No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

High-stakes testing is currently the primary measure of student success in the United States. Based on this measure of student performance, closing the achievement gap in test scores between Black and Latinx students and their white peers has become the main indicator of success for schools serving Black and Latinx students. When schools are unable to close the achievement gap, one possible consequence is closure and replacement by a new school. This process is referred to as reconstitution. Though reconstitution was developed to provide Black and Latinx students with a more equitable educational experience, these schools often cannot raise high-stakes test scores or their efforts to raise scores have negative implications on their Black and Latinx students. Based on this context, I wanted to learn how the Black and Latinx staff of a reconstituted school describe and understand success through their lived experiences, rather than through state exam outcomes. For my dissertation, I used a qualitative case study that explored the way one founding principal and six founding teachers at a reconstituted school, the Bronx Promise Academy (a pseudonym), described and understood success for their school community and for their Black and Latinx students. I used counterstorytelling, a methodology based on Critical Race Theory, that centered the understanding of success on the experiences and stories of the Black and Latinx staff member participants of my study. After using purposeful sampling to identify the participants, I conducted one interview with each participant and one focus group with all of the participants. Overall, I found that the principal’s counterstory to student success had a direct influence on how her staff viewed the importance of high-stakes exams and understood success for their school community and their students. First, I found that the principal, Ms. Jean-Baptiste, had a counterstory to the traditional view of student success that her teachers also adopted. Ms. Jean-Baptiste and the six teacher participants believed that student success should not be based on high-stakes testing outcomes but instead should be based on students developing real-world skills and navigational capital, or the ability to adapt and thrive in a variety of situations. These skills involved perseverance, critical thinking, and independency. Next, I also found that Ms. Jean-Baptiste’s counterstory for school success prioritized building a strong culture at the Bronx Promise Academy that fulfilled the needs of her students rather than raising test scores. Her counterstory was shared by all of the teacher participants. Since their students went through a traumatic experience at a closing school, the participants considered themselves successful because they collaboratively constructed unique routines, traditions, and structures for their school community. They considered this new culture as a success because they said it provided students with a sense of community, care, and joy that they needed in order to succeed academically at school. My findings, on both this holistic view of success and the use of counterstorytelling, have implications for district and school leaders, policymakers, and education leadership researchers.

Black school psychologists are significantly underrepresented in American schools, and this must be addressed to effectively meet the needs of marginalized groups in this field. Through the lenses of critical race theory, intersectionality and the trauma-informed approach, this phenomenological study explored the experiences of eight Black graduate students studying school psychology at both predominantly White institutions (PWIs) and historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Convergent data yielded themes of (1) Awareness of Intersectionality, (2) Black Representation Matters, (3) Black Mentor/Faculty as Support, (4) Black Sociocultural Safe Spaces, (5) Cultural Incompetence at PWI, and (6) Unsupported Traumatic Experiences at PWI. Divergent data revealed that students from HBCUs experienced a sense of belonging, whereas students from PWIs experienced feelings of isolation. Lastly, divergent data revealed that accreditation was the main concern for students who attended HBCUs. Implications, recommendations, limitations, and future research directions are provided. / School Psychology

Extensive literature has documented The United Methodist Church’s’ (UMC) commitment to social justice. A current focus in the church is working with economically marginalized populations, including the 231,170 Black children and youth in Mississippi. To better understand adults that serve this population, I conducted an exploratory study to gather baseline data about UMC adults’ contemporary attitudes and beliefs about race, racism, and discrimination. A cross-sectional survey was administered at the 2017 Mississippi Annual Conference of The UMC. Using a critical race lens, I found that most of the attendees espoused moderate color-blind racial attitudes and beliefs about the frequency that low-income, Black youth experience racial discrimination. I suggest that espousal of these attitudes and beliefs may promote notions of white privilege or internalized oppression and may lead to increased acts of racial prejudice and discrimination when these adults interact with low-income, Black youth.

Little attention has been paid in Canadian Child Welfare research to the role that training plays in engaging new workers as they enter the complex role of child protection. Focusing on learning principles such as child neglect and working with an ethno-racial Other, it was important to understand what workers took away from their engagement in training and how this was implemented in practice. A mixed methods approach using critical analysis of the OACAS Handouts was used to inform the Semi Structured Interviews conducted with frontline C.A.S. workers. Critical Race Analysis provides theoretical foundation to understand how the ethno-racial other is perceived and enacted in discourse that workers take away into practice. Findings suggest that C.A.S. workers have a conflicted view of training due to the nature and context in which they practice. Aside from the benefits of training, workers have a lot to say about how it could be structured in order to benefit practice. Workers also have complex and conflicting views on neglect, some of which are learned through training and then exacerbated through practice. Workers practice principles on engaging with an ethno-racial other was not influenced through training, but through their own learning processes as influenced by practice and earlier education. These factors relating to child welfare workers can help influence future training within C.A.S. organizations across Canada. / Thesis / Master of Social Work (MSW)

<p>The 3,000-year-old Indian caste system continues to impact the experiences of Indians across the world. Psychological conceptualization and literature with Asian Indians (AIs) in the U.S have largely focused on the experiences of AIs as a marginalized group in the U.S. and within-group experiences such as casteism has not been considered as a framework for analysis, despite its pervasiveness. As counseling psychologists with values of social justice, caste is critical to consider as a unit and framework for analysis in understanding the lived experiences of all AIs in the U.S. This dissertation consists of two parts that are conceptually related to each other. The first chapter reviews historical, socio-political, and psychological factors in the conceptualization of casteism and theorizes Caste Critical Theory (CasteCRIT), which is based in Critical Race Theory. The second chapter assesses AI psychological literature from the lens of CasteCRIT. The empirical study aims to develop and validate a scale to measure casteist beliefs based in the key tenet of CasteCRIT that casteism is endemic. The Caste Beliefs Scale (CBS) is a 15-items scale with a correlational factor model and measures institutional and interpersonal caste beliefs in the U.S. Implications are discussed for future research. </p>