While there is ample research theorizing reasons for so-called "achievement gaps" between African American and White students on standardized tests, few studies explore African Americans' perceptions of the impact these tests have on overall education. Through interviews with six current students attending Hillsborough County public high schools, one recent graduate of a Hillsborough County high school, and two parents of students in Hillsborough County public schools, this research study probes participants' perceptions of the impact of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) on their high school experiences. All participants in the study identified as African American or Black. Through archival research and participant observation with the Tampa Bay Academy of Hope (TBAH), a non-profit organization dedicated to developing leadership, behavioral, and academic skills for inner-city middle and high school students, this study also investigates the role of community-based organizations in facilitating the successful navigation of academic and bureaucratic challenges for African American students and parents in the quest for academic success at and beyond the high school level in Hillsborough County. The consequences of standardized testing in the Hillsborough County schools participants have attended reach beyond individuals' successful graduation, affecting course options, academic tracking, school structure, and school climate. Here I argue that standardized testing is another method of academic tracking, and school-wide penalties and rewards associated with disaggregated standardized test scores impact student and parent perceptions of school climate and school-family relationship.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / There is a dearth of literature about post-secondary transition experiences of Black women with dis/abilities (BWD). In this qualitative study, I explore transition experiences of five post-secondary BWD from high school to college in order to privilege her chronicles and narratives as knowledge. In addition, two urban public high school transition coordinators (TC) participated in the study. Three inquiries guided my dissertation: (1) features of educational experiences narrated by BWD, (2) features of transition services provided to students with dis/abilities, including roles of and approaches as described by the TCs, and (3) how BWD narratives may be leveraged to critique and extend transition services as the TCs described them. I engaged in three semi-structured interviews with six of the seven participants (one interview with the seventh). I drew from Disability Studies/Disability Studies in Education (DSE), Critical Race Theory, and Womanist/Black Feminist Theory and their shared tenets of voice and counternarratives and concepts of social construction and falsification of consciousness to analyze the narratives of BWD participants. I drew from the DS/DSE tenet of interlocking systems of oppression, DisCrit tenet three, race and ability, and constructs of Inputs and Outcomes in work on Modeling Transition Education to analyze the TCs’ narratives and in connection to the narratives of the BWD. Across both sets of participants, three themes in the form of Truths emerged; they were terrible and sticky experiences of racial/dis/ability oppression for the BWDs and, imposing of whiteness and normalization within the transition education practices described by the TCs. For the BWD, those terrible and sticky truths took three forms: (a) Pathologization; (b) Disablement; and (c) Exclusion. Another type of truth in the BWD’s narratives, however, was Subverted Truths: (re)defined identities and radical love, (re)placed competence and knowledge, and (revalued sisterhood and community, the ways of pushing back and resisting the Truths and their effects. I discuss implications for BWD post-secondary transition-planning-and-programming theory, research, policy, practice, praxis, and spirituality.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The systemic racism imposed on the lives and education aspiration of six of my elders who stayed in the racist South during the ferociously deleterious era of Jim Crow is the focus of this phenomenological critical race study. These stories centered the voices of my elders as powerful weapons to expose white supremacy and the psychophysiological trauma imposed upon my elders. These stories were about the lives, lived experiences, and educational trials and triumphs of six of my Brown and Black hue American elders whose ancestry was born out of slavery and delivered into the vicious Jim Crow era. My work was grounded in Phenomenological Critical Race Theory. Critical Race Theory validates my elders’ narratives and their narratives fortify the tenets of CRT. For you see, racism was an everyday phenomenon my elders experienced as residents of rural Southern America. My elders came to understand “what” they were, Black, by understanding “who” they were not, White. Furthermore, this qualitative phenomenological critical race study was guided by three inquiries, what experiences have you had with Jim Crow; how or in what ways did your experiences with Jim Crow affect your education; and how or in what ways did your experience with Jim Crow affect your life? These inquiries produced four intersecting themes, 1) the survival of racism as part of everyday life, 2) economic exploitation of Black labor, 3) denial of equitable education, and 4) the sociopolitical construction of racial identity, and three significant findings, racist place, sociopolitical oppression, and inequitable education.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This study explored the perspectives of Black mothers and daughters as they contemplated how two institutions ---schools and prisons/jails -- influenced their relationship with one another. As the incarceration rates for Black females increase in the U.S., examinations of these perspectives can produce insights about the impacts of schools and jails/prisons on the lives of these girls and women, and more pointedly, about the perceived contributions of racist and misogynistic forces on the Black mother-Black daughter relationship. Three pairs of mother-daughter dyads were selected and interviewed for the study. The daughters were Black middle school-aged girls between the ages 10 and 14, and the mothers were of varying ages. Two specific research questions centered on: (1) the participants’ perceptions of how these institutions have had an influence mother and daughter relationships, and (2) how they dealt with problems they faced either separately or together that were associated with school (for both participants in the dyad) and/or that resulted from the jail/prison experience (for the mother). Interviews were analyzed using phenomenological research methods and metaanalyzed from a critical feminist framework. Findings show that both mother and daughter have been resourceful in maintaining strong ties despite the array of forces that challenged these unions. Participants from both sides of these mothers and daughters dyads expressed how mothers’ parenting styles, lifestyle decisions, and self-perceptions were effected by the institutions of schooling and criminal justice. Although the findings of the study offered a glimpse of participants’ perspectives on racism and sexism as forces that influenced their experiences, the relationship issues between them were most prevalent. Further research is recommended to uncover more of the intricacies of sexism and racism as they relate to relationships and personal issues of Black, formerly incarcerated mothers and their pre-teen and teenaged daughters.

My experiences as a Canadian Muslim nurse wearing a hijab have sparked the question concerning the experiences of nurses who, in their daily practice, choose to wear a head cover, an immediate visual signifier of their Muslim identity. I wish to generate understanding of how this religious identity and its racialization intersect with gender to shape nurses’ experiences with anti-Muslim racism. Through listening to the stories of ten Canadian Muslim nurses who were recruited across Canada and who wear different types of the hijab, come from varied and diverse cultural and educational backgrounds, and practice in different healthcare settings and contexts, their experiences are highlighted, and their voices are illuminated, revealing valuable insights into the challenges they encounter in their daily nursing practice. I situate these experiences within a conceptualization of Islamophobia and, more specifically, gendered Islamophobia as a form of anti-Muslim racism that is often experienced by women and girls who are identifiable as Muslims. In this dissertation, I attend to the overarching question: What are the experiences of Canadian Muslim nurses wearing hijab and practicing within the Canadian healthcare system? This question encompasses three sub questions: 1) How do Muslim nurses’ social locations that are produced at the intersections of gender-race-religion converge in understanding their experiences? 2) What are the power relations enacted within the discipline of Canadian nursing that produce and sustain social locations experienced by nurses who wear a hijab? 3) What are the ways these nurses resist their racialization and push against master-narratives that are constructed about them? These questions are approached using narrative inquiry as a research methodology that is informed by critical race feminism and care ethics. These questions are also explored through intersectionality as an analytical lens to unpack the complexities of these nurses’ experiences. In this study I present the nurses’ counter-narrative that challenges the stereotypical assumptions about them and unveils the multilevel contextual power structures that preserve racism within the discipline of nursing and reproduce the processes of racialization experienced by nurses who wear a hijab. In doing so, my aim is to provide a vessel in which the nurses share their stories and to reclaim control over the reductionist Orientalist colonial narratives about them. It is my hope that knowledge gleaned from this study will inform the understanding of the structures and processes that produce and maintain racism within nursing with the goal of advancing transformational change in nursing to achieve social justice. I capture the counter-narrative of nurses who wear a hijab in three composite narratives that I constructed from their stories based on key storylines that I needed to unpack. By ‘composite narrative’ I refer to a technique where several interviews are combined and presented in one or more individual stories that are linked by a shared purpose or identity among research participants. The technique of using composite narratives to present and analyse complex and extensive data is congruent with analyzing stories as a whole instead of fragmenting them. The counter-narrative offers a point of resistance as an alternative discourse that uplifts the voices of the nurses through understanding and generating knowledge about their experiences from their standpoint. The stories of Muslim nurses who wear a hijab bridge a gap in the literature about Muslim nurses’ experiences within the current charged political environment, post 9/11 era, the COVID-19 pandemic, the Quebec ban on wearing religious symbols and the ensuing debates it generated in Canada. Their stories provide a needed and timely understanding of the implications for nursing research, policy, practice, and education to create an inclusive and supportive environment for nurses who wear a hijab. Given the interconnected nature between racism and colonialism, fostering such an environment is inherently anti-racist and decolonial. Importantly, doing the work to create safer, anti-racist spaces for nurses who wear a hijab and to decolonize nursing which would benefit all racialized nurses. / Graduate

Dissertation｜2460442M Abstract The discourses structuring news coverage of terrorist attacks influence our understanding of the nature, drivers and severity of the threat emanating from a specific extremist actor category. Therefore, they are a powerful tool to further socio-political goals. Acknowledging the role of language in shaping reality, this dissertation project uses Critical Discourse Analysis/Critical Discourse Studies to reveal current discursive trends in the understudied coverage of Islamist and right-wing extremist attacks in the Swiss press. With the dominant social factor distinguishing the two extremist categories being ethnicity, it hypothesises that Western media discourses reflect the presuppositions of Orientalism and Critical Race Theory. Both theories expect texts to express, enact and legitimise social hierarchies based on racial affinity to solidify the supremacy of the white elite. The exemplarily analysis of the reporting of two recent extremist incidents by three newspapers representing political perspectives from the right-wing to the left-wing shows that while the Swiss press is indeed influenced by and reproduces racial inequalities, publications do so to a varying degree.

In Los Angeles, the charter movement has gained incredible momentum as Charter Management Organizations take over troubled public schools in working class neighborhoods and communities of color. In Watts, a Latino and African American working class neighborhood, Locke High School had long stood as a troubled school in the Los Angeles Unified School District. After decades of low test scores, violence, and astronomical dropout rates, Green Dot Public Schools took over the campus and, in 2008, opened Locke as a public charter school under its management. This study examined the perceptions, experiences, and stories of five 12th-grade students at Locke whose high school was taken over. These students described the impact this charter takeover had on their social, academic, and personal lives. Using qualitative research methodology, this study utilized student-created photo essays, in-depth semistructured interviews, and a focus group. Though the media prematurely labeled the takeover a success, the students‘ views differed. They described how the takeover helped them academically, but failed to give them a rigorous college preparatory curriculum. The takeover also failed to meet their social needs. These students discussed how the takeover improved the Locke campus, but failed to make ongoing improvements throughout the school. Students offered their stories and counterstories to the mainstream media, which applauded the changed atmosphere. They reminisced about the past, mourned social loss, complained of uniforms and strict compliance to rules, and hoped for additional changes. These students added personal voices to the takeover of their high school.

Although Hmong students are among the lowest demographic to enter college, the “model minority” myth continues to mischaracterize the unwavering success of Asian Americans across all educational levels. Furthermore, the “model minority” myth continues to uphold master narratives that silence the voices of Hmong American students whose educational experiences deviate quite drastically from their East Asian counterparts due to traumatic social-political contexts that continue to exert influence on their migration in the United States. Utilizing AsianCrit as a lens, the purpose of this narrative study was to explore Hmong American students’ perceptions of how race impacts their secondary educational experiences. The study suggests that race, gender, gangs, language work in complex ways to shape how Hmong American students perceive race in education and their choices within educational settings at the secondary level as they transition to post-secondary education. In addition, the study identifies three additional themes that gesture toward the manner in which Hmong American students make sense of their racial and cultural identity in the space of education.

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