“I Belong Here.”: Culturally Sustaining Pedagogical Praxes from an Alternative High School in Brooklyn

Despite persistent class and race inequalities in educational attainment and achievement in the U.S., hegemonic cultural ideologies and urban education politics and policies continue to proceed from an insistence that education is the great equalizer. These ideologies do not take into account the ways that normative school culture and pedagogical praxes take for granted middle-class, white-supremacist cultural assumptions that privilege student populations whose social locations already probabilize high rates of achievement and attainment. Vast research published in The Urban Review and elsewhere has demonstrated the importance and efficacy of culturally sustaining pedagogy for improving outcomes for economically marginalized students of color (Allen in Urban Rev 47(1):209–231, 2015; Delpit in Harv Educ Rev 56(4):379–386, 1995; Farinde-Wu et al. in Urban Rev 49(2):279–299, 2017; Gay in culturally responsive teaching: theory, research, and practice, Teachers College Press, New York, 2010; Graves in Berkeley Rev Educ 5(1):5–32, 2014; Jemal in Urban Rev 49(4):602–626, 2017; Ladson-Billings in Crossing over to Canaan: the journey of new teachers in classrooms, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2001, The dreamkeepers: successful teachers of African American children, Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco, 2009; Lee in Culture, literacy and learning: taking bloom in the midst of the whirlwind, Teachers College Press, New York, 2006; Marciano in Urban Rev 49(1):169–187, 2016; Nieto in Language, culture, and teaching: critical perspectives, Routledge, New York, 2010; Paris in Educ Res 41(3):93–97, 2012; Paris and Alim in Culturally sustaining pedagogies: teaching and learning for justice in a changing world, Teachers College Press, New York, 2017; Wiggan and Watson in Urban Rev 48(5):766–798, 2016; Yosso in Race Ethn Edu, 8(1):69–91, 2005). This article uses rich ethnographic data from a transfer school in Brooklyn, New York that serves financially insecure youth of color who are “over-age and under-credited.” These data and my analysis showcase the expertise and indigenous knowledges of teachers who practice cultural relevance and critical racial awareness in order to engage, retain, graduate and prepare students who are historically and presently marked for failure by an education system that has always been more adept at reproducing social inequality than disrupting it (Borck in Qual Inq 20(10):1–8, 2016).

     

Using Film to Increase Counselor Empathic Experiences

The early stages of empathy in counseling—emotional reaction, role-taking, and cognitive suspension—have all been largely ignored in the counselor education/psychological literature. This article describes these stages from the perspective of the aesthetic/film literatures. Emotional reaction is an internal, unobservable state of being. Role-taking involves cognitive understanding and entering the perceptual world of another. Cognitive suspension means letting go of personal beliefs and values. The film literature describes how audience emotional states are created by directors, writers, actors, and editors. This article explains how counselor educators and supervisors can use this information to help counselors increase their empathic experiences.     

The role of educators of the deaf in the early identification of hearing loss

About 16,000 babies each year will be identified with hearing loss by age 3 months once universal newborn hearing screening becomes a reality. Identification of hearing loss in infancy, followed by appropriate intervention by age 6 months, can result in normal language development, regardless of degree of hearing loss. As the average age of identification of hearing loss moves downward toward 2 months, children with hearing loss will enter the educational system earlier and with language skills commensurate with those of their hearing peers. In order to provide appropriate services to children with hearing loss and their families, early interventionists will need to forge links to health care providers involved in universal newborn hearing screening programs, to have specialized training in deafness and hearing loss, and to have expertise in providing services to very young children and to children with hearing loss in the broad range from mild to profound.     

Gender differences in the junior secondary (grade 7) mathematics curriculum in Hong Kong

This article seeks to examine gender differences across the mathematics curriculum in the various topic areas and mathematical abilities. It is suggested that a profile of these differences, when compared with students at different grade levels or across curricula, would be more fruitful for classroom teachers and curriculum developers. Breakdown and discriminant function statistics reveal that boys performed better than girls in Geometry and excelled in comprehension, and solving routine and non-routine problems. Girls were better at mathematical manipulation problems.     

Equity in education: Low priority in the school reform movement

The author argues that the educational reform movements are cyclical and that the present call for excellence can be seen in previous cycles. Noting the absence of a concern for equity in the many recent reports and studies, the author discusses the concepts of equity, equality, and excellence. Alternative reforms are proposed to enhance equity for minority and presently underachieving youth.