Given the ongoing persistence of anti-Black racism in Ontario education, I enact a curriculum of Black Excellence and antiracism. In partnership with the Ottawa Carleton District School Board and propelled by calls to action from The Ministry of Education and Black advocacy organization, I ask how The Sankofa Centre of Black Excellence course and program may address these systems of racism. I draw on Critical Race Theory as both a theoretical framework and overarching methodology of analysis for my thesis. In the first of three articles within this thesis I begin by framing my understanding of antiracism with an overview of the possibilities and limitation of Culturally Relevant and Responsive Pedagogy in Ontario public schooling contexts. In the second article, I draw on the literature and method of Critical Race Currere to understand antiracism and Black excellence in relation to teaching the Sankofa course. In the third article, I draw on a social action curriculum project research methodology to analyze and synthesize the course curriculum-as-planned and -lived. Finally, I suggest that the continued engagement with Aoki’s (1993) concept of a curriculum-as-lived serves as a departing point for engaging with broader conversations surrounding Black excellence and antiracism curriculum in the Ontario educational system.

Thesis advisor: C. Patrick Proctor / Dominant conceptualizations for family-school relations across U.S. educational research, policy, and practice continue to privilege the behaviors, experiences, and practices of white, upper- and middle-class families, while failing to address the race and class power-relations that permeate educational institutions and their neighborhoods. In the field of bilingual education, there is an emergent body of research that examines issues of language, race, and class within the experiences of families in two-way dual language bilingual education, where children from multiple racial, cultural, and economic groups are educated together with the goals of bilingualism and biliteracy. However, this scholarship has not related the experiences and relations in bilingual programs to the broader issue regarding the dominant and deficit discourse of family-school relations in the U.S. In response, this dissertation situates families’ experiences in a two-way dual language bilingual program within the broader ideological, political, and historical dimensions of U.S. family-school relations. A theoretical orientation informed by Critical Race Theory, Critical Poststructuralist Sociolinguistics, and Feminist Poststructuralist frameworks was used to highlight how racialized positionalities of families in schools reverberate beyond individuals’ identity construction, connecting to discourses about families at other societal scales. This study utilized participant observations, semi-structured interviews, and artifact generation. Data was analyzed using discursive and textual analytical approaches. Findings include (a) an investigation of how the legal and institutional contexts related to family-bilingual school relations contribute to the racialization of people and their languaging; (b) an analysis of how raciolinguistic ideologies are deployed to naturalize the designation of linguistic and ethnoracial labels upon families; and (c) a generation of portraits highlighting how families ruptured deficit positionings by reporting on systems of oppression, their dynamic language practices, and their expansive relations across groups of people, places, and temporal scales. Ultimately, this dissertation argues that despite individual efforts of stakeholders in bilingual programs to foster the wellbeing and development of families, the racist and classist foundations of schooling will ensure the reification of oppressive educational experiences for multiply minoritized families. At the same time, these families will continue to find ways to survive, resist their subjugation, and reimagine more liberatory worlds. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

This dissertation walks the balance between the western structures of academia and Indigenous ways of storytelling and knowing. Stories are how knowledge is shared and passed down in many Indigenous cultures. This study utilizes Indigenous Storywork methods, alongside western case study methodology, to explore how colonialism and the structures of public, non-Native higher education institutions and engineering programs impact the lived experiences of Indigenous STEM students. Using Tribal Critical Race Theory (TribalCrit), this study also connects individual student experiences through stories to systemic structures of universities and engineering programs in a way that honors and amplifies Indigenous ways of thinking and doing. The study was situated at a university in the eastern U.S. and had three primary forms of data: public documents such as university historical documents and program policies and structures, focus group discussions with a university Council of Elders from the Indigenous community, and individual interviews with Indigenous STEM students from the Lumbee and Coharie nations. The findings demonstrate the ways that the Indigenous STEM students at North Carolina State University hold community as a cultural value from their Tribal backgrounds that is paramount to their success at the university. The students utilize community to access knowledge and build power for themselves as well as for the whole university Indigenous community. NC State's Indigenous engineering students perceived the structures and policies of their engineering programs to be disconnected from community and relationality and thus did not utilize or connect to these structures as designed. This work also provides an example of a framework for engaging with university Indigenous communities to co-create meaningful and impactful research and demonstrates the differences in the experiences of Indigenous students in the eastern U.S. from those in the west, specifically in terms of their invisibility in the larger community, both on and off campus. / Doctor of Philosophy / This dissertation walks the balance between the western structures of academia and Indigenous ways of storytelling and knowing. Stories are how knowledge is shared and passed down in many Indigenous cultures. This study centers Indigenous methodologies and theories to explore how colonialism and the structures of public, non-Native, higher education institutions and engineering programs impact the lived experiences of Indigenous STEM students. This study also connects individual student experiences to the systemic structures of universities and engineering programs. The study focuses on a university in the eastern U.S. and used three forms of data: public documents such university historical documents and current policies, a group discussion with a Council of Elders from the Indigenous community, and individual interviews with Indigenous STEM students. The students were members of the Lumbee and Coharie nations. The findings highlight the way they hold community as a cultural value deeply tied to their Tribal backgrounds. This community is key to their success at the university and used community to access knowledge and build power for themselves as well as for the whole university Indigenous community. In particular, the Indigenous engineering students perceived the structures and policies of their engineering programs to be disconnected from community and relationships, and thus they did not use or connect to those structures in the intended ways. Instead, they went outside the system to gain the knowledge the needed. This work also provides a framework, grounded in Indigenous value of respect, reciprocity, responsibility, reverence, holism, interrelatedness, and synergy, for engaging with university Indigenous communities to co-create meaningful and impactful research and demonstrates the differences in the experiences of Indigenous students in the eastern U.S. from those in the west, specifically in terms of their invisibility in the larger community, both on and off campus.

The unresolved long-term effects of slavery and past and ongoing systemic racism directed toward Black Americans can be seen in the devaluing and aggressively racist treatment of Black students in Los Angeles County schools. Through qualitative interviews with Black education community members in Los Angeles County, this study collected Black education community members’ perspectives on the need for a multiphase education reparations system for Black youth, beginning with early learners (ages 0 to 8), and what components such a system should include. Participants overwhelmingly supported an education reparations system due to the over-policing and criminalization of Black students and the history of racist and unjust policies and inequitable education; participants suggested multiple components of a potential education reparations system that can be grouped as student supports, family supports, educational resources, and societal and policy reforms. The study concludes with a proposal for introducing an education reparations system in Los Angeles County led by Black community leaders and grounded in community outreach and ongoing organizing.

No description available.

African-American male students are systematically forced to confine themselves to the social construct that European-American society has developed for them. Actions, behaviors, and words that communicate this message spread both interracially and intraracially within schools and affect African-American males tremendously in terms of their identity development and personal well-being. While many studies examine the overt forms of racism and more obvious microaggressions that African-American male students encounter in their schooling, few look at the deep-seated forms of racism that are less noticeable but that have a disastrous psychological impact on these students. This study shows the effects on the psyche and development of the three African-American male students involved as they retrospectively recount their secondary school experiences. Portraiture is used to capture each participant’s story accurately and clearly while critical race theory is interwoven throughout as theoretical framework for this research. Using both critical race theory and portraiture, a complete examination of how racism occurs within schools and its effects on African-American males is shown.

Since the publication of A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983), Berliner and Biddle (1995) have argued media have assisted leaders in creating a “manufactured crisis” (p. 4) about America’s public schools to scapegoat educators, push reforms, and minimize societal problems, such as systemic racism and declining economic growth, particularly in urban areas. The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act (2001) functions as an important articulation of this crisis (Granger, 2008). Utilizing the theoretical lenses of master narrative theory (Lyotard, 1984), Critical Race Theory (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001), and social capital theory (Bourdieu, 1986; Coleman 1988), this study employed critical discourse analysis (Reisigl & Wodak, 2009) to unmask the mainstream media’s master narrative, or dominant story, about Victory High School (VHS), which was reconstituted under the authority of the NCLB Act (2001). Findings revealed a master narrative that racialized economic competition, vilified community members, and exonerated neoliberal reforms. Drawing on the critical race methodology of counter-narratives (Yosso, 2006), individual and focus group interviews with 12 VHS teachers, alumni, and community elders illustrated how reforms fragmented this school community, destroying collective social capital, while protecting the interests of capitalism and neoliberalism. By revealing the interests protected by the media’s master narrative and beginning a counter-narrative voiced by members of the community, this study contributes to recasting the history of the VHS community, to understanding the intersections between race and class in working class communities of color, and to exposing the impact of neoliberal educational reforms on urban schools.

No description available.

Då flera tidigare rapporter slagit fast att diskriminering inom skolan återfinns såväl som i läromedel och i skolan som institution så syftar detta arbete till att analysera om även nyproducerade läromedel för grundskolan och gymnasiet, och i detta fall en kursplan från lärarutbildningen, kan sägas bidra till att upprätthålla diskriminerande strukturer. Detta arbete är framförallt inriktat på begrepp som etnocentrism och etnisk diskriminering och förekomsten av dem. Som metod används en innehållsanalys samt en syftesrelaterad analys med exponerande kritik. Arbetet visar att mycket av den kritik som lyftes mot läromedel som var producerade fram till tidigt 2000-tal även är berättigade när läromedel från 2012 analyseras. Det är framförallt närvaron av eurocentrism, strukturell rasism, och etnisk diskriminering som kan sägas skapa maktojämlikheter i läromedlen. Vid analysen av kursplanen så står det också att finna formuleringar som måste anses vara diskutabla. Vidare diskuteras bristen på nyanserade perspektiv och teoribildning i kursplanen. I slutdiskussionen för detta arbete så menar jag att lärarstudenter måste kunna tillgodogöra sig och exponeras för diverse olika begrepp och teoribildningar som rör frågor som etnicitet, strukturell rasism, mångkulturalism, och socialkonstruktivism för att på så sätt kunna bedriva en icke-diskriminerande undervisning. / This paper discuss the presence of ethnic discrimination in newly produced textbooks made for history education. Earlier research on the subject argues that modern schools and educational institutes need to highlight the issue in order to create a non-discriminating education. There is a need to incorporate theories like "Critical race theory" into the curriculums of existing teacher educations.

This essay focuses on the pedagogical benefits of using fantasy literature in the classroom as it relates to the Swedish school’s democratic values of anti-racism and working for a just society. It examines the representations of racial prejudice, discrimination, and othering among wizards and muggles which are explicitly or implicitly present throughout the Harry Potter series as well as what the representations of inequality can offer in terms of inculcating democratic values and critical thinking in a Swedish upper secondary classroom. This essay also argues for the use of Harry Potter in the EFL classroom since the novel’s complexity and popularity can work as an incentive for students to analyze the ways that the fantasy world relates to our own society. Since the focus of this essay is racial discrimination, prejudice, and otherness the critical lens is Critical Race Theory and anti-oppressive education theory.