Michael L . Boucher, Jr. | Texas A&M University - San Antonio (original) (raw)
Grants by Michael L . Boucher, Jr.
Noyce@FGCU is a Noyce track 1, phase 1 proposal that seeks to build a lasting pipeline of talente... more Noyce@FGCU is a Noyce track 1, phase 1 proposal that seeks to build a lasting pipeline of talented STEM students from underrepresented groups to meet the growing needs of diverse, Southwest Florida school districts through Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU). The program recruits undergraduate STEM majors to undertake an education minor and complete their provisional certification testing upon graduation. These graduates become certified teachers after one year of in-service at a school with high needs in Southwest Florida. Students receive mentoring during that first year of teaching through both the College of Education and the school district ensuring their success. This effort involves exceptional administrative commitment on the part of the institution, as well as an integrated partnership effort between the College of Arts and Science STEM faculty and College of Education faculty united through the Whitaker Center for STEM Education. Through the proposed program, Noyce@FGCU produces 19 high quality STEM educators equipped to work in our highly diverse schools.
Primary objectives of Noyce@FGCU include:
1. Increase the number of STEM classroom teachers for grades 6-12. To fill critical shortages of math and science teachers in Southwest Florida, Noyce@FGCU produces 19 qualified STEM teachers for our underrepresented districts.
2. Increase the success of Noyce@FGCU classroom teachers. Success is supported through pre-service enrichment, and dual first-year mentoring by an in-school teacher, and a first year in-service coach.
3. Support teacher certification of Noyce@FGCU scholars. Scholars complete certification testing prior to graduation. Teacher certification is completed by scholars through cooperation with the school districts by successfully completing their first year of provisional teaching.
External Funding by Michael L . Boucher, Jr.
Books by Michael L . Boucher, Jr.
This volume gives scholars and students a working knowledge of the procedures, challenges, and be... more This volume gives scholars and students a working knowledge of the procedures, challenges, and benefits of using photo methods in their ethnographic work through studies by researchers who are currently using it. The studies are both examples of exemplary scholarship and serve as tutorials on the procedures and methodological considerations of using this personal, even intimate, method. These eight authors were asked to re-open their carefully packed-away studies, disassemble the methods and the findings, and reflect on the contents.
Like looking through old photo albums, these reflective essays allowed us to have new conversations with different audiences. Each chapter contains sections that penetratingly explain the research problem, describe why photo methods were used for the study, elucidate and reflect on the method, summarize the findings, and then examine participant empowerment through the method. This unique structure is specifically designed to be used in masters and doctoral classrooms and with researchers looking for new methods or to strengthen their existing work. The editors and authors believe that using photo-methods can empower participants to become part of the research process. Each author uses photo with the same goal; to create rigorous science that has meaning for the participants.
Book Chapters by Michael L . Boucher, Jr.
The use of photographs in ethnographic education research is an emerging method that promises to ... more The use of photographs in ethnographic education research is an emerging method that promises to enable researchers to collect deeper, more meaningful data from individuals who may otherwise be silenced. When used to empower participants, photo methodologies can remove what Foucault (1980) described as the analytical “gaze,” allowing for discussions of difficult or taboo subjects like race, sex, gender, and dis/ability (p. 155). This article discusses the development of photo methods in ethnographic education research, contributes practical suggestions as to their use, and provides successful examples where photos have empowered study participants. To do both science and justice in cooperation with our participants, empowering communities and individuals and collecting trustworthy data are equal goals. Using photos in the reviewed studies achieved positive results for participants and revealed new understandings of communities, culture, and individuals.
Advances in library and information science (ALIS) book series, 2018
Springer eBooks, Oct 15, 2017
This chapter highlights one participant from my previous research, a case study, designed to reve... more This chapter highlights one participant from my previous research, a case study, designed to reveal how five successful White social studies teachers negotiated their teaching relationships with their African American students. The participants, from a Midwestern de facto segregated urban district, were identified as successful teachers and chosen using a nomination process. They were observed in the classroom and interviewed using photo-elicitation (Crilly et al., Qual Res, 6:341–366, 2006; Harper, Visual Stud, 17:13–26, 2002). The photos were taken by the researcher of classroom interactions between the White teacher and students of color on an iPad. The interviews were then qualitatively analyzed for emerging themes (Creswell, Qualitative inquiry and research design: choosing among five traditions. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, 2007; Patton, Qualitative research & evaluation methods: Integrating theory and practice. SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks, 2002; Stake, The art of case study research: Perspectives on practice. SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks, 1995). Using photo elicitation gave these teachers a platform to theorize and reflect on the relationships with their students of color and their own ideas about race: (1) Teachers discussed the dynamics of their relationships with students and their ability or inability to connect with individual students. (2) Teachers saw their interactions with students through a new lens and theorized about the nature of urban teaching and their own ideas about race. (3) Teachers revealed the complicated push and pull between empowerment and deficit modeling of their students’ lives.
Participant Empowerment Through Photo-elicitation in Ethnographic Education Research, 2017
Although the two have distinct origins, photography and ethnography are linked in history and pra... more Although the two have distinct origins, photography and ethnography are linked in history and practice. The technology and application of photography as documenter and driver of society has created a convergence of culture and image not possible in former ages, and Yet in social science, the image has been slow to gain acceptance as a tool for data collection and dissemination. This introduction describes the origins and mechanisms of this powerful union and explains how the use of images in ethnographic work enhances validity. The chapters herein are testaments to the power of using images in ethnographic research as more than a mere mechanism for deeper data collection, but also as an empowering experience for participants.
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2018
Public historical spaces hold a powerful role in the teaching of a regional and national heritage... more Public historical spaces hold a powerful role in the teaching of a regional and national heritage curriculum. Those public sites, markers, museums, and monuments provide the narrative from which citizens conceptualize the past and they comprise a curriculum of American history. However, the calculated and intentional omission of the histories and identities of marginalized and oppressed people creates an unequal, ahistorical void that is filled by the hegemonic normality of the White supremacist narrative, creating a curriculum of White supremacy. Using research of historical understanding, racialized historical understanding, historical understanding in museums and public spaces, and the concept of erasure in history, this chapter investigates the important role public spaces play in presenting a holistic and complete historical narrative that goes beyond the additive models of multiculturalism and preserves the culture and heritage of all peoples.
Marking the Invisible: Articulating whiteness in social studies education and research, 2020
Social studies educators were given a charge by the founders of our discipline to bear citizens w... more Social studies educators were given a charge by the founders of our discipline to bear citizens who construct a “more perfect union” and build a new social order through education (NCSS, 2017). The founders of the social studies envisioned a curriculum to combine history, geography, economics, and government, enlightening a reasoned populace who enshrine democracy and light the world with human potential. After two World Wars, many thought that vision was possible and social studies could lead the way (Dow, 1976). However, the evidence is clear that the forces of conservatism, fear, a complicity with, or a commitment to, white supremacy, have overcome the grand experiment and have moved us to this crossroad. This essay comes from my rage at the events on both the local and national stage surrounding the 2016 presidential election and with it, the rise in white nationalism’s profile and activity. When I started this piece in 2017, Charlottesville had just occurred and my University had experienced Nazis and white nationalists placing flyers around campus, threatening professors and students. My anger spilled over the page and, while much of that original essay has been replaced with more reasoned analysis, I still feel that rage at what has been done to us, to our country, and to the dream that sustains social studies teachers daily; the dream that education in culture, history, and civic engagement will build that more perfect union. In this chapter, I hope to challenge teachers, professors, and the entire social studies discipline to face its complicity with whiteness and the conservation of white supremacy by naming white fear, the very real fear white people have of other white people, as an important part of problem. Thus, this is a call to radically redefine who we are as social studies professionals.
This chapter seeks to build a new theory in education research, critical solidarity with particip... more This chapter seeks to build a new theory in education research, critical solidarity with participants in education research. The theory uses critical pedagogy as a beginning point as expressed in the work of Paulo Freire and subsequent theorists. In Freirean fashion, the researcher asks the question, but the participant is the questioner of their own experience. In this way, the research, in which the authors attempt to empower participants, is a pedagogical tool.
The use of photographs in ethnographic education research promises new insights and challenges to... more The use of photographs in ethnographic education research promises new insights and challenges to researchers who wish to do good, by doing science and working for justice in the communities under examination. The use of photo-elicitation is discussed as a method that can help alleviate what Foucault described as the analytical "gaze," allowing for discussions of difficult or taboo subjects like race, sex, gender, and dis/ability. The history, uses, and techniques, are examined for different photo methods including photo-elicitation interviews and photovoice. This chapter also contributes practical suggestions for using photos in ethnographic research and illuminates new research in the field. Using photos in the reviewed studies achieved positive results for participants and revealed new understandings of communities, culture, and individuals.
Papers by Michael L . Boucher, Jr.
No, this is Texas: The critical race theory panic in Texas, 2024
This qualitative case study uses a Cultural Studies lens to examine two white teachers’ experienc... more This qualitative case study uses a Cultural Studies
lens to examine two white teachers’ experiences
with epistemologies of ignorance and bad-faith
ideologies that led to Texas laws that propagate
white supremacism and erase the lived
experiences and cultures of their students.
Grossberg’s (1996) call to interrogate power
relationships within a cultural context allows us
to explore the complexities of the epistemologies
of ignorance (Mills, 1997) where white
legislators ban curriculum that does not trumpet
Texas and U.S. exceptionalism. The complexities
around identity and race in Texas, the history of
colonialism, slavery, segregation, and current
white supremacy in law and custom are all part of
the intricate milieu of Texas education. This
study found that despite much media attention,
these two teachers did not have deep
understandings of the laws created to silence
them and were unlikely to engage or defend their
students against the erasure of their culture and
history. It is a cautionary story to teacher-
educators and teachers to avoid complacency
because many of today’s teachers will not stand
against authoritarian laws and practices.
The Urban Review, Aug 14, 2015
However, according to the cover, there are over one million copies of Payne's Framework in circul... more However, according to the cover, there are over one million copies of Payne's Framework in circulation and the text remains pervasive in both K-12 school districts and schools of education across the country. As educators will likely encounter the ideas in the Framework, if not the text itself, in their teacher education program or shortly thereafter, this paper suggests that those who teach the teachers explicitly engage in a critical dialogue with the Framework in the hopes of leading educators to deeper understandings of their own positionality in teaching the Other. The authors propose a cultural studies approach that seeks to contextualize both the discursive strategies of the Framework but also to disrupt the ''perceived wisdom'' of the majoritarian narratives in Payne's book as illustrated by the ''push and pull'' experienced by this teacher. By using data and counter-storytelling, teacher educators can lead teacher candidates to observe the struggles of teachers in the field and infuse a more ethical foundation for their interactions with the Other (Solórzano and Yosso in Qual Inq 8(1):23-44, 2002).
Action in teacher education, Jan 2, 2018
ABSTRACT This qualitative case study investigated the changes in mental models of a group of Whit... more ABSTRACT This qualitative case study investigated the changes in mental models of a group of White, rural and suburban, teacher candidates in a rural midwestern college and their increased capacity to understand race and culture after their short-term practicum experience in Guatemala City. The study used individual written reflections, whole-group discussions, and individual interviews to investigate changes in mental models of educational practices by preservice teachers. Teacher candidates expressed (1) changes in their mental models of schools, teaching, and learning; (2) changes in their personal growth that they expressed would affect their future teaching; and (3) an expansion of their personal worldview and a reduction in otherization of non-U.S. and people who would not be considered White in America. This study finds that short-term international teaching experiences can have a profound impact on how the preservice teachers plan to meet the needs of diverse learners.
The Urban Review, Oct 17, 2016
Museums and historical sites are created to inform the public about our national heritage, yet th... more Museums and historical sites are created to inform the public about our national heritage, yet the contributions of people of color are often excluded from these narratives. Even when they are included, the researchers found that students' understanding and interpretations are often different based on the racial identity of the viewer. This study should lead to a reexamination of the mechanisms for content delivery in historical sites and museums and serve as a caution for historians and history teachers. If we ignore this racialized difference and refuse to acknowledge diversity in students' racialized historical understanding, minority students' voices are excluded and majority students become miseducated about the past. This study investigated a student trip to southern Indiana where students experienced historical sites from the Underground Railroad and racial segregation. During the trip, students connected to the slave experience in different ways, reported different understandings of the history of segregation, and disrupted or reifyed the progressive (slavery to segregation to civil rights) narrative of American history. This article builds on the work on racialized historical understanding in classrooms by
Noyce@FGCU is a Noyce track 1, phase 1 proposal that seeks to build a lasting pipeline of talente... more Noyce@FGCU is a Noyce track 1, phase 1 proposal that seeks to build a lasting pipeline of talented STEM students from underrepresented groups to meet the growing needs of diverse, Southwest Florida school districts through Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU). The program recruits undergraduate STEM majors to undertake an education minor and complete their provisional certification testing upon graduation. These graduates become certified teachers after one year of in-service at a school with high needs in Southwest Florida. Students receive mentoring during that first year of teaching through both the College of Education and the school district ensuring their success. This effort involves exceptional administrative commitment on the part of the institution, as well as an integrated partnership effort between the College of Arts and Science STEM faculty and College of Education faculty united through the Whitaker Center for STEM Education. Through the proposed program, Noyce@FGCU produces 19 high quality STEM educators equipped to work in our highly diverse schools.
Primary objectives of Noyce@FGCU include:
1. Increase the number of STEM classroom teachers for grades 6-12. To fill critical shortages of math and science teachers in Southwest Florida, Noyce@FGCU produces 19 qualified STEM teachers for our underrepresented districts.
2. Increase the success of Noyce@FGCU classroom teachers. Success is supported through pre-service enrichment, and dual first-year mentoring by an in-school teacher, and a first year in-service coach.
3. Support teacher certification of Noyce@FGCU scholars. Scholars complete certification testing prior to graduation. Teacher certification is completed by scholars through cooperation with the school districts by successfully completing their first year of provisional teaching.
This volume gives scholars and students a working knowledge of the procedures, challenges, and be... more This volume gives scholars and students a working knowledge of the procedures, challenges, and benefits of using photo methods in their ethnographic work through studies by researchers who are currently using it. The studies are both examples of exemplary scholarship and serve as tutorials on the procedures and methodological considerations of using this personal, even intimate, method. These eight authors were asked to re-open their carefully packed-away studies, disassemble the methods and the findings, and reflect on the contents.
Like looking through old photo albums, these reflective essays allowed us to have new conversations with different audiences. Each chapter contains sections that penetratingly explain the research problem, describe why photo methods were used for the study, elucidate and reflect on the method, summarize the findings, and then examine participant empowerment through the method. This unique structure is specifically designed to be used in masters and doctoral classrooms and with researchers looking for new methods or to strengthen their existing work. The editors and authors believe that using photo-methods can empower participants to become part of the research process. Each author uses photo with the same goal; to create rigorous science that has meaning for the participants.
The use of photographs in ethnographic education research is an emerging method that promises to ... more The use of photographs in ethnographic education research is an emerging method that promises to enable researchers to collect deeper, more meaningful data from individuals who may otherwise be silenced. When used to empower participants, photo methodologies can remove what Foucault (1980) described as the analytical “gaze,” allowing for discussions of difficult or taboo subjects like race, sex, gender, and dis/ability (p. 155). This article discusses the development of photo methods in ethnographic education research, contributes practical suggestions as to their use, and provides successful examples where photos have empowered study participants. To do both science and justice in cooperation with our participants, empowering communities and individuals and collecting trustworthy data are equal goals. Using photos in the reviewed studies achieved positive results for participants and revealed new understandings of communities, culture, and individuals.
Advances in library and information science (ALIS) book series, 2018
Springer eBooks, Oct 15, 2017
This chapter highlights one participant from my previous research, a case study, designed to reve... more This chapter highlights one participant from my previous research, a case study, designed to reveal how five successful White social studies teachers negotiated their teaching relationships with their African American students. The participants, from a Midwestern de facto segregated urban district, were identified as successful teachers and chosen using a nomination process. They were observed in the classroom and interviewed using photo-elicitation (Crilly et al., Qual Res, 6:341–366, 2006; Harper, Visual Stud, 17:13–26, 2002). The photos were taken by the researcher of classroom interactions between the White teacher and students of color on an iPad. The interviews were then qualitatively analyzed for emerging themes (Creswell, Qualitative inquiry and research design: choosing among five traditions. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, 2007; Patton, Qualitative research & evaluation methods: Integrating theory and practice. SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks, 2002; Stake, The art of case study research: Perspectives on practice. SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks, 1995). Using photo elicitation gave these teachers a platform to theorize and reflect on the relationships with their students of color and their own ideas about race: (1) Teachers discussed the dynamics of their relationships with students and their ability or inability to connect with individual students. (2) Teachers saw their interactions with students through a new lens and theorized about the nature of urban teaching and their own ideas about race. (3) Teachers revealed the complicated push and pull between empowerment and deficit modeling of their students’ lives.
Participant Empowerment Through Photo-elicitation in Ethnographic Education Research, 2017
Although the two have distinct origins, photography and ethnography are linked in history and pra... more Although the two have distinct origins, photography and ethnography are linked in history and practice. The technology and application of photography as documenter and driver of society has created a convergence of culture and image not possible in former ages, and Yet in social science, the image has been slow to gain acceptance as a tool for data collection and dissemination. This introduction describes the origins and mechanisms of this powerful union and explains how the use of images in ethnographic work enhances validity. The chapters herein are testaments to the power of using images in ethnographic research as more than a mere mechanism for deeper data collection, but also as an empowering experience for participants.
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2018
Public historical spaces hold a powerful role in the teaching of a regional and national heritage... more Public historical spaces hold a powerful role in the teaching of a regional and national heritage curriculum. Those public sites, markers, museums, and monuments provide the narrative from which citizens conceptualize the past and they comprise a curriculum of American history. However, the calculated and intentional omission of the histories and identities of marginalized and oppressed people creates an unequal, ahistorical void that is filled by the hegemonic normality of the White supremacist narrative, creating a curriculum of White supremacy. Using research of historical understanding, racialized historical understanding, historical understanding in museums and public spaces, and the concept of erasure in history, this chapter investigates the important role public spaces play in presenting a holistic and complete historical narrative that goes beyond the additive models of multiculturalism and preserves the culture and heritage of all peoples.
Marking the Invisible: Articulating whiteness in social studies education and research, 2020
Social studies educators were given a charge by the founders of our discipline to bear citizens w... more Social studies educators were given a charge by the founders of our discipline to bear citizens who construct a “more perfect union” and build a new social order through education (NCSS, 2017). The founders of the social studies envisioned a curriculum to combine history, geography, economics, and government, enlightening a reasoned populace who enshrine democracy and light the world with human potential. After two World Wars, many thought that vision was possible and social studies could lead the way (Dow, 1976). However, the evidence is clear that the forces of conservatism, fear, a complicity with, or a commitment to, white supremacy, have overcome the grand experiment and have moved us to this crossroad. This essay comes from my rage at the events on both the local and national stage surrounding the 2016 presidential election and with it, the rise in white nationalism’s profile and activity. When I started this piece in 2017, Charlottesville had just occurred and my University had experienced Nazis and white nationalists placing flyers around campus, threatening professors and students. My anger spilled over the page and, while much of that original essay has been replaced with more reasoned analysis, I still feel that rage at what has been done to us, to our country, and to the dream that sustains social studies teachers daily; the dream that education in culture, history, and civic engagement will build that more perfect union. In this chapter, I hope to challenge teachers, professors, and the entire social studies discipline to face its complicity with whiteness and the conservation of white supremacy by naming white fear, the very real fear white people have of other white people, as an important part of problem. Thus, this is a call to radically redefine who we are as social studies professionals.
This chapter seeks to build a new theory in education research, critical solidarity with particip... more This chapter seeks to build a new theory in education research, critical solidarity with participants in education research. The theory uses critical pedagogy as a beginning point as expressed in the work of Paulo Freire and subsequent theorists. In Freirean fashion, the researcher asks the question, but the participant is the questioner of their own experience. In this way, the research, in which the authors attempt to empower participants, is a pedagogical tool.
The use of photographs in ethnographic education research promises new insights and challenges to... more The use of photographs in ethnographic education research promises new insights and challenges to researchers who wish to do good, by doing science and working for justice in the communities under examination. The use of photo-elicitation is discussed as a method that can help alleviate what Foucault described as the analytical "gaze," allowing for discussions of difficult or taboo subjects like race, sex, gender, and dis/ability. The history, uses, and techniques, are examined for different photo methods including photo-elicitation interviews and photovoice. This chapter also contributes practical suggestions for using photos in ethnographic research and illuminates new research in the field. Using photos in the reviewed studies achieved positive results for participants and revealed new understandings of communities, culture, and individuals.
No, this is Texas: The critical race theory panic in Texas, 2024
This qualitative case study uses a Cultural Studies lens to examine two white teachers’ experienc... more This qualitative case study uses a Cultural Studies
lens to examine two white teachers’ experiences
with epistemologies of ignorance and bad-faith
ideologies that led to Texas laws that propagate
white supremacism and erase the lived
experiences and cultures of their students.
Grossberg’s (1996) call to interrogate power
relationships within a cultural context allows us
to explore the complexities of the epistemologies
of ignorance (Mills, 1997) where white
legislators ban curriculum that does not trumpet
Texas and U.S. exceptionalism. The complexities
around identity and race in Texas, the history of
colonialism, slavery, segregation, and current
white supremacy in law and custom are all part of
the intricate milieu of Texas education. This
study found that despite much media attention,
these two teachers did not have deep
understandings of the laws created to silence
them and were unlikely to engage or defend their
students against the erasure of their culture and
history. It is a cautionary story to teacher-
educators and teachers to avoid complacency
because many of today’s teachers will not stand
against authoritarian laws and practices.
The Urban Review, Aug 14, 2015
However, according to the cover, there are over one million copies of Payne's Framework in circul... more However, according to the cover, there are over one million copies of Payne's Framework in circulation and the text remains pervasive in both K-12 school districts and schools of education across the country. As educators will likely encounter the ideas in the Framework, if not the text itself, in their teacher education program or shortly thereafter, this paper suggests that those who teach the teachers explicitly engage in a critical dialogue with the Framework in the hopes of leading educators to deeper understandings of their own positionality in teaching the Other. The authors propose a cultural studies approach that seeks to contextualize both the discursive strategies of the Framework but also to disrupt the ''perceived wisdom'' of the majoritarian narratives in Payne's book as illustrated by the ''push and pull'' experienced by this teacher. By using data and counter-storytelling, teacher educators can lead teacher candidates to observe the struggles of teachers in the field and infuse a more ethical foundation for their interactions with the Other (Solórzano and Yosso in Qual Inq 8(1):23-44, 2002).
Action in teacher education, Jan 2, 2018
ABSTRACT This qualitative case study investigated the changes in mental models of a group of Whit... more ABSTRACT This qualitative case study investigated the changes in mental models of a group of White, rural and suburban, teacher candidates in a rural midwestern college and their increased capacity to understand race and culture after their short-term practicum experience in Guatemala City. The study used individual written reflections, whole-group discussions, and individual interviews to investigate changes in mental models of educational practices by preservice teachers. Teacher candidates expressed (1) changes in their mental models of schools, teaching, and learning; (2) changes in their personal growth that they expressed would affect their future teaching; and (3) an expansion of their personal worldview and a reduction in otherization of non-U.S. and people who would not be considered White in America. This study finds that short-term international teaching experiences can have a profound impact on how the preservice teachers plan to meet the needs of diverse learners.
The Urban Review, Oct 17, 2016
Museums and historical sites are created to inform the public about our national heritage, yet th... more Museums and historical sites are created to inform the public about our national heritage, yet the contributions of people of color are often excluded from these narratives. Even when they are included, the researchers found that students' understanding and interpretations are often different based on the racial identity of the viewer. This study should lead to a reexamination of the mechanisms for content delivery in historical sites and museums and serve as a caution for historians and history teachers. If we ignore this racialized difference and refuse to acknowledge diversity in students' racialized historical understanding, minority students' voices are excluded and majority students become miseducated about the past. This study investigated a student trip to southern Indiana where students experienced historical sites from the Underground Railroad and racial segregation. During the trip, students connected to the slave experience in different ways, reported different understandings of the history of segregation, and disrupted or reifyed the progressive (slavery to segregation to civil rights) narrative of American history. This article builds on the work on racialized historical understanding in classrooms by
This qualitative case study investigated the changes in mental models of a group of White, rural... more This qualitative case study investigated the changes in mental models of a
group of White, rural and suburban, teacher candidates in a rural midwestern
college and their increased capacity to understand race and culture
after their short-term practicum experience in Guatemala City. The study
used individual written reflections, whole-group discussions, and individual
interviews to investigate changes in mental models of educational practices
by preservice teachers. Teacher candidates expressed (1) changes in their
mental models of schools, teaching, and learning; (2) changes in their
personal growth that they expressed would affect their future teaching;
and (3) an expansion of their personal worldview and a reduction in
otherization of non-U.S. and people who would not be considered White
in America. This study finds that short-term international teaching experiences
can have a profound impact on how the preservice teachers plan to
meet the needs of diverse learners.
Museums and historical sites are created to inform the public about our national heritage, yet th... more Museums and historical sites are created to inform the public about our national heritage, yet the contributions of people of color are often excluded from these narratives. Even when they are included, the researchers found that students' understanding and interpretations are often different based on the racial identity of the viewer. This study should lead to a reexamination of the mechanisms for content delivery in historical sites and museums and serve as a caution for historians and history teachers. If we ignore this racialized difference and refuse to acknowledge diversity in students' racialized historical understanding, minority students' voices are excluded and majority students become miseducated about the past. This study investigated a student trip to southern Indiana where students experienced historical sites from the Underground Railroad and racial segregation. During the trip, students connected to the slave experience in different ways, reported different understandings of the history of segregation, and disrupted or reifyed the progressive (slavery to segregation to civil rights) narrative of American history. This article builds on the work on racialized historical understanding in classrooms by Epstein (Soc Edu 61:28-31, 1997; Curric Inq 28(4):397-423, 1998; Theory Pract 40(1):42-47, 2001) and moves the conversation from the classroom to the public spaces that not only tell our history but show it as well.
This qualitative case study provides a counternarrative to literature of White teachers who are u... more This qualitative case study provides a counternarrative to literature of White teachers who are unsuccessful in bridging the achievement gap and disrupts the assumed meaning of solidarity between successful White teachers and their African American students. As part of successful classroom practice, this teacher interrogated his own whiteness and worked to create relationships of solidarity with students. Solidarity in multicultural and multiracial classrooms is difficult to build and a deeper concept than many theorists have acknowledged. The success of this teacher suggests that the creation of relationships of solidarity may be an effective framework to describe successful White teachers.
Despite a caveat at the end of A Framework for Understanding Poverty (1996/2005), Ruby Payne’s de... more Despite a caveat at the end of A Framework for Understanding Poverty (1996/2005), Ruby Payne’s deficit model has led researchers to criticize her effect on White pre-service teaching students (Smiley and Helfenbein, 2011; Gorski, 2008). However, according to the cover, there are over one million copies of Payne’s Framework in circulation and the text remains pervasive in both K-12 school districts and schools of education across the country. As educators will likely encounter the ideas in the Framework, if not the text itself, in their teacher education program or shortly thereafter, this paper suggests that those teaching teachers explicitly engage in a critical dialogue with the Framework in the hopes of leading educators to deeper understandings of their own positionality in teaching the Other. The authors propose a cultural studies approach that seeks to contextualize both the discursive strategies of the Framework but also to disrupt the “perceived wisdom” of the majoritarian narratives in Payne’s book. By using data and counter-storytelling, teacher educators can lead teacher candidates to observe the struggles of teachers in the field and infuse a more ethical foundation for their interactions with the Other (Solórzano and Yosso, 2002).
Key Words: Urban Education, Whiteness, Solidarity, Teacher Education
BEFORE MINNESOTA BECAME a hotly contested battleground stale in this year's presidential election... more BEFORE MINNESOTA BECAME a hotly contested battleground stale in this year's presidential election, our state recently concluded a highly controversial public debate regarding the creation of new social studies standards. This battle over required social studies knowledge in Minnesota was part of the larger "culture war" in the state and nation.
In early September of 2003, the Minnesota Department of Education made public the 56-page first draft document detailing 233 K-12 standards chat were specified by 848 corresponding benchmarks dealing with U.S. history, world history, geography, economics, civics and government. Immediately, many teachers, parents, professors, community leaders, and students raised serious concerns at public hearings, in the newspaper, and elsewhere.
Ultimately, the struggle centered on two questions: What knowledge is of most worth? and Whose knowledge is of most worth? These questions were new for the state because
Minnesota has a long tradition of local control in matters
of curriculum- before the mid-199os, when the legislature adopted stare-wide performance standards for graduation in various subject-areas, independent school districts, schools, and teachers determined what was taught and when. The system had served the state well by consistently producing top-rated scores on national assessments and strong showings in performance-based efforts like National History
Day competitions. However, in this new era of accountability and lo Child Left Behind, Minnesota was labeled as "failing" co have highly specific and testable content standards.
The context: White supremacism is a divisive, cancerous, and self-defeating mental and social con... more The context: White supremacism is a divisive, cancerous, and self-defeating mental and social construct, yet it has largely gone unchallenged for much of our history. The assumption of White racial and cultural supremacy and its normalization is a theme throughout the schooling experience from textbooks, to teacher interactions, to disciplinary practices that have created and strengthened a school to prison pipeline. Multicultural Education, while working to ameliorate the effects of White supremacism has been unsuccessful because most materials and frameworks of “inclusion” refuse to acknowledge the root cause of the problems they seek to address. The term “White Supremacy” conjures racist hate groups, and most educated people disavow that version of White supremacy. However, if we cloister White supremacist thinking into that small box of uneducated and unenlightened reactionaries, we miss the larger context of societal White supremacism that infects everything in our society and creates the reasoning for policy and personal decisions made daily. hooks (2013) explained that while people usually associate racism with overt “acts of aggression by whites against blacks,” The concept of White supremacy reveals social structures and, “addresses the ideological and philosophical foundations of racism” (p. 177). Even in the way we discuss diversity in schools is based on the construct of White supremacy, “Structural racial integration with no fundamental change in white supremacist thinking and values has simply meant that black people, though ‘integrated’ into various areas of mainstream life over time, were and still are seen as inferior” (hooks, 2013 p. 178).
The session: This session will begin the concept that “Loyalty to whiteness is treason to humanity” (Ignatiev &Garvey, 2006). Given that 80% of teacher candidates are White and come to schools of education steeped in whiteness and willing purveyors of its hegemony, the question of how to tutor teachers to be a force against White supremacism challenges critical teacher educators. Using a second wave White teacher identity framework that seeks to embolden White teachers to challenge structures of White supremacy, this session will engage in a dialogic investigation of the challenges of engaging White teachers in Anti-racist work (Matias, 2016; Jupp, Berry, &Lensmire, 2016). Critical White Studies (Delgato & Stephancic, 1997) teaches that the solution to this problem is complex and multifaceted, and explains the lack of success in dismantling structures or the ideology of White supremacy through training teachers using either a) multiculturalism, or b) first wave anti-racism training. This session proposes a new framework to train teachers specifically as disruptors and deconstructions of White supremacist structures through a transference of solidarity from whiteness to their students and communities of color. Using Axel Honneth’s (1996) concept of solidarity as a recognition of the status of others. From Honneth’s work, we can derive, not only a deeper definition of solidarity in classrooms, but a process to define types of solidarity through caring and interrogation of one’s own standpoint. The cultivation of solidarity cannot be assumed based on authority or positionality, but an ongoing, political commitment to students and communities.
The purpose of this session is to present new research on the burgeoning discussion of reframing ... more The purpose of this session is to present new research on the burgeoning discussion of reframing educational spaces to challenge white supremacist structures and empower African American students. Typically, educational research on African American students focuses on the " achievement gap " and other deficit modeling to describe and explain how students are failing in schools. This new research seeks to turn the discussion from descriptions of how students can do better in school structures steeped in white supremacy to how schools, communities, and other educational spaces can reconstruct in order to " do better " by our students. Objectives of the session: having attended the session on Challenging White Supremicist structures, attendees will: 1. Comprehend and synthesize new research on challenging White supremacy in educational structures to create successful educational environments that empower African American students. 2. Apply this new research to challenge White supremacy in educational structures to create successful educational environments to school design, museum design, and curriculum development. 3. Advance and refine the frameworks of student empowerment through redesign of education spaces leading to higher achievement for all students. Overall, attendees will understand new thinking on successful educational environments and trouble reified notions of the achievement gap and deficit models of educational environments.
Photo elicitation. The techniques I used for data gathering included photo elicitation, the techn... more Photo elicitation. The techniques I used for data gathering included photo elicitation, the technique of showing photos to the participant in order to draw a more in-depth discussion and therefore richer data (Harper, 2010).
…my life project has been to achieve an understanding of teaching, learning, and the many models ... more …my life project has been to achieve an understanding of teaching, learning, and the many models of education; I have been creating and continue to create a self by means of that project, that mode of gearing into the world.
…my life project has been to achieve an understanding of teaching, learning, and the many models ... more …my life project has been to achieve an understanding of teaching, learning, and the many models of education; I have been creating and continue to create a self by means of that project, that mode of gearing into the world.
…my life project has been to achieve an understanding of teaching, learning, and the many models ... more …my life project has been to achieve an understanding of teaching, learning, and the many models of education; I have been creating and continue to create a self by means of that project, that mode of gearing into the world.