<p>International students are integral in U.S. higher education institutions, and research demonstrates that these students face a range of concerns, with race and racism being understudied. In this dissertation, I present two chapters highlighting the racialized experiences of international students of color. In the first theoretical chapter, I connected international student literature to tenets of Critical Race Theory. I ended with specific recommendations for the field of counseling psychology. In the second empirical chapter, I conducted a narrative inquiry and interviewed 6 Asian Indian international students about how they formed understandings of race and racism in the United States. Through using reflexive thematic analysis, four themes of antiessentialism and intersectionality, social construction of race, sources of racial construction, and impacts of racial construction were developed. Using these results, I provided insights into how international students from India may understand race and implications for clinical practice, higher education, and research. </p>

This study aims to understand the experience of a non-White family trying to adopt a transracial child. ‘Transracial adoption’ is defined as a family adopting a child from a different race than theirs. My overarching focus is on how society comes to understand transracial adoption as a one-way transfer of minority children into White families, however, when the roles are reversed there is a lack of acceptance for minority families adopting transracially – specifically, when the adoptive child is White. The purpose of my study is to share my mine and mother’s life experience of fostering, social workers, child welfare and adoption so that minorities who are looking to adopt transracially may use mine and/or my mother’s life experience to help guide their adoption process if they feel they are being discriminated against. This study will also explore motivations, values, ethics and possible biases regarding transracial adoptions. Highlighting the contradictions that exist in transracial adoption practices I will use my own research as a platform for awareness of how social work practice can influence the lives of minorities who would like to adopt transracially, and for the need at both a macro and micro to create clearer transracial adoption policies for minority and White families. / Thesis / Master of Social Welfare (MSW)

The purpose of this paper is to explore the personal, cultural and structural experiences and barriers faced by highly skilled Canadian university graduate immigrants regarding finding a good job related to their qualification in the labour market, and how this struggle has shaped their lives. Data was collected through individuals by semi-structured questionnaires. Interviews were the deep source of skilled immigrants’ experiences and problems they have faced in the labour market. Applying the critical race theory perspective and using the Thompson PCS Model as investigating tool, this study sought to capture the participants’ reality. The findings suggest that immigrants are facing many structural and systemic barriers and racial discrimination in the labour market. It is affecting them not only individually but also affecting their families and because of that these skilled immigrants have a plan to leave Canada for better job opportunities because even after graduating from Canadian universities they were unable to find work according to their field of study and work experience. Major themes emerging from this research include: why skilled immigrants pursued more education if they were already graduated from their home countries; immigration policies and labour market policies mismatch; non-recognition of immigrants credentials and work experience; inadequate settlement services; racial discrimination in job market; and what difference they feel before and after graduating from Canadian university in finding a job. / Thesis / Master of Social Work (MSW)

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.

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.