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Using Jackson and Mazzei's thinking with theory, this paper centers the stories of three researchers who practiced critical self-reflection while engaging in secondary analysis of data from The Pedagogy of Student Success Project, a study intended to learn about graduate students' evolving conceptualizations of student success. In particular, the researchers were interested in how their individual theoretical leanings influenced how they interacted with the data and how their collaborations in turn shaped their thinking. To explore this phenomena, the authors analyzed qualitative data from two participants, wrote reflective memorandums, and held conversations about their theoretical leanings. The three researchers addressed how the Anti-Deficit Achievement Framework, Black Feminisms, and Intersectionality shaped their analysis of qualitative data. Findings reveal how scholars' theoretical leanings inform how they analyze and interpret student success research, in addition to showing how research collaborations play a role in thinking with theory.

This article presents the author's response to Nicola Rollock's critique on the author's paper in which the author has argued that ethnographic data should be more widely used in psychology (Woods 2005, 2007b). Rollock argues that the paper neglects Zak's level of educational achievement, and fails to critically interrogate his teachers' actions towards him. In particular, she argues that these aspects should be examined with reference to Zak being a Black African boy. In support of this argument, she draws on literature showing that on average, children of his ethnicity and gender achieve less academically than the average White British child, and are framed as problematic within dominant school practices (e.g. DfES 2006; Youdell 2003, cited in Rollock 2008). Here, the author discusses three issues arising from Rollock's critique. Firstly, she argues that because her research question differed from the one that Rollock asks, she did not collect the kinds of data that would enable her to make the argument that Rollock suggests. Secondly, Rollock seems to be arguing that ethnicity, social class and gender are critical considerations in all social science research. The author questions whether this is a reasonable expectation. Thirdly, she considers how to link her analysis of children's responses to punishment with Rollock's argument that teachers read children's behaviour through a lens of ethnicity, social class and gender. (Contains 1 note.)

The purpose of this study is to examine what the Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) designation means to Hispanic college students at a Research One four-year university. This qualitative case study used one-on-one interviews with Hispanic undergraduate and graduate students to explore their experiences and perceptions of what it means to be an HSI and how the HSI designation can affect their collegiate experience. The study was guided by Museus's culturally engaging campus environments model to help identify what strategies can enhance the educational experiences of Hispanic students attending an HSI. The findings of this paper only include data from students of this particular HSI. The overarching themes that emerged include a sense of belonging through campus organizations, the presence of Latina/o/x faculty, and institutional diversity.

This qualitative study examines Latina/o/x parents' perceptions and involvement in the pre-college process from the South Texas border region. Researchers have expressed student success and the likelihood of students pursuing postsecondary education is dependent on the level of parent involvement. As student demographics and enrollment rates continue to shift in education, parent involvement has received attention from policymakers, practitioners, and researchers as a discussion topic to advance educational outcomes for students of color, specifically for Latina/o/x students. Although existing literature on parent involvement is not new, Latina/o/x parents' experiences and contribution to their student's success have been absent from the literature. In which has constructed a deficit perspective in which places the responsibility on Latina/o/x parents for their student's success. This paper aims to examine how Latina/o/x parents are involved and contribute to their student's success to identify how school settings can leverage and include parents in collective efforts that support students.

Even in marginalized towns it is possible to find school communities that have developed relationships that encourage the construction of institutional cultures and management structures prone to superior academic performance compared to others within the same context. This paper presents the findings of a qualitative research project conducted in 8 towns and 16 schools in Mexico. The analytical framework is based on Kenneth Gergen's social constructionism. The paper highlights the role of the school's principal in the construction of relationships in the school community and the build-up of practices leading to shared meaning and goals. The desire and ability of the principal to promote dialogue and provide spaces for it are central, as well as her or his ability to interpret and translate the needs of parents and community, and the systemic norms from the Ministry of Education, to the reality of the community and the parents.

In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education overturned the "separate but equal" principle promulgated in 1896 in Plessy v. Ferguson. Yet, almost 70 years after Brown, schools continue to be segregated, and the structure of the public education system has fostered inequities across the nation. Although there have been legal challenges to the conditions and disparities within schools, many urban districts are still impacted by Plessy-like logic and policies that reflect white supremacy, essentially legitimizing social inequity. Stories of racial segregation, as well as unequal instruction and funding, continue to define many urban school districts. This paper will offer findings from in-depth interviews with urban school leaders. Their perspectives, examined through a critical race theory lens, highlight continued disparities and obstructions in access to literacy, education, and opportunity affecting Black students—demonstrating a separate and unequal public school system in the urban context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The developing structure of Omani higher education sector depends upon a culturally diverse group of international academics who outnumber their Omani colleagues. This creates a unique group composition that is inconsistent with the largely Omanising workplace context. Drawing on data gathered from a case study, this paper explores the reasons and the effects of group instability resulting from faculty's national diversity on establishing a group's social identity, the latter being an antecedent for establishing an intellectual capital. The findings of the study suggest that national diversity is associated with a number of factors that impede longevity within work groups thus affecting identification with a common group prototype. These include human resources management practices, such as outsourcing recruitment, inconsistent recruitment standards, low faculty agility and a number of personal factors that emphasise individual identity. The paper concludes by arguing that the absence of social identity in higher education hinders establishing an intellectual capital that represents a cornerstone for establishing a knowledge-based economy that fuels the realisation of Oman 2040. The findings have implications to the GCC1 contexts that are characterised by depending on largely nationally diverse workforce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using Jackson and Mazzei's thinking with theory, this paper centers the stories of three researchers who practiced critical self-reflection while engaging in secondary analysis of data from The Pedagogy of Student Success Project, a study intended to learn about graduate students' evolving conceptualizations of student success. In particular, the researchers were interested in how their individual theoretical leanings influenced how they interacted with the data and how their collaborations in turn shaped their thinking. To explore this phenomena, the authors analyzed qualitative data from two participants, wrote reflective memorandums, and held conversations about their theoretical leanings. The three researchers addressed how the Anti-Deficit Achievement Framework, Black Feminisms, and Intersectionality shaped their analysis of qualitative data. Findings reveal how scholars' theoretical leanings inform how they analyze and interpret student success research, in addition to showing how research collaborations play a role in thinking with theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need for multifaceted analyses of the relationships between how the United States acknowledges racism and how schooling can be structured to mitigate its negative impacts has never been greater, especially given rising attention to the racial "achievement gap." In suburban, elite Pioneer City, a series of initiatives I will refer to as "the transformation" aimed to eliminate racial disparities in educational achievement through simultaneous efforts to redistribute students from a racially and economically isolated elementary school and train all district staff in a particular brand of culturally relevant pedagogy. This paper draws from a larger yearlong study in which I used critical ethnographic methods to explore tensions between a goal of systemic change and reproductive forces at play in Pioneer City Schools. Focusing on one third-grade student, I offer insights into how the school district's equity-minded policy changes find their way into one classroom, both reflecting and complicating preexisting ways of viewing the role of race in young children's lives.

The purpose of this paper is to present a qualitative secondary analysis of two empirical studies that focused on the leadership practices of female practitioners at the secondary level engaging in discourse and practices to disrupt educational inequities. The guiding research question is, "How do school leaders engage in courageous conversations to: (1) transform beliefs and practices concerning educational inequities, and; (2) engender equity to enhance learning for all students?" Building on Singleton and Linton's (2006) framework on courageous conversations, this study examines how some school leaders break the silence and interrogate educational inequities to improve schools. Findings explicate how conversations amongst practitioners can be the impetus for transformative actions, which in turn, lead to the educational achievement of all students. The voices of participants are magnified and lessons from the field are forwarded.

Even before withstanding one of the most devastating economic crises in American history, families living in poverty have battled a dominant discourse that labels them as lacking personal responsibility, initiative, and the ability to make "good" choices. This discourse is reflected in the parent-involvement mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act, where parents living in poverty are expected to sign contracts promising to take a more active role in the education of their children. This study describes what it looked like when a grassroots, Community Based Organization (CBO) dedicated to speaking back to this dominant discourse partnered with an urban public school system to simultaneously help families leave poverty and improve the academic success of their children. This paper illustrates what it looks like when families living in poverty speak back to the dominant discourse, seek validation for their non-dominant discourses, and enter a potentially liberating Third Space between.

Drawing from two in-depth qualitative studies, we used a sociocultural lens for a cross-case analysis examining how Latin@s' participation in schools is affected by ideological messages that subordinately position them in terms of their ethnicity, class, and immigrant status. We identified a range of dynamic responses to the school's normalization pressures: (1) "echando ganas" [giving it their all] in school while labeled "at risk", (2) living through school with perceived success, and (3) threatening the school's normalization process. This paper emphasizes the need to create inclusive spaces that acknowledge, reward, and support the efforts and agency of students and parents that go beyond school-prescribed normalization practices. (Contains 2 notes.)

Drawing from recent scholarship that examines schooling and the shifting terrain of youth identities, this study examines the identity constructions of Jessica, a Latina high school student. Our portrait of Jessica is part of a larger longitudinal study in which the middle and high school experiences of three Latinas, including Jessica, were examined. For this paper, we used data gathered from Jessica's four years in high school, which included interviews from Jessica and her mother, and field observations from shadowing Jessica's school days during her junior and senior years. Data analysis illustrated two broad themes: Jessica's relationships with her academics and her social life, including the recent positioning of herself as a mother during her pregnancy in her senior year. Findings suggest that Jessica improvised her positions within various realms of school to both resist and reconfigure discourses that shaped her identities as a student and adolescent. This study argues for more research that examines and explores what youth have to say about their school experiences in order to illustrate the complex ways in which adolescents author themselves in school.

This paper draws from Critical Race and Latina/o Critical Theories to examine the racialized experiences and academic successes of Latino male students in a doctoral program at a predominantly white institution in the Midwest. In doing so, the authors explore the friendship the participants developed with one another as they navigated unchartered waters, or the unknown of graduate school, on their path to graduation. The authors introduce the concept of compañerismo in higher education to illuminate how the affinity and bond developed and the various ways it positively shaped the participants' experiences. The findings are presented in three critical time frames within a doctoral program (1st, 3rd, and 5th years) through a composite counternarrative based on focus groups. The authors conclude by offering implications for practice and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This qualitative study examines Latina/o/x parents' perceptions and involvement in the pre-college process from the South Texas border region. Researchers have expressed student success and the likelihood of students pursuing postsecondary education is dependent on the level of parent involvement. As student demographics and enrollment rates continue to shift in education, parent involvement has received attention from policymakers, practitioners, and researchers as a discussion topic to advance educational outcomes for students of color, specifically for Latina/o/x students. Although existing literature on parent involvement is not new, Latina/o/x parents' experiences and contribution to their student's success have been absent from the literature. In which has constructed a deficit perspective in which places the responsibility on Latina/o/x parents for their student's success. This paper aims to examine how Latina/o/x parents are involved and contribute to their student's success to identify how school settings can leverage and include parents in collective efforts that support students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to examine what the Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) designation means to Hispanic college students at a Research One four-year university. This qualitative case study used one-on-one interviews with Hispanic undergraduate and graduate students to explore their experiences and perceptions of what it means to be an HSI and how the HSI designation can affect their collegiate experience. The study was guided by Museus's culturally engaging campus environments model to help identify what strategies can enhance the educational experiences of Hispanic students attending an HSI. The findings of this paper only include data from students of this particular HSI. The overarching themes that emerged include a sense of belonging through campus organizations, the presence of Latina/o/x faculty, and institutional diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need for multifaceted analyses of the relationships between how the United States acknowledges racism and how schooling can be structured to mitigate its negative impacts has never been greater, especially given rising attention to the racial “achievement gap.” In suburban, elite Pioneer City, a series of initiatives I will refer to as “the transformation” aimed to eliminate racial disparities in educational achievement through simultaneous efforts to redistribute students from a racially and economically isolated elementary school and train all district staff in a particular brand of culturally relevant pedagogy. This paper draws from a larger yearlong study in which I used critical ethnographic methods to explore tensions between a goal of systemic change and reproductive forces at play in Pioneer City Schools. Focusing on one third-grade student, I offer insights into how the school district’s equity-minded policy changes find their way into one classroom, both reflecting and complicating preexisting ways of viewing the role of race in young children’s lives. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This qualitative manuscript examined N=20 Black male undergraduate students' racialized interactions with non-Black higher education administrators, professors, and peers and how those select interactions either encourage or hinder their academic, social, and psychological well-being and success as science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) majors. This manuscript utilized W.E.B. DuBois' Condition of Double Consciousness to explore how Black men enrolled in college challenge the myth that Blacks are uneducated and other cultural stereotypes placed against them and how their intersectional identities are further impacted. Findings indicate that Black male STEM majors are affected by having to combat the myth of Black anti-intellectualism, remaining resilient while experiencing various forms of discrimination, and understanding how they view themselves versus how their non-Black higher education administrators, professors, and peers view them across their intersectional identities. To cope with the effects of discrimination and other stressors, Black male scientists believe it is crucial to heal from the racialized trauma they suffer and identify counseling services. However, many of the Black men in the study never sought out counseling services. Instead, they relied on their peers and mentors to provide advice on how they should navigate academia as Black men. Lastly, Black male scientists believe that counterspaces should be created to support the increase of Black men in STEM and that higher education institutions should provide more educational opportunities to amplify the different types of scientific careers that Black men can access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship has attempted to amplify the voices and intentions of Black fathers to establish a healthy presence in the academic and school-based lives of their children. However, schools as mesolevel instantiations of civil society and culture often preclude Black fathers from carrying out this prosocial role. The basis for this, we argue, resides in the logic of antiblack misandry. In this article, we demonstrate how a sample of Black fathers perceive how they—and Black men at large—are viewed as inherent outsiders within their children's school and the ways they respond to these perceptions and subsequent treatment. Analysis produced three overarching themes–perceptions and experiences, counterfactual experiences, and attitudes and actions. Findings affirm a stereotyped pattern of Black fathers being seen and treated as absent, dangerous, or unimportant to their children's schooling lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports from a case study of a ‘talent class’, a special development programme for talented pupils, established in a Danish municipality. It analyses student backgrounds and motives for joining this talent class programme, which is seen in relation to ordinary schooling in Denmark. Drawing on Bourdieu, the paper links social background resources and success in school via the concepts of habitus and capital; it views talent as the product of an investment of time and cultural capital, which is easily accumulated by children of resourceful families. Based on the analysis and its discussion of school talent, the paper proposes a typology of talented students, encompassing the distinguished, the quiet, the versatile and the industrious students. For each type of talent, a student narrative illustrates the link between social backgrounds and student approaches and understandings of their own talents. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In light of the lingering threat of recession of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), this paper examines the ways in which undocumented Latinx students glean hope in a vacillating DACA context to persist through college. A review of immigration policy particularly as it relates to K-12 and higher education is provided as a springboard to investigate the salience of student voice in policy considerations. Findings indicate the critical supports of familial capital as undocumented Latinx students navigate the complex anti-immigrant terrain. As the long-term legislative fate of undocumented students remains unknown, we provide recommendations for educators and policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we take an unsanctioned academic network, a writing group, as a site of inquiry into both the broad given-ness of the norms of the neoliberal academy and our simultaneous compliance with and resistance to these norms. We choose to comply because we are invested in becoming academics; we continue to research and write for conferences and publication and to frame our scholarly work in terms of how it can be used on our CVs. We choose to resist by working collaboratively and towards remaining intelligible (both to ourselves and to those outside the academy) while becoming scholars. Here we put several concepts to work to think about the role of the writing group in our experiences as becoming-scholars, in particular ‘becoming-minoritarian,’ ‘schizoid subjectivities,’ ‘agential assemblage,’ and ‘institutional passing.’ Then, to think about how we (might) live through the process of becoming academic, we turn to the concept of survivance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

One of the longer-term effects of poststructuralism and its principles, in particular deconstruction, has been to direct fresh attention to reading as an ethical practice. A re-focus on the ethical responsibility of the reader is part of a large, historic process of moving beyond 'structuralism' – a name for the formerly-dominant paradigm of the academic disciplines, which embedded false ideas based on sexism, racism, and scientism in the heart of philosophical theory. We will consider how ethics applies to reading in our local milieu; a nation founded on a bilateral relationship between British settlers and iwi Māori, which was inscribed in 1840 in a national treaty, the Treaty of Waitangi/Te Tiriti o Waitangi. We read everything we see around us as part of a system of meanings determined by local histories and cultures. What does it mean to be 'read' as a Māori, a Pacific, or a Pākehā/White person in the local educational contexts of university and school, and what are the implications of different (cultural) forms of reading in a complex community? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Special education teachers are often encouraged to use praise in their instructional interactions with their students with significant support needs (SSN). It is assumed that reinforcing behavior facilitates learning and academic achievement for these students. Despite a myriad of interventions aimed at increasing special education teachers' use of praise, little is known about how praise functions in this context. This is concerning, given the growing body of literature suggesting that praise negatively impacts academic achievement for students without SSN. This study uses constant comparative methods to examine the form, function, and use of praise in supporting learning and instruction in two special educations classrooms that exclusively serve students with SSN. Findings indicate that praise, as an extension of instruction that prioritizes compliance over learning, did little to engage students in thinking or learning. The results hold implications for the instructional approaches teachers use with their students with SSN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from two in‐depth qualitative studies, we used a sociocultural lens for a cross‐case analysis examining how Latin@s’ participation in schools is affected by ideological messages that subordinately position them in terms of their ethnicity, class, and immigrant status. We identified a range of dynamic responses to the school’s normalization pressures: (1) echando ganas [giving it their all] in school while labeled ‘at risk’, (2) living through school with perceived success, and (3) threatening the school’s normalization process. This paper emphasizes the need to create inclusive spaces that acknowledge, reward, and support the efforts and agency of students and parents that go beyond school‐prescribed normalization practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a qualitative study based on 11 ethnographic interviews with families in Oaxaca de Juárez, Mexico, that focused on the retrospective assessments of families concerning their decisions regarding the formal education of their children. The study includes a descriptive and detailed analysis of the phenomenological meanings families attribute to education in Oaxaca. The primary themes identified by families as playing a role in decision-making processes regarding education were: (1) the role of personal sacrifice for the benefit of the entire family; (2) the collective nature of educational achievement; (3) the association of education with upward social mobility for the family; (4) feelings of pride for the family and increased social status in the community; and (5) hope for a better life for the children's generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a reflective endeavor on the affective dimensions of my fieldwork, which explores Asian migrant women's desires for educational success in the United States and South Korea. My encounter with affective and material forces pervasive in the field triggers affective reflexivity that supports my own struggle against the (human) tendency to separate between my epistemology and ontology as well as other dualisms I confronted during the fieldwork. Unlike posthumanists' suspicion around authentic ways of knowing using the method of reflexivity in traditional qualitative inquiry, I contend that affective reflexivity is an inevitable process that allows me to discern affective, active, or vibrant data and helps with understanding reflexivity as a "material" labor to augment ethical accountability and methodological rigor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High achieving Black female students attending predominately-White institutions (PWIs) are stereotyped as being strong willed and celebrated for their resilience. On the surface, these narratives seem to compliment African American students for doing well. However, strong-Black-woman depictions trivialize the racism and sexism these women experience. Utilizing Black feminist geographic theory, I argue that colleges and universities can be "paradoxical spaces" for academically successful Black women: The sense of accomplishment that comes from performing at peak levels often gets undercut by the marginalization these women face on campus. Qualitative, open-ended interviews of 20 participants attending a large Midwestern PWI demonstrate that high achieving African American women relish the intellectual challenges of their academic pursuits, yet they also deal with intense feelings of isolation and frustration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Yosso's community cultural wealth (CCW) shifted conversations about educational inequality from deficit perspectives to those that acknowledge the assets People of Color bring to school. CCW represents the accumulation of students' unique forms of capital, many of which have historically gone unrecognized by schools. This study applies CCW to the schooling experiences of bilingual middle school students who achieved English proficiency and enrolled in advanced coursework. Observations and in-depth interviews with students and their teachers revealed that merely possessing and identifying forms of capital is not enough to guarantee academic success. While students in this study benefitted from some forms of capital, they also possessed resources that lie dormant. Activating capital to transform into wealth required both student agency and support from outsiders. Implications from this study call for educators and researchers to work in spaces between capital and wealth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, I used small stories narrative and Indigenous methodology to understand the everyday occurrences of Native American students and to highlight the complex relationship between their identity, their sense of belonging in graduate school, and their view of education. The experiences of the participants were marked by two things: the experience of ongoing colonization and the experience of defending Native identity. By focusing on the small narrative stories of their everyday experiences, my research illustrates how ongoing colonialization creates situations where students need to defend their identities. Not only is small stories research one way to avoid some of the more essentialist problems of grand narratives, it provides one possible way to move forward and to demonstrate and deconstruct the problematic power structures in higher education that prevent Native American students from accessing equity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a qualitative study of an urban middle school, this article examines student perceptions of shifting tracking structures following the dismantling of a school’s bilingual education program. The article demonstrates that students understood the school changes based on supposed language needs through an explicitly racialized lens, thereby illuminating both the permeability and entrenchment of raciolinguistic ideologies in the predominantly nonwhite school. In particular, a raciolinguistic ideology of antiblackness that positioned Black students as lacking when compared to other non-White students was ultimately reproduced in student discourse despite the change from bilingual education to English-only class tracks. This finding is significant because it questions how education reform is often structured without regard to broader social contexts and histories. The article concludes by exploring strategies policymakers and educators can draw from to challenge underlying relational racializations of antiblackness that are so pervasive in our current language education programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CC Vision - an urban education reform effort launched to strengthen the cradle-to-career education pipeline in Central City - provides the impetus for our use of youth participatory action research (YPAR) to gather and activate student voice in the fight for education justice. Student voice can significantly enhance the quality of policy designed to expand access to education opportunity for poor and/or youth of color attending urban schools. Fifteen youth from seven different high schools in the Central City metropolitan area spent 18 weeks participating in the Central City Youth Co-Researcher Project as co-researchers. We aim to demonstrate the tensions of facilitating YPAR projects with diverse youth, and the benefits of YPAR as a student voice initiative intended to bolster justice-oriented education research. The influence of their scholarship vis-à-vis YPAR on wide-scale education policy-making, and education reform, in Central City is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This one-year ethnographic case study focused on students of color from a West Coast High School who faced a variety of academic challenges. Collectively, they shared perspectives on school improvement, and among the recommendations was the importance of mentorship in the classroom to develop students’ aspirational, navigational, and informational capital for academic resiliency, high expectations, and success. This article highlights the perspectives of multiple stakeholders, such as students and teachers, on the qualities of mentorship practices. Using these data, a framework was developed to promote mentoring as an interrelated process in classroom instruction to ignite a new perspective on school reform. In this particular context, this study concludes that these students of color viewed mentorship as a critical component that was often missing in their high school careers. In an effort to improve students’ experiences in the classroom, this article argues that teachers must develop critical mentoring skills, beyond what is traditionally considered as mentoring services, as a pedagogical tool to assist students to overcome their academic challenges and achieve school success. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article discusses the racial opportunity cost of academic achievement for Latina/o students who graduated from urban high schools and participated in a larger study of 18 high-achieving students of color. The article focuses on the ways the school context influenced their success. Interviews with the seven Latina/o participants reveal that while the original findings encompassed their perspectives, there were additional dimensions to their experiences that expanded the notion of racial opportunity cost. These factors included: (1) Language; (2) Immigration; and (3) Family. A secondary focus of this article is how school leaders can use these findings to facilitate academic achievement for Latina/o students. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study examines Black student and parental perceptions of exclusionary practices of Black school principals. I ask why students and parents viewed two Black principals as contributing to abusive and exclusionary school environments that marginalized Black students. After a two-year ethnographic study, it was revealed that exclusionary behaviors toward Black students—which was viewed as “abuse” by students and parents—was a reproduction of the district's racism, and thus adds new considerations for discussions around the value of racially-like (i.e., all Black) educators and students. Parents perceived these two Black principals as dealing more harshly and rigidly with the Black students and their families; moreover, analysis of the interview data revealed that the principals rejected the cultural and social capital, and proclivities of Black students, and blamed Black students for their lower achievement and unique behaviors. I draw significant attention to the larger contexts of White supremacy and racism as I examine how Black principals negotiate their own roles, how they understand their own treatment of urban Black students, and how they are (knowing or unknowingly) reproducing oppressive practices of White supremacy on Black students in school. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study presents selected findings drawn from a larger investigation of Black male students in the community college. In the larger study, qualitative interviews were conducted with 28 Black males attending a public two-year college in the southwestern United States. The focus of the larger study was on identifying factors which, from the perspectives of students, affected their academic success. Academic success referred primarily to students’ grade point averages or achievement and secondarily to continuation towards students’ self-proclaimed collegiate goals. A large portion of Black male participants in this study indicated that academic disengagement served to negatively affect their achievement in the community college. Students discussed academic disengagement as a reluctance to fully engage as active agents in their own academic development through necessary interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Latino males are grossly underrepresented at four-year postsecondary institutions in the United States. This phenomenological study seeks to address this emergent educational crisis by focusing on the experiences of two Latino male achievers at predominantly White research universities. Community Cultural Wealth is used to explore how Latino male collegians with a cumulative grade point average (GPA) above 3.75 employed linguistic, resistant, and navigational capital to enhance their academic and social experiences during college. The reports offered by participants in this study are intended to advance knowledge regarding the experiences of Latino male collegians as well as to enhance research, policies, and practices that increase the educational attainment of Latina/o students within higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Students with learning disabilities (LD) are particularly vulnerable in making the school-to-college transition where they negotiate a complex constellation of challenges that include academic demands, social expectations, and emotional/personal growth. Although a substantial body of knowledge exists about college students with LD, it is largely predicated upon both extrinsic supports available to ensure a successful transition into college and ways to maintain that success. In contrast, intrinsic knowledge as the basis of agency exerted by individuals with LD to strategize for their own success has received comparatively little attention. This study uses narrative methodology guided by a theoretical framework of disability studies, to render three nuanced portraits of college students with LD. Participants demonstrate ways in which they manage to navigate the academic, social, and emotional/personal realms when transitioning into college. In doing so, they reveal instances of self-knowledge that are often hidden or overlooked, revealing numerous instances of agency. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

During a teaching methods field experience, we initiated several processes to facilitate pre-service teachers’ reflection, empowerment, and performance as they learned to teach students. Through an ethno-theater presentation and subsequent revisions to an ethno-theater script, we turned the reflective lens on ourselves as we discovered instances of our teaching within this field experience that required us to look at our data and ourselves as contributing actors in a series of scenes. Our analysis of the data (as captured through the performance text) led us to new understandings of ‘reflection,’ ‘empowerment,’ and ‘performance’ through the constructed roles and relationships within this field experience work. We discuss the process of creating an ethno-theater script and the methodological impact it had on us as teacher educators and researchers. We conclude with a proposal for dramatic solutions to accelerating reflexivity within teacher education contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Two-way immersion is a model for bilingual education designed to help language-minority students develop additive bilingualism while at the same time offering language-majority students a chance to learn a second language. There is a great deal of rhetoric around two-way immersion that claims these programs aim to improve overall equity among diverse groups of learners. The article begins with a brief review of the available research on two-way immersion education. Then, using Bakhtin's concept of dialogue and Bourdieu's and Gee's ideas of discourse/Discourse, this article takes a close-up look at the discourse patterns in one second-grade two-way immersion classroom in Northern California, with an eye to uncovering how the teacher deliberately attempts to expose students to 'alternative' discourses and to lead language-minority students to construct positive identities as learners. The ultimate question the article attempts to address is whether and to what extent any classroom program can create lasting change in the larger society through exposing students to 'alternatives' to mainstream dominant discourses within the context of classroom norms and activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research suggests that oppositional culture and a burden of acting White are likely to emerge for Black students in desegregated schools in which Whites are perceived as having greater educational opportunities. Using interviews with Black and White students in one desegregated secondary school, this 'school structures' argument is assessed. While Black students perceive race-based limitations to their opportunities for getting ahead and are cognizant of racial patterns of track placement within the local school context, the authors found no evidence that Black students oppose school achievement. These findings are important because they shed light on some of the educational dilemmas that Black students encounter, which have received limited attention in prior work on oppositional culture. These dilemmas include cross-race peer pressure from Whites among high-achieving Black students and dilemmas of low achievement among Black students who struggle academically. Based on the findings, future lines of research are suggested that might help researchers better understand racial achievement disparities in such contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article begins with a discussion of recent critiques of Fordham and Ogbu’s argument on the ‘burden of acting white’. These critiques point to the stereotypical and homogeneous characterization of the black peer group by Fordham and Ogbu, as well as their inattention to the ways in which schools relegate into the lower tracks those students who behave too ethnically and who do not demonstrate proficiency with dominant cultural attributes. The second half of the article presents data showing that academic achievement is related to peer‐group membership and that schools are largely responsible for which peer group students join. Based on an ethnographic study at a predominantly Latino urban high school, I argue that Latino high achievers do not necessarily experience the ‘burden of acting white’ as Fordham and Ogbu suggest. This was due to the institutional practices at Hernandez High School, which ensured that high achievers and low achievers occupied different academic and social spaces, resulting in little interaction between the groups, and to the very different culture that prescribed the ways in which members of each group could achieve status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on findings from a study involving 30 highly successful, low‐income, African American public high school students. The students’ gender‐based experiences defy the traditional patterns of educational underachievement associated with this minority group. They challenge John Ogbu’s influential notions of ‘involuntary’ minority students as oppositional and resistant to schooling. Moreover, the strong gender‐based variation found among these students in terms of their college aspirations and strategies for attaining success raise questions about an undifferentiated treatment of the African American student population. School practices, peer interactions and students’ lived familial and community experiences are crucial factors in shaping educational outcomes. The intertwining of school, family and community cultures constructs gendered attitudes and beliefs. Even when students share a racial and class identity, gender may strongly mediate their perceptions and behavior, in and out of school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the condition of education for Latinos in the U.S. Percentage dropout rate for Latino students; Factors affecting students' learning and academic performance; Connection between family and school and students' academic achievement.