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1 – 10 of 575Michelle Reidel and Cinthia Salinas
The purpose of this self-study is to investigate how critically examining our emotions as social studies teacher educators (SSTEs) can inform practice and further the project of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this self-study is to investigate how critically examining our emotions as social studies teacher educators (SSTEs) can inform practice and further the project of moving race from the margins of social studies curricula.
Design/methodology/approach
This self-study's design includes the use of multiple data collection methods and continuous dialogue with Chris who served as Macy's critical friend. The authors independently analyzed the data following the same procedure with each data set and then utilized a constant comparative method to reconcile our coding.
Findings
The findings point to the importance of critical emotional reflexivity in any effort to reposition race as central rather than peripheral to teaching and learning social studies content.
Originality/value
This study is not under review with another journal.
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This paper argues that because leadership is a relational practice and leaders are gendered and racialised, in socially diverse schools and societies, leader preparation around…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper argues that because leadership is a relational practice and leaders are gendered and racialised, in socially diverse schools and societies, leader preparation around difference is potentially emotionally confronting to leaders' professional and personal identities.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper draws on critical race and feminist theoretical perspectives to undertake a review and analysis of current approaches to professional development.
Findings
The paper concludes that because there is significant agreement now that leadership is considered to be emotional management work, then leadership learning, if it seeks to change practice, is also emotionally laden. The paper concludes that to develop more reflexive leaders, professional learning should begin with scrutiny of the self as gendered and racialised to consider what that means for “the Other” in terms of leadership in culturally diverse communities and schools.
Research limitations/implications
The paper is context specific, largely drawing on Australian data with reference to indigeneity. This is consistent with its theoretical position that leadership is relational and situated.
Practical implications
The paper identifies possible strategies that could be undertaken in professional learning forums that address issues of difference.
Originality/value
While there are significant issues around professional learning to develop pedagogical practices that address student diversity, there is less theorising around leadership diversity and what that might mean in terms of professional development of leaders.
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Julie Faulkner and Michael Crowhurst
Critical discussion of the social conditions that shape educational thinking and practice is now embedded in accredited teacher education programmes. Beneath beliefs that critique…
Abstract
Purpose
Critical discussion of the social conditions that shape educational thinking and practice is now embedded in accredited teacher education programmes. Beneath beliefs that critique of educational inequality is desirable, however, lie more problematic questions around critical pedagogies, ethics and power. Emotional investments can work to protect habituated ways of thinking, despite attempts to move students beyond their comfort zone. This strategic process can shift attitudes and promote intellectual and emotional growth, but can also produce defensive reactions. This paper, a self-study in relation to an incident in a tertiary education programme, examines how student feedback on content and pedagogy positions teachers and learners. The purpose of this paper is to frame and reframe ways in which learner feedback to critical approaches might be read. The argument examines, through dialogue, the potential of disruptive teaching approaches for recontextualising both learner and teacher response. Such exploration articulates particular tensions and challenges inherent in critical teacher education pedagogies.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a reflective practitioner piece – involving journaling and the use of dialogue – to explore a critical incident.
Findings
This is an exploratory piece – the authors explore the workings of tension in critical/poststructural pedagogical work.
Originality/value
The deployment of dialogue as a method and as a way of presenting key issues is somewhat novel. The paper works through quite complex terrain in an accessible and reasonably clear fashion.
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Danelle Adeniji and Marquita Foster
The purpose of this study is to describe the authors’ experiences as Black feminist graduate assistants assigned to teach diversity courses led by white professors.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to describe the authors’ experiences as Black feminist graduate assistants assigned to teach diversity courses led by white professors.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors draw from Black feminist approach to provide authentic, liberatory anti-racist pedagogy, ensuring that the identities and cultural knowledge of Black, indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) pre-service teachers (PSTs) are given space in anti-racist education and social studies courses.
Findings
The study’s findings show that creating systems for (re)constructing performative anti-racist courses disrupt whiteness and whitewashed pedagogy in teacher preparation programs.
Originality/value
The implications of the authors’ experiences reflect that centering abolitionist teaching methods can bolster BIPOC PSTs anti-racist identities and future practices in diverse classrooms.
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Reshmi Lahiri-Roy and Ben Whitburn
This paper emerged from the challenges encountered by both authors as academics during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. Based on their subsequent reflections on inclusion in…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper emerged from the challenges encountered by both authors as academics during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. Based on their subsequent reflections on inclusion in education for minoritised academics in pandemic-affected institutional contexts, they argue that beyond student-centred foci for inclusion, equity in the field, is equally significant for diverse teachers. Working as tempered radicals, they contend that anything less is exclusionary.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a reciprocal interview method and drawing on Freirean ideals of dialogue and education as freedom from oppression, the authors offer dual perspectives from specific positionings as a non-tenured woman academic of colour and a tenured staff member with a disability.
Findings
In framing this work dialogically and through Freirean ideals of conscientização, the authors' collective discussions politicise personal experiences of marginalisation in the teaching and researching of inclusion in education for preservice teachers, or more pointedly, in demonstrating the responsibility of all to orientate towards context-dependent inclusive practices. They assert that to enable educators to develop inclusion-oriented practice, the contextual frameworks need to ensure that they question their own experiences of inclusion as potentially precarious to enable meaningful teaching practice.
Research limitations/implications
It offers perspectives drawing on race, dis/ability and gender drawing on two voices. The bivocal perspective is in itself limitation. It is also located within a very Australian context. However, it does have the scope to be applied globally and there is opportunity to further develop the argument using more intersectional variables.
Practical implications
The paper clearly highlights that universities require a sharper understanding of diversity, and minoritised staff's quotidian negotiations of marginalisations. Concomitantly inclusion and valuing of the epistemologies of minoritised groups facilitate meaningful participation of these groups in higher education contexts.
Social implications
This article calls for a more nuanced, empathetic and critical understanding of issues related to race and disability within Australian and global academe. This is much required given rapidly shifting demographics within Australian and other higher education contexts, as well as the global migration trajectories.
Originality/value
This is an original research submission which contributes to debates around race and disability in HE. It has the potential to provoke further conversations and incorporates both hope and realism while stressing collaboration within the academic ecosystem to build metaphorical spaces of inclusion for the minoritised.
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Mezirow's theory of transformative learning aims to evoke change on a deeper level of learning. This qualitative study with 38 pre-service teachers enrolled in a Master's degree…
Abstract
Purpose
Mezirow's theory of transformative learning aims to evoke change on a deeper level of learning. This qualitative study with 38 pre-service teachers enrolled in a Master's degree programme for teacher education in Austria used semi-structured interviews to explore how diversity skills can transform after diversity training applying Mezirow's theory of transformative learning. In these trainings, a disorienting dilemma was placed at the centre of the diversity training from which transformative learning took its start.
Design/methodology/approach
In an increasingly diversified school system, diversity skills have become a pedagogical necessity for teachers in their future workplace. However, many teachers state not feeling adequately prepared for diversity within higher education and their attitudes towards diversity oftentimes remain unchanged despite diversity training.
Findings
The findings were deduced from structured content analysis. They show that the diversity trainings led to new cultural frames of reference for the study participants on a cognitive and social level, but to a smaller extent on an emotional level.
Originality/value
The study follows a different approach than “typical” diversity trainings through Mezirow's theory on transformative learning contributing to making a real change to preparing students for their workplaces in diversified Austrian schools.
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Maeve Wall, S. Shiver, Sonny Partola, Nicole Wilson Steffes and Rosie Ojeda
The authors suggest strategies for addressing and combating these attempts at racelighting.
Abstract
Purpose
The authors suggest strategies for addressing and combating these attempts at racelighting.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors of this article– five anti-racist educators working in various educational settings in SLC– employ the Critical Race Theory counter-story methodology (Delgado and Stefancic, 1993) to confront resistance to educational equity in Utah. They do so by first providing a historical context of race and education in Utah before presenting four short counterstories addressing the racelighting efforts of students, fellow educators and administrators when confronted with the complexities of racial injustice.
Findings
These counterstories are particularly important in light of the recent increase in color-evasive and whitewashed messaging used to attack CRT and to deny the existence of racism in the SLC school system in K-post-secondary education, and in the U.S. as a whole.
Originality/value
These stories are set in a unique environment, yet they hold national relevance. The racial and religious demographics in Utah shed light on the foundational ethos of the country – white, Christian supremacy. They reveal what is at stake in defending it and some of the key mechanisms of that defense.
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The purpose of this end piece, framed in aesthetic and critical theory, is to review the author's own approach with graduate students regarding the omnipresence and significance…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this end piece, framed in aesthetic and critical theory, is to review the author's own approach with graduate students regarding the omnipresence and significance of emotion in organizational leadership, and to comment on the contributions to emotional theory found in this volume of the Journal of Educational Administration. The objective in the author's own research is to assist students, through aesthetic awareness, in moving beyond “one‐dimensional” thinking and the “iron cages” of organizational experience.
Design/methodology/approach
As personal affect and perspectives of meaning were of primary importance in the author's research, she employed participatory action research methods. Qualitative data were drawn from students over a ten‐year period as they responded to a question about connections between aesthetic presentations – given by their colleagues as short introductions to each class – and organizational life as they experienced it personally and theoretically.
Findings
Aesthetics, understood not only as appreciation, but also as action, brings to students the illuminating power of multiple forms of expression. Through expression, that is, students named feeling, affect, and begin to understand the nature of emotion. The arts provide ways of expression apart from, and including, the spoken word.
Originality/value
The arts, and an understanding of aesthetics, opens a rarely travelled route whereupon students may engage in organizational theory as a humane science.
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Dawn Joseph, Reshmi Lahiri-Roy and Jemima Bunn
This research is situated at a metropolitan university in Melbourne (Australia) where the authors work in initial teacher education programs within the same faculty. The purpose…
Abstract
Purpose
This research is situated at a metropolitan university in Melbourne (Australia) where the authors work in initial teacher education programs within the same faculty. The purpose of this study is to raise awareness that collegial, collaborative and “co-caring” environments can foster an improved sense of belonging, acceptance and inclusion in the academy. They also argue that communities of practice may foster an improved sense of belonging that enhances empowerment and harmony among all staff in academia in pandemic times and beyond.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors draw on case study methodology as a qualitative approach to understand and illuminate the phenomena under study. Case study methodology provides an in-depth understanding of their trifocal voices, as it allows them to voice their stories through collaborative autoethnography. The authors use self-narratives to unpack their sense of belonging in academic spaces. Collaborative autoethnography (CAE) enabled them to work together as a team of women and as a community of researchers.
Findings
The findings foreground the responsibilities of casual staff while concomitantly articulating the challenges faced by both permanent and casual staff to create a “sense of belonging” in the academy. The authors found that social connection engenders a sense of belonging and inclusion within a space that is often beset by neoliberal ideologies of competitiveness and individual achievement. They articulate their stress, pressure and uncertainty as permanent and as casual academics working supportively to develop and maintain identity in very difficult circumstances. They share how they developed professional relationships which bring unforeseen benefits and personal friendship at a time of especially restrictive practices.
Research limitations/implications
The paper includes three voices, a limitation in itself, thus generalisations cannot be made to other academics or institutions. Employing CAE offers the possibility of delving more deeply into the emotional complexities inherent within this method for further research. They recommend a sense of “co-caring” as a form of pastoral care in the “induction program” for all academics including casual staff. While this may not “strategically” fit in with many because of power imbalances, the journey of co-caring and sharing and building friendships within the academy has a limited presence in the literature and calls for further investigation.
Practical implications
The authors draw attention to the need for higher education institutes to recognise the role permanent staff play when working with casual academics.
Social implications
The authors draw attention to the need to be inclusive and collaborative as a way to improve the divide and strengthen connections between permanent and casual academics at university worksites. This is imperative given the shifting demographics within Australia and its workforce. They also highlight issues of race in the academy.
Originality/value
This is an original work carried out by the authors. It raises concerns about a sense of belonging in the academy, job certainty and the place of people of colour as these issues may also be experienced by other full-time and casual academics.
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Michael Crowhurst and Julie Faulkner
From one Graduate Diploma Secondary student taking a pro-diversity course that both authors had a connection with there was a very angry response, encapsulated by the statement…
Abstract
Purpose
From one Graduate Diploma Secondary student taking a pro-diversity course that both authors had a connection with there was a very angry response, encapsulated by the statement “This course made me feel guilty to be an Australian”. We are aware that negative student evaluations can be part of the territory for tertiary teachers working in diversity courses. The purpose of this paper is to explore the students’ confronting comment which will be construed as a type of offer that is being extended to us – an offer that we are refusing. We draw on Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of “exterior assemblages”, and we shift our gaze to consider “what constitutes the territory” that is our response to the pre-service teacher’s evaluative claim.
Design/methodology/approach
The specific methods we deployed involved an eclectic appropriation of various tools. We embarked on this process of exploration by journaling, collective reflection and informal discussions with other colleagues. Our journals responded to the question: What constitutes the place that is the territory that is our refusal of the student’s offer? In order to explore this place we: kept a hand-written journal; used conventional text and arts based practice techniques in our journaling; discussed our journal entries periodically (face to face, via Skype and via e-mail); discussed this project with colleagues – giving them knowledge that we were doing this – and that we might write journal entries about these conversations; and read a variety of relevant texts We engaged in these processes for a three month period. At the end of this period we shared journals, and set about the task of analysing them. We engaged in a number of analyses and detailed our findings over the next month. Further, over a longer period of time we engaged with this incident and our journal entries and presented a series of in progress papers at a variety of conferences and seminars. The analysis of the data generated involved discourse analysis and dialogue.
Findings
A series of key discourses were identified and listed in the paper.
Research limitations/implications
The key identified ideas are briefly linked to a series of implications for practitioners.
Practical implications
One of the key practical implications is the suggestion that where disagreements surface in education that one response to such moments might be for the parties to consider where they are located.
Social implications
The paper outlines a way of thinking about disagreements that has useful implications when considering issues relating to pedagogical strategies aiming to work towards social justice.
Originality/value
The paper is an original response to a critical moment that occurred for two lecturers in pre-service teacher education.
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