“A moving target”: a critical race analysis of Latina/o faculty experiences,perspectives, and reflections on the tenure and promotion process

This article examines how Latina/o professors perceive, experience, and reflect on the tenure and promotion process. Findings for this longitudinal study are drawn from a purposive sample of nine female and seven male, Latina/o tenure-track faculty participants. Using a Critical Race Theory, Latino Critical (LatCrit) Race Theory, and Chicana Feminist framework, this article documents fundamental inequities in the tenure and promotion policies and practices that affected the Latina/o faculty in this study. Using narrative data, educational biographies, in-depth semi-structured interviews, and unstructured ethnographic interviews, this study found four common themes: (1) tenure and promotion processes functioned as a “tool of fear,” (2) the tenure and promotion process was like a “moving target,” (3) tenure provided limited forms of respect but not full membership, and (4) Latina/o supervivencia enabled the professors to thrive despite unsupportive and sometimes hostile campus and departmental climates.     

Inclusion gatekeepers: the social production of spatial identities in special education

Abstract

Critical approaches to inclusive education seek to transform educational systems to increase access, participation, and achievement for students at the intersections of multiple markers of difference. Yet, the role of space in inclusive education remains under explored as a social and political construct. We know that space matters for the production and maintenance of student identities; however, little is known about its interaction with teacher and specifically special educator identity. This qualitative study takes a ‘spatial turn’ in inclusive education by exploring how the existing geographies of exclusion within schools mediated special educators’ identity construction. Through interactions with their sociocultural contexts, special educators’ engaged in the co-construction of gatekeeper identities and participated systems of ableism that perpetuated and justified exclusion. Recommendations will be made for how school communities can critically interrogate space as a means for increased equity and inclusion.     

‘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.     

Public universities and the neoliberal common sense: seven iconoclastic theses

Neoliberalism has utterly failed as a viable model of economic development, yet the politics of culture associated with neoliberalism is still in force, becoming the new common sense shaping the role of government and education. This ‘common sense’ has become an ideology playing a major role in constructing hegemony as moral and intellectual leadership in contemporary societies. Neoliberal globalisation, predicated on the dominance of the market over the state and on deregulatory models of governance, has deeply affected the university in the context of ‘academic capitalism’. The resulting reforms, rationalised as advancing international competitiveness, have affected public universities in four primary areas: efficiency and accountability, accreditation and universalisation, international competitiveness and privatisation. There is also growing resistance to globalisation as top-down-imposed reforms reflected in the public debates about schooling reform, curriculum and instruction, teacher training and school governance. Many question whether neoliberal reforms attempt to limit the effectiveness of universities as sites of contestation of the national and global order and thus undermine the broader goals of education. Neoliberal reforms have limited access and opportunity along class and racial lines, including limiting access to higher education through the imposition of higher tuition and reduced government support to institutions and individuals.     

Using action research to improve health and the work environment for 3500 municipal bus drivers

During the past five decades occupational researchers have documented that bus drivers’ health is worse than in almost any other profession. The authors suggest that the reason there has not been any successful attempt to change this situation is because the focus until now on removing statistically associated external risk factors has been too narrow. The article describes a project whose purpose was to improve the health and well‐being of 3500 Copenhagen bus drivers. At the end, more than 200 interventions were implemented. The authors adopted a new approach of combining epidemiological results and qualitative methodologies, creating a broader explanatory foundation for action, linked by repetitive processes of critical reflection, which was central to defining problems, explaining causes, developing sufficiently effective interventions and measuring effects. The project revealed the importance of several new and potentially preventable factors involving such issues as lifestyle, private stressors and inappropriate management. During the project period an evaluative framework was developed to explore and measure the complex effects of multiple interventions. Three years after the interventions were launched, follow‐ups revealed remarkable improvements such as reductions in stress and body pains, an increase in satisfaction, and improvements in management and the drivers’ cabin. This article is the story of a methodological journey, from classical epidemiology to an approach combining the strengths of survey (broad coverage), qualitative methods (in‐depth focus) followed by critical reflections and ending with action research.     

On being critical: uniting theory and practice through emancipatory action research

This paper engages with some of the specific issues that challenge critical practice. My argument is related to the Carr and Kemmis debate on ‘staying critical’ and to ideas expressed in my current book, Community Development: A Critical Approach. I refer to critical practice as any practice that has a transformative social justice intention, and which happens in a range of contexts from grassroots community activism to more institutionalised settings, such as hospitals or schools. My own professional base is community development, and this paper is founded on emancipatory action research developed over many years in grassroots practice. It is my view that emancipatory action research, committed to the practice of social justice, with the intention of bringing about social change, is a necessary component of critical practice. In fact, I would go so far as to say that emancipatory action research is the glue that binds critical praxis in a unity of theory and action. However, all too often collective action for change is not followed through to its greatest potential, and practice remains contextualised in the immediate, local and specific without making critical connections with the structural roots of oppression from which inequalities emanate. The result is that we constantly fixate on symptoms, and leave the root causes free to perpetuate oppressions. At the same time, we find ourselves in a globalised world marked by intensifying social divisions. So, it is my intention to raise a few issues which present challenges to get beyond sticking points in critical practice as we face times in which there is an accelerating urgency to ‘become critical’.     

Engaging with research through practitioner enquiry: the perceptions of beginning teachers on a postgraduate initial teacher education programme

This study focuses on the perceptions of student-teachers towards their engagement in small-scale research projects undertaken whilst on a one-year postgraduate initial teacher education programme. We present an institutional response to national and international policy agendas regarding the place of research within initial teacher education at master’s level, focusing on the role of practitioner enquiry in facilitating a critical engagement with practice. The paper concludes that practitioner enquiry offers a potentially powerful and illuminating way of exploring emerging professional identity and asserting agency in beginning teachers.     

关于钓鱼岛争端报道的批评性语篇分析

批评性语篇分析旨在通过分析大众语篇来展示语言与社会的复杂关系,尤其是揭示语篇中字里行间所隐含的社会意识形态意义。自从日本悍然单方面宣布钓鱼岛国有化以来,中日钓鱼岛争端一直是国际社会的热点话题。文章选择《英国卫报》和新华社对钓鱼岛争端的两篇报道。借助“及物性”概念,对比分析两篇报道的语言结构特点,以此探讨不同新闻语篇背后深藏的语言、权力与意识形态之间的各种差异。     

Teacher experiences of culture in the curriculum

This study examines the experiences of two middle‐school teachers as they attempt to acknowledge the ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity of their students in their curriculum and teaching practices. It identifies the complications and challenges they encountered in the process. It presents one curriculum event to explore the ways in which diverse beliefs and values intersected as the teachers implemented the event. It employs a narrative inquiry approach with an emphasis on stories to learn about the experiences of the participants.     

Preparing literary material for public utterance

This essay claims that arguments about the genres of discourse contain as a crucial element an attribution of status, which involves a dialectic of authority and marginality. Rhetorical scholarship is often a reaction against the condition of marginality. Reflection on these matters illumines the ontology of rhetorical discourse.