Year: 2009

Images of “othering”

Images of “othering”

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I just reconnected with an amazing woman from my grad school days at the University of Maryland.  Avis Jones-Deweever is director of the Research, Public Policy, and Information Center at the National Council of Nego Women.  Please read her recent blog post on “Precious” and “The Blind Side” on the Race-Talk blog site!  Media portrayals of black women, men, children, families, and communities deeply impact choices we ultimately make about public policy, education, care, and trust.  Avis’ blog helps put current movie releases into relief.

At West Wind, we have been exploring the impact of othering on education…how our expectations and beliefs about children of color, their families, and their communities have been shaped by centuries of images of people of color designed to justify oppression and lack of care.  The conversations we had with folks at the Summit for Courageous Conversation and the Harvard Alumni of Color Conference have helped us to understand much of what we have seen in our work with schools, communities, researchers, and policy leaders.  If we don’t believe children can learn, we don’t teach them effectively.  If we believe they are dangerous, we discipline them at higher rates and we do what we can to protect others from them.  This is precisely what we are doing as a society.

Overcoming dominant narratives about children of color may be our greatest challenge as a nation and an education system.

A guest shares her thoughts on the proposed curfew

A guest shares her thoughts on the proposed curfew

Reading Time: 2 minutes

by Brandy Johnson

Tomorrow (December 1), a proposed curfew for minors in Iowa City will come up for consideration by our City Council. I was recently asked if I felt that the curfew proposal was focused on black youth.  My answer was “ABSOLULTELY YES!”  The violence that people talked about during the curfew debate has been taking place in our part of town, so it seems pretty clear that the curfew is more towards the African American kids on the Southeast side than any other race or location.

I am a minority student attending City High School and I am a member of the FAS TRAC program.  The choice of a juvenile curfew as a response to crime that affects all of us in my neighborhood–instead of choosing to invite me and my family and others of us to help figure out a solution–makes me feel like blacks aren’t to be trusted.  This makes me feel that our community isn’t welcoming me here, like I am being judged by other races (mostly Caucasians) and the decision being made is that I’m not wanted in my neighborhood.

Not only is the curfew affecting blacks in general, it is also affecting minors who have done nothing wrong.  I fit in both categories. I am not a troubled student or a violent person.  Why am I being punished for doing nothing wrong?  If the curfew is going to be a new law, it shouldn’t be toward one race or non-violent kids, it should be forced on the individuals who caused this.

It would be better to get to know minors as a new generation, understand what we are about, and hear our voices when it comes to making new decisions about us in our community (which don’t even affect the adults who make them). Again, why punish me and others who have done nothing wrong?

Pausing on Thanksgiving

Pausing on Thanksgiving

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Happy Thanksgiving to all.  This morning, I opened my email to a much appreciated message from the president of the National Congress of American Indians, Jefferson Keel.

NCAI President Jefferson Keel Speaks of Gratitude and Hope on Thanksgiving Day

WASHINGTON — November 25, 2009 — National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) President Jefferson Keel released the following statement on the eve of Thanksgiving Day:

“Indian Country was here at the beginning of our first national holiday, and we are still here four centuries later — grateful that we stand proud of our tribal cultures and contribute their strength to the sustaining diversity of America.

Indian Country is grateful on many, many counts. A President and his Administration have heard our concerns and priorities, acknowledging the nation-to-nation relationship, at the first annual White House Tribal Nations Conference. The Embassy of Tribal Nations has opened its doors in the nation’s capital. Congress is working in partnership with us to advance the priorities of Indian Country as seldom before. And a national museum on the Washington Mall bears witness to us for all who visit it.

We also have much to contribute to this great nation. Above all, our cultural heritage has positioned us to spearhead the historic task of restoring a human connection to the land, air, water, all living things and one another. We give thanks that the Creator has safeguarded our message of oneness in the web of life, for it is instrumental to restoring the global environment and good will among nations.

We must give thanks for other safeguards — the warriors who guard our homeland, many of them far from home on this holiday of gratitude and reunion. Native men and women have steadfastly fought and died defending this country as the highest serving minority group in the U.S. armed forces. We give thanks for all who defend our country.

Also this year, we give thanks for the harvest that inspired the first Thanksgiving. Abundant as the harvest has been this year for many, for many others it is a lean year. We’ve known that unemployment is high and that household hunger is a growing concern.

As always, Americans give thanks this day for their individual and community harvest. But especially this year, NCAI calls on them to join the many tribes and individuals in Indian Country who are going the extra mile to help their needy neighbors, just as they did on that first Thanksgiving.”

Stereotype Threat

Stereotype Threat

Reading Time: 2 minutes

In July 2009, REL Southeast at SERVE Center, UNC, Greensboro,  published the Issues and Answers brief for the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) titled Reducing stereotype threat in the classroom: A Review of social-psychological intervention studies on improving the achievement of Black students.  The authors tell us that “stereotype threat arises from a fear among members of a group of reinforcing negative stereotypes about the intellectual ability of the group” (p.i).  Without intervention, stereotype threat has a negative effect on student performance for members of such groups.

The brief considers only “rigorous research” and finds support for the following three classroom social-psychological strategies for reducing stereotype threat: (1) reinforce for students the idea that intelligence is expandable and, like a muscle, grows stronger when worked; (2) teach students that their difficulties in school are often part of a normal “learning curve” or adjustment process, rather than something unique to them or their racial group; and (3) help students reflect on other values in their lives beyond school that are sources of self-worth for them.  The report also notes several limitations of the study that are of great importance.  First, the report notes that the underlying search was very focused and included only those interventions that have been tried in real school settings.  This means that there may be other equally or even more effective interventions out there.  Second, the studies were small in scope and their replicability is unknown.   Thus, the authors urge readers to share ideas for reducing stereotype threat even if they are in the developmental stages.

The authors also make some important concluding points.  First, they suggests educators will need to adapt the strategies for their own contexts so as not to lose the spirit of the interventions.  Second, they suggest the timing of the intervention might be critical (one study focused on 7th grade students) as there may be “windows of opportunity for influencing student attitudes and beliefs” (p.13) and interventions might be more effective at particular times during the school year.  Perhaps the most telling point, however, is the last one.  The authors tell us that no social-psychological intervention can make up for lack of learning, motivate unmotivated students, or turn a low-performing and underfunded school into a model school.  They go on to say:

“More generally, the interventions would not work if there were not broader positive forces in the school environment (committed staff, quality curriculum) operating to facilitate student learning and performance. Without these broader positive forces, social-psychological interventions, while potentially reducing psychological threat levels for some students, would be unlikely to boost student learning and achievement. However, when these broader positive forces are in place, social-psychological interventions such as those reported on here may help Black and other minority students to overcome stereotype threat and improve their performance in school” (p.14)

Congratulations to REL Southwest for getting such an important Issues and Answers brief published.  However, let us not lose sight that these interventions do not directly challenge the system that perpetuates negative stereotypes about the intellectual ability of these groups in the first place.  Rather, they place the burden on students of color and the educators who care about their achievement rather than on the system that makes such interventions necessary in the first place.  Thus, stereotype threat interventions are a short-term strategy that may be part of a longer-term strategy to disrupt systemic racism and other social forces that serve current power structures.  They are not in and of themselves sufficient to transform education.

Teaching Diverse Students Initiative

Teaching Diverse Students Initiative

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Teaching Tolerance, a project of  The Southern Poverty Law Center, recently launched a new effort entitled the  “Teaching Diverse Students Initiative.”  This is a very nicely designed site with researched-based tools and resources for teaching racially and ethnically diverse students.   Contributors to the site include Linda Darling-Hammond, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Sonia Nieto, Mica Pollock and others including a couple of my early literacy friends and colleagues, Dorothy Strickland and Patricia Edwards.

Follow the link below.  You need to register to check out the tools.  Its free.

http://www.tolerance.org/tdsi/

Learning with our youth

Learning with our youth

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I constantly am amazed at how prepared young people are to talk about race.  I recently had the privilege of talking with students in the Fast Trac College Bound program at Iowa City High School.  We are inviting these young leaders to contribute to this blog.  Stay tuned…!

This document provides background on Fas Trac, as well as information about how to support their efforts.

Welcome!

Welcome!

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Welcome to West Wind Education Policy’s blog on Systemic Equity Leadership. We’ve set this space up primarily as a place to share links and thoughts with anyone we come into contact with through the work. We also will be posting links to handouts and readings we’ve shared here on the Resources page. Please feel free to poke around as you like!

Critical Race Theory: An Annotated Bibliography

Critical Race Theory: An Annotated Bibliography

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[box class=”grey_box”]Prepared by Deanna Hill[/box]


Critical Race Theory (CRT) emerged in the legal academy in response to growing dissatisfaction with Critical Legal Studies (CLS) and its inability to adequately address race and racism in its critique of U.S. jurisprudence. Many trace the framework back to the work of Derrick Bell in the 1960s and Alan Freeman and Richard Delgado in the 1970s and 1980s. The first CRT workshop was held at a monastery in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1989. The University of Iowa College of Law hosted the “CRT 20: Honoring Our Past, Charting Our Future” workshop in April, 2009.

CRT places race at the center of analysis. At the same time, CRT recognizes the complex ways that race intersects with ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, and other systems of power. CRT has an activist agenda to transform and redeem, not just to critique and deconstruct. Further, CRT works toward the elimination of racial oppression as part of the larger goal of eliminating all forms of oppression.

CRT produced several offshoots, including Critical Race Feminism, Queer-Crit, Lat-Crit, Asian Crit, TribalCrit, and Critical White Studies. Additionally, CRT crossed over into other disciplines. CRT was formally introduced into education in 1995 when Gloria Ladson-Billings and William Tate published in Teachers College Record the now seminal article “Toward a Critical Race Theory of Education.”

Summary of The Knowledge Garage: Redesigning Education R&D to Transform Learning

Summary of The Knowledge Garage: Redesigning Education R&D to Transform Learning

Reading Time: 5 minutes

We prepared this Executive Summary of our white paper for the national invitational summit that we convened with Knowledge Alliance/Center for Knowledge Use and the Stupski Foundation, Unleashing Knowledge and Innovation for the Next Generation of Learning, from August 10–12, 2009, in Santa Ana Pueblo, New Mexico.


Executive Summary

Education R&D has its passionate advocates, to be sure, but even they would be hard pressed to argue that the topic conjures up visions of unbridled creativity, free flowing inventiveness, and audacious risk-taking—at least at first glance.

This white paper advocates on behalf of taking a second, more introspective glance through the lens of “the knowledge garage”—the garage serving as a metaphor for ideas hatched in unlikely places by unlikely people, but ideas nonetheless that can ultimately change the world.

The paper begins with an appreciative nod to the early garage sites of youthful inventiveness, whose initial tinkering gave us the personal computer, eventually democratizing ongoing communications worldwide. It then poses the following question:

by pursuing a similar course, one also filled with creativity, inquiry, opportunity, and tenacity, could education R&D be redesigned to transform learning?

Section One, Road Trip: Rethinking Education R&D, describes the quest for the answer, led by two organizations: Knowledge Alliance and West Wind Education Policy. It highlights development of a new product, one of ideas and potential actions, six years in the making. What began as a conceptual dialogue among a group of leading research organizations to define the meaning of knowledge utilization culminated, via a broader conversation with individuals from other backgrounds and fields, in concrete dimensions of a potential R&D infrastructure for education. In between, were side trips incorporating thoughts of the future, entrepreneurship, web-based technology, and system design.

Sharing this road trip has three objectives. First, it aims to document for the actual participants the highlights of their long-term efforts to identify the intersection of knowledge, innovation, research, development, and action. Second, it provides a record in hindsight for potential participants, intended to accelerate their subsequent engagement. Third, openly sharing these activities models the comprehensive, thoughtful type of inquiry needed to assess the role of education R&D, both now and in the future, in the transformation of learning.

Section Two, Specifications: Designing a New Model, places the issue of reinventing education R&D into larger relief, by summarizing four emerging issues that will have a significant impact on the outcome. First is the profound way in which the education system itself is changing, starting with rethinking the individual relationship between students and teachers in a 2.0 learning world. Second is a new Administration on record as champions of transparency in governing and innovation as well as stewards of a record infusion of federal education funds to states and school districts. Third is the evolving conversation to replace 50 different sets of state standards and assessments with an alternative more responsive to accomplishing national education priorities in a global context. Fourth are external considerations of the general public’s role in education R&D, not only to inform citizens but to involve them as active participants, as beneficiaries, and ultimately, as taxpayers and public investors. As one wise participant noted, if the early innovators had not found their market and filled a demand, they’d still be in the garage.

Section Three, GPS: Navigating the Road Ahead, describes how an innovative idea successfully implemented by dedicated educators and achieving positive results may still not survive—a situation all too common in education today. A future scenario, based on forging a new teacher-student relationship more compelling for a digital world, is used to illustrate the point. The paper then revisits the scenario in order to pose this question: what would have happened differently if a redesigned R&D education infrastructure had been in place?

Section Four, Body Parts: Building the Infrastructure, moves from the conceptual to the concrete. It uses the scenario as backdrop to examine the respective parts—from the leadership structure that provides oversight, field support, outreach, and dissemination, to the local design teams and innovation sites that address problems of practice through cycles of continuous improvement—of what a top-down/bottom-up redesigned R&D system in education might look like. It also poses, as part of this context, a way to position policymaking and practice in a seamless relationship, enriched by the coordinated, strategic use of research, knowledge, development, and dissemination.

Section Five, Test Drive: Shifting into High Gear, poses three recommendations intended to prompt action.

  • Recommendation One: create a new leadership structure to redesign R&D in education, with two preconditions intended to accelerate its initial and long-term success: 1) conduct a series of rigorous benchmarking studies to capture, and then customize for implementation, the relevant best practices from comparable types of entities and 2) align with other R&D entities, both within and outside the federal government, that share the same applied research mission.
  • Recommendation Two: implement a proof of concept of the approach outlined in this paper that, ultimately, would position local design teams nationwide as consistent participants in implementing ongoing innovative practices in education.
  • Recommendation Three: support a series of targeted and coordinated outreach efforts so that the new education R&D infrastructure can evolve into a true knowledge ecosystem, which routinely uses research to reinforce effective state and federal policymaking; helps build a market, based on practitioner needs, for product development that will spur continual innovation; and informs and engages the public and its many segments, so that they, collectively and respectively, have an identifiable stake in the outcome.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in many respects, was the ideal sponsor of this white paper. Its male namesake was part of a cadre of young independent-minded learners a generation ago who used their imagination and resolve in ways that ultimately transformed the world. In democratizing access to information, they also fashioned a whole new type of student, “the 24/7 learner,” for whom self-directed education has become not just an aspiration, but an expectation.

As with any transformation, there are winners and losers. Clearly, the first category includes the growing numbers of students for whom the Internet has become the primary source of both knowledge and co-invention. In the potential loser category is the current education system, increasingly at risk in achieving its mission, as increasing numbers of students are learning in spite of, not because of, what they experience in school. Even more troubling are the growing numbers of students who, precisely because they lack access to the Internet, are in danger of falling even further behind.

It is therefore fitting for the Gates Foundation, as well as growing numbers of other innovators, to weigh in on the side of forging new solutions to transform public education—using, as their legacy, both the experiences and resources grounded in the early garage days. Accordingly, this white paper ends with a call to action on behalf of forging future learning opportunities. It suggests embracing not only the original inventive spirit of the garage, but also the purposeful actions—and lasting entities—that such creativity ultimately produced.

A dual inventive/sustainable approach cannot come soon enough. Fundamental challenges now confront all aspects of society, calling upon the entire country to act like one big garage. The problems are increasingly apparent; remedies, less so. The risk, absent proven and thoughtful approaches, is defaulting to inappropriate or deficient solutions. The stakes are high, but the opportunities are endless—if we can evolve the myriad, often vitriolic separate discussions currently underway into collaborative deliberation followed by collective action.

Developing a culture and habit of using R&D in education to innovate for the long-term—the message conveyed in the following pages—can serve this purpose. The message is long overdue.

It’s time, taking a cue from the quintessential garage band of all time, therefore, “to head out on the highway.”

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