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U.S. education is built upon a system of Whiteness, entrenched in White supremacy culture, and defended by White fragility. Within this framework, even a publicly-recognizable event intended to center Blackness, the celebration of Black History Month, reinscribes White supremacy. Through the decontextualized presentation of select Black heroes and the use of pedagogies that position White teachers as authority figures who regulate the presence of Blackness, and without drawing attention to the White supremacist cultural norms that are the foundation for U.S. society, students can walk away from Black History Month with a reinforced belief in White supremacy. In order to disrupt White supremacy, White teachers must be grounded in the principles of critical race theory. White teachers must take a knee against normative Whiteness and develop as 'abolitionist teachers'. Those teachers who choose to persist with pedagogical approaches that devalue Blackness and support White supremacy cannot claim good intentions; choosing to center and celebrate Blackness is the path to racial justice.

To address accreditation standards and to meet a need due to a disparity in health care providers engaged in direct patient care, many institutions of higher education have focused on initiatives to increase the numbers of ethnic and racial minority populations. Despite these efforts, there remains a dearth of diversity in health care. For many underrepresented minority populations (URM), numerous barriers exist to becoming a health professional. Greater levels of discrimination and bias reduce belonging and agency in URM students impacting recruitment and retention. Research has shown that discrimination and bias are antithetical to feeling a sense of belonging on college campuses for URM students. The sense of belonging for URM students has been positively linked to retention and other academic outcomes. Faculty interaction and campus environment have been correlated to sense of belonging. Thus, faculty members as mentors, advisors, and shapers of campus climate have an important role to play in supporting URM students. However, due to socialization in an oppressive society, narratives about race and racism can become entrenched. The entrenchment of racial ideologies, without tools to examine, deconstruct, and reflect, leads to little forward progress. Incorporation of mindfulness anti-oppression pedagogy provides a needed paradigm shift for allied health educators to act with intentionality as they cultivate spaces of belonging for URM students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multicultural education is a term with a variety of definitions growing from a number of different disciplines. These authors conducted a content analysis of the Pearson reading program "Good Habits, Great Readers" for grades four and five. The qualitative approach of content analysis allowed researchers to examine text "through the systematic classification process of coding and identifying themes or patterns." Through content analysis they were able to extract themes and patterns embedded within "Good Habits, Great Readers" to describe the phenomena within the text. As all curriculum can be understood as racial text, gendered text, political text, autobiographical text, and so on, the authors were able to look at the messages the "Good Habits, Great Readers" series gives to its readers. Thus, content analysis provided the framework to examine the Pearson text as a living document that shapes its readers. The authors were able to conclude that through literacy, issues impacting students of color can be addressed while empowering students to make decisions that will influence their own school and local communities. Textbooks and reading series like "Good Habits, Good Readers" can be a start to multicultural integration, but they cannot be the end.

The year 2020 brought not only the COVID-19 pandemic but also a wave of racial injustice, which impacted many in the U.S. and beyond. Combined, these phenomena have been characterized as dual pandemics, which introduced new demands that forced faculty to redesign aspects of their doctoral programs to ensure sustainability during the pandemic and post-pandemic era. The purpose of this essay is to highlight changes we made to sustain our EdD program during and post dual pandemics. We achieve this by employing Ginwright's (2022) four pivots and brown's (2017) emergent leadership as a framework and to conceptualize how we transitioned from viewing the events of 2020 as problems to embracing the possibilities they offered for the present and future of our EdD program. Practical implications and recommendations for this work are discussed to offer EdD faculty ways to design, develop, and sustain their doctoral programs in the post-pandemic era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated differences in 50 fifth through eighth grade students' perceptions of caring teacher behaviors. The analyses revealed that African American and female students were more likely to value behavior that encourages academic achievement than were White and male students, who were more likely to value warm interpersonal behaviors. (Contains 5 tables and 1 footnote.)

In U. S. schools, which have a primarily White teaching force but an increasingly non-White student population, students and teachers may not be able to complete caring encounters based on their differing communication patterns. Therefore, it is important to understand what behaviors students view as caring so that teachers can complete caring encounters with their students. This research investigated differences in 825 sixth-grade students' perceptions of teacher caring based on student minority status. The findings of this research demonstrate that care does look different to different groups of students. Therefore, teachers must care for their students in culturally congruent ways if all students are to receive the benefits of caring teacher-student relationships. (Contains 1 table.)

Doctoral education is a time of profound identity shaping. Educational leadership continues to be dominated by assumptions about Whiteness and maleness as well as calls to center social justice in the educational leadership curriculum. In this paper, I describe the critical pedagogical approaches and underpinnings I used in the genesis, structuring, and implementation of an educational leadership doctoral course focused on the specific intersection of Black women. I highlight the roles of dialogue, relationships, and my own positionality. Institutional leaders, educational leadership program leaders, and individual faculty must commit to reenvisioning educational leadership preparation through an intersectional lens to move toward educational justice. Finally, I offer a reflection on the iterative nature of social justice teaching and learning, highlighting imagination, passion, healing, and joy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]