carolina due to its complex legal and political history with school desegregation and its recent support for various school choice options and privatizing public education. We assert that the push for school choice and privatizing public education in North Carolina demonstrates a broader, recurring problem in American public schools-–creating progressive education laws and policies appearing to promote educational equity and opportunity and then regressing to policies supporting White privilege while maintaining the status quo of inequitable educational opportunities for historically underserved and minoritized students.     

Between tradition and modernity: girls’ talk about sexual relationships and violence in Kenya,Ghana and Mozambique

This paper interrogates the influence of a tradition-modernity dichotomy on perspectives and practices on sexual violence and sexual relationships involving girls in three districts of Kenya, Ghana and Mozambique. Through deploying an analytical framework of positioning within multiple discursive sites, we argue that although the dichotomy misrepresents the complexity of contemporary communities, it is nonetheless deployed by girls, educational initiatives and researchers in their reflections on girls’ sexual practices and sexual violence. The analysis examines variations between communities in patterns of and perspectives about sexual relationships, transactional sex and sexual violence. It illuminates ways in which features of ‘modernisation’ and ‘tradition’ both exacerbate and protect girls from violence. Across contexts, girls actively positioned themselves between tradition and modernity, while positioning others at the extreme poles. Education initiatives also invoked bipolar positions in their attempts to protect girls’ rights to education and freedom from violence. The paper concludes by considering the implications for educational intervention and the potential for the analytical framing to generate richer, more contextualised understandings about girls’ perspectives, experiences and ways of resisting sexual violence.     

Conceptualising gender and violence in research: Insights from studies in schools and communities in Kenya,Ghana and Mozambique

Gender and violence are complex and contested concepts, understood in varying ways in research, policy and interventions in education. Often there has been an emphasis on acts of violence, with much less attention to the social conditions and gender relations behind these acts. This paper discusses the development of a conceptual framework that emphasises not just acts and individuals, but also transformation of gendered power relations and inequities, alongside a focus on addressing the identity conflicts and struggles of everyday life. The framework underpins research, advocacy and community interventions in a multi-partnered project on violence against girls led by ActionAid.