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1 – 10 of 921Latifa Sebti and Brent C. Elder
In this article, we highlight ways in which disability critical race theory (DisCrit) (Annamma et al., 2013), inclusive education and community-based participatory research (CBPR…
Abstract
Purpose
In this article, we highlight ways in which disability critical race theory (DisCrit) (Annamma et al., 2013), inclusive education and community-based participatory research (CBPR) can be used within professional development schools (PDS) to provide students with disabilities with more access to inclusive classrooms. At a grade 4–6 elementary school, we developed a model of a critical PDS to promote inclusive education and facilitate the transition of students of color with disabilities from self-contained to inclusive classrooms. We conducted semi-structured interviews and used action plan meetings with school administrators, teachers, professionals and students with disabilities and their parents to assess the impact of our critical PDS model. Findings suggest this model had a positive impact on administrators’ and teachers’ critical consciousness, ideological and instructional practices, students of color with disabilities’ social, academic and personal outcomes, as well as a schoolwide culture of inclusion and social justice. This study can inform tailored professional development efforts to improve educators’ inclusive practices.
Design/methodology/approach
We conducted semi-structured interviews and used action plan meetings with school administrators, teachers, professionals and students with disabilities and their parents to assess the impact of our critical PDS model.
Findings
The findings of this study suggest this model had a positive impact on administrators’ and teachers’ critical consciousness, ideological and instructional practices, students of color with disabilities’ social, academic and personal outcomes, as well as a schoolwide culture of inclusion and social justice.
Practical implications
This study can inform tailored professional development efforts aiming to improve educators’ inclusive practices.
Originality/value
We developed a model of a critical PDS to promote inclusive education and facilitate the transition of students of color with disabilities from self-contained to inclusive classrooms.
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Elizabeth Hale, Hope E. Wilson, Lauren Gibbs, Jessie Didier and Carolyne Ali-Khan
The purpose of this study was to examine how participants experienced and perceived an M.Ed. program that had a school-based design. In particular, the authors sought to…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study was to examine how participants experienced and perceived an M.Ed. program that had a school-based design. In particular, the authors sought to understand: (1) how participants experienced being in a school-based cohort and (2) whether and how participants experienced the three designated tenets of the M.Ed. program: teacher inquiry, social justice and student engagement and motivation.
Design/methodology/approach
This qualitative study used semi-structured focus group interviews (n = 7) to examine teachers’ perceptions, using a constant comparative method (Corbin & Strauss, 2008) of open coding to analyze the data and determine emergent themes.
Findings
The findings indicate the design of this school-based M.Ed. program provided both social and academic benefits including strengthening teachers’ working relationships and their understanding of students outside their own classroom and a transfer from individual learning to organizational benefit. Teachers positively perceived the three tenets that guided the first year of the program, especially the ability to study social justice and student motivation in depth.
Practical implications
This study has implications for teacher education and retention as well as how boundary spanning roles in PDS schools can impact graduate students’ experiences in schools. Given the current teacher shortage concerns, it is important to understand how M.Ed. programs can be designed with teacher needs at the forefront so learning is relevant and rewarding, both to the individual and the school.
Originality/value
While there are many studies that examine the use of cohorts in education, particularly in doctoral programs, few, if any, studies examine a school-based cohort M.Ed. program for practicing teachers. This study also puts a unique spotlight on how boundary-spanning roles can benefit not only teacher candidates but also practicing teachers in their M.Ed. programs.
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This study aims to consider the role of emotions, especially those related to empathy, in promoting a more humane education that enables students to reach out across kinship…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to consider the role of emotions, especially those related to empathy, in promoting a more humane education that enables students to reach out across kinship chasms to promote the development of communities predicated on a shared value on mutual respect. This attention to empathy includes a review of the rational basis for much schooling, introduces skepticism about the façade of rational thinking, reviews the emotionally flat character of classrooms, attends to the emotional dimensions of literacy education, argues on behalf of taking emotions into account in developmental theories and links empathic connections with social justice efforts. The study’s main thrust is that empathy is a key emotional quality that does not come naturally or easily to many, yet is important to cultivate if social justice is a goal of education.
Design/methodology/approach
The author clicked Essay and Conceptual Paper. Yet the author required to write the research design.
Findings
The author clicked Essay and Conceptual Paper. Yet the author required to write the research design.
Research limitations/implications
The author clicked Essay and Conceptual Paper. Yet the author required to write the research design.
Originality/value
The paper challenges the rational emphasis of schooling and argues for more attention to the ways in which emotions shape thinking.
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Sonal Nakar and Richard G. Bagnall
Vocational education and training (VET) in Australia has for some time been driven by an agenda of “reasonable adjustment”, in which practices are modified to ensure equitable…
Abstract
Purpose
Vocational education and training (VET) in Australia has for some time been driven by an agenda of “reasonable adjustment”, in which practices are modified to ensure equitable access and participation by disadvantaged students. However, the growing marketization of VET has instead encouraged the use of more flexible approaches to attract and retain students from diverse backgrounds. They have thus paralleled and confounded reasonable adjustment practices for inclusive development. This study sought to identify the moral dilemmas experienced by VET teachers arising from implementing reasonable adjustment practices.
Design/methodology/approach
This phenomenological research project used in-depth conversational interviews with 19 experienced VET teachers from a diversity of teaching fields to identify moral dilemmas experienced as arising from changes in their workplace contexts.
Findings
One of the identified dilemmas was responding flexibly to heightened student diversity, to which study participants largely responded by prioritising the economic imperative over social inclusion. Well-intended actions thus led to unintentionally damaging outcomes, raising important ethical questions about the relative value of economic and social development outcomes and the role of reasonable adjustment in their attainment. The study also highlights the lack of appropriate VET teacher training in managing ethical conflicts to minimise risks to themselves and their employing organizations.
Originality/value
As a case study of inclusive development policies in practice, this research may be seen as a cautionary tale for inclusive development policies in other countries with similarly strong VET economic and socially inclusive development policies for sustainability. The paper thus opens a dialogue for critical reflection on the current problems in a reasonable development approach in the field of comparative and international education. Those two parallel agendas have presented VET teachers and trainers with ethically challenging situations in which the economic and social development imperatives are experienced as being conflict with each other.
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Iryna Kushnir, Zara Milani and Marcellus Forh Mbah
This article aims to address the response from the higher education (HE) sector in the United Kingdom (UK) to the full-scale war in Ukraine which started in 2022.
Abstract
Purpose
This article aims to address the response from the higher education (HE) sector in the United Kingdom (UK) to the full-scale war in Ukraine which started in 2022.
Design/methodology/approach
Relying on theoretical ideas of neoliberalism and the collection and thematic analysis of relevant official communications from six UK universities, the article uncovers three major ways in which these universities have been responding to the war.
Findings
They include (1) altruistic responses, (2) the promotion of equal treatment of all people and (3) the condemnation of the invasion and its implications for UK’s international cooperation in HE. These responses suggest the strengthening of the liberal ideals in the UK HE sector, heavily dominated by marketisation.
Originality/value
This analysis is significant not only for advancing a very limited scholarship on the topic of HE in the context of this war but also for understanding the development of the neoliberal landscape of UK HE and neoliberalism as a phenomenon in times of crises.
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Deborah Greenblatt and Melanie D. Koss
The purpose of this paper is to show how the impact of White Supremacy and Christian hegemony on the educational system. By highlighting interconnectedness across targeted groups…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to show how the impact of White Supremacy and Christian hegemony on the educational system. By highlighting interconnectedness across targeted groups, the authors assert that through coalition building, groups are stronger than they would be working alone. Solidarity gives hope to combating hatred of all kinds. Learning that there is a long history of antisemitism is an important component of fighting bias. With book banning and controversy over teaching critical race theory in schools, it is important that educators reflect on their social justice education.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors analyze the definitions and enactment of multicultural, culturally responsive and anti-bias education as well as critical theory. They then investigate how antisemitism is of concern to all identities targeted by White Supremacy and Christian Nationalism (LGBTQIA+, minoritized races, non-Christians, etc.) and the importance of education in fighting hate and influencing policy and practice.
Findings
Although 2 % of the US population identifies as Jewish, 11% of incidents educators reported were classified as antisemitic. Education is the key to fighting antisemitism and Holocaust denial (Greene et al., 2021; Stanton and Marcus, 2019). The authors make recommendations for addressing antisemitism, including addressing antisemitic incidents, the importance of Holocaust studies, the need for religious literacy, fighting the banning of books and narrowing the school curriculum. The authors ended by reinforcing the need for Jewish people to be included in multicultural, culturally responsive, anti-bias education and the need for “Heb-crit” as a sub-study of critical race theory.
Social implications
Anti-bias education must include antisemitism and show how connected hatred is rather than having groups compare their struggles. The authors explained the diversity among Jewish people to highlight the complexity of an identity group that is often inaccurately oversimplified.
Originality/value
There is a need for scholarship on modern-day antisemitism and internalized antisemitism and reflective narratives as commonly used in Black and Latinx studies (Rubin, 2020). With the rise in Holocaust denial and antisemitic groups (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2024), it is important to advocate and teach about these topics, which are not often discussed in PK-12 or Schools of Education (Muller, 2022).
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Natalia Karmaeva and Petya Ilieva-Trichkova
Against the recent reversal of the gender gap in higher education that has been observed in many countries, this paper aims to explore why there are better chances for lower…
Abstract
Purpose
Against the recent reversal of the gender gap in higher education that has been observed in many countries, this paper aims to explore why there are better chances for lower social class women to access higher education than for higher social class women in a relative comparison with the same groups of men. Based on the occupational approach and the Breen–Goldthorpe model, we demonstrate those country conditions under which stratification in individual chances to obtain higher education is more severe.
Design/methodology/approach
We use contextual characteristics which capture gender-based and occupational differentiation, including female labour force participation, the share of females in the service sector, and the share of males in upper-secondary vocational education. By using multilevel modelling techniques and data provided by the European Social Survey (2002–2018) for 33 countries, we have made a cross-country analysis of how the relationship between gender and class, as well as the achievement of higher education, is moderated by these features.
Findings
Our results show that a higher share of males in upper secondary vocational education in a given country is negatively associated with the likelihood of obtaining higher education, whereas a high share of females employed in services in a given country has a positive association with this likelihood. We have also found cross-level interactions between a higher share of employed females and women in the service sector, on the one hand, and those of working-class origin, on the other, that are positively associated with higher education achievement. In higher education achievement, the growing importance of horizontal differentiation based on occupation and gender has accompanied the declining power of vertical inequality based on social class.
Originality/value
This study combines gender and class in an analysis of patterns of inequalities of educational opportunity in different societies undergoing a post-industrialist shift.
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This paper draws on African anti-colonial thought and Black consciousness to propose critical conscious leadership (CCL) as a decolonising leadership approach appropriate for…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper draws on African anti-colonial thought and Black consciousness to propose critical conscious leadership (CCL) as a decolonising leadership approach appropriate for pursuing emancipation, social justice and innovation in a new African university.
Design/methodology/approach
I utilised the method of critical discourse analysis to study Ihron Rensburg’s language as he reflected on his leadership at the University of Johannesburg (UJ). The study engaged with Rensburg’s writings and texts on his account of leading the merger and transformation of UJ. The primary text draws from his book “Serving Higher Purposes” (2020).
Findings
Through the construction of CCL, the paper proposes alternative tenets for leading transformation towards a new African university. CCL grounds a decolonised and pluriversal new African university’s character premised on a consciously revitalised alternative thinking that will carry the communitarian spirit of Africa in knowledge production, dissemination and consumption in humanising all and serving the greater good. And it operates within the dialectical tensions of the social and economic purpose of higher education (HE), African and global relevance, African and Western paradigms, excellent performance and attainment of social justice.
Originality/value
The proposed CCL offers an alternative leadership approach that responds to the call to “Dethrone the Empire” by centring Blackness in HE leadership, which is crucial for authentic transformation and decolonisation.
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Rubaya Rahat, Claudia Calle Müller and Mohamed ElZomor
Construction education rarely addressed the importance of disseminating knowledge on infrastructure equity, thus impeding progress toward creating equitable and sustainable…
Abstract
Purpose
Construction education rarely addressed the importance of disseminating knowledge on infrastructure equity, thus impeding progress toward creating equitable and sustainable developments. This study aims to investigate the existing sustainability courses under the American Council for Construction Education (ACCE) accredited construction management (CM) programs to examine the integration of infrastructure equity topics and assess improvement in CM students’ knowledge and awareness to address this issue through an intervention.
Design/methodology/approach
To achieve these objectives, this research reviewed the sustainability course descriptions of the ACCE-accredited undergraduate and graduate CM curricula. Furthermore, the study implemented a workshop within a CM sustainability course that taught the students about the key concepts of infrastructure equity as well as how to address this issue by leveraging the Envision infrastructure rating system.
Findings
The course review results showed that most sustainability courses lack topics such as infrastructure equity and social sustainability. Moreover, the analysis of pre- and postworkshop surveys indicated that guided training could improve the students’ understanding as well as boost their confidence to address and mitigate infrastructure inequity issues.
Originality/value
The findings of the study are valuable for increasing awareness of infrastructure equity and facilitating the future construction workforce with the required expertise to develop equitable infrastructure systems.
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Esneider Gutierrez-Rivera, Manuela Escobar-Sierra, Jorge-Andrés Polanco and Francesc Miralles
This study aims to address the challenge of sustainability in Catholic schools quantitatively, even more so knowing that there are few systematized and quantitatively elaborated…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to address the challenge of sustainability in Catholic schools quantitatively, even more so knowing that there are few systematized and quantitatively elaborated approaches that help to determine their sustainability dimensions. Therefore, this study aims to estimate the structural relationships of organizational sustainability in primary and secondary religious schools in Latin America based on the substantive functions of the school, such as care, upbringing and education from an organizational approach.
Design/methodology/approach
Deductive reasoning was used. In the preliminary phase, data were extracted from 420 educational leaders of primary and secondary schools in Latin America from the Lasallian Network, leading a school population of 200,500 students and impacting 166 schools; these previous results were again contrasted with the forthcoming literature with research from the Ramon Llull University, Barcelona, Spain, to achieve the sustainability framework, which has an endogenous variable called the school organizational sustainability framework.
Findings
The results reveal four dimensions of the first-order structural model: management, association, communication, well-being and curriculum, And eight second-order dimensions: governance, communication, resources, secular association, secular partnership, health, social commitment, and campus operation. The investigation results show that secular association and well-being are two dimensions that are constituted as the main elements of a sustainability framework for this type of organization.
Research limitations/implications
The Catholic school has specific dimensions that need to be cared for with special attention, such as association, which comes from the laity and comes from the experience of the religious. In addition to this vital dimension, well-being, constituted as care for the people of the community, as care for all, is connatural to the religious school. Still, it is constituted by an edge that completes it, and that is the concern for the well-being of those outside regarding social justice. A limitation in the pretension of totality is that the study is conducted in a small portion of Catholic schools in Latin America.
Practical implications
A practical impact in the schools investigated is to present this sustainability framework as a reference to incorporate these dimensions as a strategy to bet on sustainability. Although the realities and contexts of the Latin American school are very different, some factors can impact low-income schools and schools with more significant financial resources if they are strengthened and worked on with dedication. In addition, this framework can lead to roads and the construction of indicators within the school, which can measure the sustainable commitment of the whole school. Finally, a clear finding of the framework is the need for good governance processes related to leadership and leaders' commitment to school-wide sustainability.
Social implications
The present study impacts the depth that the proposal of the global educational pact can reach in the reality of Catholic schools in Latin America. The seriousness with which its leaders take the issue of sustainability from this perspective can contribute to the sustainability of life itself.
Originality/value
The originality of this research is that it constitutes the first Sustainability framework in Latin America in Catholic schools from an organizational approach.
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