Life: a critically reflective experience (original) (raw)
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International journal of doctoral studies, 2024
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Ncpea Publications, 2010
The 2010 Yearbook, Promoting Critical Ideas of Leadership, Culture and Diversity, is dedicated to the membership of NCPEA-our colleagues, friends, role models, fellow researchers and mentors. It has been a privilege to work on the 17th and 18th editions of the NCPEA Yearbooks, first as Associate Editor with Dr. Chuck Achilles, who was Editor in 2009, and currently as Editor with Dr. Betty Alford, the Associate Editor for 2010. My work with Dr. Achilles was a dream come true. I never thought in a million years that in 1996 when he came as a part of a visiting team to review the potential of a doctoral program for the Department of Educational Leadership and Counseling at Sam Houston State University that I would ever be able to work so closely with him.
Reflections on Race and Privilege in an Educational Leadership Course
Journal of Leadership Education, 2018
To be effective social justice leaders, school leaders need to gain critical understandings of their positionality and racial privilege and be prepared to engage in difficult conversations with others. This study examines how a peer-to-peer letter exchange assignment in a doctoral course allowed educational leadership doctoral students (N = 27) to reflect on race and privilege with each other. The findings reveal how students examined racial privilege, positionality, and bias. The authors discuss how this assignment can be used in educational leadership programs to develop and grow the practice of critical reflection for self-examination of privilege.
2015
The primary purpose of this study was to examine teachers' beliefs about diversity and equity through a culturally relevant analysis of their visions of teaching and practice. The secondary purpose was to identify how centrally located these beliefs were within their visions. Participants included a Black British female second grade teacher, a White Cajun-American male pre-kindergarten and a White American female art teacher within one public elementary school in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Using qualitative case study methodology, participants' visions and practices were This dissertation represents the culmination of a six-year-long journey that challenged me in unpredicted and unimaginable ways. I would not have persisted through the challenges presented over these six years without the support of many friends and family members, some of whom I will mention here and all of whom I will not be able to capture in these few pages. While I remain grateful to all individuals who supported me, I must specifically thank a few named here. This journey began six years ago when two faculty members saw in my application something interesting and promising. Professors Victoria-Maria MacDonald and Sherick Hughes led the Minority and Urban Education (MUE) Program and welcomed me into the University of Maryland (UMD) family in 2009. It is a family unlike any other program's at the University, and I am grateful that they invited me to join. Their love and support served the foundation of my beginning years as an educational scholar; I am so grateful. My Dissertation Examining Committee members supported me in multiple ways. Susan De La Paz provided me guidance and mentorship over four years of researching and writing as well as providing me ongoing time and feedback during the final dissertation process. Linda Valli maintained high expectations in each class while also providing helpful and encouraging-yet honest-feedback on my work. Patricia Hill Collins expanded and challenged my thinking in new ways. She also provided the "tough love" I needed to motivate me to finish this dissertation. Jennifer Turner was always available by phone when I thought I was going mad and doubted my own abilities to complete this journey. I also want to thank my committee for their challenging and List of Tables.
Qualitative Inquiry
After the cancelation of the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (2020) due to the Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19), the substantive content of my presentation for the plenary, “Higher Education in the Time of Trump: Resistance and Critique” came into confluence with my invitation to deliver the 2020 Keynote to the 17th Incoming Cohort of the doctorate program in Educational Leadership for Social Justice, School of Education, Loyola Marymount University. This presentation delivered via ZOOM on June 18, 2020, calls forth a broader confluence of our current political climate under the “leadership” of Donald J. Trump, COVID-19, and national social justice activism linked with the Black Lives Matter Movement. Truly we are living protest and recovery in repressive times with a connectivity between the three. This message is both particular and plural to the audience that it was originally presented, and now to a diverse readership in these repressive times.
Despite the clarion call from educational leaders, scholars, and doctoral students for educational leadership preparation to provide learning experiences to ensure students persist to become transformative school leaders, most educational leadership programs struggle to make this happen. The purpose of this reflective essay is to capture how converting a doctoral educational leadership program from a quarter system to a semester system afforded two faculty members the opportunity to redesign their doctoral program into one that specifically focuses on social justice. We not only capture how the semester conversion process afforded us the opportunity to ensure the program was tied to preparing transformative school leaders, but highlight how it allowed us to implement programmatic supports predicated on ensuring that more students graduate. We believe the insights we gleaned from redesigning the Ed.D. program will assist other educational leadership faculty and directors. They will be able to graduate more leaders who are equipped to build socially-just schools and solve complex problems facing the communities they serve.
2016
The task of guiding the development of scholar-practitioners as leaders for social justice is inherently challenging. The dissertation journey, unlike any other journey practitioner-based doctoral students face in urban school settings, provides a steep learning curve as they transition from practitioner to scholar-practitioner. This journey challenges doctoral students, particularly those who represent the marginalized students they serve, as they begin to understand their personal history, how they view themselves, how they view others, and the ethical and political issues (Creswell, 2013) they face as their thinking shifts from that of a mere practitioner to that of a scholar-practitioner. This collection of case studies on dissertation research emerged from the collective work of faculty, students, and program graduates of the Educational Leadership for Social Justice Doctoral Program at California State University at East Bay. As we examine the development of scholar-practition...