Surveying Borders, Boundaries, and Contested Spaces in Curriculum and Pedagogy [1 ed.] 9781617355226, 9781617355202

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Surveying Borders, Boundaries, and Contested Spaces in Curriculum and Pedagogy

A volume in The Curriculum and Pedagogy Series

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Surveying Borders, Boundaries, and Contested Spaces in Curriculum and Pedagogy

Edited by

Cole Reilly Victoria Russell Laurel K. Chehayl Morna M. McDermott

INFORMATION AGE PUBLISHING, INC. Charlotte, NC • www.infoagepub.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Surveying borders, boundaries, and contested spaces in curriculum and pedagogy / edited by Cole Reilly ... [et al.]. p. cm. -- (The curriculum and pedagogy series) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-1-61735-520-2 (pbk.) -- ISBN 978-1-61735-521-9 (hardcover) -ISBN 978-1-61735-522-6 (ebook) 1. Education--Social aspects--United States. 2. Education--Curricula--Social aspects--United States. 3. Critical pedagogy--United States. I. Reilly, Cole. LC191.4.S86 2011 370.11’5--dc23                           2011025349

Copyright © 2011 Information Age Publishing Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. Printed in the United States of America

Contents Acknowledgements................................................................................ ix The James T. Sears Award...................................................................xiii Foreword: Cognitive Imperialism and Decolonizing Research: Modes of Transformation.................................................................... xv Introduction: Putting it Together....................................................xxix

Sect i o n A Theory and practice: (in)forming (trans)forming (re)forming

1

1 Editing Crew: More than Just Carets.................................................... 7 Amy Shema 2 Get Real: Math in the Real World....................................................... 23 Erin M. Humphries 3 Looking for June Cleaver: Reclaiming Equity in the High School English Language Arts Classroom................................ 39 David L. Humpal



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Sect i o n B Transcending the Confines of Inside(r)/Outside)r(

57

4 Traveling Curriculum’s Borders: Curricular Implications for Schools along the Texas-Mexico Border....................................... 65 Jaime Lopez 5 Navigating Borderlands of Accountability: An Autoethnographic Exploration..................................................... 77 Melissa Castañeda 6 Echoes Down the Rabbit Hole: Voices Heard and Lost in the Land of Professional Development Schools....................................... 91 Victoria Russell

Sect i o n C Translating Silence and Noise

103

7 Power Negotiations and Race-Centric, Race-Avoidant, and Seemingly Race-Neutral Academic Tasks......................................... 107 Myosha McAfee 8 To What Extent Am I Part of the Problem?: Strategizing Identity Politics While Instructing a Multicultural Teacher Education Course............................................................................... 123 Cole Reilly 9 Dramatic Encounters: The Role of the Private and Public in Understandings of Social Justice through Conflict..................... 141 Antonino Giambrone

Sect i o n D Troubling Capital and Deficit

161

10 Border Inquiry.................................................................................... 169 Melina Martinez

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11 The Influence of West African Languages on African American Vernacular: Ebonics Crisis in Oakland, California Revisited............................................................................ 179 Michael Takafor Ndemanu 12 Literacy sin Fronteras: Deconstructing Borders for Language and Cultural Inclusion....................................................................... 195 Elva Reza-López, Blanca Caldas Chumbes, and Christian Belden 13 Anti-Racist Teacher Education Curriculum: Toward a Reconceptualization of the Racial Framework of Prospective Teachers...................................................................... 209 Nicole V. Williams Epilogue: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Editing this Book: Considering Borders & Boundaries Between “Public” & “Art” in Framing Arts-Based Education Research........ 225 Afterword: Something about Hats: Teaching, Researching, and Teaching Research for Understanding..................................... 233 About the Editors............................................................................... 241 About the Contributors...................................................................... 243

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Acknowledgements While the theme of borders and boundaries has been the centerpiece of each individual chapter of this book we, the editors, have also found the challenges of borders and boundaries central to creating this book. In our acknowledgements we would especially like to thank those who helped us to overcome the borders, which took form in geography, language, and relationships (between reader and author, between public and private, between theory and practice, and between schools and society, to name just a few). It was the collaborative and generous efforts of the following people that enabled us to “survey” the obstacles and to create a meaningful body of work that attends to the vital concerns of democracy and social issues confronting us today. One of the borders confronting the Curriculum and Pedagogy Group has been that of the division between academia and the world “out there.” As a group, we have endeavored to engage current P–12 practitioners to share their thoughts, experiences, and research at our annual conference. After over a decade of outreach, C&P is grateful to those practitioners who are active and hope that we will find a way to reach more individuals working in public schools. The traversing of that division is evident in the authors represented in this volume, and, we would like to thank all of the authors who offer our readers possible ways to disrupt those boundaries, each in his/her/their own way. This work is an offering of meaningful recommendations in the transformation of theory and practice in the P–12 milieu. Our authors have been remarkably flexible and open to the ongoing requests for needed documentation, and suggested revisions. Their commitments to the quality of their work and to the vision for this book have

Surveying Borders, Bounderies, and Contested Spaces in Curriculum and Pedagogy, pages ix–xii Copyright © 2011 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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been outstanding. Their individual works bring together here, in juxtaposition with one another, a “third space” (Serres, 1982) where unexpected nuances of meaning, and unprecedented alternative perspectives are created. The spaces in-between the chapters become bridges across borders, intersecting the individual with the collective, voices speaking across space to one another. We also wish to offer our sincere appreciation to Melina Martinez, who has provided us with powerful images that disrupt the traditional boundaries between readers and authors. Her images, as a mode of inquiry, visually connect readers as witnesses without words and challenge the boundary between public pedagogy and academic language that too often alienates a broader public audience. Additionally, her work serves as the most appropriate cover art we could have imagined gracing the cover of this edited volume. We extend our gratitude to Marie Battiste for writing the foreword to the book. We wanted to reach out beyond those who are active participants in the Curriculum and Pedagogy Group, and traverse the boundary between the wider scholarly arena and ourselves by inviting a scholar “outside” of C&P to write the Foreword. To that end, she graciously and eloquently elaborates on her work with postcolonial inquiry and First Nations People, deftly interweaving the significance of her work with the larger vision for the book supported by the individual chapters. She offers perspective and insight that bridge the mission of the Curriculum and Pedagogy Group with the broader challenge to de-colonize our theories and practices as well as to disrupt the dominant scholarly narratives that re-entrench social and intellectual imperialism at the expense of marginalized peoples everywhere. We thank our peer reviewers, whose diligence and eye(s) for detail provided encouraging feedback to each author. Our reviewers are many and varied, coming from across our borders to the north, and from across the United States. Because of their unique scholarly backgrounds we were able to provide the most suitable reviewers for the wide range of works within these pages. A special thanks goes to the graduate students at Monmouth University for their diligence, honesty, and insight, without which we would not have been able to support the best work of our authors. Roughly half of the graduate student reviewers were enrolled in the Research in Curriculum Studies class; those were Shardea Brown, Heather Cellary, Ashley Hoppe, Nicole Hoyt, Stephanie Lauria, and Carolynn Morris. The others were either recent Monmouth University graduates or enrolled in other courses, and they generously volunteered their time and energies without reward. The

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additional volunteer reviewers included Meghan Fryer, Erin Humphries, Douglas Spishock, Tina Parisi, and Alicia Somers. We confronted the boundaries of geography between Maryland (where Morna, Victoria and Cole work) and New Jersey (where Lauri works) by making the trek up I-95 to work with a dedicated group of graduate students. Early in the process, Lauri volunteered her graduate class to serve as a subset of our pool of reviewers, which gave us the opportunity to provide rich and meaningful feedback to our authors. The geographical distance made us long for face-to-face contact. While email bridges many communication borders, there is much to be gained from face-to-face conversation. To bridge this geographical boundary, we were grateful for the 2.0 web and Skype (which was sometimes glorious, and other times frustrating) to remain in contact with each other. So we thank the makers of Skype as well. Finally, we are deeply appreciative of the Curriculum and Pedagogy Group’s governing council for selecting us to serve as the editing team, and for all their guidance and support throughout this process. In particular we make a note of sincere gratitude to Jake Burdick for reading the many emails and responding to our endless series of questions, both big and small. We acknowledge the breadth of patience he has extended toward us during this process. Thank you to George Johnson, publisher at Information Age Publishing, and IAP itself, for taking on the Curriculum and Pedagogy book series. This volume was the maiden voyage of this new relationship and we attribute its success in large part to the hard work of our new publishers, and George’s professional flexibility and gracious attitude. Most of all, we would like to thank our co-editors, Victoria and Cole, for their amazing insight, rich knowledge and experience, relentless hard work, and especially for their friendship. Each editor brought vision, creativity, and passion to this project. We have learned that editing a book with others is like having a baby: both experiences require a strong existing relationship between partners and a capacity for honest communication to make it work. Like the erroneous assumption that having a baby will “bring partners closer together,” editing a book with friends can test the ties that bind. While we did struggle through some difficult challenges and differences, we did not allow boundaries to come between us—we overcame each obstacle creatively and effectively, and we are deeply grateful to each of them for their commitment. Finally, we would like to include here that each editor contributed his or her own talents and strengths to this work equitably. —Morna McDermott and Lauri Chehayl

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Reference Serres, M. (1982). The origin of language: Biology, information theory, and thermodynamics. In J. V. Harari & D. F. Bell (Eds.), Hermes: Literature, science, philosophy (pp. 71–83). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

The James T. Sears Award The annual James T. Sears Award began with papers submitted for the 2004 Curriculum and Pedagogy Conference. Now in its seventh year, the award is presented to the author(s) of an outstanding paper or multimedia presentation presented for the first time at the conference and selected for inclusion in this edited collection. The primary author of the winning paper or presentation must be a graduate student in the field of education or a school or community based practitioner/scholar. The award consists of three features: inclusion, with recognition, in the edited collection, a plaque recognizing the recipient(s), and a small cash award. Additionally, a paper judged to be of outstanding quality and contribution will also be recognized with a distinction of “Honorable Mention” in the edited collection and again at the Curriculum and Pedagogy Conference the following year. The selected work will reflect the spirit of “soulful” curriculum scholarship, as evidenced in James T. Sears’ lifelong commitments to curriculum scholarship and engaged action embodied in his valuing multiple, diverse communities, his cogent critique of dominant norms, and his pursuit of social justice for all. Each year, the award winner is selected by the Fellowship and Awards committee of the Curriculum and Pedagogy Governing Council upon recommendation by the editing team of this collection. We are honored to announce that the 2011 James T. Sears Award winner is Nicole V. Williams for her authorship of the essay, Anti-Racist Teacher Education Curriculum: Toward a Reconceptualization of the Racial Framework of Prospective Teachers. [At last year’s conference (as well as when she submitted her manuscript for this book) she was still a doctoral student at Ohio State University; by the time this book comes to print she will have begun

Surveying Borders, Bounderies, and Contested Spaces in Curriculum and Pedagogy, pages xiii–xiv Copyright © 2011 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. xiii

xiv   The James T. Sears Award

her first tenure-line faculty position at The University of Findlay.] Nicole’s paper supports the vision for this year’s theme of surveying borders, boundaries, and contested spaces. Her insightful work with pre-service teachers deftly  illustrates the myriad of deeply entrenched, yet  ironically shifting borders  surrounding the  dominant ideology of institutional racism and the relationships between self and “other.” Her research advocates for a much-needed reconceptualization of teacher education, raising the call for educators and teacher educators to critically engage with the complexities of race and racism as they are embodied within K–12 and post secondary classrooms across the United States. While Multicultural Teacher Education (MTE) courses and workshops abound in higher education, Williams’ scholarship and research, presented in this paper, demonstrate that raising teacher awareness  about racism and social justice falls short when it fails to  provoke educators (new or seasoned) with the means to confront the borders and boundaries they place between themselves as part of the problem and their perceptions of students of color. Her work is a call to teacher educators and K–12 practitioners, White teachers in particular, to confront themselves more honestly in order to survey the problem “out there” and to take responsibility for the problem in order to be part of the solution. We are also pleased to distinguish with Honorable Mention the work of Michael Takafor Ndemanu, a doctoral candidate at Indiana University. His essay, The Influence of West African Languages on African American Vernacular: Ebonics Crisis in Oakland, California Revisited, speaks to the complexity of linguistic influence and evolution across the borders of time, geography, and culture. Michael’s fluency and familiarity with a number West African and European languages allow him to masterfully demonstrate connections between and across a complex and evolving language system that has been frequently marginalized—treated as no more than clumsy slang. Indeed, Ndemanu demonstrates that Ebonics has a far richer history and structure than is often acknowledged. He effectively describes the role that Ebonics has played and continues to play in regard to American culture(s) as well as in its school policies and politics. We congratulate Nicole and Michael for their contribution to the work and vision of the Curriculum and Pedagogy (C&P) Group. —Cole, Victoria, Lauri, and Morna

FOREWORD

Cognitive Imperialism and Decolonizing Research Modes of Transformation

It is a great honor to be asked to write a foreword for this engaging book of writings that emerged from the annual Curriculum and Pedagogy Conference, around the theme of “Surveying Boundaries, Borders and Contested Spaces.” The reflections and analyses offered in this collection suggest a new era and reconceptualization of knowledge(s), extending beyond conventional notions of knowing while addressing the inner and outer boundaries of accepted and diffused knowledge systems. With this foreword, my intention is to share the traumatic experience of cognitive imperialism of Indigenous1 peoples of North America with regard to education as well as to reflect on the still unrealized potential for an innovative trans-systemic approach that would allow different and diverse knowledge systems to understand each other without prejudice. My own research in animating a decolonized educational context has sought to investigate the failure of the educational systems and the nature of needed transformations from the perspective of a Mi’kmaw woman and educator, a former education director and principal of a First Nations school, and now professor of education Surveying Borders, Bounderies, and Contested Spaces in Curriculum and Pedagogy, pages xv–xxviii Copyright © 2011 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. xv

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at the University of Saskatchewan. In addition to working with and for First Nations communities, I have lived and worked under the federal Indian policy. From this experience and knowledge I have lectured often, unpacking the assumptions, theories and discourses that inform First Nations education policy and practice in an attempt to bring different perspectives and [hopefully] different outcomes for First Nations people. For me, these are vital to the future of education and to the future of all students–not just those who are Indigenous. Eurocentric Research on Indigenous peoples Indigenous peoples represent multiple knowledge systems and cognitive diversities. They live in diverse ecologies throughout Canada and the United States, from the arctic tundra to the eastern and southern coastal regions, from the western plains to the mountainous regions, as well as in urban areas and rural communities. Some communities are vastly isolated in their ecologies, while others live in close proximity to towns and cities, often in greater numbers. While greatly eroded, their diverse Indigenous languages still exist from which unique knowledge systems emerge from ancestral teachings and skills developed from living on and with the land. This knowledge is built from many ecologies and relationships, and provides the necessary dynamic foundational to future environmental sustainability as well as for their own resource use and economic development. Despite the great diversities that exist among Indigenous peoples, there is a tendency, especially among many disciplinary research reports on Indigenous peoples, to characterize them in ways that homogenize their experience without reference to the remarkable cognitive diversities or the colonial contexts or situations that have so dramatically changed their living, learning, and capacities. The Eurocentric dispositional model of research has prevailed with a persistent focus on the results of living within impoverished, colonized environments, yet little analysis has seen the light of day regarding who structured the situations they have had to endure and why, much less how to actually change these circumstances. Statistics offer fragmented but stark evidence of what Indigenous infants, children, youth, women, men, and elders have lived with and the damaging effects that patriarchal, colonial, racialized and impoverished environments provide. In earlier research, questions explored what was in their “culture” and “socialization” that created such negative outcomes. The answers to such research questions blamed the Indigenous peoples. Today we know that that kind of ‘questioning the victim’ for what hegemonic relations with settler societies have created is neither warranted nor accepted. More recent research in education, social welfare, policing, law, and justice have

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begun to address the social constructions of the systems or contexts that have created poverty, racism, and intergenerational abuses as well as the possible directions for ameliorating them; however, there is little political motivation to fund or resource such needed changes. More importantly, for many of the first generation of Eurocentric-trained Indigenous researchers is the awareness that little is actually known about Indigenous knowledges (IK) and teachings or even the assimilative systems that have created their cognitive prison-houses. Slowly contemporary studies are revealing that the residential schools and the system of forced assimilation in formal education have gone hand in hand with serious inequality, exclusion, and conflict exemplified in Indigenous peoples’ aborted achievements in schools, lack of self-esteem, fragmented identities and self-awareness, a growing sense of meaninglessness among Indigenous youths, and underdevelopment of their potential and capacities. The European settlers’ societies that have developed the current systems have also continued to disregarded IK and its teachings as valid epistemologies or have used research to examine and appropriate IK for their own purposes. Disrespect for Indigenous epistemologies and theft of knowledge and its products have alienated Indigenous learners from formal learning and Indigenous peoples from colonial research foundations, contributing to a legacy of mistrust between Eurocentric institutions of higher learning and Indigenous peoples, their governing bodies, and their institutions of learning. Strained relations between researchers and Indigenous peoples have also resulted in notable absences in academic works. For example, relatively little is known about Indigenous science and the principles, practices, and knowledge held by kin, places, and languages. Indigenous science remains a neglected field of knowledge and inquiry, and as such, the teachings of Indigenous science have not been applied to conventional education. Some notable work has emerged (Aikenhead, 1998; Aikenhead & Michell, 2010; Cajete, 1999; 2000; Hatcher, Bartlett, Marshall, & Marshall, 2009; Kawagley, 1995). Likewise, the Indigenous peoples’ humanities have been forced into even smaller subsets of marginalized disciplinary knowledges (Battiste, Bell, Findlay, Findlay, & Henderson, 2005). As such, Indigenous peoples do not see their own epistemologies reflected in educational curricula. Thus, in order to identify, comprehend, and nourish linkages between Indigenous science and conventional systems of scientific research and knowledge, scholars of diverse professional, scholastic, and cultural backgrounds must understand the colonial foundations of Eurocentric research on which the current educational system has been forged and reconstruct a new, imaginative education foundation which builds on the respectful engagement and interchange with Indigenous peoples for knowledge translation and dissemination.

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Eurocentrism and Cognitive Imperialism To understand the theory behind why Indigenous knowledge is marginalized, one must first understand the pervasive nature of Eurocentrism. As an imaginative and institutional context, it is the dominant consciousness of formal education and all students have been marinated in it. All educated peoples are both the victim and beneficiaries of the Eurocentric educational systems that have taught us in the discourses of the ways of the conventional that have been prescribed as normative. Eurocentrism is an ultra-theory in modern thought. It provides the context for many smaller theories, all of which can be seen as integral parts of Eurocentric diffusionism. Diffusionism in its classic form depicts a world divided into the two categories. There is Greater Europe, which has a history, invents things, and progresses. And then there is non-Europe, which has no history, is stagnant and unchanging, and receives progressive innovations by diffusion from Europe. The theory of Eurocentric diffusionism postulates the superiority of Europeans over non-Europeans. It asserts that the difference between these two peoples lies in the quality of the European mind or spirit, which contains a certain intellectual or spiritual factor that leads to creativity, imagination, invention, innovation, rationality, and a sense of honor or ethics. The reason for Indigenous non-progress is seen as the lack of the intellectual or spiritual factor that is inherent in the “European mind,” “European spirit,” or “Western man” (Blaut, 1993). All Eurocentric scholarship is diffusionistic and dispositional since it accepts the notion that the humanity has a single center (Europe) from which culture-changing ideas originate and a vast Indigenous periphery (non-Europe) that progresses as a result of diffusion from that single center. Eurocentric thought claims to be universal and general, and this claim of universality is the cloak Eurocentric thinkers use to project their beliefs onto other cultures that possess different worldviews or “inner logic” or localized knowledge. Without significant exception, the discourses of Eurocentric thought have silenced and subordinated Indigenous peoples, as well as many others in society. Where forced English assimilative education has disrupted the knowledge systems and social systems, many nations have lost or have had eroded their Indigenous knowledge systems, language usage and functions, knowledge and skills, beliefs and customs, resulting in many youth and communities having lost their connections with relatives, ancestors, and teachings. This has contributed to the youth losing learning opportunities and knowledge based within Indigenous elders’ and community teachings that might help them stay connected with their cultural ancestry and with their spiritual roots that have guided their peoples, or that could help restore their learning motivations.

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In the ensuing silence about their knowledge systems, Indigenous youth have been deprived of their heritage and identity. Eurocentric educational, legal, and social systems have induced a collective amnesia that alienates Indigenous people from their knowledge, their elders, from their linguistic consciousness, from their land and spiritual connections, and from the meaning and order of their world. This I have characterized elsewhere as cognitive imperialism (Battiste, 2000), following on the understandings of cultural imperialism (Carnoy, 1974). Cognitive imperialism is the product of the Eurocentric hegemony of education and languages of instruction and the forced assimilation that has been imposed on Indigenous peoples as a form of “white washing” the brain. Many educators have recognized the damage done to Indigenous students by culturally exclusive curricula, and many are committed to the idea of culture-based education in some form. To achieve new visions and processes that arrest cognitive imperialism, colonialism, and assimilation, a different kind of education and educational theory is required to enable Indigenous people to build upon their knowledge systems and teachings. Post-Colonial Theory My awareness that the educational process in Canada and the United States supports cognitive imperialism has led me to seek a decolonized Indigenous education. My search has been an inspiring part of my own self-education and growth. Post-colonial writers have made me aware of the conditions that support colonial policy and how we, as educators, have unwittingly sustained the power of Eurocentrism. My search has also made me aware how important it is to understand the colonial foundations of the Eurocentric diffusion of knowledge in Canadian institutions and made me aware that it is not enough to change the content of curricula or the language of instruction used in schools. A personal commitment on the part of educators is required as well. Each and every one of us has a responsibility to contribute to the decolonization of education. In my research, I have sought to identify theory and methodologies for transforming the deficient education systems using post-colonial theory and Indigenous knowledge. Post-colonial is not a term for a temporal time after colonialism, because neither Eurocentrism nor colonialism has lost its monopoly in education; rather it is a term that is about challenging the literary canons that have centered the norms of Western Europe as universal and naturalized their diffusion of knowledge and values of its colonizers to Canada and the United States. Post-colonial is about the need to challenge and even reject the Eurocentrism at the centre as legitimate norms for all and to raise the necessity for education to respond to the knowledge system

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of all peoples in their various locations, without the needed authority of Eurocentrism to verify those knowledges. Post-colonial is a term that has emerged to help raise consciousness about the Eurocentric monopoly and its exclusions that have been formalized around privilege and authority of disciplinary knowledge. As well, it is about the recovering and reclaiming of knowledges and voices made silent by the Eurocentric monopoly and related privileges. Post-colonialism is an inspirational and aspirational practice, goal, or idea Indigenous peoples use to imagine a new form of society through a restorative and transformation system of education. It is a symbolic strategy for shaping a desirable reality that does not, as-yet, exist (Battiste, 2000). The Indigenous conceptualization of a post-colonial world is an act of hope, a light in the darkness of educational failure. To other writers in the humanities and social sciences, post-colonialism is about rethinking conceptual, institutional, cultural, legal, and other boundaries that are assumed to be universal, but in fact act as structural barriers to the self-actualization of Indigenous peoples, women, visible minorities, and others. Post-colonial theories offer the “possibility of new readings” on the debates/discussions and offer the reading of the inclusion/exclusion debate as a tension between scorn and desire leading to colonial ambivalence in action. Totalizing theories are no longer useful. Rather we educators must determine when we are thinking about Eurocentric mainstreaming, who designated it as the mainstream or who/what is being streamed? What is imagined in the term “Indigenous,” “Aboriginal,” “First Nations,” or “First Americans”? How do we know the other, and what methodologies do we employ to know the other? What role does the other have in self- representing, defining, speaking, and being heard? What then does the work look like after these issues have been determined? Postmodern studies, women studies, cultural studies, and Native studies have all attempted to foreground these voices and humanities, though often the discourses surrounding Indian/white relations have taken centre stage to the humanities of Indigenous peoples. Thus it is vital that this work entail recovering and reclaiming of knowledge and voices made silent by Eurocentric monopoly and privileges despite the fact that Eurocentrism continues to operate as if it is ‘a depoliticized process of intellectual refinement’ whereas Indigenous knowledge is treated as if it is a ‘product of local politics of the tribes’ (history of treaties, constitutional issues, Indian Affairs, white and Indian relations) or of culture (cultural learning styles, cultural brokering, socialization of family). Hence educators tend to treat Indigenous knowledge first as a culture based on difference and/or the politics of Indian/white relations, i.e., Native Studies. As such, cultural relevance, inclusion, and neo-assimilation are regarded as the cornerstones of mainstreaming education.

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Well before the 1970s, when control of Indigenous education by Indigenous peoples was advocated and accepted as government policy in Canada and the United States, many Indigenous scholars and post-colonial writers were imagining a new restorative educational system. Most Indigenous people understood the crisis they lived and felt the urgency for reform. They, like the authors of the report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples in Canada (1996), have helped to illuminate a restorative education system that links IK with Eurocentrism as the key to addressing racism and poverty as well as improving the future capacity of Indigenous people. Indigenous scholars around the world have begun to address the crisis through an aspirational discourse of post-colonial or decolonized education that attempts to reconcile a restorative education system with the forced assimilation or traumatic education systems (Battiste, 2008; Ireland, 2009; G. Smith, 2000; L. T. Smith, 1999). Post-colonialism describes a process of constructing a theoretical space that derives from the historical experience of colonization and its intergenerational traumas. In the literature, it is defined as liberation from the imposition of culture and ideas upon people by other people from foreign territories (Schwartz & Ray, 2000), but for those submerged in colonization, it is about removing brutal oppression and domination. Today, leaders, writers, scholars, and activists are raising consciousness about the processes of domination. They are also raising awareness of the patterns of violence imposed on oppressed peoples and the processes of healing required overcoming their pain and trauma. The researchers are articulating visions of transformation of the colonized and oppressed, and helping the world to understand the lessons to be learned from Indigenous peoples’ struggle for survival of their knowledge systems. Unfortunately, their insights rarely penetrate contemporary curricula and educational policy, although their efforts have created an unfolding postcolonial discourse. The post-colonial discourse in Eurocentric education is also about how colonial consciousness creates oppression and how it maintains this oppression through an imposed history of powerlessness, exploitation, marginalization, cultural imperialism, and violence (Young, 1990). The reading of required history texts that describe the battles and wars that create white patriarchal privilege is one example of the ascendancy of domination. The descriptions of the heroic work of individuals in the development of Eurocentric civilization are another significant example. Post-World War II sentiments gave rise to a consciousness about the limits of Eurocentrism and its teachings, instigating a rise in global consciousness, notably the United Nations’ Declaration on Human Rights (now the Conventions on Human Rights); the political decolonization of and independence in over 160 countries of the world; the dismantling of the USSR; and post-apartheid Africa. These dramatic global shifts provided concrete

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evidence of the changing nature of the liberation from imposed hierarchies and its unifying theme to create a more just world order for humans, as well as to undo the damage caused by colonialization and cognitive imperialism (Schwartz & Ray, 2000). Curriculum and pedagogy are critical sites for post-colonial work, particularly because modern systems of education and economics have been crafted out of colonial borrowings from European systems and made them legally mandatory for all children. Eurocentrism is now seen as a fabricated ideology of knowledge and power generated from a history of European scholarship for the benefit of Europeans. It is now found in public educational systems and practiced upon most peoples of this planet. By the nineteenth century, most formal education systems had sufficiently adopted this knowledge system, for unclear reasons and with little justification, making it the universal normative liberal arts education. Today we understand it as the Western knowledge system or ‘the West’ (as opposed to the Eastern knowledge systems). It is also the source of imperialism, colonialism, racism, and other prejudices, including its superior estimations of what it means to be educated, what is higher in education, and/or what is considered progress. It is built on an ideology that believes that it is not just a knowledge system but also the knowledge system; and as such, all other knowledge systems are diminished as local or folk knowledge, thus inferior to or not legitimate for mass distribution in public education. Eurocentrism underlies all contemporary concepts of civilization, scholarship, disciplinary and interdisciplinary discourses, opinion, and law (Blaut, 1993). While Eurocentrism attempts to assimilate or domesticate the other knowledge systems of humans into its premises and structures, it has not been successful; rather it functions as the normative guard that watches over the prison-house comprised of Indigenous peoples and their knowledge systems. Contemporary social or human science and humanities in Eurocentrism are presented to everyone as either the highly abstract and impersonal rationalization of the present (like economics), a humanization of the Eurocentric order (political philosophy and legal theory), or a subjective experientialism disconnected from practical engagement (Eurocentrism humanities and philosophies). While the disciplines and discourse of Eurocentrism quibble with each other about their accepted theories and methods, they actually remain allies in the construction and maintenance of Eurocentrism. Since Eurocentrism is an implicate knowledge system, it is characterized as a comprehensive, singular, and true knowledge system (rather than an opinion or attitude), and appears to be immune from interdisciplinary, multicultural or cross-cultural critique. Some Canadian ministries of education are searching for a unifying approach to the different and diverse knowledge systems; however, these initiatives and their research are just beginning. The problem remains in

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their thinking that these systems are alike and need only to add to current Eurocentric structures. These ministries have not yet sought to challenge the presumptions and assumptions that have been developed from cognitive, imperialistic Eurocentric foundations, which privilege and widely disseminate certain research. However, it ignores much of the scholarship and diverse voices of other knowledge systems and different peoples’ construction of Eurocentrism, which has been emasculated, marginalized, or reframed knowledge systems to make them more palatable to Eurocentrism (Battiste, 2000; Said 1979; 1993). Today, the critically important post-colonial quest for Indigenous peoples around the world is to fully integrate their knowledge and practices into their children’s lives. Reclaiming, recovering, restoring, and celebrating are all part of a revisionist project of great magnitude. It is a project that many Indigenous peoples have taken to all their sites of work and study, including blockades, fishing disputes, and the courts. But the post-colonial agenda is also a project that is enacted in schools, and all educators must be aware of its significance. Decolonizing Praxis Perhaps it is too easy to point to the examples of the destructive effects of colonization. It is more difficult to understand the processes and methodologies of de-colonization. A leading theorist of decolonization, Maori educator and scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999), notes that the experiences of Indigenous peoples engage decolonization in a distinct manner: “Decolonization is about centering our concerns and world views and then coming to know and understand theory and research from our own perspectives and for our own purposes” (p. 39). The decolonization of existing Eurocentric education and praxis is under way in the work of many scholars. The Maori experience is significant because it aims not only to decolonize educational systems built on colonialism, but also to enable and sustain Maori renaissance and resistance. The Maori educational revolution has swept through all of their small country of Aotearoa (New Zealand) to Hawaii, giving leading models in the process of decolonization. They continue to assert that decolonization is an awareness and practice that is never complete. Their social transformational challenge is about incremental change, taken in a number of steps in multiple sites of struggle. Their schools represent only one part of the total transformation. In articulating the vision and purpose of language revitalization, leading Maori scholar, Dr. Graham Smith identified three features in the theory of decolonization as fundamental tools for change: conscientization, resistance, and transformative action (Smith, 1997).

xxiv    FOREWORD

By conscientization, Smith means becoming aware of the existing hegemonies and practices that entrench the Eurocentric social, economic, gender, cultural, and political privileges that erode or destroy Indigenous peoples’ lives within their own cultural context. This awareness requires Indigenous peoples to develop a critical consciousness that interrogates and understands inequalities in society and the hegemonic issues evident in public services such as education, health, and justice. Graham Smith uses resistance to mean oppositional actions and politics to form shared understandings. The Maori people most clearly evidence a collective politic in Kaupapa Maori, which embraces both theory and action. These collective activities respond and react to decolonizing structures of oppression, resolving and acting to transform existing conditions and institutions. Graham Smith uses transformative action to mean praxis that is both reflective and reflexive with respect to theory and practice. Rather than merely developing a critique of what has gone wrong, transformative action has to create meaningful change or decolonization by intervening and making a difference in everything Indigenous people do and at every site of struggle they take on. Transformative action is about entering into dialogues with one another about the needed transformative work and about the struggle to decolonize with appropriate methods and strategies. In the area of education, it is about reflecting on what the role of schooling has been, what barriers have excluded some voices from participation in schools, and what perceptions others hold that prevent them from fully benefiting from what a transformative curriculum can offer. Many educators comprehend that the attempt to decolonize and actively resist colonial paradigms is a complex and daunting task. The colonial educational model offers a fragmented and distorted picture of Indigenous peoples and of the colonizers. Understanding Eurocentric assumptions of their superiority within a historical context and the continued dominance of this mode of thinking in all forms of contemporary knowledge is foundational to change. In addition, Indigenous people need to renew and reconstruct the principles underlying their own knowledge systems, worldviews, environments, languages, and forms of communication. They need to understand how all these elements interact to construct their humanity. At present we are witnessing a renaissance of Indigenous peoples (such as WIPCE) and the emergence of non-Indigenous allies who are providing critical frameworks for addressing these issues and working with the Indigenous renaissance. While acknowledging excellence through the proper valuing and respectful circulation of Indigenous knowledges across and beyond Eurocentric disciplines, Indigenous peoples and their allies are seeking to heal themselves, to reshape the contexts of their lives, and to effect

Cognitive Imperialism and Decolonizing Research    xxv

reforms based on a complex arrangement of conscientization, resistance, and transformative action. Conclusion Most Indigenous peoples around the world continue to suffer intergenerational trauma and stress from genocide and cognitive imperialism, and their lives continue to be destroyed by colonization. The work of educators, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, is to enable the human potential of all peoples. Indigenous peoples are not just part of the dialogue. They need to advance their own post-colonial trans-systemic discourse. This discourse must interrogate current thinking, curricula, and structures. It must question who benefits from them and how. And it must work actively to transform colonial thought by changing Indigenous thinking and by helping others, especially Indigenous students, to understand the roles they must play in effecting change. The efforts of educators need to reveal inconsistencies, challenge assumptions, and expose ills. Educators need to search within themselves and their knowledge systems for principles that will guide all children to lead dignified, respectful lives. Sometimes this will require patience with those who have internalized a colonial agenda that demeans Indigenous culture and language, and that leads Indigenous people to destroy themselves. Indigenous knowledge can be a source of inspiration, creativity, and opportunity. It can contribute to equality, solidarity, and tolerance in their humanity. Respect for Indigenous knowledge begins when Indigenous people provide the standards and protections that center (and/or un-marginalize) this knowledge. Through the processes of post-colonial theory and decolonizing praxis, the integration of IK with Eurocentrism in transformative education is the best hope for the future of Indigenous peoples as affirmed by the final report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples in Canada (1996), the dedicated efforts of the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations (Battiste & Henderson, 2000), the United Nations Declaration on Indigenous Peoples, the International Labour Organization Convention Concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries (ILO No. 169) (1989), and UNESCO Declaration on Science and the Use of Scientific Knowledge (1999) as well as the Draft Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of the heritage of Indigenous Peoples (Wiessner & Battiste, 2000) and the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, Programme of Action (2001). The Indigenous researchers and activists, post-colonial scholars, and leaders are determined to see education fulfill its promise. No longer can institutions

xxvi    FOREWORD

excuse their reluctance to change by saying that they do not know what Indigenous people want (Havemann, 1999). Indigenous knowledge around the world was affirmed in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which offers Canada, the United States, and other nations of the world a chance to comprehend another view of Indigenous humanity and science, as they never have before. The Declaration ends the regime of Eurocentrism and cognitive imperialism in international law. It opens the door to understanding Indigenous humanity and its manifestations without paternalism and without condescension. In practical terms — as articulated in the United Nations Working Group’s Guidelines and Principles for the Protection of Indigenous Populations (Wiesner & Battiste, 2000)—this means that Indigenous peoples must be involved at all stages and in all phases of educational planning so that each nation has an opportunity to rededicate itself to protecting humanity; to redressing the damage and losses suffered by Indigenous peoples to their languages, cultures, and properties; and to enabling Indigenous communities to sustain their knowledge for their future. Everyone can and should engage in the elimination of cognitive imperialism and promoting decolonized education. This is not a task for Indigenous peoples alone. Nor is it a task to be carried out in isolated locations or sites. These reorientations should take place everywhere educators recognize the privileging of Eurocentrism and recognize the importance of Indigenous knowledge, protocols, and concerns. The Indigenous renaissance will inevitably be experienced in predominantly non-Indigenous contexts. Hence, all educators and students need the assistance of the most current post-colonial theory and decolonizing praxis. Those who do not yet feel comfortable with the decolonizing tasks must demand assistance, not as a one-way street but as a dialogue of collaborative community growth. Humble and honest requests rarely go unheeded, but it is not the responsibility of Indigenous educators to achieve decolonization alone. Rather it is the work of a community of educators who view education as an inclusive transformative process that is based on many knowledge systems and acknowledges the need for change from cognitive imperialism as an enabling option for all. Note 1. In Canada the terms for Indigenous peoples are entrenched in the constitution as reference to Aboriginal, which refers to First Nations (status and nonstatus Indians), Inuit, and Métis. In the United States, the terms are American Indian or Native American. For this essay, I will use the term Indigenous to refer to those groups on both sides of the border, although each tribal nation has also its own referent term for itself.

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References Aikenhead, G. (1998). Border crossing: Culture, school science, and assimilation of students. In D. Roberts & L. Ostsman (Eds.), Problems of meaning in science curriculum: Ways of knowing in science series (pp. 86–100). New York: Teachers College Press. Aikenhead, G. S. & Michell, H. (2011). Bridging cultures: Indigenous and scientific ways of knowing nature. Don Mills, ON: Pearson Education Canada. Battiste, M. (2000). Reclaiming Indigenous voice and vision. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Battiste, M. (2008). The decolonization of Aboriginal education: Dialogue, reflection, and action in Canada. In P. R. Dasen & A. Akkari (Eds.) Educational theories and practices from the majority world (pp. 168–195). New Delhi: Sage. Battiste, M., & Henderson, J. Y. (2000). Protecting Indigenous knowledge and heritage: A global challenge. Saskatoon, SK: Purich Press. Battiste, M., Bell, L., Findlay, L. M., Findlay, I. M. & Henderson, J. Y. (2005). Thinking place: Animating the Indigenous humanities in education. Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 34, 7–19. Blaut, J. M. (1993). The colonizer’s model of the world: Geographical diffusionism and Eurocentric history. New York, NY: Guildford Press. Cajete, G. (1999). Ignite the sparkle: An indigenous science education model. Skyland, NC: Kivaki Press. Cajete, G. (2000). Native science: Natural laws of interdependence. Santa Fe, N.M.: Clearlight Press. Carnoy, M. (1974). Education as cultural imperialism. New York, NY: David McKay Company. Dyck, L. (1996). An analysis of Western, feminist and Aboriginal science using the medicine wheel of the Plains Indian. Native Studies Review 11(2), 89–100. Hatcher, A. M., Bartlett, C. M., Marshall, M., & Marshall, A. (2009). Two-eyed seeing in the classroom environment: Concepts, approach and challenges. Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education, 9(3), 141–153. Havemann, P. (Ed.) (1999). Indigenous peoples rights in Australia, Canada, & New Zealand. Auckland, NZ: Oxford University Press. Ireland, B. (2009). ‘Moving from the head to the heart’, addressing ‘the Indian’s Canada problem’: Reclaiming the learning spirit–Aboriginal learners in education. Ottawa, ON: Canadian Council on Learning. Retrieved from http://www.ccl-cca.ca/ pdfs/ablkc/AboriginalLearnersEdu_en.pdf Kawagley, A.O. (1995). A Yupiaq worldview: A pathway to ecology and spirit. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press. Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) (1996). Volumes 1–5. Ottawa: Canadian Communications. Said, E. (1979). Orientalism. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Said, E. (1993). Culture and imperialism. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf. Smith, G. (2000). Maori education: Revolution and transformative action. CJNE 24(1), 57–72. Smith, G. (1997). Kaupapa Maori theory and praxis. Unpublished Dissertation, Auckland: University of Auckland.

xxviii    FOREWORD Smith, L.T. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and Indigenous peoples. New York, NY: Zed Books. Schwartz, H. & Ray, S. (2000). Companion to post-colonial studies. Malden, MA and Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. UNESCO (2001). United Nations. World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, Programme of Action Agenda item 9, adopted 8 Sept. 2001 in Durban, South Africa. UN Doc. A/ Conf.189/5 (2001) (edited). United Nations (1999). Declaration on Science and the Use of Scientific Knowledge, Science for the Twenty-First Century, Budapest, Hungary, June 26-July 1, 1999 at http://www.unesco.org/science/wcs/eng/declaration_e.htm United Nations (1989). International Labour Organization Convention (ILO) (No. 169) concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Country 27 June. Wiessner, S. & Battiste, M. (2000). The 2000 revision of the United Nations draft principles and guidelines on the protection of the heritage of Indigenous people. St. Thomas Law Review 13(1), 383–390. Young, I. (1990). Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

INTRODUCTION

Putting it Together Bit by bit, putting it together . . . Piece by piece, only way to make a work of art, Every moment makes a contribution, 
 Every little detail plays a part. 
 Having just the vision’s no solution, 
 Everything depends on execution, 
 Putting it together, that’s what counts.   —Sondheim & Lapine, 1984, p. 87

Putting together an initial call for proposals was a snap: sending out invitations to all those people who had presented at this year’s conference in Akron, inviting each to submit something for the proceedings—then . . .  wait. Once submissions came pouring in, our editing team had the pleasure of revisiting much of what one or more of us were able to catch at the conference as well as some of the work we had regrettably missed in-person. After giving each manuscript a first-reading to determine whether it would move on for blind-review, we played matchmaker, pairing pieces with new and veteran scholars in the field we thought might be best to provide each text constructive insight and critical feedback. Those initial stages of the project were pretty straightforward, really. Moving into the next major phase of the project called for more artful considerations and creative problem solving. Once multiple reviews came in for each manuscript, we had a chance to workshop ideas a bit—revisiting and refining the broader vision for what would become this book. The October 2010 conference title had been “Complicating Borders, Dialogues, Surveying Borders, Bounderies, and Contested Spaces in Curriculum and Pedagogy, pages xxix–xxxix Copyright © 2011 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. xxix

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and Understandings to Curriculum and Pedagogy” and precedent suggested those words would also serve as the title for the corresponding book proceedings. However, none on our editing team were wed to that name— particularly not after reading how pervasively many of the initial manuscript drafts were super-saturated with the terms complicating, dialogues, and understandings (or any/every variation of the these).1 On the other hand, we quickly came to understand that the concept of borders held promise as an authentic and unifying theme for the book. Ounce by ounce, putting it together: 
 Small amounts, adding up to make a work of art. 
 First of all, you need a good foundation, Otherwise it’s risky from the start. 
 Takes a little cocktail conversation But without the proper preparation, Having just the vision’s no solution, Everything depends on execution . . .  The art of making art is putting it together . . .  bit by bit.   —Sondheim & Lapine, 1984, p. 87–88

Among the pieces submitted for consideration, those that seemed to rise to the top of our collective pile, time and again, had something rather unique, albeit universal in common. Each referenced a rather nuanced understanding of one complex, curricular dichotomy or another. Whether dividing lines were being illustrated, celebrated, or blurred, disrupted or deconstructed, transcended, troubled, or something else entirely, it seemed we had an interesting collection of strong work(s) shedding light upon systemic boundaries, borderlands, and frameworks for understanding that often go misunderstood. One submission initially consisted entirely of a series of powerful photos taken along the U.S.-Mexico border in southern Texas, documenting the physical manifestation of two countries divided; with this we found a literal representation with strong imagery to parallel many of the figurative metaphors taken up throughout other pieces we selected for publication in the book. Of course this visual piece would stand on its own [and it does, with reflective written commentary and analysis, serving as our tenth chapter], but we hoped to also deconstruct parts of it throughout this anthology, drawing texts collectively into both divided and overlapping conversations with one another. Hoping to encourage readers to recognize some of the connections we, as editors, had drawn (as well as to draw their own), our next step was to situate the chapters into thematic trios and one quartet—each theme relating to a different archetypal binary or conceptual blockade that the referential works blemished, blended, blurred, blared, and/or blighted. Having considered a dozen or more possibilities, we arrived at the follow-

Putting it Together    xxxi

ing dichotomies of contested space to weave together the efforts of our scholar-authors: 1) theory + practice, 2) inside(r) + outside)r(, 3) silence + noise, and 4) capital + deficit. Throughout the book, each editor contributes a brief glimpse of his/her own insight with regard to one of these themes, illustrating just one of many ways a reader might imagine weaving the separate scholarly elements of a given section into a richer conversation with one another and, we hope, his/her own. As the time came for us to name the book, we toyed with countless discursive arrangements, eventually settling upon “Surveying Borders, Boundaries, and Contested Spaces in Curriculum and Pedagogy” as our revised title. We hoped to acknowledge the range of borderlands—real, abstract, and otherwise—the book promised to broach in terms of curriculum as well as pedagogically. A final task then was to arrive at a word—a verb—that spoke to what it was we felt this anthology of work was doing. One of the most complicated things about borders is not what they are, or what they divide, but how we move about, among, or across them. Beyond merely illuminating a string of conceptual couplings, we like to think the proceedings offer somewhat of a call to consideration (if not always action). But how was it we felt the proceedings engaged with these ideas. Were we/they effectively troubling the borders? Traversing them? Transcending them? It seemed there might be a range of answers corresponding to certain pieces, but none of these effectively captures them all. Clearly our chapters were not all trying to do the same thing. In fact, they offered a myriad of perspectives with regard to how one might appreciate and appropriate certain, universal notions of dichotomous understanding. As such, we arrived at surveying2 as perhaps the most fitting term. To survey not only allows for a number of interpretations for how one might critically consider a situation, but it also suggests an intentional and documented recording of such efforts, where one considers data/matters from multiple points of view—where the whole might be more than the sum of its parts. “The art of making art is putting it together . . . ” (Sondheim & Lapine, 1984, p. 88). Taking Things Apart For all the measured intention we brought to designing a unifying framework and structure to organize the year’s proceedings, it was serendipitous to realize that each of our four thematic sections offered prominent parallels to some of the noteworthy tensions I have observed—make that surveyed—in the Curriculum and Pedagogy (C&P) Group in recent times— and this year’s conference only further illustrated just that. Allow me to elaborate.

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Theory and Practice C&P has always prided itself as a champion of innovation in progressive praxis (Allen & Dentith, 2010; Schubert & He, 2010)—wishing to neither privilege nor isolate theory and/or practice as islands unto themselves (as it seems many other professional organizations seemingly do, at least on a de facto level). Indeed, the group genuinely means to be/provide an inviting space for practitioners as well as post-secondary scholar-theorists. Yet it seems year after year, our membership is overwhelmingly comprised of folks working and/or studying in “higher” education. Many of those ‘practioners’ present are either grad students (often times, though not always, intending to transition into faculty positions at the university level) or local teachers and artists, who attend the conference only when its circus comes to [their] town. Yet, more than a decade ago, C&P’s earliest visionaries expressly intended to “re-engag[e] with practitioners” (Allen & Dentith, 2010, p. 1). Certainly, there are a number of complicating factors faced in this regard. Whereas conference travel is an expectation for many graduate students and university faculty members—complete with varying level of supportive reimbursement, albeit less in tough economic times—the same may not be true for many of our would-be and former members, who find attending the conference incompatible (if not impossible) with their other practitioner obligations. As someone who manages the records for our organization’s membership, I am keenly aware of these unfortunate figures; likewise, as a council member, I don’t see much representation on council among those outside of higher education. No doubt, C&P will continue to work on addressing this matter, as many of us undoubtedly value the insight practitioners might offer and gain by attending our/their conference. Inside(r) and Outside)r( Like any professional organization (but also, perhaps also not quite like any other one), C&P wrestles with a cliquish reputation it presumably hopes to shake. I still remember how much I enjoyed my first C&P conference at Balcones Spring, Texas, in 2006. Nothing about the experience resembled the stuffiness or artifice I had associated with a number of other professional conferences I had attended. Not only did bunking up in a cabin full of friendly, if not familiar faces, present a different vibe from the word go, but relaxed attitudes toward dress and imaginative presentation styles dotted the ‘i’ and crossed the ‘t’ for me to trust that the annual C&P conference was indeed (as I had heard) truly different. I appreciated the powerful connections I made on a human level in the dining hall or by the drumming

Putting it Together    xxxiii

circle just as much as the plethora of highly intellectual conversations I participated in regarding my work and that of others. I returned the following year with enthusiasm and was overjoyed to find not only had I remembered a number of people, but they remembered me and my work as well.3 Nearly a dozen people who attended either of my presentations the previous year came up to ask me how things had progressed since the pilot stages of my projects. I was flattered to feel as though my ideas mattered to others—that this scholarly community seemed to embrace me with open arms. After attending in 2006, I had recommended the conference to several of my fellow grad students and colleagues; by the time I was leaving Balcones Springs in 2007 to catch my flight home out of Austin, I was a walking spokesperson for the organization, encouraging countless others to join us the next year in Decatur. Indeed, I felt a part of that ‘us’ and I considered running for council the following year. Of note (and this much has been true every year that I have attended the conference), not everyone felt as much a part of things as I did at C&P. In fact, several friends and acquaintances who attended with me commented that they often felt like outsiders there—that there was a clear presence of boisterous and enthusiastic insiders who meant well, but also that not everyone could become a part of that group. For whatever reason, I seemed to have an open invite to the informal gatherings in certain rooms/cabins each night; however, these spaces were simply too small to house everyone from the conference, so it becomes a matter of who is and is not in these rooms. Many of those on the inside become fast friends who reminisce and reconnect all year round, via Facebook and email, etc.—planning to share a hotel room or cab fare to and from the airport for other conferences throughout the coming year. For those on the outside, particularly those who know something happened that they were not a part of, this may conjure up regressed memories of insecure emotion they had not considered since high school. It is perhaps important to appreciate that the hurt feelings attached to this insider/outsider dynamic by and large seem rather unintentional. I would like to imagine this has nothing to do with social hierarchies or elitism, but it is conceivably an inevitable byproduct of certain people who delight in one another’s presence and seek to nurture those relationships; somewhere along the way, this may make for inconsiderate behavior toward those outside that group. I should, of course, confess that I struggled to pick up on this initially— perhaps because I have always felt rather included. [After all, the fish is the last one to see the water; sometimes borders and boxes are easier to see from the outside.] Adding to this, I should also confide that I noticed something occur at this year’s conference that suggests this innocent, slippery slope may be steeper than I had feared. A perfect illustration for just how connections can uniquely take shape at C&P, I shared a ride from Decatur

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back to the Atlanta airport with three other council members shortly after the 2009 conference wrapped. As luck would have it, the trip was paired with a medley of iTunes downloads from what would become the first Glee soundtrack (2009) only weeks later. Little did I know, I had stepped into a vehicle filled with four other unabashed gleeks; before long we were belting out the songs’ harmonies with improvised choreography the way it would seem only trusted friends could. By the time we reached the airport, we had unofficially committed to co-presenting the following year, analyzing some of the latent curricular messages we found available in the musical comedy’s weekly episodes. Fast forward to this year’s conference in Akron, where our Glee-inspired scholarship and sing-along presentation was slated for the final timeslot of the 2010 conference. We had a remarkably good turn out, considering most people by then would have headed home. Of note, the room was relatively full, primarily comprised of familiar faces to C&P as well as to the four of us; however, still a few people in attendance were newcomers. The presentation went well, but there were a few rowdy responses among some of our friends in the audience who were playfully behaving as ‘class clowns’ might. I certainly was not offended and my sense is that none of my co-presenters were either; after all, we knew these individuals and we afford them some license, particularly at C&P. After the presentation, two dear pals who I’ve known for years but were still new to C&P, shared that they were shocked and dismayed by how rudely some C&P insiders in the audience handled themselves throughout our presentation—that they would likely never come back to the conference again for fear that they might someday experience something similar during one of their own presentations. Of course, my instinct was to immediately forgive and even defend those who misbehaved that morning. “You have to understand, that’s just how _____________ can be.” But my friends interrupted, “No, we don’t have to understand her, him, or anyone! At any other conference such behavior would never fly.” It seems they had a point. C&P needs to think carefully about the way we might be subconsciously privileging insiders to (mis)behave or take up more than their fair share of space if common courtesies go un-policed for only certain members; if not, we run the risk of souring the impression our organization and conference might make on those not yet on the inside . . . those perhaps not interested in becoming a part of any inside. Silence and Noise In an overlap/intersection between boundaries of insider/outsider with silence/noise, I consider the ways in which those on the “inside” (what-

Putting it Together    xxxv

ever that inside may be) feel a privilege to make noise, while those on the “outside” are often silenced. Similarly, one could certainly draw interesting connections between the dichotomies of silence and noise with the scholarly efforts of browning or colouring curriculum and pedagogy. What may seem a rather recent initiative for the Curriculum and Pedagogy Group, others know to have been a long time coming—a movement often hushed or marginalized by many curricular scholars. Despite C&P’s commitment to progressive and democratic ideals in educational work, like any number of other professional organizations for curricular scholarship, as a field, we have a history of falling short when it comes to hearing/listening for all voices—particular those who might best serve to decenter, disrupt, or queer certain canonical overtones of white and western privilege in celebrated educational scholarship. As a manifestation of insider/outsider divisions, even the most democratically dedicated paper, one focused on equity and plurality, often times falls into the cycle of quoting only “seminal” curriculum texts (translation: white and male). Toward this end, the Browning Caucus and the Browning/Colouring Strand4 of the conference each reflect specific, tangible efforts made prior to this year’s conference to finally begin addressing what it might mean to brown/colour a field of study that has been notoriously whitewashed and ostensibly colour-free. Unfortunately, it seems as though earlier efforts afforded only minimal impact, amounting to stolen asides and impassioned discussions much of the membership might have just as easily missed as they were dismissed: mere noise or whispers. In planning this year’s conference, those of us whose work exercises browning/colouring efforts might have been delighted to see this collectively marginalized voice was finally being given a microphone (and captive audience). Not only did the C&P council agree to dedicate its Thursday town hall meeting to browning/colouring— sponsoring a panel of impressive scholars to present with supportive travel funding and/or assistive technologies—but the conference program committee also afforded caucus members the opportunity to develop and facilitate a follow-up workshop on the following day of the conference. As a member of the Browning Caucus, I have been privy to a wealth of creative and resourceful efforts behind the scenes for more than a year now. Toward that end, I have found our strategic employment of silence and noise fascinating. For instance, all of the more conventional committee work associated with C&P is expected to unfold via the organization’s wiki. This, of course, catalogs a history of countless exchanges so that every move and mission is historicized and documented. By contrast, the Browning Caucus has made a deliberate effort to conduct our efforts off-wiki—so that the group might truly function on its own as a caucus, separate from the existing C&P structures.5

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To some extent, this amounts to a self-imposed border. How fascinating that borders too can be employed strategically by marginalized groups as a form of self-preservation! Similarly, even the makeup of the initial Browning Caucus has been strategic from its onset. Efforts were made to prevent this endeavor from being effectively colonized or co-opted by well-meaning majority scholars as the white face(s) of C&P; many majority scholars in C&P fully support this project . . . but they were essentially asked to do so from the sidelines initially. As such, the group of us sporadically communicates via email, where budding ideas might be nurtured and refined before they are subject to scrutiny beyond the caucus, itself. Although I was pleased with C&P’s willingness to prioritize an entire town hall for the full membership to engage with some of the exciting work associated with each of four browning scholar panelists, I drew even greater inspiration from the workshop that followed it the next day. Finding time and space (in a noisy restaurant) to gather and plan the workshop amounted to some fantastically authentic professional development in its own right, but the workshop itself was better still. The session’s more intimate atmosphere of approximately twenty-five C&P members who chose to attend6 helped set the tone for the day (and, let’s hope, the year to follow). During this session, I remember hearing (and recording minutes for) what seemed like an unending list of original and thought-provoking ideas for what the next steps of browning/colouring might look like. We moved beyond talk to conceptualize the beginnings of a plan of action. Capital and Deficit One thing I have always appreciated with C&P has been the group’s conscious effort to avoid privileging certain scholars and their work above others—avoiding the relegation of capital and deficit status values. First attending the conference more than five years ago as a graduate student, I was delighted to feel as though I was on equal footing with anyone/everyone in the room. Understand that that is no small accomplishment, considering the number of decorated names present—scholars I had been reading about and referencing for years. Still, it felt like every effort was made to minimize the unnecessary hierarchical components that might decorate most conferences. No one was listed in the program as “Dr.” anything; instead, we were all treated as peers, with first names listed prominently on our name tags. Egos and accolades were to be checked at the door, like unnecessary luggage. Anyone was free to chime in at town hall meetings and grad students and practitioners were encouraged to run for positions on council.

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Furthermore, a mentoring strand existed (and still exists today) to help nurture and encourage the work of new and emerging scholars—be they grad students, practitioners, or pre-tenure faculty members, etc. Kris Sloan, in particular, invests considerable energy toward arranging suitable pairs, so that each mentee might find a mentor well suited to his/her needs. Having now experienced both ends of the dyadic mentee/mentor paradigm, I can say without hesitation that it is one part of the conference I cherish most. Each year I have formed lasting relationships with mentors and mentees alike and it makes the conference feel that much less intimidating to know you have an ally—someone to save a spot for you at breakfast7 as well as to ask you thoughtful questions about life and work. As a rule, C&P makes every effort not to follow the path of its many peers, affording certain scholars or scholarship the status associate with a keynote; there is deliberate intention to not presume one person’s work is more deserving than others. Along those lines, I felt like what I put forward in terms of scholarship in my presentations was taken very seriously— challenged with only the best of intentions (to make it stronger, like a peer editor) but never condescended, corrected, or cavalierly dismissed. Sadly, these are blessings graduate students cannot always take for granted at conferences in our field. A few years ago, seemingly well-intended decisions were made that suggested C&P might have lost touch (if only momentarily) with certain principles with regard to capital and deficit. As the tenth anniversary of C&P approached, a number of events were organized to recognize some of the more senior scholars in the group on special panels—most of whom had been with C&P from its early years. What those who planned this must not have realized was how such panels would appear, consisting of predominantly white and male scholars of a certain age—effectively perpetuating the face of curricular and pedagogical scholarship in ways that mirrored the very cannons that progressive organizations like C&P tend to resist. We might not have called these keynote panels, but more or less they were constructed as such. Of course, this mistake, perhaps innocent in intention, did not go unnoticed; that leads me back to what I admire most about the Curriculum and Pedagogy Group—what we trust the reader(s) too will find represented throughout the pages of this book. We are a diverse and imperfect group of critical thinkers and doers—thoughtful enough to allow for pluralistic approaches to the field, and yet candid enough to hold one another accountable when one’s efforts seem at odds with his/her philosophy. Democracy is not a seamless narrative, but a cacophony of voices (noise) in a space that is constantly shifting beneath its own feet. We must remain conscious and keenly aware of our own positionality in relations to others to safeguard our

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mission of a democratic discourse that remains “open”—where unnecessary boundaries of any kind will not take root. First of all, you need a good foundation, Otherwise it’s risky from the start. 
 Takes a little cocktail conversation But without the proper preparation, Having just the vision’s no solution, Everything depends on execution . . .  The art of making art is putting it together . . .  bit by bit.   —Sondheim & Lapine, 1984, p. 87–88

Notes 1. A number of promising authors, particularly those new and emerging as scholars in the field (but not only those people), must have presumed we wanted to see those words on every page. This, of course, was not the case; the result was often less sophisticated, under-complicated drafts of otherwise promising scholarship. As such, we found ourselves redirecting such efforts. 2. Not to be confused with any derivative of the term, “surveillance” (Jupp, 2011). 3. I immediately realized, of course, that I remembered their work too. 4. Debate continues to surround the naming of these efforts as browning or colouring, etc. 5. Before bringing questions or requests before the governing council or C&P’s membership, this affords us the chance to organize, draft, and edit our collective thinking 6. As opposed to the expectation that all members attend town halls in enormous rooms, where microphones often are necessary 7. I wonder how many of the people who seem to feel like outsiders at the conference have neglected to participate in mentoring strand opportunities (as either a mentor or mentee).

References Allen, L. A., & He, M. F. (2010). Foreword—Curriculum~pedgaogy: Past~present ~future. In J. G. Maudlin, B. Stodghill, & M. F. He (Eds.) Engaging the possibilities and complexities of hope (pp. xi–xxxi). Troy, NY: Educator’s International Press, Inc. Glee Cast (2009). Glee: The Music, Volume 1. Los Angeles, CA: Columbia Records. Jupp, J. C. (2011, April 1). Rider for the Proceedings Book Title [Msg 6]. Message posted to https://curriculumandpedagogy.wikispaces.com/message/view/C ouncil+Discussion+Page/36930000

Putting it Together    xxxix Schubert, W. H. & Dentith, A. (2010). History—The last moment: Past. in J. G. Maudlin, B. Stodghill, & M. F. He (Eds.) Engaging the possibilities and complexities of hope (pp. 1–2). Troy, NY: Educator’s International Press, Inc. Sondheim, S. & Lapine, J. (1984). Sunday in the Park with George. New York, NY: Samuel French, Inc.

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Section A Theory and practice: (in)forming (trans)forming (re)forming

“Praxis” is a fifty-cent word we seem to throw around quite a bit in scholarly chitchat. It’s a sexy word—like “paradigm” or “hermeneutics”—that makes our writing a little snappier, our point a little more difficult to contest. I am not suggesting that people who use these wonderful words are inept. I simply think that every once in a while we need to stop a moment and consider our terminology; we need to reflect on where our words come from, and what they really mean in the field of curriculum studies. “Praxis” is a word that can strike abject fear in the hearts of teacher candidates across the country. It is the name of a series of standardized tests created by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) that purports to measure the content-area knowledge and/or teaching skills of individuals who wish to become teachers. At least one of the Praxis exams is utilized as one facet to determine if an individual is eligible to be a teacher in nearly every state in the country. Therefore, for anyone who wants to be a teacher, praxis is an important word. But, surprising as this may be, the term has actually been around much longer than the ETS. The term praxis is originally a Greek word that translates to engaging, doing, practicing ideas, or applying. According to Jacqueline Bach, Aristotle “explained that praxis is action taken by an individual who has been informed by knowledge and wisdom” (2010, p. 681). In the field of curriculum studies, praxis is often used to characterize the space between theory and practice, but it also is employed to define a way of life and learning. Praxis is cyclical and recursive. The individual who engages in praxis, a reflective Surveying Borders, Bounderies, and Contested Spaces in Curriculum and Pedagogy, pages 1–3 Copyright © 2011 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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and thoughtful person, is faithful to the assimilation of life-long learning in her or his daily life. Public school teachers who choose to engage in praxis live and work in what can at times be a colossal chasm, or other times a breathless space, between theory and practice. Across the United States, pre-packaged and scripted curricula have potentially collapsed the space to a barely-existent whisper. These curricula, that conveniently provide the questions and answers marching in the margins of the teacher’s edition of the text, excuse the practitioner from even the most basic of thoughts. They do not foster or reward critical reflection; it’s not even part of the plan. So one must wonder: In today’s increasingly institutionalized environment, can we still find practitioners who engage in praxis? The happy answer is a resounding YES! The chapters in this section are written by individuals who are authentically engaging in praxis; they are the articulations of how the authors’ professional lived experiences have been (in)formed (trans)formed and/or (re)formed through their purposeful study, and that study has been guided by or adapted to their daily practice. In “Editing Crew: More than Just Carets,” Amy Shema (in)forms her role as a literacy educator and extracurricular literacy club advisor through the lens of research on individual social development and the interpersonal relationships between elementary students. Similarly, Erin Humphries (trans)formed her daily practice as a high school math teacher with her research on integrating real-world application with subject-matter instruction. She shares her experiences here in the chapter entitled “Get Real: Math in the Real World.” Humphries acknowledges that she is operating in a standardized environment, but transforms those standards into culturally and socially relevant pedagogy to engage her students. When reading “Looking for June Cleaver,” one cannot help but think of the popular Socrates statement “the unexamined life is not worth living” (West, 1979, p. 38a). Through critical examination, David Humpal (re)forms his understandings after purposeful study about race and identity. In this deeply personal experiential piece, the author artfully layers diverse elements of popular culture with rigorous scholarly literature from the field of curriculum studies. The result is a demonstration of how Humpal’s life-choices are informed by his critical reflection and learning. Paulo Freire elucidated the concept of praxis in this way: “humankind, as beings of the praxis . . . emerge from the world, objectify it, and in so doing can understand it and transform it with their labor” (1970, p. 125). In the following chapters, these authors have metaphorically stepped outside of their daily routines, looked back and thought for a while, and then asked themselves important questions about what they observed in their own daily practice. Through the voices of other scholars, as well as themes and ideas that emerged through their own data collection, the authors have objectified and informed their daily work through the lens of study, and then gen-

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erously shared their lessons with us. Though not one of them actually uses the word “praxis” in their manuscripts, it is through their engagement with praxis that they have (in)/(trans)/(re)formed their own lives, as well as the lives of their students, their readers, and the world around them. Their way of living and teaching is both organic and sincere; the actions of these practitioners, informed and guided by their search of wisdom, are as impressive as they are immeasurable. This kind of transformational teaching can never be quantified on a Praxis test. —Laurel K. Chehayl References Bach, J. (2010). Praxis. In C. Kridel (Ed.), Encyclopedia for curriculum studies (pp. 680– 681). Los Angeles, CA: Sage Reference. Friere, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Continuum Publishing Company. West, T. G. (1979). Plato’s apology of Socrates. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

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Wall in Farmer’s Field

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CHAPTER 1

Editing Crew More than Just Carets Amy Shema Graduate Student, University of Rochester1



Shaq: Oh yes. My mom is so proud. She was happy and crying when I got the award [Student Author]. She didn’t see the writing side of me because I don’t talk about school much at home. This [the award] shows her that I can write and I do like to read.

I get so excited when I hear that a child loves to read. I get even more excited when a child likes to write his own stories and shares them with me. It is hard not to smile at colorful depictions of monsters, animals, family members, friends, and sci-fi characters as he explains every detail of the illustrations and reads the words on the page (and some that are not) out loud. Children are creative beings who need places that honor, encourage, and support various forms of self-expression. Having children engage in authentic activities in which they conceptualize a real purpose and audience can be a highly motivating experience. It can also provide an opportunity for children to explore different identities and bolster confidence.

Surveying Borders, Bounderies, and Contested Spaces in Curriculum and Pedagogy, pages 7–21 Copyright © 2011 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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For Shaq, Editing Crew was a space to express multiple identities and share “the writing side” of him with his mother; a side she does not normally see. The above quote is particularly interesting because Shaq recognized that he could present different aspects of himself while making a connection between writing and reading. Editing Crew was a place for Shaq to engage in literacy practices requiring him to integrate not only various skills, but also to learn different ways to present himself and engage with others. This study uses a sociocultural lens that approaches literacy as a social practice occurring among and between people communicating in socially mediated contexts. This lens allows for literacy events (Heath, 1983) to serve as a focal point for social interaction and intrapersonal development. In this article, I focus on a group of students who participated in a schoolbased extracurricular group, Editing Crew, and the ways in which they understood their participation as influential upon their sense of self. Data for this investigation is comprised of student comments collected during an end of the year meeting and my observations as the co-teacher facilitating this group. Before attending the Curriculum and Pedagogy Conference, I explained to the students that I would be presenting to a group of teachers in Ohio and sharing our work at Editing Crew. Immediately Jessie cheered. I asked her why she was so excited.

Jessie: Because I want other people to know about what we do here and how we do it and to give them an idea to do like their own at their own school. Editing Crew is awesome! Theoretical Perspective

Literacy as a Social Practice Literacy as a social practice is consistent with the works of researchers such as Rogoff, (2003), Street (1995), Lankshear and Knobel (2003), and Barton and Hamilton (1998). As such, literacy is “a sociocultural practice understood and acquired only within the context of the social, cultural, political, economic, and historical practices to which they are integral” (Lankshear & Knobel, 2003, p. 28). Scholars such as Gee (2003), Heath (1983), Scribner and Cole (1981), and Street (1995) interpret literacy as something that people do; it is an activity, located in the space between thought and text. Literacy does not just reside in people’s heads as texts to be analysed (sic). Like all human activity, literacy is essentially social, and it is located in the interaction between people. (Barton & Hamilton, 1998, p. 3)

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Within a socio-cultural perspective, human beings interact with their worlds primarily through mediated means such as cultural artifacts or tools, symbols, and language. Sociocultural learning theory (Cole, 2003; Engestrom, 1987) defines learning as occurring through participation in joint, collective activities mediated by cultural tools (Lave & Wenger, 2005; Wertsch, 1993). Students learn “as they acquire various social practices, identities, and tools not only through participation in interpretive communities of practice, but also through experience in acquiring social practices and tools and in constructing identities within specific cultural worlds” (Galda & Beach, 2001, p. 66). This epistemological position posits that knowledge is co-constructed among participants through activity, rather than in the head of an individual. As children learn to negotiate and “master” cultural tools of written or spoken language, technologies, or behaviors, they begin to incorporate them in their everyday practices (Barton & Hamilton, 1998). This paper presents children as authors and explores the processes in which they develop literacy skills through authentic socially mediated practices. Often literacy instruction is thought of as happening in the classroom, facilitated by a teacher trained in specific techniques, and resulting in measurable progress by the student. Reader’s and writer’s workshops, guided reading, spelling and phonics lessons, and sustained silent reading are a few of the approaches teachers use for literacy instruction. The curriculum used is often initiated by the teacher and developed to meet state and district standards. Some approaches to literacy instruction, such as writer’s workshop, are more holistic and take into account the processes students engage in to develop as writers (Calkins, 1994), while others take a more product-driven approach which focused on students working through discrete writing exercises that are neither connected to the curriculum nor involve a sincere application of process writing (Edelsky, 1996). Although foundational skills are important and highly emphasized at the primary level, research has shown that students take a more active role in their learning when they are able to make connections between the processes and products of their work (Shannon, 2007). Literacy as a social practice provides a theoretical lens to analyze learning situations in which literacy is learned. Literacy learning develops within mutually constructed dialectic social relationships. Likewise, literacy products cannot be separated from learning and cognition; they are integral to what is learned. Therefore, literacy practices are just as important as the products developed from practices. Children develop a self-identity of an author by creating an expression of self that is also recognized by others within socially mediated contexts. Gee (2003) writes, “Learning involves taking on and playing with identities in such a way that the learner has real choices and ample opportunity to mediate in the relationships between new identities and old ones” (p. 208).

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He goes on to say, “Since reading and thinking are social achievements connected to social groups, we can all read and think in different ways when we read and think as members (or as if we are members) of different groups” (p. 3). The students who participated in Editing Crew took on multiple roles and identities, which enabled them to fluidly shift between identities and engage in literacy practices across contexts. This identity development is one way to acknowledge authentic learning taking place within larger social contexts. Authentic learning can take place when teachers and students engage in authentic activities with no predetermined goals or outcomes and is co-constructed for real audiences and purposes (Edelsky, 1996; Larson & Marsh, 2005; Nystrand, 1997). Inherent in the definition of authentic activity is the production of meaning through social engagement. I am specifically drawn to how children make meaning of themselves, each other, and their environment and the multiple ways in which they construct a sense of self within those spaces. It is important to explore how people construct meaning because it is integral to their development and conception of self within that activity. It is through mutually constitutive social systems that we are able to express a sense of self and interact with others in relationships (Cole, 1996). This paper addresses the shifting identities of elementary students, the scholastic and social confidence that emerge within this context, and implications for curricular development. The Study Demographics The school is situated in a mid-size urban area and is relatively small, with only about 300 students in grades kindergarten through 6th with two classrooms at each grade level. The student population consists of approximately 80% African American, 9% Hispanic or Latino, 9% White, and 2% Asian, American Indian, or multiracial and is considered to be “economically disadvantaged” as defined by the state report card. The school boasts a high attendance rate (95%), low suspension rate (< 0.5%), and a stable student and teacher population. Students consistently achieve Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) in all subject and demographic areas and the school is in overall “Good Standing.” Many students arrive for kindergarten with limited academic skills and steadily progress to or near grade level by 3rd or 4th grade. The student population is consistent with peers in other schools within the district in terms of socio-economic status, English-language proficiency, racial background, and parental support. The school is considered to be “high performing” and is grounded in an Expeditionary Learning model. This model provides a framework for teach-

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ers, administrators, parents, and students to work within a set of learning principles that encourages authentic curriculum development and pedagogy designed around student interests, needs, and learning targets within a community of high expectations. Due to consistently high student performance, strong administrative leadership, and highly qualified teachers, the district administration has permitted school-level autonomy for curriculum development. Although curriculum is aligned with state and district standards, no pre-packaged curricular materials or basal readers are used. To ensure consistent vocabulary across grade levels, the reading and writing program follows guidelines outlined in Strategies That Work and 6+1 Traits of Writing (Culham, 2003).2 We also employed the language of these frameworks at Editing Crew to support classroom instruction. To date, Student Authors have ranged from students in grades 2–6th and consisted of five girls and four boys, a boy/girl pair, a girl/girl pair and boy/boy pair, and totaling 12 Student Authored books. Books selected include multiple genres such as poetry, non-fiction, fiction, Choose Your Own Adventure, biography, advice or ‘How To’ guides, and rap lyrics. Student Author of the Month I had been working with a first grader, Lynnie for about a month on a book she had been writing. Upon its completion, I asked Lynnie if she wanted to share her book with the librarian, Mrs. Title. Of course! She was eager to do so. Mrs. Title is an enthusiastic woman who gets genuinely excited about student work and provides constructive praise helping students to feel a sense of accomplishment. She was so impressed by Lynnie’s book that she asked if we should make copies to distribute to the rest of the school so other students could read the book, too. Lynnie was thrilled. The next week at our School Wide Morning Meeting (SWMM), Lynnie received the first Student Author of the Month award. SWMM is a weekly event where all students, teachers, and staff, meet in the gym for an interactive and enthusiastic celebration of the school community. There are ritual activities3 such as sharing of a greeting, a reading, an activity, and closing. Once a month the school librarian features a Book of the Month highlighting one of the ten Expeditionary Learning design principles in which the school is grounded. In the fashion of Reading Rainbow, the librarian teases the book’s plot and entices the audience to read the rest to find out what happens. Later in the day, each classroom receives a copy of the book. The librarian promoted Lynnie’s book in the same manner as the other Books of the Month. She called Lynnie to the center of the circle and presented her with a medal and the 4-foot star with Lynnie’s photo in the center that hung in the library for her stay as Student Author.

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Following Lynnie’s announcement as the Student Author, other students approached the librarian about being a Student Author and bombarded her with their creative work. During the next academic year, numerous students shared their submissions and the librarian selected subsequent Student Authors. Students were chosen at the librarian’s discretion for a variety of reasons. For some, becoming Student Author was a way to highlight their writing skills, for others it was a way to promote their self-confidence as a writer and for peers to see a certain student as someone deserving recognition. Subject matter, genre, and format were also considered. Books arrived in various formats and stages of completion. One memorable submission was an interactive “pop-up” book that was very creative and would have been of high interest to students; however, there was no way to reproduce it and send a copy to every classroom. Although this book in particular was an example of a high quality text, other books lacked content quality such as including a set of incomplete stenciled animals randomly placed on a page or photos printed from computer clip art and stapled together. As teachers, Mrs. Title and I were thrilled at the new interest in writing and wanted to encourage students to continue to write books, but as the number of submissions increased, the librarian’s subjective selection process became difficult to explain to authors. Students often shared writing pieces and quickly inquired when they would be awarded the honor of Student Author. It became challenging to encourage students to continue writing yet also be selective about which books were chosen. During the first full school year, eight Student Authors (two of whom were co-authors) were highlighted. However, we also felt we needed to use discretion as to who was awarded the honor of Student Author. These pragmatic considerations concerned us as club advisors. At the end of the school year Mrs. Title and I were discussing the development of criteria for book submissions so that she would not be the sole person accepting (or rejecting) student work. We wanted to continue encouraging students to write, but we also needed guidelines to make the selection process more transparent and fair. In the end, we thought having a committee review submissions might be helpful. The following school year, we invited previous Student Authors to help evaluate submissions. We felt these students had a good understanding of the process an author undergoes to get a book published and could use their experience to guide other students. Additionally, Student Authors represented a range of grade levels, expertise, and abilities. We thought a small group setting would help to facilitate social and academic growth among students.

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Editing Crew The next October, Mrs. Title, and I sent invitations to the previous year’s Student Authors inviting them to participate in a club for authors. We also asked the homeroom teachers to let the students join us in the library for about a half hour each Friday morning. The classroom teachers were supportive of our efforts and recognized the significance of having this group of students be involved in a “special” club. We spent the first few meetings talking about how the students wanted the club organized and what it should be named. The students decided to call our group Editing Crew in the tradition of the “crew” model supported school wide. The motto at the school is “Crew not Passenger”—meaning that each community member takes responsibility for the success of the whole. At Editing Crew the students determined the direction of the group and laid out the parameters for crewmember participation, goals, and expectations. The school also uses the 6+1 Traits of Writing to frame the writing curriculum. To support classroom instruction the librarian and I proposed using the 6+1 writing rubrics as guidelines for discussing student writing pieces. The group agreed and decided on a few other rules. First, submissions should not be part of a class assignment. A teacher or adult could help a student with his/her writing but it should not be part of a teacher-initiated project. Second, the students were very concerned that we needed to be cognizant of age-appropriate work. They wanted to make sure that whoever evaluated the submission understood that first grade work and sixth grade work would look different. Lastly, it was important that all students be notified of the status of their submission. If the book was not accepted as submitted, students listed strengths and suggestions for improvement and extended an invitation to the author to meet with Editing Crew to work on revisions. As new students were honored as Student Authors, they were also invited to participate in Editing Crew. Not all authors accepted the invitation but the two students who worked to revise their submissions with members of Editing Crew did. At our last meeting of the year, we reflected on our work over the school year and how Editing Crew progressed. The students were eager to continue as a group the following year and made suggestions for the fall. Findings Reading & Writing Are Connected As literacy educators, we recognize the interconnection between reading and writing; however, the two are often taught as separate subjects in

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schools. A social practice approach to literacy learning interprets reading and writing as mutually constitutive practices that inform one another. While I strive to create a learning environment that situates literacy within a practice framework, I was unaware of the impact Editing Crew would have on students recognizing the mutually constitutive nature of the two. Throughout the year, Mrs. Title and I witnessed student growth and saw numerous benefits from student participation in Editing Crew, but the student comments confirmed our observations. I present the following transcript of our conversation because it honors the students by using their words and provides insight to the flow of the discussion. This dialogue comes from a discussion regarding whether the students felt Editing Crew helped in other areas of school.



Shaq: Oh yeah! When I started I was below on the 25-book campaign. I started reading more and when I finish this book I will be at 35. Shema: Has it helped with your writing? Shaq: A lot (emphasis). I use specific details a lot–to support. I go back and get information from the text and write it in my own words.

When asked about participation in Editing Crew, Shaq initially responded by telling the group about his willingness to read as a result of being part of the group. He then explained about his writing practice and his ability to add detail, a common recommendation made by the Editing Crew on student submissions. The use of phrases such as, “specific details” and “write it in my own words” are consistent with the 6+1 Traits of Writing vocabulary. Shaq has incorporated writer’s language into his explanation, but first responded to my question by commenting on how many books he has read. Marissa directly addressed the process of writing and being able to selfevaluate her own work.

Marissa: It helped me with my writing process in class like writing about salmon. I know what to write to make it a 4. I add specific details—I give details so it’s not too vague. Mrs. Title: (to Aleia) Did you write before [Editing Crew]? Aleia: Yeah. I’ve been writing more. I’ve done my 25 Book campaign. I read 50 books. Laron: I didn’t write that much but now I write more. Because of Editing Crew I knew I need to practice. I didn’t like writing before but now I love to read!

Editing Crew    15

These students’ responses make explicit connections between reading and writing. Without prompting, they immediately presented reading as a sense of accomplishment and pride. Marissa described her understanding of what she needed to revise in her draft to “make it a 4.” A “4” is a reference to the 4-point scale in which a 4 is “Strong” on the writing rubric. She also used the phrase, “add specific details” and commented on the writing process. Aleia and Laron both commented on the change in their writing frequency and ending with a comment about reading. Although the students made comments about 25 Book Campaign, we had not previously had any discussions about their reading progress at Editing Crew. Agency Responsibility for the Group At the last meeting of the year, I opened with a general question asking students to reflect on the year and to share what they thought we did well as a club. Overwhelmingly, the students said that helping people publish their books and inspiring new authors was a great accomplishment. As one student said, Editing Crew and Student Author “encourage[d] people to want to write. They get more serious about writing because they might have stopped at the rough draft but now they work on the edits to have a finished book.” They also said that they liked adding two new people but were concerned about how many students would want to join the club in the fall and their reasons for doing so. In an attempt to ensure that new Editing Crew members were serious about writing, a few of the members suggested making students pass a test to get into Editing Crew. A 3rd grader was very concerned that kids would want to join to have the breakfast treats that I would bring to share, but not want to work. We decided that we would continue to only invite students who were Student Authors be part of Editing Crew. Since Editing Crew is (as one student said), a “privilege and a time to work,” new authors could decide to participate or not. Without prompting Lynnie continued:

Lynnie: Some kids just want to get a prize and eat but that’s not what being a Student Author is about. Laron: Yeah it’s about writing. Dante: I wanted it [Student Author] so much I just kept going. I knew it was a lot of work but work is what I do.

This is a powerful exchange between two 3rd graders and a 4th grader because it expresses their commitment to the writing process and the in-

16    A. SHEMA

trinsic reward of being a Student Author. The students later explained that at one of the SWMM when a Student Author award was presented, younger students a few rows behind them remarked that they would write a book so they too could get a prize. Laron turned to the younger kids and responded, “it’s not about getting a prize; it’s about being an author.” Shifting Identity Not only did the student authors begin to identify as “real” authors, they also changed the ways they interacted with peers as a result of their new identity. For example, Lynnie was an accomplished artist and was able to use her expertise to critique and assist students with illustrations. Another student, Nazier, was a 6th grader who had difficulty with peer interaction and lacked self-confidence as a student. His participation in Editing Crew made him the senior student of the group and permitted him to take a leadership role; something that he was not able to do in his classroom. Kanye exhibited social awkwardness and peers were reluctant to partner with him in class due to his poor handwriting. After being awarded Student Author, his peers changed their perception of him because he was recognized for his great ideas and extensive knowledge base. Ownership of Leaning When I asked if Editing Crew has done anything to help with other aspects of their learning, Shaq and Aleia had the following exchange:



Shaq: People get into things that other people do–it inspires them. Other kids see it and want to write a book. Like three little kids came up to me and said they are writing a book and wanted tips to get published. Aleia: (without prompting) I’ve improved how I talk to other people. I don’t say “um” a lot anymore. Shaq: It’s true I’ve noticed that about her. It builds confidence like with grammar, DRA summaries, interpretation. Yeah like that.

Here, the students reflect on their own growth and attribute being part of Editing Crew as improving their interpersonal skills. Shaq saw himself as a role model for younger students and through his exchange with the “little kids” as a writing advisor. His identity as an expert extended into various contexts. Shaq interacted within the members of the group as an expert peer and he also self-identified as a competent reader and writer in his classroom because of his reference to DRAs.4 This identity was further bolstered because of his public recognition as a Student Author, which was

Editing Crew    17

acknowledged before the entire school and subsequently recognized by younger students. Mrs. Title later commented that it was important to highlight students like Aleia because she was very shy before being part of this group but her involvement bolstered her confidence. Since becoming a Student Author, she has also written a novel. “When she is here [Editing Crew] she is known as an author,” remarked Mrs. Title. This was a testament to the importance of having students engage in authentic experiences in which they can develop a sense of agency and embody new identities. Importance of Authentic Activities Home/School Connection At the time of our discussion, I was considering videotaping student interactions during the following year’s Editing Crew meetings. I asked the group if they thought that their parents would approve of me videotaping and interviewing each of them. Shaq immediately responded:

Shaq: Oh yes. My mom is so proud. She was happy and crying when I got the award [Student Author]. She didn’t see the writing side of me because I don’t talk about school much at home. This shows her that I can write and I do like to read.

This was a poignant comment because I had not considered the impact that being a Student Author would have at home or parental response to this recognition. Shaq shared the pride his mother felt and credited the award with bridging a gap between home and school. He felt a sense of accomplishment and used this experience to demonstrate school success to his mother. Mrs. Title and I realized that we needed to make sure parents are invited to the Student Author presentations. We had been inconsistent with notifying parents of presentations that year and Shaq helped reminded us of the importance of having parents join the celebration. Informing Teacher Practice Dante was a 4th grader who loved to draw and had an insatiable need to talk. After he submitted his book in February and it was reviewed by Editing Crew, I worked with Dante to help develop his story. Fortunately, his classroom teacher, Ms. Gains was supportive of his creative interests and permitted him to periodically leave class to work with me. We spent many sessions together and Dante was committed to publishing a book that he

18    A. SHEMA

knew represented his skills. Sometimes he would leave his writing with me to safeguard until our next session, however, this was rare. One day, he asked for a folder and envelope to protect his work so that he could carefully transport his writing between home and school. Dante’s classroom teacher later told me that he would efficiently complete his class work so that he had time to work on his book. He was always careful with his work in progress and attentively worked on the illustrations. Once the book was complete, Dante exuded such excitement and pride that I was reminded why I teach. At the year-end staff meeting, Dante’s teacher made a point of sharing her gratitude for my work with Dante. She thanked me for seeing Dante’s potential and making the time to work with him. Later I thanked Ms. Gains for her kind words. She said that Dante continued to write throughout the rest of year and he would bring in partially written stories that he composed at home. She commented on her perceptions of Dante as a writer and the growth that she witnessed: Ms. Gains: I would say that at the beginning of the year he was an average writer and his handwriting and spelling [were] even low. Now he comes in with stories he writes at home and brings in half written because he has so many ideas in his head he needs to start a new one. He is just so creative and imaginative. I used to think that we did creative writing during expedition work, but to see his ideas and his writing on his own they [the writing] are so different. Ms. Gains’ comments are simultaneously a reflection on her misconception of Dante’s abilities and her understanding of one student’s writing process. Through the course of authoring a book, Dante demonstrated his strengths and was motivated to conscientiously address his areas of need. Ms. Gains’ realized that Dante’s classroom writing and his personal writing were qualitatively different. Although she thought that Dante’s in-class writing was indicative of his skills and creativity, it was not until she witnessed his writings developed through authentic engagement at home that she was able challenge her own conception of what she thought students were producing. Discussion If we want to provide students with authentic activities and have them truly embody various roles, then we must consider the contexts in which they are presented. As educators, we must be aware of the purpose of the tasks we

Editing Crew    19

ask students to complete and present opportunities for students to engage in genuine experiences with a real purpose. Teaching needs to be understood as more than just the objective transfer of information from one person to the next. Literacy education cannot be seen as teaching reading and writing skills, but as Luke (1994) explains, “becoming literate not only involves learning how to make sense with the lexicogrammatical patterns of textual language but it also entails learning a schema for what literacy is, how to use it, when, where and to what possible ends” (p. 8). Editing Crew presented an opportunity for a small group of students to engage in building their literacy schema through peer supported interaction with authentic materials and for a real purpose. When students see themselves as able learners, capable of monitoring and controlling their learning, they are more willing to tackle challenging tasks and take risks that move their learning forward. However, there has to be a symbiotic relationship between the teacher and student, one that is grounded in a philosophy of education that shares responsibility and encourages the equal valuing of ideas and co-construction of knowledge. Rogoff (1994) has written extensively about communities of learners and the roles of various participants in those communities. She writes that “children and adults together are active in structuring shared endeavors, with adults responsible for guiding the overall process and children learning to participate in the management of their own learning and involvement” (p. 213). Students learn how to coordinate with, support, and lead others to become responsible and organize their own learning by being able to build on their shared interests. Rogoff (1994) differentiates between a community of learners from traditional classroom contexts by the level of involvement children have in the development of activities, the nature of discourse, adult’s roles, student responsibilities, and the commitment to the community as a whole. Editing Crew supported the characteristics of a community of learners by creating a space that helped to empower students to be self-reflective, experience personal agency and competence, and provided opportunities for continued growth. AUthor Note The week before the 2010 Curriculum & Pedagogy Conference, Editing Crew had its first meeting of the year. In addition to reviewing a few book submissions, I had a chance to talk with some of the students. I explained that at the conference I could tell other people about what we do as a group but I cannot use their names. The students were confused because as published authors they wanted others to read their books and biographies. This

20    A. SHEMA

too made me think about the lines we as teachers and researchers draw between truly authentic activities in which students develop identities such as author or illustrator and the need to protect those populations considered being “vulnerable subjects.” I share our work at Editing Crew because authors, teachers, a school community, and we are proud of the accomplishments of our students. As part of our discussion of what it meant to be anonymous, I asked each student to choose his/her pseudonym to be used in this text. With the exception of my name, students have selected all names in this text. Notes 1. This paper was developed during my public school teaching and is independent from my proposed doctoral research. 2. The writing traits are Ideas, Organization, Voice, Word Choice, Sentence Fluency, Conventions and Presentation 3. SWMM activities have been adapted from The Meeting Book by Roxann Kriete (2002). 4. DRAs, the Development Reading Assessments, are the district required instruments used to evaluate reading competency, determine student instructional reading levels, and measure fluency and comprehension.

References Barton, D., & Hamilton, M. (1998). Local literacies. London: Routledge. Calkins, L. (1994). The art of teaching writing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Cole, M. (2003). Cultural psychology: A once and future discipline. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univesity Press. Culham, R. (2003). 6+1 Traits of Writing: The complete writing guide. New York, NY: Scholastic Edelsky, C. (1996). With literacy and justice for all: Rethinking the social in language and education (2nd ed.). London: Taylor & Francis. Engestrom, Y. (1987). Learning by expanding. Helsinki: Orienta-Konsultit Oy. Galda, L., & Beach, R. (2001). Response to literature as a cultural activity. Reading Research Quarterly, 36(1), 64–73. Gee, J. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Heath, S. B. (1983). Ways with words: Language, life and work in communitities and classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lankshear, C., & Knobel, M. (2003). New literacies: Everyday practices and classroom learing. Buckingham: Open University Press. Larson, J., & Marsh, J. (2005). Making literacy real: Theories and practices for learing and teaching. London: Sage Publications.

Editing Crew    21 Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (2005). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Nystrand, M. (1997). Opening dialogue: Understanding the dynamics of language and learning in the English classroom. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Rogoff, B. (2003). The cultural nature of human development. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Scribner, S., & Cole, M. (1981). The psychology of literacy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Shannon, P. (2007). Reading and writing against democracy. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Street, B. (1995). Social literacies: Critical approaches to liteacy in development, ethnographic, and education. London: Longman. Wertsch, J. (1993). Voices of the mind: A sociocultural approach to mediated action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Appendix A  Student Authors and Editing Crew Name

Title

Genre

Grade

Mrs. Title

School Librarian

Spring 2008 Lynnie*

The Fast Lizard and the Kind Snake

Fiction

1st

Fall 2008 Takir Aleia* Tasha Laron* Jessie* Shaq* & Nazier* Marissa*

Scary, Scary Sharks A Book of Poems 7 Mythical Creatures The Dinosaur Explorers: The Giant A List of Things You Should Not Do OBAMA! Who Are You?

Nonfiction Poetry Fantasy Fiction Advice Nonfiction Advice

3rd 4th 5th 2nd 3rd 4th & 5th 3rd

Fall 2009 Kanye* & Lynnie* Decide Your Path: Will You Survive Your First Few Days as a Duckling? Black History Bowden The Wolf Who Was Not Afraid of Anything Dante*

Choose Your 2nd/3rd Own Adventure Rap 6th Fiction 4th

Fall 2010 Jason* & Tamaris Maggie & Rain

Poetry Fiction

Lessons Learning: A book of poems Let It Snow

Denotes members of Editing Crew Note: students selected all pseudonyms. *

3rd & 4th 4th

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CHAPTER 2

Get Real Math in the Real World Erin M. Humphries Monmouth University

Purpose The arrival of the 21st century has caused today’s leading societies to put a vast emphasis on skills and expertise students should master by the time they graduate high school. Many educators believe certain skills and expertise relating to core subject areas are needed in order to become active members in today’s global society. Mastery of the core subjects, including mathematics, goes beyond the rote memorization and testing of material. Students are expected to understand the core subjects at much higher levels while realizing its importance in their everyday lives. Skills obtained in mathematics have aided in the development and improvement of medicine, health, environment, and finance due to the incorporation of 21st century skills (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2009). For example, mathematics is essential so students can “Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of society’s impact on the natural world (e.g., population growth, population development, resource consumption rate, etc.)” (Partnership for 21st

Surveying Borders, Bounderies, and Contested Spaces in Curriculum and Pedagogy, pages 23–38 Copyright © 2011 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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Century Skills, 2009). The educators’ understanding and awareness of how to successfully incorporate real-world applications into lessons will allow students to potentially apply and demonstrate their knowledge to places outside of the classroom. The purpose of this study was to investigate how high school students experience real-world applications of math content. The study was based on the notion that there is a distinguishable correlation between student understanding as an active member of today’s society and real-world applications. In addition, another focus of the study made possible by teacher participation was examining the educational benefits of using real-world contexts to introduce or teach mathematical topics. Although not the focus, the study may ultimately guide curriculum administrators to alter the course of study in mathematics to incorporate more real-world applications in the classroom to improve student understanding, knowledge, motivation, and interest in any learning environment. Some questions the study intended to answer are: • How do teachers incorporate real-world applications into their lessons? Is incorporating real-world applications a beneficial teaching method? • How do students connect or experience what they learn in math class to their everyday lives? Are students more interested when they are presented with real-world applications? In April 2006, President George W. Bush created the National Math Panel including leading mathematicians, cognitive psychologists, and educators. The Panel is responsible for providing recommendations to the President and the U.S. Secretary of Education on the most valid and productive use of research to improve and advance the teaching and learning of mathematics (The National Mathematics Advisory Panel, 2008). On March 13, 2008 the Panel devised the National Math Panel’s Final Report containing 45 findings and recommendations for instructional practices, materials, professional development, and assessments. Success in mathematics is important for individual citizens and as a whole society because it provides an increased amount of college and career options. One of the research findings of the National Math Panel that requires additional research is based on using “real-world” problems to teach mathematics. The question addressed is whether or not using real-world contexts to introduce or teach mathematical topics is a beneficial teaching strategy. This issue stems from the realization in schools that students are struggling to maintain interest in the math classroom and are therefore not learning and comprehending the given material. They are failing to make a connection between math and the real world that can ultimately aid in the understanding of the mate-

Get Real    25

rial. Since additional research is necessary, the following research study was developed to further explore the issue. The 21st century has arrived and it has brought with it the need for change while the world struggles with money, power, and the newest technology. Surrounded by and certainly affected by global changes, are the numerous classrooms around the country. A group of educators have come together to create a vision of what skills students are expected to master by the time they graduate high school in the 21st century. The vision has developed into A Framework for 21st Century Learning. The goal of this new framework is to help students become more aware and potentially master skills and abilities required of them in order to thrive as an active member in today’s global society. “Within the context of core knowledge instruction, students must also learn the essential skills for success in today’s world, such as critical thinking, problem solving, communication and collaboration” (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2009). Mathematics is a subject-area in which all of the essential skills should be attained before graduation. Unfortunately, students are unaware of the importance math has in their lives because of the lack of proper engagement of the material as well as its relation to the students’ lives outside of the classroom. Students should be able to make personal economic choices, understand the role of the economy in society, and understand that their mathematical skills could be used in future workplaces or careers. Many believe this is possible through the implementation of the new framework that allows the curriculum to bring real-life applications into the classroom. When a school or district builds on this foundation, combining the entire Framework with the necessary support systems—standards, assessments, curriculum and instruction, professional development and learning environments—students are more engaged in the learning process and graduate better prepared to thrive in today’s global economy. (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2009)

Rinaldo (2005) from Niagara University states, “Our purpose as educators is to understand our students so that we can effectively facilitate their learning” (p. 72). As a teacher of secondary mathematics, I have witnessed students struggle in the classroom and I decided to explore an issue that can be incorporated into the classroom. By carrying out this study I hope to determine if providing students with real-world applications of math concepts will facilitate their learning and as a result help them better understand the material and maintain interest in the classroom. Ultimately, the knowledge gained by students in the classroom will guide them in their everyday lives. The position of the study was developed with a pragmatic worldview in that it is problem-centered with the goal of finding a solution or explanation to the problem. The research completed during the study intends to

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answer the question of “how” something is being experienced. How do teachers incorporate real-world applications into their lessons? How do students make connections or experience what they learn in math class in their everyday lives? These questions have the potential to have a multitude of answers, and in the pragmatic mindset, freedom of choice is allowed. The instruments used to collect the data intend to explore the answers most connected to the focus of the study. In the study, a student survey will be used to measure the relationship between real-world applications of math content and student experience with the content. At the same time, how teachers incorporate real-world applications into their teaching will be explored using a teacher survey with high school math teachers. Thus, following the principles and flexibility of pragmatism, varying methodology will be used within the data collection to approach the problem at different angles to best understand it. Review of Literature In today’s 21st century, the need and importance for mathematics in school is being stressed more than ever. Society recognizes the need for math in a variety of ways starting with its significance in school and extending to various career options. Many people have the ability to be great mathematicians but without proper education, children are shying away from it. Often times schools force-feed math to students and in turn they begin to hate it. School should be a place of learning, not fear, especially of a subject with a vast amount of possibilities. Teachers who understand this fear in students need to present mathematical material in a way that interests students and can be directed toward any type of learner. Bonotto (2003) believes that there needs to be a radical change on the teacher’s part in the classroom. She investigates how incorporating classroom activities in the classroom relating to the real world may help in the development of mathematical knowledge. Teachers need to be aware of the role of mathematics in everyday life and “see mathematics incorporated in the real world as a starting point for mathematical activities in the classroom, thus revising their current classroom practice” (Bonotto, p. 135). Bonotto’s study emphasizes the connection that needs to be made between in-school math and out-of-school math. She believes that using problem-solving mathematics will enable students and teachers to work collaboratively to focus on areas of interest to further the understanding in the classroom. Students’ acknowledgement of the necessary role of mathematics in everyday life is constantly evolving throughout their educational careers. There are several forms of mathematics that can be seen or experienced

Get Real    27

outside of the classroom. Unfortunately many students are oblivious to the uses of math in their lives unless they are appropriately introduced to them or more importantly engaged with them. Jennifer Hunter and Irene Turner developed a study involving individual student accounts of their everyday experiences with math. The study was based on the notion that separating math from personal experience causes the mastery of newly learned math concepts more difficult (Hunter and Turner, 1993, p. 17). Interviewing students who are experiencing school firsthand allowed Hunter and Turner to make a valid conclusion of how these students perceive math. Hunter and Turner (1993) say, “because pupils do not generalize their mathematical knowledge spontaneously to situations outside school, they are unable to apply the powerful mathematical techniques they have learned in school to solve problems in their everyday lives” (p. 17). Incorporating prior knowledge and experience in the classroom will help students find purpose in math. Franz and Pope agree that keeping secondary students interested and excited about math is a challenge to even the best math teachers. They are aware that in most classrooms students are not shown the importance of math in their world and thus have difficulty thinking, understanding, and applying math to real world situations (Franz and Pope, 2005, p. 21). The solution they propose is incorporating children’s literature into the classroom because it introduces complex concepts and helps build connections to the real world. One book mentioned describes a student who realizes his life is based off a series of math problems. This type of teaching is not difficult and does not require intense planning according to Franz and Pope. This innovative method is only one of the ways teachers can engage students in their own mathematical learning journey especially in today’s technological advanced society where the possibilities are endless. Today’s technology today has caused an increased need for mathematically capable persons. Jobs and careers in finance and business are at an all time high. Abate expresses a concern that students are not aware that having knowledge of math and science will increase the number of future career options. He says that teachers have formed groups such as the NCTM that “provide students with connections to ‘real-world’ situations that the students will face as they transition into the workplace of the future” (Abate, 1998, p. 31). He also mentions the need for teachers to be aware of teaching methods that recognize diverse learning styles. In addition, redesigning curriculum to incorporate real-world applications has potential difficulties so a study was completed that involved students and teachers working together to improve secondary math instruction. The results were informal and not generalized. Further research is being conducted on the issue. Teachers have an important role in any classroom. Effective teachers enhance student learning more than any other aspect of schooling stu-

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dents may experience. Thus teachers have many responsibilities, including presenting material to their students in ways that are interesting and engaging. Gainsburg completed a study examining the use of real-world connections made by teachers. She surveyed several secondary mathematics teachers about their purposes for making real-world connections in the classroom and says more targeted research is necessary to see how different types of students learn math (Gainsburg, 2008). All in all, many people are focusing their time and effort into producing better math classrooms. Teachers and various educators are becoming increasingly aware of various instructional techniques that can be implemented in the classroom involving math and the real world. How students experience real-world applications of math content will ultimately guide teachers to develop motivating lessons, with the goal of student understanding and success in the math classroom. Methodology The research involved in the study combines both qualitative and quantitative data gathered through participants’ perception of the relevance and acknowledgement of the issue. A concurrent, embedded, mixed-methods approach was implemented. A survey was the preferred data collection technique for two different populations. Ernie Stringer (2008) states, “The major advantage of surveys is that they provide a comparatively inexpensive means to acquire information from a large number of people within a limited time frame” (p. 77). Participants were either secondary math educators or students who have experienced and completed high school math courses. It was necessary to have more than one perspective on the issue to prevent invalid conclusions based on lack of experience teaching mathematics, as found in another research study about math and technology (Habre, 2007, p. 9). Two separate surveys were designed to correspond to the two different populations. The first survey was comprised of four questions and was given to a population of high school math teachers. The purpose of their survey was to see how they incorporate real-world applications into their teaching and how they perceive how their students respond to them. Ten math teachers, all graduates from a private university on the East coast, were asked to complete the survey. The size of this population was decided based on teacher availability. The second survey included six questions and was given to a population of first-year college students at the same private university who have experienced high school math. Twenty-two first-year undergraduates were used in this study because they have completed all math courses necessary for them to graduate high school and were not far

Get Real    29

removed from their high school experience. The size of this population was determined based on the professor’s permission to use his class for the study. Their survey consisted of questions directed toward their experience of math outside of the classroom. Based on Creswell’s research design (2009), the surveys given to participants in this study were cross-sectional and the sampling was multistage. The data collection for teachers was administered via email and completed surveys were placed in a password protected electronic file. Teachers had one week to complete the survey and two follow-up emails were sent to ensure a high response rate. The data collection for students was administered in person during class time while the researcher was not present. The professor was asked to collect all completed surveys. Stratification in the study is a given. One population is characterized by being math teachers who have graduated college and have a teaching degree, while the other is characterized by having experience in high school math classes. The surveys are not limited based on participants’ gender. The surveys were produced by the researcher, and were approved by the university’s IRB. The researcher created surveys based on personal educational experiences as a teacher and student. Validity and reliability were established during the data analysis process. This allowed the researcher to determine if the surveys could be used in further studies. The teacher survey consisted of all open-ended questions. The student survey consisted of two continuous scaled questions (e.g., agree, strongly agree) and two open-ended questions. Data analysis occurred once all surveys are collected. The teacher surveys were compared to one another to see their different perspectives on the issue. The student surveys were also compared to one another to see the differing ways students experience math outside of school. Both sets of surveys were analyzed anonymously. Pseudonyms are used throughout the findings. The analysis also involved a potential correlation between the two populations and their perspectives on math and the real world. Findings The uses and applications of math in everyday life are endless. Interestingly enough, the results demonstrated a range of situations in which math is used in everyday life. The student surveys were very informative in giving examples of how they experience math. Unfortunately, the teachers surveyed have no correlation to any of the students surveyed so a direct conclusion cannot be made. However, comparing student surveys to one another as well as teacher surveys to one another helps answer the question of how high school students experience real-world applications of math content.

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Most students agreed that they were able to connect math to experiences outside of the classroom. This ability stems may from the teachers’ efforts to use varying teaching methods to incorporate real-life applications in their lessons. Out of the 22 students, 14 agreed that they were able to make a connection to what they learned in math class to their everyday life. Figure 2.1 shows a quantitative graph of the remaining outcomes. Only one student strongly disagreed and only one student strongly agreed, as seen above. Part of survey asked students if they belonged to any student clubs, sports teams, or maintained a job. This question was asked to help students think about how they use math outside of school in different contexts. Two open-ended questions asked students to describe ways in which they experienced math outside of school and how they applied the mathematical knowledge learned in high school to solve problems in their everyday lives. Emily works at a company called All Fenced In. She wrote about how she used math to calculate perimeters and areas during work. Roger, a student who works at a bank said he uses numbers everyday and says mathematical skills are important in life to calculate finances. Roger also mentioned a need for mathematical skills in various careers such as accounting or architecture. Figure 2.2 shows the quantitative results of the second scaled question. Fourteen students agreed that they are more interested and learned better when presented with real-life problems. There were also a greater number of students who strongly agreed with this question. Brianna strongly agreed with the second question and in her response she mentions how she applies the mathematical knowledge she learned in high school to her everyday life. She wrote, “If I want to make a half a batch of cookies I am able to calculate the appropriate amounts. I also use math when I’m driving to see how long it would take to me drive home if I either 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

Strongly Disagree

Disagree

Agree

Strongly Agree

Figure 2.1  During high school, I was able to connect what I learned in math class to my everyday life.

Get Real    31 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

Strongly Disagree

Disagree

Agree

Strongly Agree

Figure 2.2  When my math teacher related a lesson to real-life I was more interested in what I was learning and I understood the material better.

drove at 60, 70, or 80 MPH.” On the other hand, Kayla says she does not necessarily experience calculus outside of school but uses basic math and concepts learned in algebra daily to calculate prices, taxes, and percents. These types of calculations can occur every day. Martin disagreed with both of the scaled questions wrote the following, “I use math all of the time, such as when I’m looking at prices of items. I also use math in situations that aren’t near as obvious.” In this case Martin admits that he uses math everyday, but his experiences in high school did not help him at all. It is important to investigate how students think about math to better understand how to teach effectively. Teachers were asked to complete three open-ended questions regarding their incorporation of real-world examples in their lessons, if or how students understand the material better if given real-world examples, and if their tests contain problems with real-world applications. Most teachers said they usually introduce a new section or lesson by first asking the students how they think each topic can be applied to the real-world followed by the use of tangible examples found in discussion, word problems, or handson activities. Ms. K says, “I apply real-world examples with each section. I use occupations to show how it applies to jobs as well as in entertainment (sports, movies, music) to hold interest.” Teachers agree that using realworld examples eliminates the question, “When will I ever use this?” There were differing perceptions regarding about whether or not students have a better understanding after being presented real-world applications of the material. Mr. U states, In most of my experiences, the students do have a better understanding when introduced to its real world application. The link helps them to make more sense out of the concept. Also, most students will ask when or where the con-

32   E. M. HUMPHRIES cept they are learning will be applied to their lives. Usually after an explanation, the “ah-ha” moment occurs.

On the other hand, Mr. H comments, “No, it usually confuses them even more. However, that is depending on the topic. They seem more interested when it’s related to real life. But doesn’t necessarily help them better understand the material.” It is no question that students are more interested in the material when given an application, but unfortunately this does not always create a solidified understanding. It all relates to the difficulty of the material and the type of learner. It is more practical for teachers to use real-world examples in formative assessments. This helps teachers avoid monotony with drill problems often seen in math classes. Most teachers say they only include one or two real-world applications on tests similar to problems already given during the lessons leading up to the tests. Mrs. K states, “If discussed during class, it is fair to give a question pertaining to the real world on an assessment. Most concepts only allow themselves a real world application.” It is obvious that teachers agree that using real-world examples in the classroom benefits the students because they are aware of various ways that math can be used in their lives. But depending on the material it is difficult to incorporate the applications into every aspect of the class. Skills learned in calculus or geometry are not necessarily used in students’ everyday lives but most say they experience math outside of school using basic skills to help calculate money in financing, budgeting, shopping, or during various jobs including banking and plumbing. Implications for Future Study At this moment someone is at the supermarket calculating numbers in their head while a student sits in the dugout analyzing his stats and figuring out how many more homeruns he has to knock out of the park to beat the school record. There are many instances where people use math and are completely oblivious to it. This study is not only interesting to math teachers, but to our entire society. Of course all academic subjects are of equal importance because our society thrives on maintaining a community of well-rounded citizens and fortunately math is a subject that has endless opportunities and possibilities. More recently, the emphasis on mathematical abilities is at an all time high because of advancement in technology regarding computer programs and electronics. How far will technology go? Where do the people gain their mathematical abilities that are part of the 21st century technological advancement? It may be a stretch to say that society’s abilities stem from their high school experience, but it is feasible

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to say that their interest in the subject of mathematics could have evolved during their high school education from their awareness of how and when math is used in places other than school. This study suggests that students do experience math outside of school and most were able to make a connection to what they learned in high school to their everyday lives. The surveys completed by students allowed me, the researcher, to analyze the findings and establish a conclusion based on the types of math students are utilizing in their everyday lives. Most students agreed that they experienced math in their everyday lives. Some can argue that most skills used in everyday life are basic and can be learned at the elementary level. But at the elementary level students are not exposed to various aspects of life that involve those basic skills. For example, balancing a checkbook only involves addition and subtraction but learning how to balance the checkbook is not learned until high school, in most cases. The application of math most seen in the surveys dealt with finance, banking, pricing, percents, or driving. Students with certain jobs, such as a plumber and a worker at a golf course, used other types of math involving geometric properties such as measurement, size, perimeter, and area. The expectations I had before giving the student surveys were challenged by the actual results. As a math teacher, the ideal results I hoped to see involved most students agreeing that they connect what they learn in math class to their everyday lives and that they are more interested in what they were learning and understood the material better when given real-world examples. This is something I always strive to make possible while teaching, even though it is difficult at times. My expectation was that students would disagree with the statements but fortunately the opposite transpired. A majority of the students agreed with both statements. Prior to formulating a connection between teachers and students I became aware of different teacher perspectives on the subject. Surveying students allowed me to see if, where and in what ways math is used outside of school. It allowed the students to think about how they make the connection between math and their everyday lives. On the other hand, surveying teachers allowed me to investigate different teaching methods and discover if teachers are in fact using real-life applications in their lessons. This also caused the teachers to look at their own teaching style and question whether using real-world applications is a beneficial teaching strategy. Again, I was excited with the results, because all teacher participants said they do incorporate real-world examples into their lessons. Unfortunately, many did not agree that the students understood the content better because many students struggle with critical thinking skills and thinking outside the box. In today’s society critical thinking skills are essential. The importance of this is expressed in A Framework for 21st Century Learning. Living in a state involved in the beginning implementation of the framework, other teach-

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ing professionals including myself have to be aware of the framework and how to apply it into our classrooms. Teachers have many responsibilities, including guiding their students to become active and successful members of society. This can be done through experience and application. Hunter and Turner (1993) concluded that although students do well in math class, they are unable to generalize their knowledge in solving problems they may face in their everyday lives. The only way students would be able to generalize their knowledge is if they are given examples on how to use math in situations outside of the classroom. This involves the use of critical thinking. Without critical thinking, students are unable to break down problems and use processes to solve them. Thinking outside of the box is necessary in math classrooms. Unless students are able to view math content in different contexts, they will be unable to take their knowledge to new and challenging problems they may face outside of school. It is important for teachers to be aware of the extracurricular activities and jobs their students may have because this allows them to be creative and directly relate material to the students’ interests. Students were asked if they were members of any clubs, sports, or if they had a job. It was interesting to see how students involved in activities outside of school were more inclined to give examples for how they experienced math outside of school. A member of the pep band said math can be experienced in music and dance in computing how many beats a note is and how long to play it. This is a notable exemplar of a student experiencing math because it goes beyond using math in areas such as banking. In high school, students are becoming more aware of their future adult responsibilities and begin to ponder different career choices. Since many responsibilities of young adults involve money, math teachers have an important role in presenting students with real-world applications. Aside from money, students are thinking about future careers. Abate (1998) is concerned that if students do not possess the proper science and math skills, their future career options will be minimized. This is another goal of the new framework. It is necessary for students to understand the importance of different mathematical material, not only to solve everyday problems, but also to potentially guide them to future careers. This study suggests that teachers begin to revamp their lessons and ultimately incorporate as many real-life applications as possible. This does not necessarily mean testing the students only with real-world problems. A teaching strategy that can be used is making sure students understand the possible connection the material has to their lives. Studies are being done to produce creative and innovative ways to engage students. Incorporating real-life examples into lessons is a challenge for all teachers. Franz and Pope (2005) produced a study using children’s literature to show students the importance of math in their lives. Many teachers would not think to

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use children’s books to interest their students, but the study showed positive results. In addition to the studies mentioned previously, this study is unique in that it focuses on how students demonstrate their understanding of mathematics by being able to experience it in their everyday lives. Although a direct conclusion cannot be produced between the student and teacher surveys, there is definitely a correlation between how teachers present math content and how students perceive it. Most of the students agreed that they were more engaged in the learning process and were more likely able to understand the material at a deeper level if their teachers related a lesson to real-life. Conversely, the study acknowledged that most teachers incorporate real-life examples into their lessons in some way. Therefore I can conclude that if teachers continue to apply the mathematical content they are teaching in ways students can relate to or understand how it can be used, students will maintain a higher interest in the classroom and ultimately be able to experience math outside of the classroom. However, although this study specifically informs high school teachers, it is valuable for math teachers of all levels. All in all, there are available methods for teachers to implement in their classrooms that will ultimately lead to greater student success. With this said, further research is needed to gather information about varying techniques, how they can be used in the classroom, and their effectiveness on the mastery of the material. Many school curricula include an outline of specific standards teachers need to teach and skills students should achieve by a certain time. But most do not include methods or strategies teachers can use to obtain the skills needed to master the subject. Further studies involving A Framework for 21st Century Skills have the potential to prove the effectiveness of different teaching strategies that involve real-life applications, which may ultimately guide curriculum administrators to alter curriculums based on the needs of the 21st century classrooms. Students aware of their place in today’s global society, whether they take the role of financial advisor, chemical engineer, or environmentalist, will ultimately create a thriving society in which young adults understand their potential in various subject areas. This will occur through the incorporation of real-life applications in today’s classrooms. References Abate, R. J. (1998). The math, science, & manufacturing collaborative. Retrieved from ERIC database. (ED421078) Bonotto, C. (2003). Investigating the mathematics incorporated in the real world as a starting point for mathematics classroom activities. International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, 2, 129–136.

36   E. M. HUMPHRIES Creswell, J. W. (2009). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (3rd ed.). Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc. Franz, D. P., & Pope, M. (2005). Using children’s stories in secondary mathematics. American Secondary Education, 33(2), 20–28. Gainsburg, J. (2008). Real-world connections in secondary mathematics teaching. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 11(3), 199–219. Habre, S., & Grundmeier, T. A. (2007). Prospective mathematics teachers’ views on the role of technology in mathematics education. IUMPST: The Journal, 3 (Technology). Retrieved from http://www.k-12prep.math.ttu.edu/‌journal/‌tec hnology/‌habre01/‌article.pdf Hunter, J., & Turner, I. (1993). Mathematics and the real world. British Educational Research Journal, 19(1), 17. Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (2009). Framework for 21st century skills [Data file]. Retrieved from http://www.p21.org/‌documents/‌P21_Framework.pdf Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (2009). P21 Framework Definitions [Data file]. Retrieved from http://www.p21.org/‌documents/‌P21_Framework_Definitions. pdf Rinaldo, V. (2005). Today’s practitioner is both qualitative and quantitative researcher. The High School Journal, 89(1), 72. Stringer, E. (2008). Action research in education (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson: Merrill Prentice Hall. (Original work published 2004) The National Mathematics Advisory Panel. (2008). Foundations for Success: The final report of the national mathematics advisory panel. Retrieved from U.S. Department of Education website: http://www.ed.gov/‌about/‌bdscomm/‌list/‌mathp anel/‌report/‌final-report.pdf

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Appendix A: High School Math Survey (Teachers) Thank you for your participation in the completion of this survey. Please answer honestly and to your best ability. Rest assured the information you share is confidential. PART A: Circle the appropriate answer 1. Are you male or female? Male/Female PART B: Please answer the following: 2. How do you incorporate real-world examples into your lessons? ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ 3. Do the students understand the mathematical content you present to them better after you give real-world examples? ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ 4. Do your tests contain problems with real-world applications? ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________

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Appendix B: High School Math Survey (Students) Thank you for your participation in the completion of this survey. Please answer honestly and to your best ability. Rest assured the information you share is confidential. PART A: Circle the appropriate answer 1. Are you male or female? Male / Female 2. Do you belong to any student clubs, sport teams or do you have a job? Yes/No If so, please list them. ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ PART B: Please tell me how much you agree or disagree with the following statements. 3. During high school, I was able to connect what I learned in math class to my everyday life. Strongly Disagree

Disagree

Agree

Strongly Agree

4. When my math teacher related a lesson to real-life I was more interested in what I was learning and I understood the material better. Strongly Disagree

Disagree

Agree

Strongly Agree

PART C: Answer the following. 5. How do you experience math outside of school? ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ 6. Are you able to apply the mathematical knowledge you learned in high school to solve problems in your everyday life? Please provide some examples. ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER 3

Looking for June Cleaver Reclaiming Equity in the High School English Language Arts Classroom David L. Humpal Texas A&M University

On an early, crisp November morning, I stepped out onto my front porch. In the shadows at mid-street lay a torn, dirty red, white, and blue cloth . . . a tattered American flag. It didn’t take long to figure out that the first African American man was elected President of the United States, and some of my neighbors were not happy. After Barack Obama won the Democratic Party nomination, I had heard some grumblings from Hillary Clinton supporters that they were not going to support him because he was African American. I picked up the flag, and with quiet disgust walked back into the house. Had Archie Bunker, the fictional white bigot from the 1970’s sitcom All in the Family (Family), followed me to this small North Central Texas town my family and I moved to nearly four years ago? I have been accused of melancholy, relying on my past for answers to things affecting people most dear to me—my family and my students. Not even I could explain the constant state of sadness deep inside of me Surveying Borders, Bounderies, and Contested Spaces in Curriculum and Pedagogy, pages 39–56 Copyright © 2011 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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throughout my life, constantly relying on my past for answers, and coming up empty-handed to questions in both my personal life and career as a high school English teacher. The torn flag may have stood as a reminder of where I stand on equitable treatment of all Americans, but more so it turned a simple graduate course research project of the impact of standardized testing on high school English Language Arts into a case study of equity issues in the classroom. During my early study, I sought first-hand stories from my colleagues; reporting only thematic results of their narratives, omitting any feelings I shared with them, worrying my subjective interjections would not be “valid” research. But these dichotomous feelings brought about a clash of my past and present. The ten-year anniversary of my stepfather’s death, a recent Texas State Board of Education adoption of a new history curriculum, and further campus observations of racial, gender and socioeconomic prejudices boiled inside of me. As a researcher, I soon discovered that autoethnography allows for a personal narrative of immersion into a high school and community’s cultural values, and for the possible explanations that could help fill the gaps behind tensions created by intersections of racial inequality in my school district, my community, and my life. As a sufferer of major depression, I knew all too well the therapeutic nature of writing. It has always been my safety net. Furthermore, it is hoped that my quest gives credence to Gay’s (2010) argument that teaching is most effective when ecological factors, such as prior experiences, community settings, cultural backgrounds, and ethnic identity of teachers and students, are included in its implementation” (p. 22). It is the “gap-filling” that has been both a personal challenge and research challenge because of methodology, historical interpretation, and adaptation to new sets of cultural codes. My premise for further study was connected directly to the internal conflicts between who I was, who I wanted to be, who I am and between two colleagues who participated in my initial studies. If standardized testing was taking time away from values we need to teach effectively, such as equity, what were English teachers doing to make up ground? As a high school English teacher, I have written about problems facing teachers and students in a time of high stakes testing. Eventually, through the lens of an outsider to a new community I began to discuss community attitudes towards race, income, and gender and how English teachers use this knowledge to form culturally relevant lessons. It has been this research that has led me to my current quest as an advocate of social justice in a White homogeneous classroom. But I am White, and my students are White. One major question has dauntingly nagged me into a Walt Whitman “barbaric YAWP.” What credibility does a White teacher have as an advocate in such a setting? And why

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would anyone care? Unlike Schulz’s (2008) yearlong experience with Chicago Cabrini Green fifth-graders seeking community action on a dilapidated old school building (p. xi), I had no goal. Nor, was this a large urban area. This was rural Texas, and in a cruel Melvillian (1856/2009) way, I seemed trapped in the absurdity of my hue. To help justify an adequate response to this question, I have begun to piece together answers to my personal context of equity issues by addressing events in my life that at times are complex and dichotomous, yet real like Wise’s reflection of Whiteness (2004). Specifically, my research should be construed in part as a quest of “becoming” (Jupp & Slattery, 2010a, p. 454), and therefore will: (1) narrate researcher positionality in a White hegemonic North Central Texas high school; and (2) expose complications of equity discussions while blending fictional and nonfictional discursive contexts including media transportation narratives, journals, life histories and prior research; and (3) initiate discussion for increased use of alternative methodologies to garner teacher ethos in White homogeneous classrooms while drawing from the researcher’s contextualized findings. Methodology Banks (2004) argues that most studies describing students’ racial attitudes and intervention conducted before 1980 were incomplete or inconclusive, and since then there has been little support for research in race relations. Current studies should be conducted that modify these earlier studies (p. 22). It is in his call I attempt to add to future discussions alternative methods seeking understanding of attitudes impacting race, gender, income, and illness based on my experiences. It is not an attempt to exalt my own working-class Whiteness, maleness, or mental illness. For there have existed for decades, revolutionary scholars and writers in these fields. While my quest is told mainly through the lens of the first person “I” with a polyvocal subtext deciding when certain characters have agency to “speak,” all efforts were made to clearly distinguish the relationships with my participants’ point-of views. Particularly when limited third person was used, oral and written narratives and acquired recorded family history were used to craft experiences pertinent to the development of each character and are clearly distinguished from research narratives. While referenced results from my earlier studies were obtained through thematic analysis, I draw on Jupp & Slattery’s (2010b) use of discursive contexts in critical White pedagogy, including application of the “categorical content perspective” resulting in contact narratives, or narratives “that differ from their [participants] own social, cultural background regarding race, class, culture, and language” (p. 205). Beyond reflection on previ-

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ous studies, journals, and family history and topical life documents, I also incorporate transportation narratives by using music and selected video clips of June Cleaver in Leave it to Beaver (LTB) and Archie Bunker (Family). Through a realization that multiple styles within the mode of factual reporting exist (Atkinson, 1994), enjoyment can result in travelling to another time using sitcoms and music. But it is acquired knowledge that provides me with a mode of future travel through my proleptic moments by constructing a new “self” from my past. While some may argue that an individual’s identification with a fictional character while searching for current knowledge can create distorted facts, transportation through fictional characters can become a cherished part of one’s experience by “providing greater insights into an historical event or a philosophical problem . . . to understand one’s own life . . . character traits . . . [and] need for connectedness” (Green, Brock, & Kaufman, 2004, pp. 318–319). Furthermore, while we can view history critically, Furay and Salevouris (2000) argue we can empathize yet distance our values from those in a different time (p. 65). Also we can see Cueller’s (1975) “vraisemblence” by connecting a character with ourselves and not some “cultural code” (pp. 142–143). Finally, the over arcing quest was formed after the narrative research and writing process exposed an arrangement of scenes that best “establish[ed] continuity, contingency, and simple causality” (Coulter & Smith, 2010, p. 586). Much like Ellis (2009), I “reexamine, and revision” personal narratives and autoethnographic research “which are integral parts of each other.” This is accomplished by wrapping a “larger story of stories” of previously unpublished personal narratives around “segments” followed by gap-filling personal interpretations and scholarly and student voices and critiques in a polyvocal account (p. 12). While my story is typical of a Frank (1995) “quest” narrative (p. 120), my current revelation is a call to action for what I term the illness of social inequities. It seeks to serve as a thread of personal and professional sufferings and inequities from my earlier days for my current lens of justice. Puff Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea and frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honah Lee. Little Jackie Paper loved that rascal Puff, and brought him strings and sealing wax and other fancy stuff. (Lipton & Yarrow, 1963 [1959])

When Mary Travers of the folk group Peter, Paul, and Mary died in September 2009, I played Puff the Magic Dragon to my students. I could not hide my tears—the tears of lost loved ones—but the tears of lost childhood

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innocence. I wanted to see “Puff.” September is the month mom passed away. September is the month when He (stepfather, also referred to as Him and Gary) passed away on my birthday. The month also marked the beginning of a downward spiral into major depression and an attempted suicide in 1998. I took this moment in 2010, and revisited previous personal essays and journal entries highlighting other critical moments in my life. One such narrative, Another September, is shared with my students every September: One early January morning while sitting at the large walnut dining room table and drinking our usual cup of coffee, mom turned to me and said, “David, it’s time.” I wasn’t sure what she meant, but I took a hint that it was time to move on and let go of my troubles . . . She was the type of mom who made it to your flag football game even though she had to pull herself from work and watch you sit on the bench most of the game. ‘David, it’s time . . . David, it’s time,’ slapped me on the face . . . This woman, who raised seven kids, organized family get-togethers for our relatives . . . A mom who could disguise liver and onions so well you thought you had a new meal each Thursday night. (D. Humpal, personal communication, 2007)

Before Traver’s death, Green Day’s music video Wake Me Up When September Ends (2004) was the primary mode of my melancholy journey: “Here comes the rain again, falling from the stars, drenched in my pain again, becoming who we are. As my memory rests, But never forgets what I lost, Wake me up when September ends,” (Pritchard, et al., Track12). Tears would flow as predictable as the sunrise. Then, two weeks after my 50th birthday, Barbara Billingsley, the actress who played June Cleaver on the late 1950’s sitcom LTB, added further complications to answers of childhood and equity. Was this actress’s fictional portrayal as June the muse I was seeking? The video ending. I am now in Mayfield, and June is my mom. I watched LTB practically every day after school. As a little boy, Beaver was always getting into some type of trouble while trying to understand his role within his family, mother June, father Ward, and brother Wally. Love and protection were primary tasks of June Cleaver, Theodore “Beaver” Cleaver’s perceptive and intuitive mother. She took part in women’s groups and attended PTA meetings, and collected for charities. The show’s producers, Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher, reflected child rearing attitudes and White middle class moral messages from Dr. Benjamin Spock’s The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (1946). Through trust and obedience accomplished through always telling the truth and listening to their parents, children would gain the self-esteem and understanding necessary to contribute to society within a framework of social responsibility and respect for family, as June depicts in an episode talking about Wally’s new girlfriend:

44    D. L. HUMPAL Who is she, and what has she done to our baby? [He should marry] some sensible girl from a nice family. One with both feet on the ground that can cook, and keep a nice house and see that he’s happy. (leaveittobeaver.org, 2010)

I could relate to Beaver and the close relationship he shared with his mother. The time Mom and I spent together was a treasure . . . the trips with her in our blue station wagon were emeralds, her attendance at my t-ball and flag football games, and her attendance at the downtown parade in which she watched me march, were pearls. Trust in the little boy It wasn’t always easy for Mom, working as a carhop at a drive-in in this small, blue collar Iowa town. She divorced my father Kenny when his drunken behavior cost him too many paychecks, left us dirt poor and eventually a dad incognito. Soon after, mother remarried. But the task of raising seven children was still quite difficult. At the age of six, I began to notice just how tough it was for my mom and Him to make ends meet. I would not say anything to them about the sole dangling from my black tennis shoes and causing an unavoidable “flip-flop, flip-flop” as I walked, or any other piece of clothing needing mending. With such a large family, and with the Irish-American Him working the police graveyard shift, mom was still frugal, practical. So, if mom could patch it, she would patch it. While aware of our financial difficulties, though, I was like many young, carefree children exploring on my Schwinn Stingray bicycle a mile and a half to the downtown library, or into uncharted territories. Playing house wasn’t out of the question. Yes, I confess, a boy playing house with a girlfriend. I was hard at work with my yellow Tonka truck and bulldozer in the homemade sandpit, the inside of a tractor tire. Michelle was busy at home setting up plates for dinner in our makeshift home in the basement of my parent’s house. I did not realize it at that time, but I was a becoming a reflection of my town’s people. Sampson and Goliath Upon diagnosis of major depression in 1998, my psychologist and counselors queried about my past and found my “mental illness” to be triggered by the death of “Him,” the stepfather who I referred to as racist Archie Bunker. Cortes’ (2004) discussion on the influence of media on children is of great interest to me because I grew up under the Archie’s roof. While the show’s

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purpose was to “expose racial and ethnic prejudice” through Bunker, I was one who laughed at the “imbecilic” bigot. “He” was one who “identified” with the “cuddly . . . loveable racist” (p. 220). The “selective perception hypothesis” that was confirmed in American and Canadian studies, was also confirmed in my household (Humpal, 2009). To the family patriarch and bigoted loading dock worker Bunker, played by Caroll O’Connor, the societal gains by the “Spades,” “Spics,” or “Hebes” of America (as he referred to Blacks, Hispanics, and Jews, respectively), “came at his expense and that of other lower middle class Whites.” A national debate created by O’Connor’s character questioned the use of comedy as a vehicle to “combat prejudice and social inequality.” As such, producer Norman Lear sought in Bunker notable sympathetic qualities, allowing many viewers to see Archie in a favorable light despite his obvious foibles” (The Museum, 2010). When “He” met one of my sister’s Iranian boyfriend’s in 1976, his association with Bunker melted through his white mask. Looking back, now 35 years married, my brother-in-law and sister recall Archie’s reaction when they first met: I could tell it was the first time he came in contact with someone from a different country . . . My impression was that he was prejudice and was used to pushing people around . . .  He would just repeat the U.S. government line as he had just heard on the news as his own opinion. Once I told him about how the U.S. Government supports dictators in third world countries; he did not believe me. I told him that U.S. government puts oppressive regimes like Shah of Iran in power that torture political prisoners and take countries natural resources. He told me “you are full of shit.” He was not very happy when he found out that Kathy and I had decided to get married. (K. Shatek, 2011) Prior to his passing he had written a letter making fun of Mohammad’s faith . . . I felt Gary always wanted all the girls to marry an All-American, blue-eyed farm boy from Iowa and the fact that I fell in love with Mohammad who practiced a different faith, spoke a completely different language really bothered him, not mom that much. (K. Shatek, personal communication, March 9, 2011)

After His death I began repressing my hate to the point where I was writing to Him that fateful day I tried to take my own life, Why did you die? Why wouldn’t you let me see my father Kenny? Why did you treat me like crap as a kid using your overpowering voice and hard whips on my ass [sic] until the tears stopped flowing? Why didn’t you come to my college graduation? When I called from 1200 miles away to tell you I was getting married you said, “I was worried you ran off with a Black [sic] girl.” Why didn’t you take the time to know me?

Page upon page I wrote, page upon page . . . I tore.

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Equity The socioeconomic divide was quite evident in this Northwest Iowa town, White upper class parents sent their children to North Junior High, middle and lower class White and Black parents sent their children to South Junior High. You could feel tension permeating the basketball court, football field, or track whenever the two schools met. I remember hearing these words at our last big meet of the season my 9th grade year: “That one guy from South tried to cut me off too soon. I think I know him.” That was Kevin Zubra; he didn’t remember we used to play together in elementary school when I briefly lived on the north side. Yet, prejudices existed under our Catholic upbringing, which confused me having African American and Hispanic friends. While my five sisters, one brother, and I learned to always tell the truth, work hard, have fun, and to respect others, He contradicted my understanding of Christian doctrine with His prejudicial remarks against African Americans and my sister’s Iranian boyfriend. It was not a matter of fighting this prejudice throughout my life, for I knew, it was not right. It was not me. Archie “tolerated” my Uncle Tom, a gay ex-sailor who reached out to all his family members despite some objections to his life style. Uncle Tom was a humanitarian. As a successful restaurant and bar owner in Colorado Springs, he gave back to the community constantly, and particularly during the holidays such as Thanksgiving when I watched him coordinate preparations for an annual dinner for the homeless. I anxiously sought a closer relationship with Him since we were not allowed to see our Kenny. But as I entered my teens high school became an escape from this pain, giving me opportunities to meet and blend with new people, even the ones from the north side. Band and the school newspaper became my new families. Although shy, as a reporter, I found writing for the high school newspaper The Little Dodger as an outlet for venting injustices: If there are other ways of getting equality for women in the United States, will they match up to what women have fought for in the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)? For the moment, the most important fight that women have won is the right to vote. Will this battle be won? (Humpal, 1978, p. 2) The point of the matter is that our feelings about a widely accepted and traditional ceremony limit our respect for other people’s rights because of the belief that our side of the story stands up better than ours. Through our fight for a democratic society we have set the very laws we are trying to overturn. (Humpal, 1979, p. 2)

Although, I will give Him some credit. Besides his warning of punishment if I dare “hit a girl,” which later helped reinforce my appreciation

Looking for June Cleaver    47

and great respect for women, He was proud of mom’s accomplishments as an avid motorcyclist and wrote an article that appeared in Cycle Magazine (1968). “She cheerfully headed for the judges stand where she collected the 24-inch Powder Puff first place trophy. She jokingly complained to the judges that they should have awarded her the first place trophy to her also” (p. 40). But that is all I would give him credit for after holding his controlling wand which quieted my mom, and the alleged rape of all my sisters at some point in their lives, the last one when she was 30: I could tell everyone including his wife was afraid of him . . . He always tried to be intimidating. Some of those feelings stemmed from the fact that I knew he molested all the girls in his family . . . to a different extent. It depended on how far he could go on each girl. It started when the oldest stepdaughter was 12–13 yrs old and the last episode was when the youngest stepdaughter was in her 30’s. (Shatek, M., 2011)

On the plane to his funeral I struggled to write his eulogy, which being the writer in the family, I was assigned. I thought back to those letters strewn over my kitchen floor. I thought all I could muster while leaving the man some dignity was to say he was teaching tough love, and for me, to “be a man.” I was man. I did not cry. Overcoming Adversity After His death I grasped on to my Catholic beliefs. I became disillusioned after a priest told me following my second divorce, which happened when my former wife forced me in my condition to tell my then eight year-old daughter at the mental hospital, “Mommy and daddy are getting a divorce.” All Father White said was, “Things like this happen and you can’t do anything about it.” Further disillusionment came when my embarrassed wife told me I had to move out of the house to Colorado Springs to live with mom. I was told not to return to Texas unless I had a job, a car, and a home. I eventually had all three two years later, after recovering from major depression. With the treatment I received from her, the church, and later friends, due to what I feel was based on public misconceptions of mental illness, I now advocate on their and my behalf. While surviving as a college student, television reporter, high school English teacher, father and stepfather, I also overcame deep financial, mental or emotional losses; including, major depression, two divorces, organized religion, and bankruptcy. Becoming agnostic released inner conflicts between Catholicism and recognition of my friends and neighbors who found spiritual value in such organized religions. So, nearing a doctoral degree

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while teaching full time, and running a household while my wife works weeks on end 200 miles away, says something about the lens for which I view the world. The Move and the School Now 50, and having taught for over 23 years in six different Texas school districts, I reflect back on the hesitancy with which I moved to a new community four years ago; a peaceful, rural, blue collar town of 7,000 and smaller version of my Iowa hometown . . . same kind of stores, same kind of people, and same kind of racism, homophobia, and elitism. It frightened me, but yet piqued enough motivation for further study. Curious, I had to discover how other departmental colleagues perceived the cultural norms shaping student and parent opinion of their high school English program. This led even deeper into local values, including equity. In a sense, I could see myself as a student, a teacher, a colleague, a father, a husband, a doctoral student, and a member of the community while simultaneously seeing my past self as Beaver, mom as June, and Him as Archie Bunker. An eerie omniscience signaled Archie and June living in this town. What was revealed through thematic analysis of teacher interviews in my study of perceptions into local value expectations of high school teachers were patterns showing a strong sense of community, while teaching responsibility, empathy, persistence, and the “work ethic” to students (Humpal, 2009). This reminded me of my teachers in 1960’s Iowa and Beavers’ teacher Miss Landers in Mayfield: All of us in this room are rather like one big family and I think our family could be a lot happier if we were considerate and friendly toward one another . . . I do think you should have mutual respect and learn to get along together. You know if you do that, you’ll be taking a big step toward becoming the kind of men and women we want you to be. (leaveittobeaver.org)

But inequities began emerging from my findings, that of elitism: Margaret: The first group (2008) grads were the first group in 36 years that I ever experienced that had an overwhelming sense of entitlement. None-theless was a good class, but they were very insular, and did not hang out with kids beneath them. (Humpal, 2009 [narrative responses of teacher])

Where was the empathy and fairness I was hearing about? If teachers are effective, why was I still hearing and witnessing inequities around my high school? I wondered if any one cared, or if it really mattered to them what was happening. Throughout my teaching career, I have witnessed and par-

Looking for June Cleaver    49

ticipated in what Root (2004) describes as the educator’s “surrogate parent” role because of the propensity of “racial socialization” to take place outside the home. In various school districts, not only have I seen the lack of awareness of “suppression, denial, and coercion of racial identities” by educators, I have also seen a promulgation of such views by students (p. 122): To Kill a Mockingbird . . .  is jam-packed with racism, moral-values, and life-long lessons.  . . . . It all goes back to how you were raised. If you were raised to hate blacks [sic] then you would grow up to hate blacks [sic]. So, whose fault is it? The parents for raising you to believe that Blacks are bad, or the child’s for not being different and saying that it is bad and should be stopped? (Humpal, 2009, [narrative responses of students]) I was walking to class and what wonderful word did I hear as I walked through the hall by some ignorant kind of rednecks? ‘Faggott!’[sic] . . . .The sad thing is that those kinds of comments are a regular thing at Central High. What surprised me was when one guy, who I consider a friend, popped off and said that the guy worked at the Dollar Store was a ‘straight-up fag.’ My brother is the guy who works at the Dollar Store. (Humpal, 2009) I think it’s ridiculous how almost everything today depends on money, including social standing. Everyone is always trying to best each other by buying new and expensive things. Why should what you HAVE [sic] make a difference? Isn’t it what’s INSIDE you that matters? We’re supposed to be a generation of equality, but we’re still separated by silly things like money. (Humpal, 2009)

The Mission Ironically, just as student equity experiences were coming to light, the Texas State Board of Education passed final changes to its history standards, and nationwide historians and advocates cried political foul. Of the 300 amendments to the history curriculum, none drew more attention from opponents than approved standards they said were politically motivated by the 10–5 Republican majority board that claimed it was balancing a liberally biased history curriculum. Within the new curriculum, students would be required to learn: “Atlantic triangular trade” rather than the slave trade, “free trade” rather than capitalism, “expansionism instead of imperialism,” and the vindication of McCarthyism. Students would not be required to learn about Cesar Chavez or Thomas Jefferson. I found myself considering other ways I could present balanced historical literature within the contexts of race, gender, and socioeconomic issues. Liberationist Paulo Freire (1984) argued that someone who is truly ethical:

50    D. L. HUMPAL [is] motivated by social justice, becomes conscious of the conditions in which he or she lives and works and deliberately seeks to change those that are unjust or pernicious to human freedom. The ethical person consciously accepts this responsibility to create a future filled with promises and possibilities. (p. 31)

At the school level this means being able to freely choose values for guidance, or to choose mandates established by the oppressors. Referred to as prescription, “injunctions about what a person should do,” and proscription, “that which he or she should not do,” Freire further argues that schools are replete with this condition in that the dominant group in society imposes “one man’s choice” or values on another (p. 31). Such is the case in a conservative states (Pinar, 2004), such as Texas, where politicians focus on test scores instead of curriculum centering on youth culture, or global issues focusing on ecology, terrorism, and the economy (p. 32). I can see how “counter storytelling” through literature has proven a productive instructional tool for unveiling hidden curriculum gaps through rich metaphors. Not only does this challenge untold stories, but also it seems to personalize educational theory through the building of communities and by putting a “human and familiar face on educational theory” (Sleeter & Bernal, 2004, p. 247). Teachers must ask themselves if it is vulnerability that prevents them from using qualitative methods, or if it is because we do not want to expose to the real world our nakedness underlying our true subjective nature that clothes us all. The socially responsive teacher would see dehumanizing content and would then along with students examine “people and conditions that cause exploitation and devising strategies to end that exploitation” (Freire, 1984, p. 417). The Kingpin I revisited a colleague, and asked her specific questions about equity issues in the ELA classroom such as the teaching of values:



D: You had mentioned in a prior interview that you tell your seniors that they have to “get through me.” What did you mean by that? K: In order to wear the black dress you used to have to be only successful in my class to graduate, you don’t have to get through “me,” you have to get through four years of English, through four years of math, four years of science, and for years of social studies to graduate. Now I am no longer the kingpin.

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D: Even though you may no longer be the kingpin, are there still certain obligations such as the teaching of certain values to the students at Central? M: We address it generally through analyzing questions of morality and inequities without naming names and by the nature of what we teach we choose selections that do teach values. We cannot help but teach moral values when we teach literature otherwise we are just looking at author’s purpose plot diagram . . . that’s it. Today in class we were discussing Alfred Tennyson’s take on King Arthur and Arthurian legend part he wrote about how he would. Part of the reason for his writings was because at the time he was disgusted with the lack of moral values that were happening in England at the time and he thought that these stories show how moral people should be. . . . I always anticipates and am glad when a student asks, “Why do we need to study this?” That leads into we are human beings and we share certain values, and you’re finding out more about what it’s like to be human. D: Are there certain values existing in the community you feel are detrimental to the teaching of certain values? M: I have a young man this year who says, Miss Young, the only reason you’re telling me this is because I’m Black . . . and I just tell him you are not allowed to say that, not even in a joking manner. I don’t want to hear it. He’s trying to be funny.

Margaret’s additional information revealed her and other teachers address some issues of morality and social inequities in general through discussions in literary selections, or individually as corrective behavior as a class when incidents occur. Beyond thematic discussions embedded within literary selections and through general discussions, issues are not addressed. Part of the reason for the lack of extended discussions or changes in curriculum may have to do with a loss of control. She says she feels now that the state requires students to take four years of each of the four core areas, English, social studies, math, and science. The requirements have taken away not only her authoritative control as a means of motivating her seniors for graduation, but also loss of control of the time and content in the classroom. In my observations of Margaret, the loss of control seems to take on a loss of maternal nurturing of students, much like what I saw in June and mom and the nurturing of their children.

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Analysis Besides “His” racial remarks, growing up with five sisters, a gay uncle, Iranian relatives, and sharing educational interests with colleagues from other countries, teaching in multiple school districts with various social constructs, and experiences of unfair treatment has given me an inherent empathy for equality and treatment of man and woman. I am not sure if the absence of such experiences would have changed the lens for which I view inequities, but the revelation of such experiences regardless of the narrative tools used to divulge them surely necessitates future discussions for teacher selfreview before he or she seeks to remedy inequities through their classroom curriculum. Tetreault (2003) argues, “Multicultural scholars maintain that knowledge reflects the social, cultural, and power positions of people within society, and it is valid only when it comes from an acknowledgement of the knower’s specific position in any context, one always defined by gender, class, and other variables” (p. 160). Thus, the “finding” of a relocated and established teacher’s identity in the new community also allows for the proper framework for the study of social inequities. Furthermore, revelation of the researcher’s lens is part of a critical, rigorous, and continuous reflexivity in which influential factors are scrutinized when stepping back from the research (Guillemin & Gillam, 2004, p. 275). Personally applying “transformation” through the use of music has not only contributed to the knowledge for my research, but also in a selfish way, personal growth. For so many years I had pictured society through the eyes of an idealist, first growing up with a mother who was the spitting image of June Cleaver, and a stepfather the reflection of Archie Bunker. As I grew older, I experienced what Gutek (2009) argues were countless attempts to mold behavior in preferred modes of action by parents, teachers, and society, and was rewarded or punished by how I “conformed to or deviated from their conceptions of correctness, goodness, or beauty” (p. 5). Today, my experiences have steered my educational philosophy more towards that of a moral relativist like Dewey (1915/2001) “who abandoned idealism for pragmatism seeing ethical and aesthetic sensibilities and actions coming from human experience and responses rather than relying on tradition and custom . . . and a vision of ultimate reality” (p. 88). Even so, gaining credibility from a racial group that is predominantly responsible for my quest of social equality seems nearly impossible in my high school teaching position, except for the occasional student engagement and feedback from a mind-provoking lesson.

Looking for June Cleaver    53

Finale In a CNN (2010) interview, actor Jerry Mather’s account of his relationship with Billingsley put my transportive experience with my fictional mother June Cleaver in perspective: In the beginning she really wasn’t a mom to me. I had my own mom, my own family. She was such a wonderful lady . . . She had a great sense of humor, was very gracious, and amazing. I learned a lot about how to treat people and how to be, from her. (Interview)

I have treaded lightly in my classroom to produce lessons engaging my students beyond role-playing, literary-historical discussions and research. And while my routine occasionally gets in the way of my “becoming,” I have grasped the fact that I am not an interventionist, but a White teacher with evolving understandings of inequalities in a murky sea of hegemonic whiteness that promotes what Pinar (2004) calls “anti-intellectualism” for the sake of test scores (p. 32). In such waters, I have come to the conclusion that while some students do care, no one else will unless I take my lessons to the next level of student involvement. Other times I wonder if teachers, including myself, are hypocritically worrying about a paycheck so as not to step out on a limb to advocate, if not draw, students into progressive lessons beyond thematic analysis. One of my professors recently expressed his wonderment whether colleges of education were producing advocates or shortterm teachers. Ironically, the closer I get to my retirement from high school teaching, the more apt I am to take that selfish chance. “Let them go ahead and fire me,” I recently said as I began to plan a project requiring students to role play a “non White” academy award winner from the past 20 years by conducting research and then giving an acceptance speech. The very anger I expressed against Gary did not mask my enjoyment of childhood. He may have stolen my right to a father son relationship, but in return along with mom gave me eyes to view inequities in this world. For all degrees of hate I may have had of my stepfather, I do not call him “Him” anymore. While sorting through my old family albums I came upon a copy of a love letter he had written to mom a couple years before he died. I had only glanced at it, but have never read it until now: The cute gal gave way to a very mature lady that [sic] is always attractive, the fun and the humor is still there and the infatuation has turned into a very deep respect. You found the time and made the energy to help anyone else that needed it. (G. Mulroney, personal communication, est. 1987)

Gary’s love and trust for mom may count for some respect from me. I now have a sense of the lens he was viewing the world and the identity he

54    D. L. HUMPAL

was assuming, and even though I am no longer a child living under June Cleaver or Archie Bunker, I am a teacher, dad and stepfather grasping the challenges of students who are in many ways much like me in 1960’s and 1970’s Iowa. The discoveries I made during my journey will not negate Gary’s prejudices when I am reminded of those next September, but it has put to rest at least one critical question. For, while these experiences are nothing short of a hermeneutic message, I already know the answer as to whether or not I will once again witness my childhood innocence when I hear the rest of “Puff,” while acknowledging Pinar (2004) with my lens of an unequal world: One grey night it happened, Jackie Paper came no more. And Puff that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar. His head was bent in sorrow, green scales fell like rain, Puff no longer went to play along the cherry lane. Without his life-long friend, Puff could not be brave, so puff that mighty dragon sadly slipped into his cave. (Lipton & Yarrow, 1963 [1959])

References Atkinson, P. (1994). The ethnographic imagination: Textual constructions of reality. London: Routledge. Banks, J. (2004). Multicultural education: Historical development, dimensions, and practice. In J. Banks & C. Banks (Eds.), Handbook of research on multicultural education (pp. 3–29). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Coulter, C., & Smith, M. (2010, November). The constructions zone: Literary elements in narrative research. Educational Researcher, 38(8). Cortes, C. Knowledge construction and popular culture: The media as multicultural educator. In J. Banks and C. Banks (Eds.), Handbook of research on multicultural education (pp. 211–227). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Cueller, J. (1975). Structuralist poetics: Structuralism, linquistics and the study of literature. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Dewey, J. (2001) The school and society. New York, NY: Dover. (Original work published in 1915). Ellis, C. (2009). Revision: Autoethnographic reflections on life and work. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast. Frank, A. (1995). The wounded storyteller. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago. Freire, P. (1984). Pedagogy of the oppressed, trans. Myra Bergman Ramos. New York, NY: Continuum. Furay, C., & Salevouris, M. (2000). The methods and skills of history: A practical guide, (2nd Edition). Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson. Gay, G. (2010). Culturally responsive teaching. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Green, M., Brock, T., & Kaufman, G. (2004). Understanding media enjoyment: The role of transportation into narrative worlds. Communication Theory, 14(4), 311–327.

Looking for June Cleaver    55 Guillemin, M., & Gillam, L. (2004). Ethics, reflexivity, and “ethically important moments” in research. Qualitative Inquiry, 10(2), 261–280. Gutek, G. (2009). New perspectives on philosophy and education. Columbus, OH: Pearson. Humpal, D. (1978, March). ERA, What happened? [Opinion]. The little dodger, Ft. Dodge Senior High School. (Available from Ft. Dodge Senior High School, 819 North 25th Street, Ft. Dodge, IA 50501), 2. Humpal, D. (1979, January). I.C.L.U. attacks senior sermon. The little dodger, Ft. Dodge Senior High School.(Available from Ft. Dodge Senior High School, 819 North 25th Street, Ft. Dodge, IA 50501), 2. Humpal, D. (2009). [Narrative responses of teachers’ perceptions of local values]. Raw data. Humpal, D. (2009). [Narrative responses of students defining who they are]. Raw data. Interview of Jerry Mathers by Anderson Cooper (2010, October 18). CNN. [Television news program transcript]. Retrieved on April 8, 2011 at http://edition. cnn.com Jupp, J., & Slattery, G. P., Jr. (2010). Committed white male teachers and identifications: Toward creative identifications and a “second wave” of White identity studies. The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto Curriculum Inquiry, 40(3), 454–474. Jupp, J., & Slattery, P. (2010). White male teachers on difference: narratives of contact and tensions. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 23(2), 199–215. Kruks, S. (2009). Ambiguity and certitude in Simone de Beauvoir’s Politics. PMLA, 124(1). Lear, N. (n.d.) All in the Family. U.S. situation comedy. The Museum of Broadcast Communications. Retrieved on April 8, 2011 at http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=allinthefa Leave it to Beaver.org. (2011). Leave it to beaver: The thesis. Retrieved on April 8, 2011 at http://www.leaveittobeaver.org Lipton, L., & Yarrow, P. (1963). Puff the magic dragon [Recording]. (Original Work recorded in 1959). Melville, H. (2009). Moby dick. [Kindle 3G]. Retrieved from Amazon.com, February 10, 2011. (original work published in 1851). Mulroney, G. (1968, June). My wife’s story. Cycle Magazine, 40–41. Pinar, W. (2004) What is curriculum theory? Mahwah, NJ: Laurence Erlbaum. Pritchard, M., Wright, F., & Armstrong, B. (2004). Wake me up when September ends. [CD] American Idiot. Reprise Records, Warner Music Group. Burbank, CA. Root, M. (2004). Multiracial families and children: Implications for educational research. In J. Banks and C. Banks (Eds.), Handbook of research on multicultural education (pp. 110–126). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Schultz, B. (2008). Spectacular things happen along the way. New York, NY: Teacher’s College. Sleeter, C., & Bernal, D. (2004). Critical pedagogy, critical race theory, and antiracist education: Implications for multicultural education. In J. Banks & C.

56    D. L. HUMPAL Banks (Eds.), Handbook of research on multicultural education (pp. 240–260). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Spock, B. (1946). The common sense book of baby and child care. New York, NY: Duell, Sloan and Pearce. Tetreault, M.K. (2003). Classrooms for diversity: Rethinking curriculum and pedagogy. In J. Banks and C. Banks (Eds.), Multicultural education: Issues and perspectives (4th ed. rev.pp. 152–173). New York, NY: Wiley. The Museum of Broadcast Communications. (2010). All in the family. U.S. situation comedy. Retrieved April 8, 2011 from http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection. php?entrycode=allinthefa Wise, T. (2004). White like me: Reflections on race from a privileged son. [Kindle 3G]. Retrieved from Amazon.com on January 25, 2011. (originally published in 2007).

Section B Transcending the Confines of Inside(r)/Outside)r(

Years ago, my ex and I purchased a home together. As a couple, our tastes could not have been more different, so it was no surprise to our friends that we had considered more than 100 houses before we agreed upon one. Of course, our collective income [at the time, a pre-tenure, elementary teacher and a sole-proprietor housecleaner] limited our search considerably, making everything in my school district or near the homes he cleaned well out of our price range. Still, we were thrilled to find our version of a diamond in the rough. The bones of the house itself had character, charm, and there was room for our family to grow; add to this the fact that it was well-cared for and seemed way underpriced and we were ecstatic. What more could we ask for? As we toured the exterior, we realized a non-negotiable answer to our hypothetical question: a fence! Just south of the property line, the neighbor’s backyard seemed to be an automotive graveyard—where rusted-out vehicles ten years past their last inspections went to die. A number of clunkers were partially buried already—no more than mysterious mounds of metal among the overgrown ivy and weeds, where the neighboring teens would lean their [working] dirt bikes. Of far more importance to us than that the junkyard decor made for a bit of an eyesore, we were concerned about safety. A pair of proud papas to a pug puppy at the time, we saw enough sharp edges there to consider getting tetanus shots for our own eyes; between the shattered glass, scattered nails, and corroded shards of steel everywhere, this would be a danger zone were our dog to ever wander into that yard. We also noticed a number Surveying Borders, Bounderies, and Contested Spaces in Curriculum and Pedagogy, pages 57–62 Copyright © 2011 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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of tread marks and wipe out skids on what would become our side of the property line, suggesting the neighbor kids made a habit of riding their motorized two-wheelers through our backyard. Yikes! None of this was a dealbreaker, for we had a solution in mind and we had fallen in love with the house. We began looking into the local ordinances immediately regarding fences and property lines. I have to imagine that the fences and boundaries we construct in life— both the literal ones and those otherwise—are generally born of perceived necessity and, at some level, probably fear as well. My ex and I were genuinely concerned with the safety and welfare of our dog. As such, we certainly felt justified in establishing a substantial barrier that might protect her from harm’s way. Toward that end, the tall wooden slats along the southern border of our property line served their intended purpose. With time, it seemed the neighbor family grew to make use of the fence as well—using their side of it for everything from hanging potted plants to leaning dirt bikes, or playing wall-ball activities and pitching practice as the need arose. The presence of the fence was undeniable and we all seem to have found ways to make it work for us. Still, I cannot help but wonder how the fence may have altered the social dynamics locally on our street. What kind of impression must it have made on those neighbors to see us build a fence only along their side of our property? Perhaps adding insult to injury, surely they noticed we began digging holes for our fence poles immediately—before taking down room after room of busy wallpaper or repainting nearly every interior wall and ceiling throughout the house; even before our moving truck would arrive, full of all our furniture and belongings, we made erecting the fence our top priority from the moment we received the key to our new home. For years, we never really interacted with that family beyond a casual wave or nod when our paths would cross. Unlike the folks who lived just north of our property—with whom we shared cups of sugar, extra produce, recipes, tools, and conversation—we remained outsiders in their world, just as they would be in ours. I suppose things must look radically different from either side of that fence—casting mysterious shadows of apprehension this way and that from day to day. For one backyard to exist as the safe zone of puppydom we meant for it to be, our “inside” mentality for the space was defined by that which it was not— the “outside” region, just beyond its reaches. More often than not, scholars who exercise terms like insider and outsider in the social sciences (Collins, 1986; Merriam, Johnson-Bailey, Lee, Kee, Mtseane, & Muhamad, 2001; Smith, 2004) do so with regard to situating one’s research standpoint, or lens of entry into the investigation, in juxtaposition to the participants. It is relevant, after all, to consider what social and cultural factors stand to color, shape, and inform our ability to interpret and analyze the words, actions, and motives of others. Too often

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in-/outside dichotomies of positional access are imagined to function as a rather simplistic and inevitable binary—an immovable barrier between two worlds, which we might squint or stretch to see beyond, but to cross such a border would be a crime of trespass. What I find particularly fascinating about the following three chapters is that each is framed around its author’s unique personal narrative of transitioning between seemingly distinct worlds, affording the reader precious access and perspective. Moving among, between, and beyond the conventional limitations of understanding associated with insider/outsider positionality, all three of these scholars offer rare, hybridized frames of reference, having personally experienced, studied, and deconstructed the dichotomy from more than one side themselves. Perhaps the most insider-esque access one can grant a reader would be for an author to tell his/her own story— to let us peer in his/her window to the world. The fact that each of these scholars in the following section bravely invites us all in to experience his/ her fluid and/or rocky transitions between insider and an outsider standpoints is significant. Growing up along the Rio Grande, Lopez’s “Traveling Curriculum’s Borders: Curricular Implications for Schools along the Texas-Mexico Border” highlights the literal and linguistic borders he faced routinely traversing between Texas and Mexico with his family as well as his daily practice of moving between Spanish and English without them. Whereas, he noticed countless curricular obstacles during K–12 that seemed to only further distance him from his family, it would not be until college that he explored the world of mariachi and realized an outside curriculum (Schubert & LopezSchubert, 1981; 2010) that might restore his sense of connectedness with both his family, his heritage, and his sense of artistry. Through the eyes of his experience as a student, Lopez sheds light upon the subtle self-deprecating messages he associated with being expected to embrace a formal curriculum that his parents valued—trusting it would afford him access to the American dream of countless new opportunities— knowing all the while it to be a system that did not value his family or culture. It was as if each lesson in school registered block after block in what would amount to a monstrous wall between them and him. Fast forward to more recent times, when he has a number of years under his belt working in schools as an adult, eventually as a school administrator. Exercising his growing sphere of influence with great intention, Lopez advocates for policy and praxis that are ever-mindful of the special value extracurricular opportunities might offer to students as a promising avenue for outside curriculum. Like Lopez before her, Castañeda also grew up just minutes away from the Texas-Mexico Border. She, however, maintains only the warmest memories of her K–12 years in school—focusing more upon the empowering and

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affirming pedagogies [she experienced firsthand] of standout teachers, than the latent curricular messages at the time. So endearing was this time in her life, in fact, she was inspired early on to someday become an ESL/ ELL teacher. Letting nothing stand in her way of realizing this goal, she faced the heartbreaking realization that teaching in today’s world is quite different than she had always imagined it to be—particularly in light of the pressures surrounding standardized testing in the U.S. “Navigating Borderlands of Accountability: An Autoethnographic Exploration” details her circular transition from enthusiastic student to idealist teacher, later from that of a self-critical teacher to a budding scholar—ever a student of praxis. Castañeda explains hers as a shift not just from the position of student to teacher, but also from a championing cheerleader to a more observant and astute critic of educational practice. Stepping outside of herself, she helps the reader navigate the frayed edges and blurred lines intended to distinguish a culture of engagement from a culture of measurement (Padilla, 2009) in schools. Castañeda confides that she began her teaching career armed with the student-centered philosophy she developed throughout her preservice years. However, she regrettably found this firm footing beneath her buckling to unenviable pressures of accountability—giving way to a slippery slope of compromise and regret. Rather than give up on a K–12 world that falls far short of the hopes she had for it as a wide-eyed student, Castañeda rebounds with determination hoping to gradually change the circumstances from the inside—to somehow strike a balance in “the spaces between and among the coexisting, albeit polarized cultures” of measurement and engagement. Hers is certainly a lofty goal, but one Castañeda is not willing to give up upon just yet—especially not in the bicultural region in southern Texas she has come to know and love all her life. She refuses to surrender the refreshing enthusiasm that brought her to teaching in the first place; instead she advocates for “the abstract student [to become] a reality [before] the real student becomes an abstraction” (Padilla, 2009, p. 73). Perhaps no chapter borrows more playfully with the abstract than Russell’s “Echoes Down the Rabbit Hole: Voices Heard and Lost in the Land of Professional Development Schools.” Not unlike Castañeda (albeit nearly 2,000 miles north and east of Brownsville, Texas), Russell shares the frustration and regret of re-entering a school system she loves, yet which seems unready for her ideals or ideas. Having left the classroom to pursue her doctorate, now Dr. Russell enthusiastically returned to the very county and school system she had come to know earlier in her career, this time to work as a Professional Development School (PDS) liaison between her employing university and three of its partnering elementary schools. However, instead of the warm, familiar welcome home she might have anticipated, she finds the return to be as disorienting as Alice’s (in)famous adventures in Wonderland (Carroll, 2005). In fact, she cleverly draws parallels between

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excerpts of Carroll’s timeless classic and her own journal entries of on-thejob experience. Working as both a supervisor and course instructor to preservice seniors interning in the context of an elementary PDS, Russell struggles to find her footing in a partnership between the county schools and university. Seemingly a part of both and yet neither world (entirely), Russell is disappointed to find perhaps she cannot go home again—not as the same person nor to the same home twice. As someone who sought her EdD to help expand her sphere of influence [“EAT ME”] on local educational policy and praxis, doctorate in hand, she is surprised to find her voice and stature minimized [“DRINK ME”] by a school system’s expectation that she fall in line, painting white roses red and refraining from asking questions. Whereas Slick (1998) acknowledges the ever-humbling predicament a university supervisor might face as a “disenfranchised outsider” (p. 821) in K–12 schools, Russell’s perspective here is noteworthy because she is no stranger to her own Wonderland. Still she often finds herself chasing white rabbits across a busy beltway and ‘shape shifting’ (Simmons, Konecki, Crowell, & Gates-Duffield, 1999) her role to satisfy every [tea] party but her own. Ever resourceful, Russell rebounds from her frightening fall down the rabbit hole, re-imagining how she (and others) might rewrite the story from within its pages. I could certainly relate to each of these authors, where having a foot in two (or more) worlds may offer amazing insight, but it can also prove to be a bit of a difficult and unsteady balancing act as well. Certainly the following three chapters are significant in that they each add valuable narrative experience to help those of us in the field(s) of curriculum and pedagogy see complex educational issues and dynamics from more than one side of the fence. —Cole Reilly References Carroll, L. (2005). Alice’s adventures in wonderland and through the looking-glass [140th Anniversary, Two Books in One Edition]. New York: Barnes and Noble Classics. Collins, P. H. (1986). Learning from the outsider within: The sociological significance of Black feminist thought. Social Problems, 33(6), 514–532. Merriam, S. B., Johnson-Bailey, J. ,J., Lee, M., Kee, Y., Mtseane, G., & Muhamad, M. (2001). Power and positionality: Negotiating insider/outsider status within and across cultures. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 20(5), 405–416. Padilla, R. V. (2009). Student success modeling: Elementary school to college. Sterling, VA: Stylus. Schubert, W. H., & Lopez-Schubert, A. (1981). Toward curricula that are of, by, and therefore for students. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 3(1), 239–251.

62    SECTION B Schubert, W. H. (2010). Outside curricula and public pedagogy. In. J.A. Sandlin, B.D. Schultz, & J. Burdick (Eds.), Handbook of public pedagogy: Education and learning beyond schooling (pp. 469–480). New York: Routledge. Simmons, J. M., Konecki, L. R., Crowell, R. A., & Gates-Duffield, P. (1999). Dream keepers, weavers, and shape shifters: Emerging roles of PDS university coordinators in educational reform. In D.M. Byrd & D.J. McIntyre (Eds.), Research on professional development schools: Teacher education Yearbook VII (pp. 29–45). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Slick, S. K. (1998). The university supervisor: A disenfranchised outsider. Teaching and Teacher Education, 14(8), 821–834. Smith, S. (2004, Winter). Insider and outsider status: An African American perspective. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 104, 57–65.

Land Meets Wall

Wall’s Shadow

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CHAPTER 4

Traveling Curriculum’s Borders Curricular Implications for Schools along the Texas-Mexico Border Jaime Lopez IDEA Public Schools

In the past three decades, the Latino/Latina population continues to increase but also continues to lag behind academically (Ballantyne, Sanderman, & Levy, 2008; Gandara & Contreras, 2009; Janzen, 2008; Proctor, Dalton & Grisham, 2008). A large portion of the Latino/Latina population in U.S. schools is labeled as English Language Learners (ELLs). According to Ballantyne, Sanderman, and Levy, (2008) ELL students tend to not perform well on most standardized tests and are dropping out of high school at higher rates than their non-ELL peers. The high school completion rate for ELL students is 69.3% , as compared to 89.9% for their non-ELL counterparts. There are currently five million ELL students enrolled in U.S. schools; over the last decade this population has increased by 57% and the number continues to climb (Ballantyne et al., 2008).

Surveying Borders, Bounderies, and Contested Spaces in Curriculum and Pedagogy, pages 65–75 Copyright © 2011 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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Meanwhile, according to Gandara and Contreras (2009), Latinos/Latinas make up approximately 48% of the public school age population in Texas, and as the population increases college graduation rates remain unchanged. This paints a grim picture for the future of this population. If educators do not remedy this phenomenon, we run the risk of creating/ perpetuating a permanent underclass, while failing to realize the full potential and contributions of Latinos/Latinas to American society. Schools have undergone comprehensive school reform efforts in attempts to remedy the situation. But they have been unsuccessful and results have further increased the suppression of educational opportunities for Latino/Latina students (Mora, 2002). In Texas, reform efforts have overrelied on high stakes testing and accountability to make measured assumptions regarding the fundamentals of existence, such as knowing, being, and valuing (Padilla, 2004). Such efforts have been the focus of how to evaluate school curricula and have driven the curricular decisions school administrators make for their schools. Henderson and Gornik (2007) suggest that the standardized management paradigm has dominated education policy and educators must function within its confines. This approach has led to the isolation of schools, individualized student and teacher performance, low teacher morale, and disengagement of students from schooling. Padilla (2004) suggests that state sponsored testing instruments and practices are a part of a specific social construction that can lead to different consequences for various groups of students in relation to their schooling experiences. Drawing from autobiographical analysis of my experience growing up on a farm along the Texas-Mexico border and having Mexican immigrant parents with limited schooling, this paper explores the ways in which the outside curriculum was a bridge to the general curriculum at the University of Texas Pan American (UTPA). Growing up less than a mile from the international border between Texas and Mexico, the international bridge is a structure that connects two countries, but it also creates a space between both countries in terms of education. Outside Curriculum The notion of the outside curriculum was introduced in the early 1980s and based on the necessary and neglected need to focus on the implicit and explicit nature of educational situations (Schubert & Lopez-Schubert, 1981). Schubert’s (2010) claim makes visible the influence outside curriculum has on shaping who we become or might become. He goes on to imply that the focus on curriculum and pedagogy in schooling presents a narrow view of what shapes human beings.

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According to Schubert (2010) the term outside curriculum is sometimes also referred to as the non-school curriculum or out-of-school curriculum. I would like to add to this list the terms extra curriculum (Monroe, 1929) and collateral learning (Dewey, 1938). Monroe (1929) defines extra curriculum as the activities students participate in outside of the general curriculum. Meanwhile, Dewey (1938) used the term collateral learning to highlight the fact that students learn much aside from what the teachers intend for them to in their classrooms. The use of all these terms implies that this type of learning is apart from the general curriculum and a component that is supplemental to the overall schooling of a child. Berk (1992) regards the extra curriculum as an essential aspect of the schooling experience. I contend that the use of the term outside curriculum more closely represents it as a component of the child’s learning not an unintentional phenomenon that occurs outside the classroom. According to Shulruf, Tumen, and Tolley (2007), there is a lack of evidence in New Zealand supporting the positive effects of the extra curriculum activities on student outcomes. In a previous review of 58 studies, Shulruf, Meager-Lundberg, and Timperley (2006) found that an association exists between participation in extra curriculum activities and student outcomes. Meanwhile, Shulfur et al.’s (2007) study on the causal effects between academic outcomes and student participation in extra curriculum activities could not provide conclusive evidence. I call on educational leaders to explore Schubert’s (2010) notion of the five key venues in which teaching and learning transpire. Similarly, Henderson and Gornik (2007) urge educators to create curriculum goals that assist their students’ acquisition of subject matter understanding. The list of venues is exhaustive but Schubert (2010) focuses on the following five: home and family; culture; community; popular culture; and non-acquisitive schooling. First, the home and family venue calls for educators to get to know students’ home and family lives (González, Moll & Amanti, 2005; Schubert, 2010). The second venue, culture, admonishes educators to come to an understanding of the context(s) of immigrants’ lives and the social situations they encounter when they come to the U.S. (Addams, 2009; Schubert, 2010). The third venue is community. This venue references the need for educators to understand that different communities enrich mainstream U.S. culture (Gandara & Contreras, 2009; Padilla, 2004; Schubert, 2010). The fourth venue is popular culture. This venue acknoweledges the educational impact of mainstream media, such as video games (Gee, 2007), podcasting (Smythe & Neufeld, 2010), music and movies (Giroux, 1999, 2001). The fifth venue, non-acquisitive schooling, refers to schooling that “gives learners the opportunity for freedom and growth” (p. 14). Valenzuela’s (1999) study describes how Mexican immigrant students from large, urban high schools and Mexican American high school students throughout Texas were prone

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to graduate culturally confused and ill-equipped to function in America’s mainstream, American schools ought to be spaces that nurture and empower all students, regardless of the circumstances (Gandara & Contreras, 2009), even if that means perpetuating the mythology that everyone can make it in this country. These venues can be the bridge to the general curricula that are available in public schools along the Texas-Mexico border. My analysis of the impact the outside curriculum had on my own educational experience demonstrates some of the many ways such venues can serve as a bridge toward increased access to the general curriculum. Noddings (1984, 1992) argues that students are at a disadvantage because they are forced to make sense of schooling when schooling is not adjusting to make sense of them. School administrators should explore the venues that can link students to the general curriculum available in our public schools or institutions of higher education. Schools need to find solutions to curtail the education crisis that plagues Latinos/Latinas in the U.S. (Gandara & Contreras, 2009; Lopez, Gonzalez, & Fierro, 2010). Gandara and Contreras (2009) argue that education is the single most effective way to integrate Latinos/Latinas into the U.S. economy and society. Autobiographical Analysis Background My name is Jaime Lopez, the son of Daniel and Dalia Lopez. My father was born in Estacion Ramirez, Tamaulipas, Mexico, in the early 1950s. This small rural town is located approximately five miles south of the TexasMexico border. Both my paternal grandparents were born in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico, which is located along the Texas-Mexico border at the mouth of the Rio Grande River. My father graduated from primaria, which is the 6th grade in Mexico. My mother was also born in the early 1950s in Weslaco, Texas, which is located five miles north of the border; she graduated from junior high school but had to drop out because my grandparents were divorced. Being the oldest, she had to work to help maintain the household. Her father, my maternal grandfather, was born in El Armadillo de los Infante, San Luis Potosi, Mexico, a small rural town located in the interior of Mexico. My maternal grandmother was born in a small farm located along the Rio Grande called “Los Parragitos.” My parents got married when they were both nineteen years old, and my father moved to the U.S. shortly thereafter. He began to work at a farm in Progreso, Texas, and for many years my parents’ patron lent them a house

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because both my parents were his employees. My father was a tractor mechanic and my mother was their housekeeper. Border Growing up along the Texas–Mexico border provides challenges to education that are unique. Lopez, et al. (2010) suggest that the border is a space where nations, cultures, traditions, and identities clash and are born anew. Individuals that reside in border regions live among two [or more] worlds, but do not exclusively belong to either; instead they reside in both worlds at once. Growing up, my week consisted of two parts. Weekdays, I attended school and did the assignments teachers asked me to complete. I considered it separate from the second part of the week—weekends at my grandfather’s ranch in Mexico. At the ranch, my family helped my grandfather harvest beans and corn, feed the livestock, and complete the annual harvest of the sorghum crop. For me, the border did not exist; it was just a space or bridge that would connect me to my grandfather. At home, we primarily spoke Spanish, but I always used English at/for school. [I employ the expression, “used English” because speaking and writing in English was unnatural to me and required added effort and skill on my part.] I remember once arguing with my parents because I wanted to visit the Rio Grande River. We had just learned in history class that the Rio Grande River was what divided the U.S. and Mexico. My parents explained to me that the Río Bravo del Norte was just down the street and did not necessitate a special trip. I was so accustomed to maneuvering between both worlds that I did not realize that the bridge was much closer than I thought. Schooling Experience I attended public school in the same district for my entire K–12 career. In elementary school, I was in the district’s bilingual program and I recall reading in Spanish from kindergarten through third or fourth grade. I was a shy student who completed assignments to the best of my ability and was not involved in many extracurricular activities. My father did not allow me to play football, and I was not interested in joining band or many other activities at the time. The only afterschool activity I participated in was the Future Farmers of America (FFA). I chose this activity because every summer I would work at the farm with my father harvesting cotton, sorghum, cantaloupe, and sugar cane. Working on the farm, I learned how to operate

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heavy machinery, use a blowtorch and arc weld, and how to harvest an assortment of crops. I also became familiar with auto and tractor mechanics. Growing up, painting was a hobby of mine. Even at a young age, I used to collect cardboard and other painting materials. My parents were never able to afford to send me to formal art classes. I remember there was an art studio that offered classes, and we would pass it every time we went to town to buy groceries. My mother made the five-mile trip to buy groceries only once each week. In high school, I grew better at my craft, but there were still no formal art classes I could take, other than the courses offered at my high school. My art teacher there loved me because of the quality of my paintings. Sometimes, she would give me tubes of acrylic paint so I could paint at home. In fact, some teachers bought some of my paintings. In high school, my classmates and teachers thought I was going to attend an art college and become an artist. [A couple of weeks ago, I was in contact with a childhood friend who I had not seen since I was a senior in high school; one of her initial responses was, I thought you were going to be an artist!] Addams (2009) contends that public schools separate children from their parents by creating a void between them. In my educational experience, the general curriculum was heavily influenced by U.S. mainstream culture; this became a wall between my parents and me. Every year of schooling added another layer of bricks making the wall taller. By the time students reach secondary school, the wall has become an immense barrier between students and their parents. As I maneuvered through the different grade levels and the curriculum increased in rigor, the void between my parents and me increased. According to Addams (2009), in spite of the enormous advantages which public schooling offers immigrant children and the children of immigrants, it “in some way loosens them from the authority and control of their parents, and tends to send them without a sufficient rudder and power of self-direction, into the perilous business of living” (p. 42). My parents wanted the space to exist because they knew the epistemological distance between them and me signified success in Eurocentric schools. Building upon Addams’ argument, Gandara and Contreras (2009) found that first and second-generation Latinos/Latinas have a tendency to achieve at comparatively higher levels than later generations of immigrants. In my case, being a first generation immigrant, the only link between my parents and me was Spanish. I grew up speaking Spanish because it was the language my family used at home and because my parents could not speak English. Much like television sets where you can change the channel whenever you want to view another program, when we were home our “television” was set to Spanish, and when we were in school, we operated on an English channel. Growing up, we were accustomed to watching telenovelas with my mom on a daily basis. It was not until high school that I started to

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transition from the Spanish telenovelas to all English television programs. Among my classmates, it was taboo for people to know that my family [or any family] routinely watched Spanish programming at home. Even if you did enjoy watching the telenovelas, it was considered an inappropriate subject in group conversation. I contend that our schooling experiences created barriers between our parents and us, and therefore, between our culture and ourselves. After high school, I did not have any ambition to enroll at a university. I was lost and searching for myself. I decided to join the U.S. Army National Guard and left for basic training shortly after high school graduation. This experience made the void even wider between my parents and me. My father is a very calm and patient individual; there have been very few times in my life that I have witnessed him be unkind to another person, but when a recruiter came home with me, he was not pleased. Gven that I was still 17 years old, I needed my parents’ consent in order to join the National Guard. Both my parents reluctantly gave their consent. There were two reasons why I decided to join: first, I was being a rebellious teenager who wanted to explore the world; secondly, I was searching to find myself. I wanted to be associated with a group. I wanted to align myself with people with similar interests. I wanted to belong to something or somebody. One of the toughest things I have had to endure was graduating from basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, and not having a single relative attend the ceremony. Achieving this feat and being unable to share this moment with my family was devastating. I felt lonely and apart from my family. A couple of months after graduating basic training, during one of the training exercises, I was involved in a highly publicized accident where three people were shot and killed. That experience forced me to realize how fragile and unpredictable life is. A couple of hours before the accident, I had been talking to one of the individuals involved in the accident. We were discussing how nice it would be to take a bath and enjoy a burger after the day’s training. It had been a couple of days since our last shower and hot meal. We had been conducting training exercises in the hot summer heat of Texas for several weeks straight. After the accident, I began to question my association with this organization. Was this what/how/where I wanted to be for the rest of my life? Was this who I wanted to be for the rest of my life? Were there other options? University Experience The following fall I enrolled at UTPA as an undeclared major. Since high school I had developed an interest in learning how to play the guitar, so I enrolled in the university’s mariachi course. The professor, a classical pia-

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nist, suggested I acquaint myself with the other classmates to learn from them. I took her suggestion, became friends with several of my peers, and learned from/with them. I immersed myself in the mariachi culture, and within a year I was performing with the group. This experience has been significant in providing me access to the general curriculum. I feel that its implications in my journey and throughout my educational career are deeply rooted. According to Gandara and Contreras (2009), access to social capital (admittance into important social networks) and cultural capital (knowing how things work) helps students succeed in acquiring a university education. In my experience, the outside curriculum was instrumental in giving me access to these two networks. In his study examining the causal effects between social class and involvement in extracurricular activities among college students, Stuber (2009) found that participation in such activities offered students the opportunity to cultivate the social and cultural resources deemed important by more privileged classes. In my experience, performing with the mariachi group took me places I would not have otherwise visited, like Canada and France. In the United States, we participated in conferences and events in Tucson, Arizona, as well as throughout several Texas cities: San Antonio, Austin, Corpus Christi, and El Paso. I was also an instructor at the Mariachi Extravaganza held in San Antonio for three years during my graduate and undergraduate years. This does not include all the weekend jobs and concerts we did on a weekly basis along both sides of the Texas-Mexico border in the Rio Grande Valley. Performing with the Mariachi gave me access to my cultural background and was a catalyst in bridging the void between my parents and me. Performing in different cities and events around the country provided the social and cultural access that Gandara and Contreras (2009) claim to be beneficial in the academic success of Latinos/Latinas. When the mariachi went to Washington, D.C. and performed at the White House, we represented our culture, and were admired for it. Receiving compliments from our nation’s leaders was an honor. In addition to being the vehicle that connected me to my cultural background, mariachi was the source that connected me to my parents. Throughout my K–12 experience, my father did not attend school activities. The only school activity he attended was my high school graduation. He did, however, attend my mariachi performances. Both my parents attended the concerts we had at the university every semester and even traveled out of town to attend my performances. Having my parents in attendance at these performances brought me closer to my family and to my true self. Getting to know my family and myself is what gave me the support system that I have needed to experience success at the university and beyond.

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Curricular Implications for Schools So what impact does this experience have on curriculum at public schools? Schubert (2010) contends that educators focus too much on covering curriculum—“we may do better to uncover the curricula instantiated in diverse public pedagogies that make us who we are” (p. 15). This assertion might inform or offer support to school leaders as they make decisions regarding what curricular influences to reject, overcome, accept, and/or nourish. By no means am I advocating that all schools start a mariachi program because I think that it had an impact on my overall schooling experience. I am recommending that schools take stock of what venues they can choose to give students access to the outside curriculum. In my personal experience, the obvious outside curriculum venues were home and family, culture, and community. The literature I reviewed mentions athletic activities, marching band, drama, debate, orchestra, student publications, student clubs (Monroe, 1929; Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery, & Taubman, 1995), fraternities/sorrorities, and Greek organizations (Stuber, 2009) all as examples of activities. Due to our geographical location, while these activities will attract the participation of a certain number of the student population, they are not all necessarily associated with the cultural background of our student population. In my experience mariachi was the catalyst that linked me to my family, culture, and community. Addams (2009) suggests that schools offer each student the beginnings of a culture so that every child can interpret his own parents by a standard that is universal. In my experience, the outside curriculum has been a major influence in shaping who I am, as well as who I am still becoming. The mariachi program was a part of the university experience, but the outside curriculum had the greatest impact on my journey to becoming. My experience with mariachi is indicative of the kind of influence the outside curriculum can have on students, especially Latino/Latina students. Gandara and Contreras (2009) advocate for all students to have opportunities to participate in organized, extracurricular activities. Such access to the outside curriculum ought to be available to every student—particularly because studies suggest many students often spend only 20% of their time in classrooms and the remaining 80% engaged in activities that have little to do with schooling. Several studies (Gandara & Contreras, 2009; Stuber, 2009) acknowledge that even well intended schools face major barriers associated to availability of resources, transportation, and other responsibilities. Two years ago, I was a first year principal of a small high school located along the Texas-Mexico border. Our school received a grant to fund afterschool activities. One of the challenges we faced were participation rates. The grant called for 90% of the students to participate on a regular basis,

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and the extra-curricular programs that were already in place could not be used in the participation rate. The first year we did not meet that requirement, so the director decided to survey students and parents to find out what activities would be of interest. Indeed, as the director aligned activities with community and student interests, participation rates increased significantly. Lopez et al., (2010) suggest that school leaders along the U.S.-Mexico border are in a unique situation for the study of school leadership. Not only do they have to work with populations that are constantly navigating between two or more worlds, but they also have to create an organizational culture where all students can be academically and socially successful, yet able to adapt to communities that are constantly “in flux” between both sides of the border. The venues a particular community decides to explore are contingent upon itself and its governorship. Nevertheless, it is important for administrators to expose these venues to the outside curriculum because they can be the bridge to the general curriculum available in public schools. References Addams, J. (2009). The public school and the immigrant child. In D. J. Flinders & S. J. Thorton (Eds.), The curriculum studies reader (pp. 336–345). New York: Routledge. Ballantyne, K.G., Sanderman, A.R., Levy, J. (2008). Educating English language learners: Building teacher capacity. Washington, DC: National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition. Available at http://www.ncela.gwu.edu/practice/ mainstream_teachers.htm Berk, L. (1992). The extracurriculum. In P. Jackson (Ed.), Handbook of research on curriculum (pp. 1002–1044). New York: Macmillan. Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York: Macmillan. Gandara, P. & Contreras, F. (2009). The Latino education crisis: The consequences of failed social policies. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Gee, J. P. (2007). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Giroux, H. A. (1999). The mouse that roared : Disney and the end of innocence. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Giroux, H. A. (2001). Stealing innocence: Corporate culture’s war on children. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan. González, N., Moll, L. C., & Amanti, C. (2005). Funds of knowledge: theorizing practice in households, communities, and classrooms. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Henderson, J. G., & Gornik, R. (2007). Transformative curriculum leadership. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Merrill/Prentice Hall. Janzen, J. (2008). Teaching english language learners in the content areas. Review of Educational Research 78(4): 1010–1038.

Traveling Curriculum’s Borders    75 Lopez, G. R., Gonzalez, M. L., & Fierro, E. (2010). Educational leadership along the U.S.-Mexico border: Crossing borders/ embracing hybridity/building bridges. In C. Marshal & M. Oliva (Eds.), Leadership for social justice: Making revolution in education (pp. 100–119). New York, NY: Allyn & Bacon. Monroe, W.S. (1929). The effect of participation in extra-curriculum activities on scholarship in the high school. The School Review, 37(10), 747–752. Mora, J.K. (2002). Caught in the policy web: The impact of education reform for latino education. Journal of Latinos and Education, 1(1), 29–44. Noddings, N. (1984). Caring: A feminine approach to ethics and moral education. Berkley: University of California Press. Noddings, N. (1992). The challenge to care in schools: An alternative approach to education. New York: Teachers College Press. Padilla, R.V. (2004). High-stakes testing and accountability as social constructs across cultures. In F. W. Parkay, G. Hass, & E. J. Anctil (Eds.), Curriculum leadership: Readings for developing quality educational programs (pp. 372–377). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Pinar, W. F., Reynolds, W. M., Slattery, P., & Taubman, P. M. (1995). Understanding curriculum: An introduction to the study of historical and contemporary curriculum discourses. New York: Peter Lang. Proctor, C. P., Dalton, B., & Grisham, D. L. (2007). Scaffolding English language learners and struggling readers in a universal literacy environment with embedded strategy instruction and vocabulary support. Journal of Literacy Research, 39(1), 71–93. Schubert, W. H., & Lopez-Schubert, A. (1981). Toward curricula that are of, by, and therefore for students. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 3(1), 239–251. Schubert, W. H. (2010). Outside curricula and public pedagogy. In. J. A. Sandlin, B. D. Schultz, & J. Burdick (Eds.), Handbook of public pedagogy: Education and learning beyond schooling (pp. 469–480). New York: Routledge. Shulruf, B., Meagher-Lundberg, T., & Timperley, H. (2006). Extra-curricular activities and high school students: A systemic review, technical report #6. Auckland: University of Auckland. Shulruf, B., Tumen, S., & Tolley, H. (2007). Extracurricular activities in school, do they matter? Children and Youth Services Review, 30, 418–426. Smythe, S., & P. Neufeld (2010). Podcast time: Negotiating digital literacies and communities of learning in a middle years ell classroom. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 53(6): 488–496. Stuber, J. M. (2009), Class, culture, and participation in the collegiate extra-curriculum. Sociological Forum, 24, 877–900. doi: 10.1111/j.1573-7861.2009.01140.x Valenzuela, A. (1999). Subtractive schooling: U.S.-Mexican youth and the politics of caring. Albany, N.Y: State University of New York Press.

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CHAPTER 5

Navigating Borderlands of Accountability An Autoethnographic Exploration Melissa Castañeda University of Texas at Brownsville

Cuando era solo una niña—about 6 or 7 years old—I loved to play la escuelita during my summer vacation. Being the eldest child made my three younger sisters my students. I read to them, following the example of my favorite teachers. I dreamed of one day becoming la maestra, so I practiced as often as I could. I taught my sisters things I learned at school, gave them assignments and tests, and then graded their work. As the years passed, I continued to dream about becoming a teacher, but not everyone thought that was the best career choice for me. For some reason people are under the misconception that anyone could be a teacher. A few family members and friends shared that sentiment and argued eres muy inteligente mija, and you should do something more than just teaching. If I remember correctly, I even had some family members ask, por qué quieres ser maestra? They were puzzled and wondered what drove my decision.

Surveying Borders, Bounderies, and Contested Spaces in Curriculum and Pedagogy, pages 77–90 Copyright © 2011 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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I was probably too young to defend myself at the time so I considered otras posibilidades, other career options along the way. I attended a high school with a technology magnet program. It was fun, but I did not restrict myself to only that experience. I took part in many extracurricular activities in high school. My most important roles were the officer positions that helped develop my leadership skills. Y todas esas experiencias helped me realize how much I love learning. Soon, other people such as school counselors, program directors, and teachers helped me through the career selection process. They shared information about various opportunities—las oportunidades para mi futuro. I struggled trying to find myself as I thought about possibly becoming a graphic designer, lawyer, dentist, and other options that I cannot even remember at this point. I did not know how to satisfy everyone else, and the presumption that anyone could be a teacher was a seed of doubt that threatened to take root. In the end, nothing seemed as fulfilling as the idea of becoming an educator. Eventually, I entered el colegio undecided about my major. I registered for basic courses throughout the initial years of my undergraduate studies. Finally, running out of lower level courses to enroll in, I followed my instinct. I decided to make a difference in children’s lives como una maestra bilingüe, an elementary bilingual teacher. I declared a major in education and explored my new program of study. My family supported my decision, and the journey began. This preparation period for the teaching field was the most fascinating experiencia. The readings and assignments captivated my attention. As I completed courses, I felt as if bits and pieces of knowledge were coming together to create a plan para mi futuro como maestra. I was intrigued with the infinite teaching strategies, particularly those that helped support English Language Learners. As a former second language learner, I could not wait to help students develop their language, academic and social skills. The idea of one day having a classroom full of small children eager to learn—listos para aprender—raised the level of excitement. I had my mind set. I planned to mold young minds and prepare them for the future. I would be an integral part of their lives. My teachers were admirable role models, and I chose to follow their ejemplo. I knew it would not be an easy task, but I was ready to overcome the challenge. Critics claimed that teachers were underpaid and often unappreciated, but that did not stop me. Preparing the instructional resources for my classroom and setting up an environment conducive to learning was my main objective. I consistently researched the best practices in schools to implement in my own classroom someday. I eventually completed my coursework along with the required student teaching component. For a semester, I co-taught with two elementary teachers in their respective classrooms. My first student teaching assignment was pre-kindergarten, and the

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second assignment was second grade. Looking back, I realize that those brief experiences sheltered me from the standardized testing world. My exposure to this world was limited until the following year when I stepped through las puertas—the doors—of my own third grade classroom. Anyone teaching a grade level that requires the administration of a standardized assessment will agree that one literally hears the metaphorical ticking clock as the test dates quickly approach. Reality set in upon the spring semester of my first year as a teacher. Suddenly, testing requirements struck me and I could not help but feel a sense of disillusionment. I suffered through the stress and anxiety of the demands of standardized testing. Of course, my students shared my frustration. I worried this would crush my dream. It was then I realized that teaching is not something just anyone can do. It entails far more than just passion and dedication. It requires resilience. The college coursework cannot fully prepare anyone for the expectations of the public education system, particularly the testing aspect. The federal government pressures each state and the ripple effect of states pressuring districts affects administrators, thus pressuring teachers, and eventually reaching the students. The former dream of changing children’s lives then becomes a fight for survival. As I gained more teaching experience, I began to have doubts about my decision to become an educator. I wondered whether I truly made a positive impact on my students or if I, like so many before me, had merely been producing test-takers of those young learners. I feared searching for answers to my own questions. Had I fallen into the mindset of a teacher that worried about test scores? No, I was also concerned about my students as individuals. The ideal and the reality were pulling me in different directions— an experience in disillusionment, to say the least. Why did testing drain the fun out of school? I wanted to put the reading practice passages away and throw out the mathematics handouts. The most disappointing aspect was that excellent teachers with creative minds surrounded me, but we all felt the urge to get those kids to pass that test. This was our collective goal and, sadly, had become our reason for being—or so it seemed. Our reason for being in those children’s lives was to get them to pass a test!? That disturbing idea made me question why I chose education as an occupation. I trusted I had much more to offer to the world. The curriculum had narrowed, but who was to blame? As I progressed through my graduate courses, standardized testing was one topic we could never escape. No matter what the course title or description, we never failed to have open discussions regarding the issue. People shared varying views. The prevailing sentiment was that teachers were no longer able to teach the way they used to. While many argued that teachers had the freedom to prepare their students for those examinations through

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meaningful, engaging learning opportunities, others expressed that the administrative pressure they faced did not afford any room for creativity. With their jobs and integrity on the line, many were fearful of using anything other than test-taking strategies in their classrooms. At this point, I began to question my future as an educator. Could I actually pursue a degree in educational administration and endorse such teaching practices? I wanted more for my future. I wanted more for our schools. Most importantly, I wanted more for our students. These thoughts led me to ponder the price of success during this accountability era. Background Looking back on my childhood, I realize the importance of having a support system comprised of not only family, but also genuine teachers who navigated the ethical borders of accountability. I am a first generation college graduate pursuing a doctoral degree. This situation is not common for most Hispanic females who grew up on the Texas-Mexico border. My parents made sacrifices to ensure that their four children each had a college education. It was not until recently that I discovered that my mother wanted to be a teacher herself. I am glad that she feels she can live out that dream through me. As an educator, I want to ensure that others have the same educational opportunities I had. Students should have a support system both within and outside the home. They should have the opportunity to take part in afterschool clubs where they can develop both socially and academically. Students should engage in hands-on learning that stimulates their creativity and imagination. They should have outstanding teachers to serve as role models and schools should be safe environments conducive to learning. Students should never fear failure. They should feel encouraged and motivated. I am convinced that sharing my narrative, through the experienced eyes of both a former bilingual student and bilingual teacher in a district located on the south Texas border, will broaden the existing body of knowledge related to leadership as a curricular issue. As a scholar of educational leadership, and a future administrator, I realize that telling my story could be crucial in bringing about change in our school system. I have selected an autoethnographic approach as a means of sharing some of the obstacles many educators face as they strive to fulfill the dream of an education for everyone. As a teacher and scholar, it is rare that I discuss or write about our current educational system (since 2001) without mention of the impending implications our schools face due to the federal mandates of No Child Left

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Behind (NCLB). The legislation includes many accountability provisions to which states must adhere (Hursh, 2005; Rose, 2009). This affects our districts, communities, administrators, teachers, parents, and students alike. Among the many, unrealistic mandates, by 2014, all students are expected to demonstrate grade-level proficiency. Students across the United States are administered high-stakes assessments in subject areas such as reading and mathematics throughout their public schooling experience. In the state of Texas, the name of the standardized assessment is the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS). Critics of NCLB suggest that such demands promote educational inequality (Darling-Hammond, 2004; Hursh, 2005; McNeil 2000; McNeil & Valenzuela, 2000; Padilla, 2010; Rose, 2009). Likewise, my own experience as a teacher has led me to recognize an increasing need for social justice. As a leadership scholar, I take particular notice of the many barriers that exist for enthusiastic educators and administrators who are committed to meeting the needs of each and every student—truly leaving no child behind. Upon careful consideration of the existing autobiographical scholarship, this paper seeks to illustrate the tension(s) between the theoretical ideals of moral leadership and its lived reality. Toward that end, I examine embedded notions of ethical and social justice leadership in the literature as each pertains to my own experiences as both a teacher and a student. My consideration and analysis of these encounters is framed by Padilla’s (2010) diverging sociocultural frameworks: “culture of measurement” (p. 72) versus “culture of engagement” (p. 79). Then, I delineate some steps to navigate the border between these two cultures. The paper concludes with a discussion about the implications such border crossings might have for stakeholders in the educational community. Autoethnography as a Vehicle of Communication Reed-Danahay (2009) defines autoethnography “as a genre of writing that, at minimum, places the author’s lived experiences within a social and cultural context” (p. 30). Through my autoethnographic investigation, I present my lived experience as a phenomenon grounded in Padilla’s (2010) notion of a culture of measurement. As Ellis contends, “When it comes to communicating ethical consciousness . . . it is much more effective to tell a story than to give an abstract explanation” (p. 148). Along those lines, I hope that my autoethnographic reflexivity here offers an in-depth understanding of personal feelings and thoughts evoked by my experiences in two distinct, yet similar socio-cultures.

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Pinar (2004) defines autobiography as “a first-person and singular version of culture and history as these are embodied in the concretely existing individual in society in historical time” (p. 38). Employing Pinar’s definition, I juxtapose my memories and experiences as a former bilingual student with those as a current educator living near the Texas-Mexico border. This autoethnography further informs critical analysis on the complexities of theory, practice, and conceptualizations of curriculum and pedagogy, more specifically issues of social justice leadership in this culture of measurement and the ethical complexities it gives rise to. As aforementioned, my research draws from the theoretical underpinnings of autoethnography (Ellis & Bochner, 2000) intersecting with autobiographical (Behar, 1996; Bochner & Ellis, 2002; Ellis, 2009) modes of inquiry. Other reflective scholars have utilized autobiographical accounts to inform their curriculum studies (Miller, 2005; Pinar, 1975). Authors Ellis and Bochner (2000) define autoethnography as “an autobiographical genre of writing and research that displays multiple layers of consciousness, connecting the personal to the cultural” (p. 733). According to Ellis (2009), “Accomplished autoethnographers do not proclaim how things are or how life should be lived, but instead strive to open up a moral and ethical conversation with readers about the possibilities of living life well” (p. 17). In this paper, I utilize autoethnography as a means to open up such conversations in relationship to the “complicated conversation” (Pinar et al., 1995. p. 548) that is curriculum and leadership. Autobiography, as well as autoethnography, methodologically facilitates such conversations. Furthermore, autobiographies may offer a sense of “bare suppression or closure; as such, they serve as a means to explain, illustrate, and underline abstract concepts that illuminate wider social, cultural, and historical dynamics” (Edgerton, 1991, p. 80). Social Justice vis-à-vis Accountability Policies Social justice leaders encounter many challenges in their pursuit of creating and sustaining equitable schools. Rose (2009) argues, “Young people get narrowly defined in the current environment” (p. 52). For the sake of improved standardized test scores, schools “have abandoned measures of critical thinking and performance” (Darling-Hammond, 2004, p. 15). Karp (2004) contends that testing mandates “narrow the focus of what teachers do in classrooms and limit their ability to serve the broader needs of children and their communities” (¶ 10). Opting to employ such curricular and pedagogical practices in schools raises ethical questions. Similarly, Eisner (2003) argues, “Education has evolved from a form of human development serving personal and civic needs into a product our nation produces to compete in a global economy. Schools have become places to mass produce

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this product” (p. 242). Padilla (2010) describes to the cultural context of this sort of mass production as the culture of measurement where “teaching becomes decontextualized from larger pedagogical concerns . . . [and] individualistic evaluation is premised on a narrow range of curricular offerings” (pp. 72–73). These practices engender curricular implications that often manifest themselves in a “narrowly defined program that can have a differential impact on educational outcomes and students’ educational experiences” (p. 76). Consequently, social justice leadership takes a back seat in this educational reform era (Cambron-McCabe & McCarthy, 2005; Theoharis, 2009). By social justice leadership, I mean a holistic approach to leadership that stresses the ethical dimension and aims primarily at educational processes that foster equality and social justice. My definition of social justice leadership is  deeply  influenced by Brown (2004), Cambron-McCabe and McCarthy (2005), Shields (2004), and Theoharis (2009), for whom social justice leadership functions as an ethical approach to leadership and not a prescriptive, generic formula of leadership strategies. Our shared sense of social justice leadership attempts to shed light on equity concerns that continue to widen the achievement gap in schools today. As a child, I always dreamed of becoming a teacher. People sometimes ask, what influenced me to become a teacher? I never think twice about my response—I have always wanted to teach. I simply knew teaching was the profession for me. My teachers made a positive impact on my life and I had terrific educational experiences growing up. Learning was always fun. I even attended summer school when I did not have to. It was my choice and I enjoyed every minute of it. I was that one student who always brought home books and materials teachers disposed of at the end of each school year. Perhaps, some students thought it was our teachers’ meager attempt to de-clutter their classrooms. I suspect those teachers had greater intentions, as the material never went to waste for me. I remember using those resources to teach my three younger sisters at home. Part of our playtime included an instructional component. I consider myself to be a visual learner so I tend to observe much about my physical surroundings. Particularly growing up, I took note of the world around me and learned from it. Back then, I examined my teachers’ actions, day in and day out. I aspired to be like them; I wanted to fill their shoes when I grew up. Now, I wonder what would happen if I could go back and take a closer look. Knowing all I do today, perhaps it would be very different—reconsidering their practice with the informed eyes of a fellow educator.

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Culture of Engagement versus Culture of Measurement Padilla (2010) recommends an alternate cultural framework for schools. “The blind eye numbers-based accountability that turns toward the social demotion of students is both an example and a telltale sign of how numbers-based accountability reflects a specific social construction of schooling” (p. 77). This system—the culture of measurement—is ever-present in our public schools today. Teachers may not realize that by using test scores as the sole indicator to academically profile students, teaching becomes decontextualized and members of the school community develop tunnel vision concerning school accountability ratings. Rather than succumbing to such practices, Padilla suggests that we, as educators, nurture a culture of engagement. Eisner (2003) insists that all students receive equal access to a rigorous education. I have seen the pressures and struggles that students face in an effort to pass these standardized assessments. “Accountability becomes a means for maintaining existing social hierarchies on a broad scale and for exerting tighter control across large populations to determine who has access to public resources” (Padilla, 2010. p. 78). The misconstruction is that the quality of an education depends heavily on the criteria currently implemented. These preconceived notions affect students and teachers’ day-today instructional routines. Many students truly believe that a test score is the sole indicator of their academic capability because of the overemphasis placed on these assessments. Until recently, all my teaching experience took place in an elementary TAKS testing grade. Recently, however, I stepped into a new role within the school district. The position of literacy coach provides a new realm of possibilities while I develop my leadership skills and style—yet I find myself once again questioning various aspects of our educational system. Not too long ago, I sat in a classroom observing a teacher as she presented a reading lesson. I am almost certain that the students could not remember the last time they participated in hands-on science inquiry or learned about current events and issues affecting society As far as I could remember, their daily routines included math and reading drills. They sat there with their thick, three-inch binders flipping through the pages to find the reading passage they had completed for homework. The teacher circulated the room to ensure that students used their routinized “strategies” (i.e., labeling the questions, using the process of elimination, providing evidence to support their response) as directed. Those who did not complete their assignment received a lecture about the importance of utilizing these strategies because that list of steps was a guarantee for success.

Navigating Borderlands of Accountability    85 I could see the frustration on the teacher’s face. The state assessment was less than two weeks away and the passing rate for the benchmark scores for their grade level decreased from the previous practice test. It had been several months of repeated daily practice and still the results were not up to par. The team took comfort by discussing the projected scores from last year. They had faith that their students could once again score much higher on the actual day of the assessment. However, after receiving a reply to the e-mail they sent the principal with the latest scores, the team was in disarray. He urged the teachers to “work harder” to help those struggling students pass—as if they had not been working their hardest already. The principal wanted 90% of the students to score at a passing level or higher. “But what about the remaining 10%,” I pondered. I could empathize with these teachers because I was in their shoes a short time ago.

Multiple Perspectives Known for his groundbreaking contribution, Pinar (1975, 2004) offers a self-reflective, psychoanalytical theoretical construct and method. Currere—in Latin, the course to be run—intersects “academic knowledge and life history in the interest of self-understanding and social reconstruction” (Pinar, 2004. p. 35). Doerr (2004) contends that a researcher must move through the four stages of currere—regression, progression, analysis, and synthesis—in sequential order. In regression, examinations of the past occur; progression entails an imagination of the future; analysis involves the present; and synthesis, the transformation stage, “brings together the three [other] photographs” (p. 17). The transformation, essentially, evokes my call for change—a change seeking curricular engagement from students and teachers in a culture of measurement toward “alternative social constructions of educational reform that provide a higher degree of sociocultural contextualization for diverse groups of students and the schools that serve them” (Padilla, 2010, p. 79). Pinar’s (2004) curricular explanation informs the way I examine my past educational experiences, perceptions, and ways of knowing and being in the world to generate a space to discuss and explore the terrain within the border of these two cultures. The next time I observed that particular reading class, students appeared uninterested in learning. Perhaps I did not think about how exhausted these poor students felt after such long days of repeated review. Instead, I was too concerned about their “success.” But to whom would we credit this success? Whose success was it? I monitored the students as the teacher reviewed yet another passage, and when students did not provide the paragraph and sentence number to justify their answer, I brought it to the teacher’s attention. What was I doing? Could it be possible that while I advocated for a “culture of engagement,” the dominant “culture of measurement” continued to thrive,

86    M. CASTAÑEDA I was there to monitor and support teaching and learning. It was a shared urgency, after all. This led me to ponder how leaders contribute to or resist the “culture of measurement” and sometimes do both simultaneously. It seemed there was no escaping this “number driven certification machinery. . . . [But there must be a way to foster] engaged accountability programs” (Padilla, 2010, p. 78), I thought . . .

The study of my evolving educational experience through Pinar’s (1975) cognitive process and my ongoing, reflective, in-depth analysis of Padilla’s (2010) cultural discourse lead me to the realization that contextualizing leadership is vital within the complicated conversation of curriculum theory. Thus, I contend that the social construction of leadership in schools within the culture of measurement may result in negative effects for both instructional practices and the curriculum itself. According to Pinar et al. (1995), “curriculum changes as we reflect on it, engage in its study, and act in response to it toward the realization of our own ideals and dreams” (p. 848). In essence, curriculum is a tool that affords experienced teachers and emerging leaders an opportunity to reflect on both current and future practices. Leadership as a process becomes a hidden curriculum that helps structure the day-to-day experiences of teachers and students. Curriculum, as defined by Jewett (2011) is “a dynamic process through which experience is structured toward cultural ends” (p. 7). Teachers and leaders embark on this learning process to formulate decisions and shape the curriculum. Structuring this epistemological encounter from a macro-perspective can help teachers, leaders, and curriculum theorists explore the spaces between and among the coexisting, albeit polarized cultures. After analyzing Padilla’s (2010) work, I fight the urge to present implications that suggest an approach or strategies to successfully cross a bridge from the culture of measurement to explore the culture of engagement. The ideal is to move beyond the conditions where “the abstract student becomes a reality and the real student becomes an abstraction” (p. 73). Presently, there is no process that can guarantee an alternate, permanent cultural change. The current reality is that these two worlds collide continuously and their hegemonic forces shape our reality. As educators, many of us travel across and throughout the borders of these two, distinct cultures everyday. Leaders essentially design and construct the shape and structure of culture throughout the borderlands of this false dichotomy. This exploration directs me toward the critical conversation about these diverging cultures functioning as a curriculum. Hence, “the teleological perspective of the [curriculum] of engagement is that the purpose of human life is to promote community and a healthy environment” (Padilla, 2010, p. 76). I contend that this curriculum of engagement is especially appropriate and perhaps more relevant to the bicultural students and teachers living on the Texas-

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Mexico border. “The [curriculum] of measurement sidetracks the thinking part of accountability and brings the full force of the state apparatus to bear on individual students and their school performance” (p. 78). However, educational leaders must learn to navigate the borderland of these curricular realms through a lens of social justice. Being the big sister in the family requires a lot of work, but I am not complaining. I consider myself a borderline friend and a borderline mother. I have three younger sisters who I adore. I always tease them , “You should be glad I’m the big sister . . . I am a very good role model. Who knows where we’d be if it was any other way?” I mostly kid around with them, but I would be lying if I said I did not think there is some truth to it. It might be the innate leader in me, or, my protective, motherly instincts—courtesy of being the eldest—but I often catch myself giving my sisters speeches that a mother would give her daughter(s). I remind them about the importance of being responsible, and I always encourage them to strive for the best. There are times when I remind them to let my mom know about their whereabouts or to check in from time to time just so our parents do not worry. I remind them to help with the dishes around the house. I tell them to be grateful for what they have. They know I was in their shoes not too long ago, so I try to set a good example for them. I consistently ask them about school, teachers, friends, and their grades. I do navigate that border very cautiously, however. I would hate to ruin our sisterly relationship by being overbearing. They share their successes and challenges. I value the trust and respect we have for one another. We share secrets and at times, I even count on them for their support and advice. Particularly when the stress of being a doctoral student while working a full-time job gets overwhelming, they help keep me sane. We share quality time when we gather around my mother’s living room and watch movies sometimes. This is the perfect balance. I offer a shoulder to lean on, and then get three in return. I provide protection and I receive support. Straddling both worlds, sister and role model, make up the dynamics of our positive sibling relationships.

On a broader scale, school leaders must learn to straddle two diverse cultures and make difficult decisions in uncertain, ever-changing times. Theoharis (2009) argues, “It is indeed possible to teach future administrators to understand the breadth of knowledge and skills, and it is also possible to light a spark or develop a consciousness in someone to see that advancing equity and justice might be central to school administration” (p. 152). These leaders influence the curriculum, but in a deeper way, their decisions help structure students’ and teachers’ identities as well as their overall school experience.

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Conclusion In this paper, I exercised an autobiographical and autoethnographic narrative to draw attention to the pedagogical and curricular circumstances that illuminate wider ethical issues related to the complicated dynamics of leadership in a culture of measurement (Padilla, 2010). This work also represents an ongoing attempt to understand my own educational and professional experiences—past, present, and future—as they relate to moral leadership practices in a culture of measurement, situated in public education along the deep, south Texas border. I offer a unique perspective with regard to a topic that inspires dilemmas for teacher as well as administrators in the bicultural region in southern Texas. The United States of America will continue to face changes in student demographics, and as educators, it is our moral obligation to provide every student a well-rounded education. Seeking and developing opportunities for ongoing discourse among practitioners and scholars, particularly through autobiographical inquiry will not only contribute to existing literature, but also unite individuals on their quest to transcend the boundaries across curricular borders. The disturbing reality is that the accountability system establishes a pressure that implicates, rather complicates, a leader’s commitment to democratic, humane practices. Perhaps the epitome of high-stakes assessment is an expanding achievement gap where bridges burn—while blurred, complicated borders thrive. It is our mission to explore that terrain by providing infinite opportunities for engaged learning. References Behar, R. (1996). The vulnerable observer: Anthropology that breaks your heart. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Bochner, A. & Ellis, C. (Eds.) (2002). Ethnographically speaking: Autoethnography, literature, and aesthetics. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Brown, K. M. (2004). Leadership for social justice and equity: Weaving a transformative framework and pedagogy. Educational Administration Quarterly, 40(1), 77–108. Cambron-McCabe, N., & McCarthy, M. M. (2005). Educating school leaders for social justice. Educational Policy 19(1), 201–222. Darling-Hammond, L. (2004). From “separate but equal” to “No Child Left Behind”: The collision of new standards and old inequalities. In Deborah Meier and George Wood (Eds.), Many children left lehind. New York: Beacon Press. Doerr, M. N. (2004). Currere and the environmental autobiography: A phenomenological approach to the teaching of ecology. New York, NY: Peter Lang.

Navigating Borderlands of Accountability    89 Edgerton, S. H. (1991). Particularities of ‘otherness’: Autobiography, Maya Angelou, and me. In J. L. Kincheloe & W. F. Pinar (Eds.), Curriculum as social psychoanalysis: The significance of place (pp. 77–97). Albany: State University of New York Press. Eisner, E. W. (2003). Building theories form case study research. In A. M. Huberman, & M. B. Miles (Eds.), The Qualitative researcher’s composition (pp. 5–35). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc. Ellis, C. (2009). Revision: Autoethnographic reflections on life and work. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Ellis, C. & Bochner, A. (2000). Autoethnography, personal narrative, reflexivity: Researcher as subject. In N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), The handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed.) (pp. 733–768). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Fasching, D. J., & deChant, D. (2001). Comparative religious ethics: A narrative approach. Oxford: Blackwell. Hursh, D. (2005). The growth of high-stakes testing in the USA: Accountability, markets and the decline in educational equality. British Educational Research Journal, 31(5), 605–622. Jewett, L. (2011, April). Bootleggers and curricular contrabandistas: A border educorrido. Paper presented at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association. New Orleans, LA. Karp, S. (2004). Leaving public schools behind. New Politics, 10 (2) Whole No. 38. Retrieved from http://www.wpunj.edu/~newpol/issue38/karp38.htm McNeil, L. (2000). Contradictions of school reform: Educational costs of standardized testing. New York: Routledge. McNeil, L., & Valenzuela, A. (2000). Harmful effects of the TAAS system of testing in Texas: Beneath the accountability rhetoric. In M. Kornhaber, G. Orfield, & M. Kurlanda (Eds.), Raising standards or raising barriers? Inequity and high-stakes testing in public education (pp. 89–123). New York: Century Foundation. Miller, J. L. (2005). Sounds of silence breaking: Women, autobiography, curriculum. New York, NY: Peter Lang. Padilla, R. V. (2010). High-stakes testing and accountability as social constructs across cultures. In F. W. Parkay, G. Hass, & E. J. Anctil (Eds.), Curriculum leadership: Readings for developing quality educational programs (pp. 72–79). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Pinar, W. F. (1975). The method of currere. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Research Association, Washington, D.C. Pinar, W. F. (2004). What is curriculum theory? Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Pinar, W. F., Reynolds, W., Slattery, P., & Taubman, P. M. (1995). Understanding curriculum: Introduction to the study of historical and contemporary curriculum discourses. New York: Peter Lang. Pinar, W. F., Reynolds, W. M., Slattery, P., & Taubman, P. M. (2000). Understanding curriculum: A postscript for the next generation. In Understanding curriculum (pp. 847–868). New York: Peter Lang. Reed-Danahay, D. (2009). Anthropologists, education, and autoethnography. Reviews in Anthropology, 38(1), 28–47. Rose, M. (2009). Why school? Reclaiming education for all of us. New York, NY: The New Press.

90    M. CASTAÑEDA Shields, C. M. (2004). Dialogic leadership for social justice: Overcoming pathologies of silence. Educational Administration Quarterly, 40(1), 109–132. Theoharis, G. (2007). Social justice educational leaders and resistance: Toward a theory of social justice leadership. Educational Administration Quarterly, 43(2), 221–258. Theoharis, G. (2009). The school leaders our children deserve: Seven keys to equity, social justice, and school reform. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

CHAPTER 6

Echoes Down the Rabbit Hole Voices Heard and Lost in the Land of Professional Development Schools Victoria Russell Towson University

I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, Sir, because I’m not myself you see. —Alice in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Carroll, 2005, p. 55

Under the guise of educational reform, Professional Development Schools (PDSs) were created to further the professionalization of teaching and to broaden the interactions of educators responsible for preparing pre-service teachers. In theory, PDS relationships were meant to break down barriers between higher education, school systems, and classroom teachers. Notably, university-based teacher educators shifted their roles from that of ‘expert’ to one of ‘partner’ and ‘collaborator’ by bridging theoretical best practice and classroom realities. In practice, this change has most benefitted classroom teachers through greater leadership development (DarlingHammond, Bullmaster, & Cobb, 1995) and enhanced reflective practice,

Surveying Borders, Bounderies, and Contested Spaces in Curriculum and Pedagogy, pages 91–102 Copyright © 2011 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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specific to their individual teaching (Pinkston, 2007). However, what happens to university faculty within these partnerships? How does a university faculty member’s voice fit into these new conversations, especially if no longer as an “expert”? Does crossing into a PDS require a new identity? Clandinin and Connelly have used teacher narrative to build an understanding of life in schools, teacher knowledge, and teacher identity (Clandinin & Connelly, 1995; Connelly & Clandinin, 1999). Through ‘stories to live by,’ teachers share stories that [they] live out in practice and tell of who they are, and are becoming, as teachers. Important to this way of thinking is an understanding of the multiplicity of each of our lives—lives composed around multiple plotlines. (Clandinin, Downey, & Huber, 2009, p. 142)

In my own narrative as a teacher educator, I reflect on the boundaries of institutions, roles, and voice within the context of the PDS environment. The tensions and shifts in these reflections bring to the surface the larger questions of what it means to educate a teacher (and who is a teacher) in a field under intense scrutiny. The History of Wonderland Professional Development Schools have a rich and colorful history. Initially, they were established to provide superior opportunities for teachers and administrators to influence the development of their profession, and for university faculty to increase the professional relevance of their work through (1) mutual deliberation on problems with student learning, and their possible solutions; (2) shared teaching in university and the schools; (3) collaborative research on the problems of educational practice; and (4) cooperative supervision of prospective teachers and administrators. (Holmes Group, 1986, p. 56)

PDS partnerships between institutions of higher education (IHEs) and local school systems typically operate within state or locally determined frameworks. For example, the Maryland Partnership for Teaching and Learning K–16 was charged in October 1999 with developing a “full implementation” plan for establishing PDS partnerships as the foundation of teacher education in the state (Maryland Partnership for Teaching and Learning K–16: Superintendents and Deans Committee, 2003). Across Maryland, PDS is defined as

Echoes Down the Rabbit Hole     93 a collaboratively planned and implemented partnership for the academic and clinical preparation of interns and the continuous professional development of both school system and institution of higher education (IHE) faculty. The focus of the PDS partnership is improved student performance through research-based teaching and learning. A PDS may involve a single or multiple schools, school systems, and IHEs and may take many forms to reflect specific partnership activities and approaches to improving both teacher education and PreK–12 schools. (p. 3)

The emphasis on collaborative practice extends to specific identification of PDS stakeholders as “IHE and school faculty, staff, and support staff; the interns participating in the extensive internship, central office staff . . .  parents; community members; business partners; and PreK–12 students” (p. 36). From the beginning, at least in Maryland, PDS extended teacher education beyond the supervisor-student teacher dyad and required committed, connected practice between and among IHEs, school systems, and the public community. Maryland PDSs are characterized by five standards: learning community; collaboration; accountability; organization, roles, and resources; and diversity and equity. Each standard is described in a matrix where indicators delineate how they may be met in four state priority areas: teacher preparation, continuing professional development, research and inquiry, and student achievement (Maryland Partnership for Teaching and Learning K–16: Superintendents and Deans Committee, 2003). Throughout Maryland, PDS stakeholders use the matrix to plan, implement, and evaluate their partnership activities. Stakeholders can designate their PDS as ‘beginning,’ ‘developing,’ or ‘at standard’ across each standard and priority area. PDSs evolve as they become progressively more collaborative across stages of work and development with all stakeholders. For example, under the accountability standard for research and inquiry, a PDS can be labeled as the following [italics added]: Beginning: A structure exists for IHE and school faculty to communicate about program assessment and improvement. Developing: IHE and school faculty periodically discuss program assessment and improvement. At Standard: IHE and school faculty collaboratively develop assessments and feedback tools to be used for PDS program planning and improvement. (p. 55)

“At standard” demands an intermingling of previously independent and isolated players in teacher education. PDSs, by these standards, must be constructed on collaborative frameworks. According to Friend and Cook

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(2007), collaboration may be defined as “a style for direct interaction between at least two co-equal parties voluntarily engaged in shared decision making as they work toward a common goal” (p. 7). To meet framework requirements and standards, PDS stakeholders must redefine their relationships and roles to infuse voluntary engagement and shared decision making in their work. Down the Rabbit Hole and Around the Beltway . . . she ran across the field after it, and was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge. In another moment, down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again. (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; Carroll, 2005, p. 13)

*  *  * I found myself again in the car (should the university just assign my car as my office?), heading around the Beltway, driving frantically to make it on time for the school system meeting. I left my campus office with plenty of time to spare, but traffic complicated my plans as I tried to make it one county over with 30 minutes to spare. On a good day, this was a 20-minute drive. Today? I was looking at much more. So much for the collected, professional introduction I hoped to make with these new/old colleagues. I hurtled down the highway, hoping no cops were nearby and wondering if I remembered to bring hardcopies of the agenda. (V. Russell, personal journal, July 19, 2010)

By requiring the boundaries to blur between institutions, the PDS framework has the ultimate goal of renewal and reform for both K–12 school systems and higher education. With a small leap of logic, it would make sense that this ‘renewal and reform’ would extend to the individual participants in PDS collaboratives, particularly the university and school system personnel charged with seeing the vision through on a day-to-day basis with preservice teachers and K–12 students. My journey from classroom teacher to doctoral student to teacher educator did not follow a direct path. Much like Alice stumbling into Wonderland, there were many trips and free falls into what eventually looked like a familiar place with some very, very curious characters. With some naïveté, I embraced my role as a ‘teacher educator’ in a PDS because I was able to do so in the school system where I had been a classroom teacher. Three years of my classroom-teaching career were based in the school system my university assigned me to for supervision; I had chosen to leave public school teaching only to pursue my doctorate full-time. I was returning to the school system exactly ten years later with the impression that I was ‘coming home.’

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While definitions and models of PDS structures abound, it is not uncommon to find university supervisors similarly ‘falling back’ into their old school systems. Sending supervisors into school systems where they once taught or led offers a cultural knowledge that minimizes disconnects between university and school system expectations. An intimate knowledge of a school system’s needs, challenges, and innovations provides an opportunity to more quickly focus work and come to consensus about goals and outcomes for the partnership. However, this familiarity ignores an important, if obvious, point about the supervisor’s story—the school system is no longer the supervisor’s ‘center.’ Clandinin et al. (2009) speak of “shifting landscapes” (p. 142) that shape the stories we live by. Landscapes may be social, school-based, or personal, but they are notable for constantly changing—both removing us from and joining us to other people’s stories. Sometimes, shifting landscapes require us to have ‘stories to leave by.’ When our knowledge does not allow us to continue living in a story, we can compose the stories that transport us from one landscape to another. As I remembered that frantic drive to make the school system meeting, my own stories—both of living and leaving—echoed those of colleagues who went back into school systems as university supervisors. Many of us had acceptable ‘cover stories’ (Olson & Craig, 2005) for leaving teaching— pursuit of doctorates, wanting to make or have a larger/ broader impact on the field, a desire to study specific ideas more closely, retirement, etc. We removed ourselves from the landscape of classrooms to try something different. In my story, I had left to pursue a doctorate full-time and planned on returning to some position that would allow me to continue working with students receiving IEP services and support. By the time I was rushing to make the PDS meeting, an entire beltway separated my campus office from the classroom landscape. I acutely felt the physical distance, but this separation is difficult for many university supervisors. Drawbacks to PDS work for university faculty often reference this division between two different worlds that both demand full-time attention (Antonek, Matthews, & Levin, 2005; Bland & Hecht, 1996). In reflection, I distinctly felt this separation between campuses. My work with school systems always has me going to the system—rarely do my school-based colleagues meet on-campus. Meetings are scheduled around school calendars and bell schedules. My concept of time is cued to the school system, rather than to my home campus. Rather than a partner, I felt split between two worlds where I did not quite fit in fully to either place. Middle ground would be a highway median—not a workable solution for collaboration.

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Advice from a Caterpillar and a Timeline It was so long since she had been anything near the right size, that it felt quite strange at first; but she got used to it in a few minutes, and began talking to herself, as usual. “Come, there’s half my plan done now! How puzzling all these changes are! I’m never sure what I’m going to be, from one minute to another! However, I’ve got back to my right size; the next thing is, to get into that beautiful garden—how is that to be done, I wonder?” (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; Carroll, 2005, p. 63)

*  *  * The timeline activity was the first post-introduction event. We (well, those who had been there before) revisited the good, the bad, and what the university gave them. There was tension because I requested that the activity only go an hour so that M and I could cover internship logistics, professional development ideas, and answer mentor questions. In the end, the timeline only covered the first few years of a decades-long partnership—and cut off right where M and I could maybe have contributed. I thought about asking if the group wanted more time, but I bit my tongue. Could I have even assumed that I controlled time here? Was I allowed to speak yet? (V. Russell, personal journal, July 19, 2010)

Gee (2005) defines discourse as “language-in-use” (p. 5) where socially constructed norms are expressed for identity and being through language. Discourse is fluid, changeable by context, position, or participation. Prior to PDS settings for pre-service teacher fieldwork, strict discourse patterns defined interactions between mentors, supervisors, and interns. Typically, expert-novice patterns were established separately between interns and their individual mentors and supervisors (Olson, 2000; Shantz & Ward, 2000). These parallel dyads could develop complications both within (Graham, 1999; Olson, 2000) and between themselves (Anderson & Radencich, 2001; Sergiovanni & Starratt, 2007). Redefining roles within PDS settings offers opportunities to re-establish power differentials in supervisory relationships and to enhance experience for more developed reflective practice. PDS roles emphasize mentors and supervisors as ‘collaborators,’ minimizing the expert-novice balance of power traditionally shaping their relationships (Holmes Group, 1986). Furthermore, given Dewey’s (1933) assertion that learning is driven by experience, reflection as part of learning has social components. Public conversations specific to teaching practice offer mentors, supervisors, and pre-service teachers alike the opportunity to “broaden their understanding of others, and, through this . . . their understanding of themselves” (Collier, 2010, p. 50–51).

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The shift in discourse has reshaped what it means to be a ‘mentor teacher.’ As already noted, teachers in PDS settings have reported greater leadership opportunities and enhanced professional practice as a result of engaging in work with university faculty (Cobb, 2000; Darling-Hammond, Bullmaster, & Cobb, 1995; Pinkston, 2007; Sandholtz & Wasserman, 2001). In this sense, the PDS goal of renewal and reform has been realized in terms of how practicing, K–12 teachers define their work and their sense of engaging in a profession. Yet, this shifting landscape for classroom teachers has not been similarly activated for university faculty engaged in PDS work. University faculty largely report benefits focused on transactions in their work—greater connection to K–12 learning and concerns, more realistic classroom experiences to draw on in pedagogical coursework, and research based on ‘real’ concerns to schools (Burstein, 2007; Shroyer et al., 2007). University faculty roles and identities have changed in only adding to responsibilities without reconfiguring what ‘university faculty’ means in the PDS context. Simmons, Konecki, Crowell, and Gates-Duffield (1999) identified the metaphor of a ‘shape shifter’ to describe the multifaceted, often conflicting, roles that university faculty must take on in sustaining PDS activities and partnerships. Madden (2005) went as far as to identify ‘sacrifice’ as one of the metaphorical markers of university faculty work in PDS settings. Appreciating the necessary ‘shape shifts’ can prove challenging for faculty engaged in PDS work, particularly those who are pre-tenured. As a university faculty member, I understand my responsibilities as a university faculty member fairly clearly—teach to an excellent standard, publish to an acceptable level, and engage in any number of university and community activities. These expectations are consistent from institution to institution, only varying perhaps in performance standards for promotion and tenure. My role as a PDS supervisor and university liaison is less well defined. I supervise interns, support mentors, troubleshoot with administrators, manage budgets, generate reports, structure field assignments, offer professional development and consulting, soothe egos, minimize anxiety, conduct research, and attend enough meetings to make me look and feel busy. In the midst of all of these responsibilities and activities, I answer to two ‘masters’—the university and the school system. One provides a paycheck every two weeks, but the other most directly influences how my day-to-day work proceeds. The ‘shape shifting’ between these two landscapes requires sacrifices each and every day. In moving between university and school system roles [and back again], my ‘shape’ does not always form back to the original me. Somewhere, somehow, I feel spliced; my body is left in one place, my voice and thought in the other. As I sat in the timeline activity as part of my introduction to the school system, I initially felt an overwhelming sense of confusion. The focus was

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solidly on the school system, with little reference to the university personnel and partners. A request prior to the meeting to keep the timeline activity to an hour in order to focus on present needs had met with some initial resistance. I had not been sure why the timeline activity needed so much time. Later I realized that it was a direct means of communicating what my role was to the school system—silent provider of moneys or content. The discourse in this activity was system-centered (interestingly, not schoolcentered) and led by those whose landscape was the system. Furthermore, the discourse was one focused on transactions—what we each ‘gave’ to the other—rather than any transformation of practice or teaching. Initial confusion turned to awareness, but one tinged with frustration and concern. The Queen’s Croquet Ground and an Intern Tea “How should I know?” said Alice, surprised at her own courage. “It’s no business of mine.” The Queen turned crimson with fury, and, after glaring at her for a moment like a wild beast, began screaming, “Off with her head! Off with her—-” “Nonsense!” said Alice, very loudly and decidedly, and the Queen was silent. (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; Carroll, 2005, p. 93)

*  *  * “What about the tea?” “Tea? What tea?” “I guess we’re not doing the tea . . .” I sit confused. What tea? Or T? Or tee? Conversation buzzes around me, as everyone seems to know what the tea is all about. We’re getting ready to break the meeting to do some scheduling and suddenly we’re having tea? “We give the interns a welcoming tea. Now that you are having your meeting with them on Monday, I guess we’re not doing the tea.” “Well, no, I guess we’re not.” Off with my head. (V. Russell, personal journal, July 19, 2010)

It was an awkward moment after nearly two hours of tight smiles and cautious announcements. The meeting was breaking up and we were gathering with the principals to schedule another series of meetings prior to the university interns arriving in a month. Calendars were being pulled out of bags

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when the questions about a tea began. I had remarked that the interns were scheduled to meet with me and my supervision partner for an initiation to the internship as well as to the professional year. I had not known that traditionally a ‘tea’ was given to welcome the interns to the school system and PDS schools. The traditional tea date had been inadvertently replaced with my scheduled intern meeting. I chose not to reschedule my meeting and unintentionally asserted my voice against the perceptions of what my role vis-à-vis the interns was to the school system. While PDS literature relies heavily on metaphors of webs, weaving, and bridges, these expressions reduce the work of university faculty to processes and transactions. Underneath those actions are people—supervisors, teachers, and interns. PDS research and frameworks have not sufficiently situated the people in PDS work on any new landscapes or offered a vision of new roles and identities within this multi-layered and hyper-connected environment. In particular, university faculty continue to operate as if they must equally attend to higher education and school system orientations, without considering whether they stand on an entirely new landscape that has shifted identity. According to Connelly and Clandinin (1999), The changing landscape and teachers’ and researchers’ professional identities, their stories to live by, are interconnected. Just as the parade changes everything—the things, the people, the relationships, the parade itself—as it passes, so, too, do teachers’ and researchers’ identities need to change. It is not so much that teachers and researchers, professionals on the landscape, need new identities, new stories to live by: they need shifting, changing identities, shifting, changing stories to live by as the parade offers up new possibilities and cancels out others. (p. 131)

Alice was not any less ‘Alice’ after falling into Wonderland. Alice standing up to the Queen of Hearts was the assertion of her person, as she defined herself. Likewise, university faculty have a voice that they alone can project into the PDS conversation. They can create a shape to embody their work, thinking, and contributions. Certainly, a “culture of professional compliance” (Latta & Kim, 2009, p. 137) can be maintained where voices are silenced or identities remain fixed to old landscapes. However, in a time when the public is debating teaching, learning, and what makes an effective teacher, we have to review the price of that passivity. New shapes need to emerge that better reflect collaborative expectations in teacher education and converge around common goals for the preparation of preservice teachers. In my work within Professional Development Schools, I had assumed that I could trade one landscape for another without accounting for the shift in my own identity as perceived by others and as defined by my own expectations. My earliest experiences in PDS relationships were clear in my

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role as an outsider, because I was working in schools where I had not taught or had prior influence. When I returned to my old school system in my latest PDS reincarnation, I ignored that ‘outsider’ stance assuming that I was always a ‘teacher’ to those I had left years ago. My ‘story to leave by’ was notable for the constant adherence to my identified role as ‘teacher’—leaving the school system for study was merely a means to improving my teaching practice. It had not occurred to me that others would not accept that role for me anymore. My current ‘story to live by’ did not work on campus and was not accepted in the public school hallways I walked—it is time for a new story that acknowledges a different ground between and among higher education and public schooling. Imagine if Alice had tripped down a different rabbit hole . . . Alice took the exit for Wonderland off the Beltway, glad that road construction was finally over and traffic moved quickly. The Queen of Hearts and Cheshire Cat, carpooling from the other side of town, whizzed by in the left lane. Alice chuckled, wondering if the local cop was running a speed trap today. It was meeting day—the team had come to the conference center in the morning for individual appointments and work, but now gathered around the table. A review of the past year identified that some core assignments needed revision in light of new state and national standards. There was debate on the team wiki about how to best align required accountability components with the PDS’s mission statement and focus on ‘creative differentiation.’ It was agreed that Alice and the Queen of Hearts would meet with the Rabbit and Tweedle Dee via Skype next week to draw up some draft project descriptions and rubrics. The new interns were arriving in two weeks and an orientation session was planned at the conference center with campus tours in the afternoon. A breakfast would be held beginning at 9 a.m. with several workshops to be offered to support teaching during the early weeks of the semester. The Deck of Cards, Cheshire Cat, and the Mad Hatter forwarded agendas for each of their workshops. There was some disagreement about whether it was too early in the semester to require more than 2 sections of teaching, but it was determined that individual supervision teams could determine what was best for the individual intern and the students in each classroom. Alice finished her day writing an article with the Dormouse and March Hare. March Hare’s work with the fourth graders on recognizing media bias had generated both research data on new media usage and instructional strategies for intermediate grade teachers. Dormouse had secured funding through the Dean’s Office and Central Office to formalize the program next year. Alice headed to the parking lot and dumped her bags into the passenger side of the car at the end of a long day. Settling into the driver’s seat, she backed out of her parking space and joined the line of cars heading home. Merging into traffic on the Beltway off the Wonderland exit, Alice grinned back at

Echoes Down the Rabbit Hole     101 Cheshire Cat waving from the Queen of Hearts’ minivan. Perhaps Alice would have some tea when she got home.

References Anderson, N. A., & Radencich, M. C. (2001). The value of feedback in an early field experience: Peer, teacher, and supervisor coach. Action in Teacher Education, 23(3), 66–74. Antonek, J., Matthews, C., & Levin, B. (2005). A theme-based, cohort approach to professional development schools: An analysis of the benefits and shortcomings for teacher education faculty. Teacher Education Quarterly, 131–150. Bland, S. J., & Hecht, J. B. (1996). University faculty perspectives on the first year of a professional development school program. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Mid-Western Educational Research Association, Chicago, IL. Burstein, J. (2007). Down from the tower into the trenches: Redefining the role of professor-in-residence at one professional development school. School-University Partnerships, 1(2), 66–76. Carroll, L. (2005). Alice’s adventures in wonderland and through the looking-glass [140th Anniversary, Two Books in One Edition]. New York: Barnes and Noble Classics. Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (2000). Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Clandinin, D. J., Downey, C. A., & Huber, J. (2009). Attending to changing landscapes: Shaping the interwoven identities of teachers and teacher educators. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 37(2), 141–154. Cobb, J. (2000). The impact of professional development school on preservice teacher preparation, inservice teachers’ professionalism, and children’s achievement. Action in Teacher Education, 22(3), 64–76. Collier, S. T. (2010). Reflection as a social problem-solving process. In E. Pultorak (Ed.), The purposes, practices, and professionalism of teacher reflectivity: Insights for twenty-first century teachers and students (pp. 45–72). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Education. Connelly, F. M. & Clandinin, D. J. (1999). Shaping a professional identity: Stories of educational practice. New York: Teachers College Press. Darling-Hammond, L., Bullmaster, M., & Cobb, V. (1995). Rethinking teacher leadership through professional development schools. The Elementary School Journal, 96 (1), 87–106. Dewey, J. (1933). How we think. Boston: D.C. Heath. Friend, M., & Cook, L. (2007). Interactions: Collaboration skills for school professionals. Boston: Pearson Education. Gee, J. P. (2005). An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method. New York: Routledge. Graham, P. (1999). Powerful influences: A case of one student teacher renegotiating his perceptions of power relations. Teaching and Teacher Education, 15(5), 523–540.

102    V. RUSSELL Holmes Group. (1986). Tomorrow’s teachers: A report of the Holmes Group. East Lansing, MI: Author. Latta, M., & Kim, J. (2009). Narrative inquiry invites professional development: Educators claim the creative space of praxis. Journal of Educational Research, 103(2), 137–148. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database on July 20, 2010. Madden, M. (2005). Bridging the gap: A phenomenological study of university liaisons in Professional Development Schools. Retrieved from http://drum.lib.umd.edu/ bitstream/1903/2389/1/umi-umd-2250.pdf Maryland Partnership for Teaching and Learning K–16 Superintendents and Deans Committee. (2003). Professional development schools: An implementation manual. Baltimore, MD: Maryland State Department of Education. Olson, M. R. (2000). Curriculum as a multistoried process. Canadian Journal of Education, 25(3), 169–187. Olson, M. R. & Craig, C. J. (2005). Uncovering cover stories: Tensions and entailments in the development of teacher knowledge. Curriculum Inquiry, 35(2), 161–182. Pinkston, G. (2007). Advancing educators: Master teachers renewing practices at professional development school. School-University Partnerships, 1(2), 55–65. Sandholtz, J. H., & Wasserman, K. (2001). Student and cooperating teachers: Contrasting experiences in teacher preparation. Action in Teacher Education, 23(3), 54–65. Sergiovanni, Y. J., & Starratt, R. J. (2007). Supervision (8th ed.), Boston: McGraw-Hill. Shantz, D. & Ward, T. (2000). Feedback, conversation, and power in the field experience of preservice teachers. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 27(4), 288–294. Shroyer, G., Yahnke, S., Bennett, A., & Dunn, C. (2007). Simultaneous renewal through professional development school partnerships. Journal of Educational Research, 100(4), 211–225. Simmons, J. M., Konecki, L. R., Crowell, R. A., & Gates-Duffield, P. (1999). Dream keepers, weavers, and shape shifters: Emerging roles of PDS university coordinators in educational reform. In D.M. Byrd & D.J. McIntyre (Eds.), Research on professional development schools: Teacher education Yearbook VII (pp. 29–45). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Section C Translating Silence and Noise

Approaching a child’s second birthday, parents suddenly find themselves becoming linguists. They sit on the edge of chairs, video cameras at the ready, waiting to capture the first intelligible sounds to come from their children’s mouths. Gurgles that only vaguely resemble ‘cat’ are applauded. Mispronunciations are viewed as endearing. Tantrums punctuated with ‘no’ and ‘mine’ are endured. Those first precious words—and the avalanche of sounds to follow—mark children as communicative. They have voice and, in time, identity. But, just as things get interesting and those voices start to say something more engaging than a stale nursery rhyme, children receive a different set of messages about speaking up. Bite your tongue. If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Can you just stop talking for one minute? Shhh! We don’t say things like that here. There is too much noise coming out of that bedroom!

Parents are joined by teachers in reinforcing the notion that “silence is golden.” Chatty students are isolated from peers, moved to the back of classrooms, and receive warnings or detentions for being disruptive. Quiet students are rewarded with verbal praise and any manner of reinforcement from positive

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behavior systems dominating schools today. Silent classrooms are studious and concentrating; noisy classrooms are chaotic and out of control. Noise is defined as “loud or confused shouting; din of voices; clamor” or “something that draws public notice” (LoveToKnow, 2011). The word has its root in the Latin nausea or sea-sickness. We apply noise to those sounds, intelligible or not, that we find discomforting, uneasy, and threatening. Noise becomes what we cannot or will not bear to hear. In this section, three authors question where they stand in the translation between silence and noise. In “Power Negotiations and Race-Centric, Race-Avoidant, and Seemingly Race-Neutral Academic Tasks,” Myosha McAfee explores how her “black, female body [is] objectified and interpreted in predominantly white, liberal learning spaces” and power negotiations resulting from her challenges to in-class race discussions. The complex responses to both McAfee’s voice and silences communicate the distance between our thinking and pedagogy. Cole Reilly’s experiences in “To What Extent Am I Part of the Problem? Strategizing Identity Politics While Instructing a Multicultural Teacher Education Course” highlight the tension in maintaining professional silence at the cost to more direct understanding. In this two-part piece, Reilly’s critical reflection of both intentional and unintentional silence offers an honest analysis of how far we can reveal or hide our identities when bridging students’ biases, prejudices, and privileges. Finally, Antonino Giambrone looks to shatter silence, particularly that which separates private and public spaces, through drama and conflict. “Dramatic Encounters: The Role of the Private and Public in Understandings of Social Justice through Conflict” offers a theoretical framework for an “improvised dramatic encounter, one that engages students in (generative) conflictual situations, as a site of meaning-making with issues of social justice.” Each author acknowledges, and in some cases applauds, the ‘sea-sickness’ of noise and welcomes the discomfort that a voice can bring. Interestingly, each author also takes on silence as a construct of his or her own design and use. Rather than an imposed good behavior, they translate silence as a stillness offering space for passion, honesty, and debate. —Victoria Russell References LoveToKnow, Corp. (2011). Noise definition. Retrieved from http://www.your dictionary.com/noise

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CHAPTER 7

Power Negotiations and Race-Centric, Race-Avoidant, and Seemingly Race-Neutral Academic Tasks Myosha McAfee Harvard Graduate School of Education

A compelling racial and educative juxtaposition is presented by two trends: the predominance of researched people of color and the predominant white writers/teachers/and consumers of research in universities. In 2011, K–12 schools are re-segregating, black and brown students are under- and mis-educated, and most U.S. universities are still predominantly white. “Achievement gap” imagery is widely manufactured and often situates race on many research and teaching agendas. Some of these research inquiries implicitly ask, what about black- and brown-ness leads to underachievement (O’Connor, Horvat, and Lewis, 2006)? In my graduate school journey, the sentiment is similar. Deficit analyses of black and brown communities often dominate course syllabi and direct courses of discussion and debate.

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In these learning spaces, silence is familiar, and ironically, race-avoidance is prime. In these kinds of learning contexts, many students of color find their identities assaulted as they grapple with racial microaggressions,1 microinsults,2 micro invalidations,3 and racial battle fatigue4 (Smith, Allen, & Danley, 2007; Sue, Capodilupo, & Holder, 2008; Sue, Capodilupo, Torino, Bucceri, Holder, Nadal, & Esquilin, 2007; Yosso, Smith, Ceja, & Solórzano, 2009). Some faculty members admit feeling unprepared to facilitate racecentric dialogue and unfamiliarity with critical race/anti- racist, decolonizing, and indigenous scholarship. In this context, I asked three urgent questions. How is my black female body objectified and interpreted in predominantly white, liberal learning spaces? What power negotiations emerge when surface-level race discussions are made explicit and challenged by a black, female? What curricular and pedagogical conditions permit these processes and what are some implications for pedagogical responsibilities? Overall, this study’s relevance lies in its hope to inform the development of my own and others’ pedagogy. In the findings, I highlight • three ways a black, female is objectified and interpreted in learning spaces, • eight participatory routines and roles exercised by teachers and learners who engage in race-centric, race-avoidant, and/or seemingly race-neutral academic tasks, • three patterns in student dispositions, and • nine implications for pedagogical responsibility. Methods and Data Sources To address these questions I use critical autoethnography. “Circumventing the colonizing and exoticizing action of ethnographer upon the cultural other,” I use my body and existential and emotional experiences as a research tool (Banks & Banks, 2000, p. 2). Critical autoethnographic methods are most appropriate for this study because they allow me to impart an embodied and experiential knowledge. My particularistic, idiographic life journey bequeaths a unique expertise. Rather than view subjectivity as a limitation, I use my biography as an advantage. More than telling one’s story, self-absorption, or egoism, autoethnography is “a critical looking outward at power relations in a cultural space that constrains the meanings available for understanding . . . one’s own life . . .” (p. 2). Autoethnography accomplishes several goals (Banks & Banks, 2000; Collins, 1990). Autoethnography acknowledges the intersections between researchers’ personal biography and her/his professional sensibilities. It chal-

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lenges “objective,” distant, boundaries of scientific inquiry as it allows one to construct social theory from personal narratives. Critical autoethnography permits one to “reflect on asymmetries of power, unequal opportunities to render judgments, and maldistributions of responsibility and rewards in our institutional lives” (Banks and Banks, 2000, p. 3). Methods that allow for reflections on unequal distributions of power and responsibility are appropriate, given that the inquiry goal is to understand which curricular and pedagogical conditions permit my black, female body to be objectified. I applied autoethnographic methods to three main sources of data: teaching assistant performance evaluations, informal interactions, and journals. I analyze anonymous teaching assistant and teacher evaluations for five courses (4 out of 5 were explicitly about racial inequality, the other, leadership) over the course of two years. These data sources uncover how my black, female body is objectified and interpreted by students who attend courses where I am a teacher of new teachers or teaching assistant. I assess fifteen unsolicited professor and student emails. In addition to countless observations of classroom discussions, I include records of informal colleagues statements to me pre-, during, and post-class lectures. Such records highlight power negotiations that emerge when surface-level race discussions are challenged. Last, I contrast these data sources with journal entries. These data underscore reactions to curricular and pedagogical conditions and allow for critical self-analysis. My learning contexts range from 88–99% white. It is not only white in terms of my colleagues or faculty, but also in terms of interaction styles and thought. A predominantly white, elite institution and a primarily white, female profession inform what is considered professional. What is considered worth knowing is determined by predominantly white authors, researchers, and theorists on course syllabi and cited in lectures. Theoretical Framework Power is negotiated in the talk, posture, and silences of classroom discourse. I describe four ways power is negotiated in interracial learning spaces using critical race pedagogy as an overarching framework (Jennings & Lynn, 2005). I interrogate the norms informed by a culture of power (Delpit, 1995) and how students who do not align with these norms are objectified (Foucault, 1985). Then I explain how I acknowledge and challenge being objectified [also known as “a practice of liberatory learning” (Jennings & Lynn, 2005; Lynn 1999, 2004)]. Because I analyze myself, use autoethnographic methods, and acknowledge the relevance of my own biography to my scholarship, I include a piece I authored as part of my theoretical framework. Finally, I present ways students respond to challenges to predominant

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ideas through emotional, ideological, and performative rhetorical postures [or “tools of whiteness” (Picower, 2009)]. The “culture of power” informs classroom routines and the criteria one uses to judge who does or does not belong. Delpit (1995) suggests that power issues are indigenous to schooling and are “constantly negotiated, defined, and enacted in relation to other power brokers within . . . classrooms” (Jennings & Lynn, 2005, p. 6). Delpit’s culture of power (1995) is a set of arbitrary “codes” that represent power relationships and refers to the ways of speaking, writing, dressing, and interacting that emulate those in power. “Those in power” include the “upper and middle classes,” “white colleagues” and “liberals” (p. 25–26). Using the rules set by the culture of power, power brokers judge who is the same or different, appropriate or inappropriate, normal or deviant. Similar to sorting individuals into these categories, Foucault (1984) suggests objectification distinguishes the anomaly. Upon identification of an anomaly, power brokers, who objectify, assume to know “the nature” of the objectified anomaly and presume to know which points of view are the most adequate for interpreting the objectified. To understand how power brokers can objectify those considered anomalies in learning spaces and what intrapersonal processes occur when the objectified are aware of being objectified, I share “Amended Five-Fifths Human”—a piece I journaled. Two days ago I came down with something terrible. I wanted to call 9-1-1 but a sobering thought left the phone un-dialed. You see, medical science doesn’t treat oppression. Scars on my soul won’t be made visible with a microscope and history can’t be seen on x-ray machines. Still, the creation of a hierarchy arbitrarily based on skin color has been hazardous to my health. And every little bit hurts.5 Generations on a plantation took my name, my language, and my humanity. Constitutionally three-fifths human. Every little bit hurts. Black bodies dressed in three-piece suits, necks in a noose hanging from trees— Strange fruit.6 White, male bodies gathered to watch lynchings with their wives and children. Every little bit hurts. Advertisement read:  “To be sold, on board the ship, a choice of cargo of about 250 fine, healthy NEGROES . . . ” Every little bit hurts. Skin color signifies “social conflicts and interests”7 and I am a prisoner of your view of my identity. Inside this skin places burn and ache. Social meanings projected onto it overwhelm and occupy my subconscience. I tried your healing balm to make it go away. . I pledge[d] allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for . . .  This black skinned body is equally human. “Oh say can you see . . .” from Swan Lake Terrace to Malcolm X Boulevard? You see, on the other side of the railroad tracks, working hard is Mama saying, “Go to sleep and you wont feel the hunger

Power Negotiations and Race    111 any more.” Gun shots proudly hail “at the twilights last gleaming” so I sleep on the floor to dodge stray drive-by bullets. In the land of “broad stripes and bright stars” pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is no family wealth, safety net, or good ‘ole boy network. Meritocracy is doing homework before the sun goes down because, this month, it was between the electricity bill and groceries. It means figuring out how to foot the bill. Boots and straps. Sold separately. This black skinned body is equally human. In the land of opportunity, I navigate colorblind “racial projects”8 and maneuver around rhetoric land mines of good intentions. Though liberals proclaim the audacity to give me a space to speak, I note the subtle subtext. “Speak softly and carefully. Don’t interrupt my illusions of superiority.” America, that black face criminalized across your TV screen, HE’S MY BROTHER. The undeserving single mother supposedly draining the welfare system, SHE’S MY SISTER. The unfit parents you claim ‘just don’t value education,’ THEY ARE MY MOTHER AND FATHER. The students you claim are ‘unmotivated,’ THEY ARE MY CHILDREN. We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice . . . NEED SEE: The black body that stands before you is more than a specimen for research, seduction, or entertainment. It is not an object that inhabits some social problem to solve in your labor market, not black bodies to fear, imprison, or deem expendable. IT’S FIVE-FIFTHS HUMAN.9 AMEND ME. AMEND US. AMEND WE. FIVEFIFTHS HUMAN. EQUALLY HUMAN.

This piece is a reflection on the process of being objectified. It is an “exploration of one’s place” and acts as a form of resistance to “othering” . . . (Burdell and Swadener, 1999) in the learning space I navigate (Jennings and Lynn, 2005). More than bestow theoretical products, the tenor embodies a practice of liberatory learning. Liberatory pedagogy involves resisting and challenging predominant ideas and structures, daily self-affirmation, dialogue, and learning the importance of African culture (Lynn, 1999, 2004). It is a negotiation of power in classrooms. Still, challenging predominant ideas and structures creates reactions. To interpret these reactions I looked to Picower’s “tools of whiteness” (2009). Tools of whiteness—emotional, ideological, and performative postures— “maintain dominant and stereotypical understandings of race” (Picower, 2009, p. 197). “Tools” suggest instruments used to accomplish a task. Moving beyond an idea of whiteness to how whiteness is enacted, she suggests whiteness manifests in two forms: in a set of rhetorical postures and as “hegemonic stories” (i.e., black people are criminals). An emotional posture presents when one regards an analysis of race as a personal attack and feels guilt. An ideological posture appears when one thinks of themselves as innocent of ‘past’ racial injustices and when one thinks ‘just being nice,’ just being a good person, and having good intentions are enough to counter institutional, societal injustices. A performative posture occurs when one chooses

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to remain silent when race is foregrounded. In Picower’s (2009) qualitative study of white pre-service teachers/graduate students, she, a white woman, found that white students relied on these tools when there were challenges to their “internalized ways of making meaning about” race and difference or what she calls “hegemonic stories” (p. 202). Hegemonic stories involve a narrative of fear (of primarily black Americans in her study), deficit schema of communities of color, and the appraisal of self as a victim (of reverse racism and of violent attacks by people of color). Picower (2009) suggests that these tools and stories are not merely “a passive resistance to” (p. 197). In fact, she suggests tools of whiteness and hegemonic stories are “an active protection of . . . white supremacy” (p. 197). Therefore, similar to liberatory learning practices, the employment of tools of whiteness in learning spaces is a way of negotiating power. I have presented four ways power is negotiated in learning spaces. Students navigate a culture of power, objectification, practices of liberatory learning, and tools of whiteness. While we get a sense of these power negotiation strategies, I seek to add four insights: (a) three ways a black female is objectified and interpreted in learning spaces, (b) eight participatory routines and roles taken up by teachers and learners who engage in racecentric, race-avoidant, and seemingly race-neutral academic tasks, (c) three patterns in student disposition, and (d) nine implications for pedagogical responsibility. Findings “I am an invisible [wo]man . . . I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me” (Ellison, 1952, p. 3). My black, female body is objectified and interpreted as an aggressor, anomaly, and awry in predominantly white learning spaces. Aggressor: According to teacher assistant evaluations, some students felt they “could not speak in ways which contradicted [my] stated positions without risking [me] attacking their statements.” Others noted that despite my “few contributions,” that I “dominated the pace and direction of the discussion.” Comments in teacher evaluations suggest that students felt I exercise “too much power . . . [that I have] such a strong, black presence, . . . a strong assertive presence”—explaining that “she is intimidating” and that there was “an odd power dynamic that made it somewhat difficult to push back on her position.” Students add, she “made me uncomfortable,” she “makes some of the students in the class feel that they could not speak in ways which contradicted her.” One student thought, “It is clear that she knows her stuff, but she makes you feel like you have to earn it or that you owe her for it.” An undertone of aggression and a vague supposition of violence

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underlie notions of “risk,” “strong,” “intimidating,” “attacking their statements,” and “making” others feel or do less (i.e., talk). Another white, male colleague asked, “How does it feel to have so much power?” I responded, “When white people have it, they seem to enjoy it more . . . ” These data present two contrasts. The first contrast is the infrequency of my contributions yet the perception that they “dominated” the pace and direction of the dialogue. Underlying this statement is a supposition that even in my silence, I was seen as a threat. This notion is supported in at least two ways. First, there are several comments on my presence as a “strong, black presence” or “strong, assertive presence.” Second, there are occasions where students unexpectedly approached me post-class and said, “you didn’t speak today,” then quietly waited for a response. While I did not know what answer was expected, I felt under surveillance. In these expressions, I sense an underlying sense of fear and anxiety. I wondered, do they fear conflict? Disagreement? Or might they have some irrational (perhaps, unconscious) notion that there would be some form of violence actually committed by me? It makes sitting in a class with me reminiscent of white women pulling their purse closer when passing black men on the street or locking their doors upon seeing a black male walk by. I am male-d. Either way, it is reminiscent of a preoccupation with stereotypical imagery rather than a real (racial) threat (Kinder and Sears, 1981). A second contrast is between my alleged power in classrooms and my power in the real world. The idea of me having a commanding position over my colleagues seems unbefitting in several ways. First, the supposed superordinate position contrasts the typical subordinate position of my race, gender, and low-income upbringing. Second, it ignores how I am numerically outnumbered racially in the classroom and in terms of the ideas I put forth. Third, it overlooks the positional authority figure in the classroom, the (typically white male or female) professors and teaching assistants. Fourth, it disregards the power asymmetry in primarily Eurocentric texts on the syllabi, instructional modalities, and knowledge validation processes. If all of these forms of disproportionate power are acknowledged in the classroom, what excessive powers do I really have? What purpose is accomplished by recognizing or augmenting my power and disregarding or abating their own power? Anomaly: According to informal conversations among student-colleagues and me, I embody an anomaly that is both an attraction and aversion. I am often assigned two roles: an arbiter (a person empowered to decide matters) and a beacon (a guide or warning signal). The role of arbiter is most apparent in a comment from a white, female professor, who said, “it seems that you have become the arbiter of who is racist and who is not.” On another occasion, one white, male student-colleague asked me if I would validate that he is not racist. I asked if he sought this validation from other black

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students and faculty and he replied, “no, just from you.” In several other instances, more than a few different student-colleagues have offered, “The [often white, female] professor looks to you for validation during class.” In addition to arbiter, I am also assigned the role of beacon. I choose beacon because it appears that I am often “looked to” for something. For example, a Latino, male colleague said, “I look to you in class because I know something is wrong here and I think you will tell us.” On another occasion, four, different student-colleagues (two white, two Asian, 3 women, one male) over the course of a week unexpectedly approached me after a class on research methods. They each shared, “I’ve been watching you for the past couple of weeks and I notice you only speak up in the last five minutes of class. Why don’t you speak up sooner?” In a different example, one evening, a white, female student colleague and I were talking. She offered, “I look at your face some times and I don’t know what you’re thinking. I find you unpredictable and hard to read.” “I look to you,” “I’ve been watching you,” and “I look at your face,” suggest a hypervisibility, an element of surveillance, and a sense of exceptionality. It acknowledges “a gaze of difference,” if you will (Jackson, 2006). A gaze of difference is “a specular event,” that “involves admitting the visibility of difference, but remaining troubled by it” (p. 10). Though gazes can be impartial, the “interplay of race relations and corporeal zones, such as that of skin color and hair texture, automatically evoke feelings, thoughts, perhaps, anxieties” (p. 10). This automatic evoking of feelings is confirmed in at least three ways, by automaticity of stereotypes (Blair, Judd, & Fallman, 2002), by perceptions of me as the aggressor, and by doubtful language. First, Blair, Judd, and Fallman suggest that the “automaticity of stereotypes” involves the efficient, uncontrolled, and unaware use of stereotypes to perceive and judge people (Blair et al., 2002) (See Figure 7.1). Second, as a

dark skin coarse hair full lips wide nose

African American

lazy musical athletic hostile

Figure 7.1  Automaticity of Stereotypes. Example of the direct association that may form between physical features and traits through their shared association to the category concept (Blair et al., 2002).

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dark-skinned black woman, with shoulder length locs, medium build and five inches taller than the average U.S. woman (5'3"), the stereotypical imagery activated by my “corporal zones” situates me as an aggressor. Third, there are traces of anxiety, doubt, hesitancy, uncertainty, and untested hypotheses in some statements. These emotional states can be seen in notions of me as “unpredictable” and “hard to read.” It is also evident in teacher assistant evaluations. For example, students wrote, “she could’ve been a bit more approachable,” “it was a little harder to approach her,” and “she occasionally seemed somewhat removed.” The use of diminutive language, like, “a bit,” and “a little” suggests triviality. The use of qualifiers like “occasionally,” “seemed,” and “somewhat” express a lesser degree or intensity. The triviality and lesser degree of intensity contrasts with threatening, aggressive, stereotypical imagery. This contrast acknowledges both an attraction and aversion to the anomaly. Awry: According to informal conversations between student-colleagues and I, unsolicited emails, and teacher assistant evaluations, I tend to go away from the expected. I am awry. Under this label, I play two roles: provocateur and catalyst. These roles are sometimes seen as negative. Students wrote in evaluations that, “She made me uncomfortable,” “[She] overstepped her role,” and “[She was] inappropriate.” Appropriate is from the Latin ad- “to” + propriare “take as one’s own” or “socially appropriate.” In my case, “inappropriate,” means that I do not “take as one’s own” what is considered “socially appropriate.” Judgments of me as “overstepping” or “inappropriate” involve underlying notions of my “place”—a set of boxes that I do not fit in, or schema that I do not match. The judgment of assertive is correct in its Latin form, meaning “insisting on or to stand up for one’s rights.” I do overstep predetermined roles. I am inappropriate. Still, sometimes there are contrasts between what students see and what professors see. One white male professor wrote to me in an unsolicited email, “I think both the content of your thoughts and the tenor of nonjudgmental intellectual curiosity with which you deliver them really make people slow down to think in a way that I have only seen rarely in other Ed. School discussions that I have been a part of.” These include times when these roles are appraised more positively. For example, students wrote, “Myosha always had provocative and thought-provoking insights to add during class. Her comments and suggestions always added to the depth of our dialogue in class.” Another student wrote, “She interjected in the conversation in meaningful ways that moved the discussion forward. There was never a time when Myosha spoke that I did not feel moved by her contribution.” Similarly, another student explained, “Some of the insights/comments she made in class were among the most powerful of the semester.” Likewise, a different student noted, “she offered clear and thought-provoking questions that help me think and re-evaluate my position.” “Every time that Myosha commented on something in class, her

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comment was a valuable and thought-provoking addition to the discussion. Notions of “thought-provoking” and “provocative” confirm that I troubled the status quo and challenged surface level discussions. These kinds of interventions into classroom dialogue can make me seem threatening, but they also produce critical learning moments. For example, after a class, a 60-year-old, white male asked, “How do you do that?” “Do what?” I ask. He replied, “The whole class will be on a train headed in one direction. Then all of a sudden you’ll speak and everyone has to get off the train to re-evaluate where it was going.” On a different occasion, a white, male colleague unexpectedly emailed, saying, “I just finished reading your portrait and had to tell you: I’m devastated by what it makes vivid for me. This is an enormous testament to your ability to have [create] a compelling portrait. On another level, it makes me take a hard look at my own portrait.” In a different conversation, a black, female student-colleague told me, “Sometimes when you speak you question the core of things, the core of people’s identities, professors’ twenty-year careers.” While some saw me as an aggressor or anomaly, others saw me as a catalyst, one whose “comments encourage and challenge the listener to think further about a certain topic or about oneself.” On teaching fellow evaluations students noted, “She interjected in the conversation in meaningful ways that moved the discussion forward.” “I looked forward to her contributions, because I knew she would push us in a new direction.” “[She excelled at] asking questions, probing, and getting people to think. Very knowledgeable.” “When Myosha spoke her comments completely altered our way of thinking.” With these kinds of intellectual dividends, it is challenging for me to decipher what I should do differently and what I should continue to do in the future. Regardless, all of these roles involve negotiations of power. Eight participatory routines and roles of teachers and learners who engage in race-centric, race-avoidant, and seemingly race-neutral academic tasks While I negotiate power in roles as an aggressor, anomaly, and awry, students (whether classmates or members of a class in which I assist faculty) negotiate power and engage in roles too. In the above analysis, we can see students in roles that include (a) victim of a strong, assertive aggressor, (b) objectifier and investigator of the anomaly, and (c) patroller of the anomaly and awry, seeking to maintain order. The victim is an emotional and performative posture (Picower, 2009). In course discourse, victimhood often manifested as students crying in class after a comment is made or a student leaving the room. The victim role is an assertion of power as it usually re-

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directs the discussion, turns down the “heat,” and stabilizes the disequilibrium usually incited by race-centric commentary. Under these pedagogical conditions, other roles and processes are triggered. First, there is typically an over-assignment of responsibility to a villain or victimizer. This person is typically the provocateur or catalyst, sometimes seen as an aggressor. Then there is a victim or the canonical, damsel in distress. The victim usually displays a lack of personal responsibility and agency. They project a need to be saved by authority figures and serve as a distraction. This role focuses the classroom group’s attention on consoling their tears rather than the storming processes expected in all groups. Complementarily, victims necessitate a role for rescuers. Rescuers console the crying peer, run after the person who left the classroom, and the professor or student who fills the silence and redirects the conversation. During such critical learning moments, silence is put on like a life jacket in a sea of ideas. In a time of class disequilibrium, it is as if everyone practiced one safety drill. There are also roles for those who appear silent. Bystanders (usually) sit in silence and talk about what happened after class. Still, there are the silent supporters, the peers who approach the provocateur after class to say, “I really like that you said . . .” The silent dissenters involve students who disagree but keep it to themselves. Sometimes they articulate their dissent of the pedagogical process at the end of semester on evaluations or privately meet with the professor. In addition to these during- and post-class interactions, there are the interventionists and the investigators. The interventionists are similar to the rescuers; they work to maintain equilibrium or the status quo. The difference is that interventionists do not act in the moment. Instead, they gather to meet about the provocateur and then approach the provocateur as a group to ask she/he to do things differently. Though the victim could do some things differently, she/he are rarely approached with the same intentions. The investigators approach the provocateur with a different agenda. They need to figure out the anomaly or provocateur. Investigators typically approach the provocateur to ask for an informal meeting. Investigators (students and professors) have been observing the provocateur for some time. Professors as investigators invite the provocateur to come talk to them or visit them during office hours, send unsolicited emails to the provocateur, and cold-call the provocateur, though they do not engage other students in this way. Three patterns in student disposition Given the aforementioned roles, there are three patterns in student disposition. Students experience judgment, disorientation, and irrationally fear retributive violence. On a teaching assistant evaluation, one student

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wrote, “I thought the tone of her comments in class discussion was, at times, accusatory. Much of what the TA said came across as judgmental and/or condescending. Her role in the course sometimes seemed to be to criticize students’ comments.” In addition, students expressed feelings of disorientation and speechlessness. One student wrote, “It was often hard for the class to respond to her comments.” Another student noted, “it [was] somewhat difficult to push back on her position.” Lastly, students irrationally feared retributive violence as mentioned before, in the imagery of the aggressor. These emotive dispositions of students often incite authority figures and rescuers to change the subject, superficially fill the silences, and typically halt opportunities for transformative learning experiences. Rather than follow suit, I interrogate these dispositions and the underlying assumptions of the content and tenor of “acceptable” answers. As a provocateur and catalyst, I can play the role of the “victimizer”— disturb the status quo, disrupt what I know to be “comfortable,” and question taken-for-granted assumptions. But there is an unspoken battle of values and norms. As a provocateur, I value a sense of progress over others’ sense of what is polite or appropriate. At times, I prefer turning up the heat when others want to avoid the kitchen. Rather than obey the politics of race-avoidance, provocateurs name racial phenomenon when the implicit rules are to use words like urban, low-income, disadvantaged or at-risk. Provocateurs speak with passion, discontent, sadness, and conviction, even when the implicit rules are to speak without emotion, distance, and “objectivity.” I carry a strong sense of urgency and a sense of what is at stake. This is definitely felt. One white, male student-colleague wrote in an unsolicited email, “You have no idea what a contribution you made tonight. To speak of ripples would be to underrepresent the impact—‘Waves’—perhaps more appropriate.” On another occasion a black, female professor told me, “When you speak sometimes, an earthquake rumbles through the room.” When I read research, I do not see some distant, group of children I used to teach in “disadvantaged” communities. I see my own future children, my community, and myself. When people hear me speak, no matter how infrequent, they hear anger, not a sense that there is something at stake. Sometimes, I wonder, what purpose does the aggressor assignment accomplish? While it sheds light on my impatience, does it shade others’ complicity? While it exposes my vulnerabilities, does it eclipse others’ insecurities? Nine Implications for Pedagogical Responsibilities Should teachers and learners hold themselves emotionally hostage for fear of some students’ wounded feelings? Should we journey beyond the emo-

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tive towards the existential and transformative? I compel readers to engage the latter question. Largely because “Blacks can endlessly participate in selfhealing exercises in an effort to retrieve custody over the total inscription of their bodies and the debilitating social conditions that attempt redefinition and confinement of their corpo-reality, but . . . inscriptions of race and racism are not entirely a Black problem; hence, Blacks cannot expunge them alone” (Jackson, 2006, p. 11). I encourage learners and teachers to: 1. Engage and challenge the provocateur, the silent bystanders, and the victim. 2. Ask compelling questions. 3. Incite learners to care deeply about our world’s challenges and incite them to grapple with them publicly. 4. Be brave enough to actually demand something of each other. Say the things no one would expect; ask the question you decided not to ask. 5. Expect identity abrasions and help learners wrestle with them publicly, as they strive to hear and think beyond them. 6. Allow cultural flexibility in linguistic and interaction styles. Students should be able to encounter these throughout the course syllabi, in the voices of (guest) lectures, class media, and pedagogy. 7. Permit teachers and learners to talk their anger, dissonance, dissatisfaction, and discontent with disciplined thought, however passionate. Fear not silence or passion; it is usually a good sign that the start of something compelling is taking place. 8. Be critical of what’s considered professional, respectful, appropriate, safe, or polite and know when these values are allowed to hinder progress. 9. Dare to do what others have declared impossible. Notes 1. “Racial microaggressions are brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, and environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults to the target person or group. They are not limited to human encounters alone but may also be environmental in nature . . .” (Sue et al., 2007, p. 273). 2. Micro-insults, one form of microaggressions, involve communications that convey rudeness and insensitivity and demean a person’s racial heritage or identity. Examples of micro-insults occur when a teacher/professor appears surprised that a Black student is articulate. The underlying message is that Blacks as a group are unintelligent (Sue et al., 2007; 2008). 3. Micro-invalidations include “communications that exclude, negate, or nullify the psychological thoughts, feelings, or experiential reality of a person of color” (Sue et al., 2007, p. 274). An example of a microinvalidation occurs

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4.



5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

when a person of color describes a negative experience at a restaurant and are told, don’t be so oversensitive or when one is told, I don’t see color. (DuBois, 1994; Sue et al., 2007). Racial battle fatigue is “a theoretical framework for examining social- psychological stress responses (e.g., frustration; anger; exhaustion; physical avoidance; psychological or emotional withdrawal; escapism; acceptance of racist attributions; resistance; verbally, nonverbally, or physically fighting back; and coping strategies) associated with being an African American male on historically White campuses” (Smith et al., 2007, p. 552) (Cobb, 2005) (Meeropol, 1939) (Omi & Wynant, 1994, p. 55) (Omi & Wynant, 1994, p. 58) Inspired by Common’s Be album (Lynn, 2005)

References Banks, S. P., & Banks, A. (2000). Reading ‘the critical life’: Autoethnography as pedagogy. Communication Education, 49(3). Blair, J., & Sadler, J. (2002). The role of Afrocentric features in person perception: Judging by features and categories. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83(1), 5. Cobb, E. (2005). Every little bit hurts [Recorded by Alicia Keys]. (2005). On Unplugged [CD]. Brooklyn, NY: J Records. Collins, P. H. (1990). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. New York: Routledge. Delpit, L. (1995). Other people’s children. New York: The New Press. duCille, A. (1994). The occult of true black womanhood: Critical demeanor and black feminist studies. Chicago Journals, 19(3), 591– 629. Ellison, R. (1952). Invisible man. New York: Random House, Inc. Foucault, M. (1984). The Foucault reader. New York: Pantheon Books. Jackson, R. (2006). Scripting the black masculine body: Identity, discourse, and racial politics in popular media. New York: SUNY Press. Jennings, M. E., & Lynn, M. (2005). The house that race built: Critical pedagogy, African-American education, and the re-conceptualization of a critical race pedagogy. Educational Foundations, 19(3/4). Kinder, D. R., & Sears, D.O. (1981). Prejudice and politics: Symbolic racism versus racial threats to the good life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 40, 414–431. Lynn, Jr., L. R. [a.k.a. Common] (2005). Be. Santa Monica, CA: GOOD Music & Geffen Records. Lynn, M. (1999). Toward a critical race pedagogy: A research note. Urban Education, 33(5), 606–626. Meeropol, A. (1939). Strange Fruit. [Recorded by Billie Holiday]. On The Commodore master takes [CD]. New York, NY: Brunswick World Broadcasting Studio.

Power Negotiations and Race    121 O’Connor, C., Horvat, E., & A. Lewis. (2006). Introduction: Framing the field. In E. Horvat & C. O’Connor (Eds). Beyond acting white: Reframing the debate on black student achievement (pp. 1–24). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Omi, M. & Wynant, H. (1994). Racial formation in the United States: From the 1960s through the 1990s (2nd ed). New York: Routledge. Picower, B. (2009). The unexamined whiteness of teaching: How white teachers maintain and enact dominant racial ideologies. Race ethnicity and education, 12(2), 197–215. Smith, W., Allen, W., & Danley, L. (2007). Assume the position . . . you fit the description: Psychosocial experiences and racial battle fatigue among African American male college students. American behavioral scientist, 51(4), 551–578. Sue, D. W., Capodilupo, C. M., & Holder, A. M. B. (2008). Racial microaggressions in the life experience of black Americans. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 39(3), 329–336. Sue, D. W, Capodilupo, C. M., Torino, G. C., Bucceri, J. M., Holder, A. M. B., Nadal, K. L., & Esquilin, M. (2007). Racial microaggressions in everyday life: Implications for clinical practice. American Psychologist, 62(4), 271. Yosso, T., Smith, W., Ceja, M., & Solórzano, D. (2009). Critical race theory, microaggressions and campus racial climate for Latino undergraduates. American Behavioral Scientist, 51(4), 551–578.

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CHAPTER 8

To What Extent Am I Part of the Problem? Strategizing Identity Politics While Instructing a Multicultural Teacher Education Course Cole Reilly Towson University

For more than a dozen years now, I have devoted much of my energy and myself to matters of social justice in education. What precisely that has meant, however, has not always found its way to the printed page. Perhaps this is because my approach to such matters habitually evolves, adapting as circumstances demand. I am forever in a state of flux. Although I have had ample opportunity to explore how the principles of social justice education play out in theory and practice (particularly in K–16 settings), my most recent work has been of particular interest to me. When the occasion arose for me to teach a graduate-level course in multicultural education, I jumped at the chance. After all, I thought to myself, for years now, so much of my heart, hands, and habits of mind have been tilling this Surveying Borders, Bounderies, and Contested Spaces in Curriculum and Pedagogy, pages 123–139 Copyright © 2011 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. 123

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soil already. I was enthusiastic about what the course might offer as well as how both the class and I stood to learn a great deal from one another. Little did I know this experience would catalyze a renewed process of critical selfreflection in me like no other teaching experience had. The first time I taught EDUC 660: Teaching in a Multicultural Society, I experienced the familiar waves of pedagogical pride and progress I associate with a strong beginning to any semester; however, since then, doubt and regret have taken up residence with me as well . . . staying longer than they have with previous courses. Their unsettling presence has not been entirely bad, but it has been humbling—making me increasingly self-critical as I reflect upon contradictions in praxis. Developing a curricular course that investigates the principles of social justice has provided remarkable revelations as well as unprecedented challenges; still, I do not presume such circumstances are necessarily unique to me. Surely I cannot have been the first to wrestle with how facilitating a Multicultural Teacher Education (MTE) course for K–12 practitioners may well test the instructor’s own thoughts and actions surrounding matters of diversity. Turning to existent literature for insight, I realized just how limited the perspective of most MTE research has been. Such scholarship has tended to focus primarily upon the preservice and practicing teachers enrolled in MTE classes or professional development workshops. The literature examines preservice teachers’ dispositions and levels of resistance and/or consciousness throughout such experiences (Mueller & O’Connor, 2007; Romo & Chavez, 2006; Ross, 2008; Thomas & Vanderhaar, 2008; Thompson, 2009; Ukpokudo, 2007). By comparison, far less relates specifically to graduate-level coursework with in-service teachers as the students. Still other scholars investigate how professional development in MTE impacts participants’ attitudes, capacities, and practice as K–12 teachers (Aveling, 2006; Case & Hemings, 2005; Cochran-Smith, 2004; Erden, 2009; Pennington, 2007; Raible & Irizarry, 2007). But for a few areas of overlap (Gordon, 2005; Juárez, Smith, & Hayes, 2008; Li, 2007) it seems that MTE research has paid comparatively little attention to the individuals who teach the courses.1 How are their/our teacher identities, dispositions, and levels of consciousness affected serendipitously in the process of facilitating MTE coursework? The following paper analyzes my own reflective and evolving narrative understandings of social justice as I teach EDUC 660 from semester to semester. In the immortal words of David Copperfield, “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero . . . or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show” (Dickens, 1997, p. 11). I hope this document invites a more purposeful dialogue with other social justice educators and teacher-scholars who face similar growing pains as they color in- and out-

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side the blurred lines of how best to embody and perform our roles as reflective MTE instructors. Taking Up the Master’s Tools? Although I had previously integrated themes of celebrating diversity and considering multiple perspectives throughout my other coursework, I was enthusiastic for the chance to delve deeper into such matters for an entire graduate-level, curriculum course. I was elated at the prospect of working with practicing K–12 educators as we might (together) consider the implications and applications such concepts may have in their practical work in schools. As I set out to plan the course, I borrowed upon the wisdom and experience of colleagues at my and other universities who have taught graduate coursework in MTE. Repeatedly they emphasized that I should be particularly mindful of teacher-class dynamics. In fact, they collectively offered tremendous insight into how courses of this nature may be characteristically complex in this regard. Many MTE profs report repeatedly receiving pointedly personal and unsavory student evaluations. Most MTE instructors I knew were female, more often than not women of color—a de facto pattern that escaped neither their notice nor mine. An unofficial survey of MTE colleagues around the country suggests this is often the case. Whether it reflects something intentional or merely coincidental, this is worthy of note. It is significant too that the vast majority of students enrolled in such courses tend to be white, Christian women of middle class means and backgrounds. Several of my MTE colleagues around the U.S.A. mentioned feeling as though their identity politics were effectively steering the trajectory of their teaching assignments—that they may have subconsciously been selected to lead such courses for tokenistic reasons, as resident others, who presumably understand the material better or offer inherent credibility to matters of diversity. Although many MTE instructors reported initially approaching such courses with enthusiasm that would rival my own, they routinely met with tremendous frustration each semester. Particularly when addressing certain, predictable themes foundational to the course. Without fail, a number of their white and/or male students would become vehemently vocal and unreceptive to particular concepts in the course (e.g., white privilege, colonialism, patriarchy). I collected anecdotal evidence while teaching EDUC 660 to see if my experience fit this pattern. On my first night of class, a Caucasian man enrolled in the course entered the room, muttering an offhand remark about getting ready to be blamed for everything—that he had heard about how courses like this treat

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‘white guys’ as if they are all either ‘racists or rapists.’ Oh dear, I thought to myself, he’s likely to be a challenge. However, by the midway point of class that evening, while we had paused for a brief intermission, this same student made a concerted effort to pull me aside and express how grateful he was to have registered for my section of the course. Having already highlighted several aspects of the syllabus by then, facial expressions throughout the room suggest a number of students were intimidated by the projected workload. He did not misread me as an “easy A.” I gather, however, he did not expect someone who looked like me—or perhaps like him—would be teaching the course. Throughout the semester I found him to be one of my most thoughtful and enthusiastic students yet—an active participant in all class discussions who willingly took risks, shared his struggles, and demonstrated growth. However, I could not help but wonder how much his attitudinal shift might be attributed to my physical appearance. Indeed, how might he have responded to the same course taught by a woman of color or someone whose voice/accent was less like his own? The demographic profile of my first EDUC 660 class (as well as for each successive semester) presents as fairly representative of most graduate classes within the College of Education at my university. Of approximately 20 students, all but one or two identified as female and no more than 25% of the students identified as non-white or non-Christian. No more than a pair of the students were raised outside the U.S.A. and neither class conversations nor written reflections suggest any students have openly identified as lesbian, gay, or bisexual—at least not to me or the rest of the class. Most of the students were younger than I am, but a handful seemed to be close to my age or older; these students tended to be parents. Approximately one third of the class was comprised of elementary teachers; another third taught at the secondary level, and the remaining students were occupational therapy majors. My students that first semester seemed remarkably receptive to many of the more predictably difficult course concepts I had challenged them to consider and/or confront. Having readily acknowledged my own male privilege—willingly illustrating this for the class repeatedly with anecdotal examples of the countless favors being a man affords me—may have allowed my students to more receptively consider and explore feminism. Many colleagues who instruct courses in multicultural teacher education had cautioned me that they routinely experience resistance when broaching matters of patriarchy. However, unlike my female contemporaries— many of whom do not necessarily identify as feminists, openly or otherwise—my male identity was perhaps less susceptible to dismissal as though I was ‘whining’ or ‘hated men’ etc. If anything, I was undeservedly patted on the back—as if recognizing and confronting patriarchy were ‘generous’ or ‘noble’ favors I was doing for girls and womankind. For example, I often

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hear students remark ‘Wow, you really get women’ or ‘I wish you could speak to my husband/boyfriend/dad, etc!’ It seemed as if my students presumed that the tenets of feminism ran counter to the interests of most men. My approach to having students unpack white privilege initially met with generally favorable responses as well. This is not to say there was no resistance. Although I was thrilled with the rather rich and sophisticated discussions of concepts that a number of more seasoned MTE colleagues confided they struggled to facilitate themselves—who could deny that how I looked and sounded played in my favor for how such ideas were received? I believe that without question, aspects of my job were made easier for me because of my raced and gendered representation. For example, my students have seemed receptive to in-class discussions of privilege. This does not fit the pattern for what many of my MTE contemporaries routinely face from their student during lessons or in course evaluations. Was it simply because I am a white man? There I was, sincerely striving to challenge and condemn the inequities of white and male privilege [among others], and yet I was also inherently exercising such privileges (regardless of my intentions) and reaping the benefits. Borrowing upon these unearned advantages, I took a calculated risk. Several lessons into the semester I assigned my students to read and respond to a particularly challenging and provocative essay by psychologist, Na’im Akbar2 (2011), Privilege in Black and White. Akbar’s position differs from other perspectives on white privilege that we considered that week (DiAngelo, 2006; McIntosh, 1990; Wise, 2011), each of which were more typical of the texts used in most MTE courses; coincidentally, those were all written by white authors. Those authors each make a concerted effort to expose a range of subtle privileges their whiteness affords them to persistently experience. All three authors use eye-opening insights and anecdotes to illuminate and unveil just how much they had mistakenly taken for granted, that people of color cannot. Many Caucasian audiences might predictably find such approaches to discussing white privilege less threatening. There are no pointed fingers of blame; each author holds a mirror up to him-/herself . . .  and perhaps the reflection(s) prove inviting, relatable, and indeed useful for the presumed reader as well. Presumably, most people of color are unlikely to experience a parallel phenomenon of ‘a-ha’ realization from these readings. Instead, they might just be pleased to see someone white acknowledging something about their experience that often goes unrecognized [and untreated]. Akbar’s (2011) tone is comparatively confrontational. He unapologetically resents white privilege, explaining, “it permits white people to define reality as they see fit” (p. 43). Akbar juxtaposes this with what he terms Black privilege.

128   C. REILLY Black privilege is a by-product of white privilege . . . Black privilege is the right to be angry! It is the justifiable right to be mad as hell, righteously indignant and consider that anger a legitimate, natural, and normal reaction. (p. 45)

He continues, Black privilege permits us to blame everything that’s wrong in Black lives as a consequence of white privilege. I can (with considerable justification) claim that Black people would be essentially flawless had it not been for slavery, racism, and the history of oppression. (p. 47)

As I had imagined it might, Akbar’s writing served as a provocative catalyst for the class to really wrestle with white privilege in a more challenging, less comfortable way. Rather than attempting to persuade readers to recognize the presence and significance of race-based privilege in their lives (DiAngelo, 2006; McIntosh, 1990; Wise, 2011), Akbar (2011) defiantly demands an apology from those who have benefited from white privilege. He wastes no subtlety, defying white America to take responsibility for its pervasively colonialist and racist ways. As students entered class that evening, ready to discuss our assigned readings, the tension in the room was palpable. The consensus of the class was that they could appreciate most of the points McIntosh (1990), Wise (2011), and DiAngelo (2006) make about white privilege—however, they felt Akbar (2011) went too far. A number of them rhetorically asked why I even assigned that reading; some told me that they were ‘pissed off’ by it—even a little “pissed off at me’, perhaps. “Terrific!” I said with a grin. “It’s healthy to read something that gets us riled up or pushes our buttons, from time to time. That sometimes makes for a more dynamic discussion and I trust we are due for one tonight. Let’s get started!” I suspect, from the perplexed expressions on the students’ faces that they hadn’t expected this response from me. After promptly highlighting the strengths of other authors (DiAngelo, 2006; McIntosh, 1990; Wise, 2011), in making the case that white privilege exists, the students launched into an attack on Akbar (2011)—not just critiquing what he wrote, but him as well. Many considered his manner rude and unprofessional. Some suggested he was ignorant- ridiculous even. To paraphrase one students’ remark, ‘If he detests America so much, why doesn’t he leave?’ Most of the class claimed that Akbar felt nothing but scorn, hate, and ingratitude for white people. A number of the students referred to him as a ‘reverse racist!’ One student compared the presumed chip on Akbar’s shoulder to that of some of her own middle school students of color who she feels ‘think the world owes them a favor or apology.’ A number of these remarks concerned me, and needed to be addressed. However, I appreciated the fact that we were venturing toward some tricky territory

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together. Clearly the reading had garnered a visceral response in much of the class—both in their identities as graduate students, and as teachers. There was some acknowledgement of their own experiential baggage and defensiveness, which impacted their connections to the reading. There was also some collective acknowledgement that it influenced the way they live their lives, and their praxis as teachers. I clarified that our course readings would continue to feature a pluralistic range of perspectives throughout the course. However, one of the ground rules for our class was that varying points of view were welcome, and would be treated as worthy of our patient consideration. I clarified that thoughtful critique was always encouraged, but ours would not be a space where we dismiss voices that are not often heard. We wouldn’t silence a voice simply because we find something disruptive, nor if we struggled to relate. I reminded the class that the same week’s readings included a piece where Jewish author, Studs Turkel (2011) celebrates former Ku Klux Klansman, C. P. Ellis, as a civil rights activist. What was it about Dr. Akbar’s impassioned analysis they deemed more offensive and unforgiveable than the deeds of a man who once recruited for the KKK? My students were caught off-guard when I suggested an outside observer might infer things about us if we, a group that was predominantly Caucasian, were too quick to discount non-white perspectives, when it seemed we 3 afforded considerable lenience and consideration to more ethnically familiar voices. With some effort, I encouraged the class to resist its instincts to disregard Akbar entirely, making room instead to reconsider his perspective less defensively and with more empathy for his experience. Indeed, much of Akbar’s (2011) essay highlights the personal frustration a student of color may experience if s/he feels his/her culture is invisible (or unwelcome) in an irrefutably whitewashed curriculum.4 Like Ellsworth (1989), Akbar felt disempowered by his education and he is eager to reveal the ironic hypocrisy of his field. As our discussion continued, conversation seemed to shift. I won’t say the class came to embrace everything about Akbar (2011), but they did thoughtfully engage with and consider the sentiment of his essay. Whereas most of the students could readily identify with experiencing many of the casual favors in McIntosh’s knapsack (1990), they came to admit they had not experienced the darker side of white privilege—how it feels to experience a curricular barrage of messages that systemically suggest you deserve less or don’t belong. Collectively, they confided that it was a challenging task to move beyond their initial impressions of Akbar—to sort through the cultural context for his angst-ridden approach and distill the heart of his message. Toward that end, we agreed that all students deserve teachers who are willing to make a similar effort to understand them and develop thoughtful eyes and empathetic ears to overcome cultural barriers.

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As one term of teaching EDUC 660 neared its end, I asked my students for informal feedback on the course and my facilitation of it. Since I devoted considerable effort into selecting a variety of texts to integrate throughout the course, I provided a list of titles for the 75+ articles, chapters, essays, websites, and film clips we had considered together throughout the term. I invited students to draw lines through the texts they found least useful and to place stars beside those they would hope I would use again with future classes. I was impressed to see that no one had crossed out the Akbar (2011) reading. In fact, more than two thirds of the class had placed stars beside it. This feedback reinforced my sense that the class had come to value and appreciate the challenge of a piece that pushed their boundaries. I hoped the class might also appraise the role I played, as yet another text, in their experience of the course. Our second-to-last class session began with a video excerpt of Tim Wise speaking about white privilege at Mt. Holyoke College (Wise & Jhally, 2008). In it he challenges the audience to consider why he is so frequently asked to come deliver such lectures. I am not standing in front of you, and you are not listening to me, because I am the most informed person in the country on racism or white privilege, not because I am the best speaker on the subject. I am fairly good, and I intend to demonstrate that to you . . . It is instead because I, and I know this, fit the aesthetic that is needed on too many campuses and too many communities around the country in order to come in and give this talk. . . . because privilege, the subject that I’ll deal with tonight, bestows upon me that advantage, and so, as a matter of responsibility and accountability, I have to own that up front . . . We will know that we have made progress . . . when a person of color can get up and give the talk that I am about to give and be taken half as seriously as I expect to be taken.

Following the video, we held a brief discussion regarding whether or not Wise’s assertion held water. We discussed the idea that many audiences (whether subconsciously or otherwise) may be less receptive to hear and consider some of the same ideas he discusses about white privilege if they came from the mouth of person of color. My students conceded there was more than a grain of truth to what he was saying. Although they were reluctant to admit this, many audiences (not just white ones) may find his an especially accessible voice (and face) for discussing such matters, because he is not a racial minority. As such, they argued, he would not easily be dismissed as someone simply ‘complaining’ about racism, just because he had experienced marginalization with regard to his race personally. The students then made connections to how they initially responded to Akbar (2011). I inquired as to whether the class thought that I too might have benefited from similar privileges throughout the semester. I asked whether any of them might have subconsciously been more defensive of certain ideas I

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raised if I had been, for instance, a woman of color. Of course, it’s the sort of hypothetical question for which neither they nor I may ever truly know the answer, but it made for a rich and reflective discussion. They mentioned feeling more conscious of my race and gender early on, but that those features of my identity seemed like mere labels or categories as we came to know one another. I also wondered if anyone initially doubted my ability to teach them about matters of race, gender, or other facets of diversity, given that I am, after all, ‘a white guy.’ Some conceded they did not at first expect me to know (or care) so much about so many aspects of diversity, but any hesitation they may have had about my knowledge or commitment to the subject dissolved by the end of the first evening’s class, when they read the syllabus and heard me talk. If indeed, my white, male body somehow makes certain topics ‘more palatable’ or ‘less threatening’ to even some of my students’ ears, how too does my own privilege then stand to both advance and inhibit the broader feminist and antiracist (etc.) goals of such a course? I am reminded of Audre Lorde’s famous quote: “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” (1984, p. 110). To what extent am I part of the problem? Furthermore, if my physical presence as an MTE course instructor inherently borrows upon certain favors afforded to white men, does it matter that I am trying to employ those privileges for the purposes of social justice? I should like to think that does matter, but just how, I am not sure. Certainly I am not suggesting there is one demographic profile for who should or should not be deemed most credible or desirable to teach MTE courses. I am inclined to believe it will take a number of us—people of all types and walks of life—coming together to employ every tool imaginable, if we truly wish to dismantle the structures of social injustice. Individually, any one of us may be part of the problem—and perhaps I am–but might we all be part of a collective solution as well? Practicing Strategic Hypocrisy? What I learned as I transitioned from my first term teaching EDUC 660 to the next, is that who is in my class may impact how I teach the course. On paper, the roster for my second class seemed remarkably similar to the preceding cohort, in terms of its demographic profile; however, group dynamics seemed radically different from one term to the next. A few prominent personalities emerged immediately that semester—each of whom happened to be noticeably more conservative5 than most of their classmates (or the previous class). In addition to being especially vocal, these students happened to all be married, white women from middle class suburbs; each identified as Christian and was especially active in her respective church.

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I began the fall semester more keenly aware of myself as an embodied representation of ‘teacher’—ever thoughtful of how intersecting facets of my identity might influence the way students read and respond to me. As such, the conservative presence in our class led me to choose my words and actions with increased care. It seemed only responsible that this remain a class where every student voice—even those not present—was equally welcome and up for respectful scrutiny. That term I observed flashes of growth from every student and they all deserved an instructor’s nurturing and attention. I wanted every student to trust that I was on his/her side in riddling through the complexities of multiculturalism in education. I foreground the analysis of my second semester teaching EDUC 660 with all this exposition because this context led me to be exceedingly aware of yet another6 aspect of myself that semester. However, as an openly gay man, who has been out since the beginning of his teaching career, I found myself in a newly awkward position. None of these conservative women realized I was gay. This much was clear to me, given some of the remarks they had made. In fact, I have every reason to assume they may have been less candid about their latent homophobia and heterosexism had they realized the professor was queer. Typically I don’t explicitly announce my sexual identity to students—no more so than my colleagues, explicitly or otherwise—but I do share a great deal about myself and I never deny being gay. In fact, I make a concerted effort to fold in a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, Queer/Questioning (LGBTIQ/Q) sensibility to all of my coursework because I remember how it felt to be a student who looked for alternative curricular mirrors, models, and mentors and rarely found them. As it happens, I exercise still another form of privilege I have yet to mention in this paper. Who I am and how I interact with most people tends to read or pass as straight—at least to those people who assume everyone is straight until something indicates otherwise.7 This is not something intentional. I’m not pretending to be ‘straight’ nor behaving differently than how I always have. I say this not as something I’m particularly proud nor ashamed of. It’s just how I seem to move about the world. How I look and sound happens to afford me considerable access in a society that privileges certain, heteronormative ideals of masculinity over other representations of gender. As such, I am often privy to people behaving differently than they likely would if they realized they were with someone gay. It’s a privilege in the sense that I am likely safer for it. My first partner was harassed and assaulted since his elementary years. This was long before he fully understood what it might mean to be gay, yet everyone knew he was ‘it’ and so did he.8 The second I heard him speak, I presumed he was gay, simply because his tone matched familiar stereotypes in the media at the time. He hated the sound of his own voice for this very reason and for

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years he felt shame about a number of his mannerism and affectations he believed ‘gave him away.’ For many reasons, life is often easier when one can move between straight and queer communities,9 provided s/he is able to do so without internalizing shame—feeling dishonest or duplicitous in the process. Is there merit in an openly queer professor (such as me) contemplating whether or not to strategically pass as straight for some of his students, if doing so might hail a more authentic [and receptive] audience for thoughtful discussion of LGBTIQ/Q matters? I ask because I can imagine how people might speak and behave differently if they thought it could affect how their gay professor evaluates their work. I’m not referring to anything flirtatious, but some individuals may feel they need to walk on eggshells, so as not to be read as homophobic. In many ways, this is not unlike how some of my previous students felt about the prospect of discussing race issues with a scholar of color. It is ironic that I find myself perhaps more closeted with regard to my MTE class than in any other aspect of my life—a course where all kinds of diversity are encouraged to be recognized and considered. Imagine, creating space for all other voices to emerge in complex class discussions of diversity, yet effectively silencing my own, minority perspective from consideration. In hindsight, I realize I may have done this the preceding term as well, though less deliberately, because I was not conscious of it. Throughout my second semester this became a studied effort. For instance, I would strategically approach all discussions of sexuality as though I were simply an ally/advocate of the queer community, but not as one of its members. I never lied/denied who I am, but I covered my footprints carefully. One evening in particular, made me question my professor identity. Like most any other week, my students needed to each submit brief reflective essays, in response to one or more of the readings, two days prior to class. That week’s readings focused primarily upon LGBTIQ/Q matters and a student who had repeatedly referred to herself as especially ‘traditional’ and ‘conservative’ turned in a reflective essay that surprised me. She highlighted her own experience with exploring sexuality—having long ago had a lesbian relationship. She maintains that chapter of her life ended when she accepted Christ as her lord and savior. She went on to explain how her ‘confused’ experience years ago offered proof that homosexuality is a choice that can be remedied—an unholy perversion to be corrected. She then compared homosexuality to addiction, incest, and pedophilia, employing the phrases ‘Love the sinner; hate the sin!’ as well. Beyond advocating that parents practice tough love by disowning their queer or questioning children, she peppered her remarks by repeatedly clarifying that she was not homophobic.

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Before class rolled around, I had thought a great deal about this student. As much as I was insulted by some of her words, I could also see it was not easy for her to share something so personal and vulnerable. To her credit, she had taken a risk by sharing her story with me. I did not expect her to out herself to the rest of the class as what others might term a “yestergay’ or ‘hasbian’ (Bevan, 2006), but I imagined parts of the conversation in class that week were likely to strike close to home for her. I considered how uneasy discussions of queering must likely be for this student, particularly because she seemed to find security in drawing hard lines and applying labels: sinner/sin, holy/perverse, support/disown. Beyond a mere blurring of such lines, true queering bends, twists, and teases such concepts—unveiling the inherent short-sightedness of these binary constructions for their roots in ignorance, arrogance, and/or fear. Given the comfort this student finds in relying upon boxes and boundaries as crutches to not explain but silence such contradictions, she was probably not ready to queer; doing so might stir up strong memories and emotions. Were I to have come out to her or to the entire class, I may have embodied a representational counter-argument to her ex-gay narrative. However, coming forward, after reading her reflection might lead this student to feel as though I had betrayed or tricked her—like I had willfully deceived her so as to establish a certain level of rapport, then swiped the ground out from under her. From her point of view, such information could feel akin to entrapment. In her written reflection, she had shared that she once identified with the larger gay community, so admitting she had left it–rejected it, even—presumable carries insult to someone like me, who is still a part of that community, and in charge of her grade. That night at class, I made a concerted effort to revisit the notion of ‘tolerance’ with the class. Tolerance was, by then, a familiar topic throughout the course. We had repeatedly discussed how tolerance falls short of acceptance—that most people do not strived to be tolerated. I tried to explain how some people’s core beliefs or faiths can make it hard for them to move beyond tolerance to acceptance with some aspects of diversity—and this seems to be particularly true for many with matters of sexuality or gender identity. For those individuals, maybe tolerance is a goal in and of itself. I was trying to construct such attitudes about tolerance as something other than hateful. If acceptance was simply not on the table, perhaps tolerance offered something of a compromise. Interestingly enough, at the time I was only conscious of the fact that I was creating a frame of understanding for others to consider such perspectives or circumstances. Today I recognize, I was also coming to terms with my own limitations in being able to accept her construction of homosexuality as merely a confused choice—a sin. Perhaps tolerance was as far as I can get with that for the time being.

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As it turns out, I may have done a good job of casting tolerance in a less negative light. To my surprise, this student announced halfway through the lesson that she was ready to give her testimony to the class. She outlined much of the narrative I had read previously in her written reflection, justifying her view of homosexuality as rooted in her faith, but not rooted in hate. As I anticipated, her classmates were shocked—as much by the fact that she had once had a lesbian relationship, but that the pendulum of judgment had then swung so far in the opposite direction that she now referred to homosexuality as a behavior of perversion and advocated for parents to be ‘good Christians’ and disown their LGBTIQ/Q children. Many of her classmates pointed out what they saw as hypocrisy in her words, actions, and justifications. My sense was that many had expected me to join them in their critique—whether because some surely realized/assumed I am gay or because I too must recognize this not-so-traditional student’s position as hateful and homophobic. Instead, I did my best to encourage discussion without making it about this student’s story. When she tried to use her story as proof that people can simply choose to no longer be gay, I countered that I would allow that that may have been her experience, but that most of the people I know who identify as LGBTIQ/Q would beg to differ. The class knew I did not share their classmate’s opinion on the choice versus orientation debate, but I thought discussion of the matter was more constructive than dismissing it. The discussion went round and round for much of the evening, but I never stifled the discussion and I never used my own story to disprove or challenge the student’s story. By the evening’s end the reformed Christian student came up to me and thanked me for making a space for her beliefs, even though she knew I didn’t share them completely. She told me that no other professor yet had ever gone to such lengths to respectfully disagree with her without silencing her position. I was glad that she noticed that I made every effort not to silence her and that her controversial position was no less welcome for thoughtful consideration in our class than the words of Na’im Akbar (2011) or C. P. Ellis (Stilts, 2011). In that respect, we had demonstrated a consistency of praxis. To this day, however, I question whether or not it was the best pedagogical choice to hush my own voice in this conversation. I know, as a teacher, that it’s not about me—that it’s not always about my opinion or my perspective. However, I wonder if my empathetic decision to advocate for one of my students effectively silenced the lone, proud, gay voice in the room. Given the lack of such curricular representations, did I owe my students something more? I would not characterize my choice that evening as selfish; on the contrary, I wonder what indeed I sacrificed personally by not speaking up. Might

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I have erred too far on the side of not dominating the space with my beliefs, my politics, and my story, that I amplified the wrong kind of voice? Were my pedagogical decisions strategic? Hypocritical? Both? Does my ability to pass [as straight] reproduce heterosexual privilege? Is my praxis as a gay, white man teaching MTE an exercise in social justice, social injustice, or a mixture of both? I continue to wrestle with such wonderings as I approach each opportunity to teach EDUC 660, and of course, no semester comes down to one lesson—not one choice but many. To what extent am I part of the problem? It is difficult to say; perhaps the solution comes more in the collective riddling of such complex questions together. More so than providing definitive answers that may not exist, I should like to think that pairing each well-intended action in MTE with candid, yet vulnerable, self-reflective analysis, we move one step closer toward a solution (should one ever exist). Notes 1. Of note, for a number of other academic fields, typically situated outside colleges of education, (e.g., African/African-American studies, gender studies), a greater presence of such scholarships does exist (Breeze, 2007; Frey, 1993; Jara, 2010; Pillow, 2002; Stanovsky, 1997). 2. Born “Luther Weems, Jr.,” Dr. Na’im Akbar changed his name after joining the Nation of Islam in 1971. 3. My choice of the pronouns us and we here is deliberate. I should clarify too that the students of color present made a point of initially distancing themselves from Akbar as well. 4. Even throughout his doctoral program his avant-garde thinking was discouraged, his research interests were dismissed, and the work of those scholars he admired was devalued—each a cold casualty of white privilege. According to Akbar, his professors would minimize or ignore the contributions of scholars of color [throughout history and around the globe] who also have advanced his field, in lieu of canonizing a familiar boys’ club of celebrated white and western voices. Theirs were the names his work was expected to reference and esteem if he hoped to be taken seriously as a scholar. 5. As many of my MTE colleagues can attest, students in these courses who refer to themselves as “conservative” often assume that affords them license to not listen or consider alternative voices. It is important to clarify that one can be both conservative AND socially conscious of diverse perspectives. These need not be constructed as incompatible positions. 6. Race and gender had captured my focus initially as undeniable facets of my visible identity that distinguish me from most other MTE professors. Absent shrouding myself in a costume or disguise, these markers are not parts of my person that I can convincingly hide. 7. My sense is that my body-type, grooming habits, and style are all likely factors, as my aesthetic (if I have one at all) does not happen to look like most of the

To What Extent Am I Part of the Problem?    137 mainstream media representations of gay men. One might say I’m not particularly fit, fashionable, nor flashy. 8. By contrast, it took me more than twenty years to realize I am gay and still another five to embrace a “queer” identity. 9. If there is privilege to the other side of that coin, perhaps their own realizations of being gay may be less confusing/conflicted than mine was. Who knows? Gay people who are unable to pass as straight [if/as desired] may have less need to come out to others repeatedly.

References Akbar, N. (2011). Privilege in black and white. In K. L. Koppelman (Ed.), Perspectives on human difference: Selected readings on diversity in America (pp. 43–49). Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon. Aveling, N. (2006). “Hacking at our very roots”: Rearticulating white racial identity within the context of teacher education. Race, Ethnicity & Education, 9(3), 261–274. Bevan, R. (2006). Gay today, hasbian tomorrow. GaydarNation [Lifestyle] Retrieved from http://www.rainbownetwork.com/UserPortal/Article/Detail. aspx?ID=14638&sid=91 Breeze, W. (2007). Constructing a male feminist pedagogy: Authority, practice, and authenticity in the composition classroom. Feminist Teacher, 18(1), pp. 59–73. Case, K., & Hemmings, A. (2005). Distancing strategies: White women preservice teachers and antiracist curriculum. Urban Education, 40(6), 606–626. Cochran-Smith, M. (2004). Walking the road: Race, diversity, and social justice in teacher education. New York: Teachers College Press. Collins, P. H. (1986). Learning from the outsider within: The sociological significance of black feminist thought. Social Problems, 33(6) S14-S32. Davies, B. (2003). Shards of glass: Children reading and writing beyond gendered identities. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, Inc. DiAngelo, R. J. (2006). My class didn’t trump my race: Using oppression to face privilege. Multicultural Perspectives, 8(1), 52–56. Dickens, C. (1997). David Copperfield [140th Anniversary Edition]. London, UK: Penguin Classics. Ellsworth, E. (1989). Why doesn’t this feel empowering? Working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review, 59(3), 297– 324. Erden, F. T. (2009). A course on gender equity in education: Does it affect gender role attitudes of preservice teachers? Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(3), 409–414. Fleming, V. D. (Writer) (1939). The wizard of Oz [Motion Picture]. In M. P. LeRoy (Producer). United States of America: MGM/Warner Brothers Entertainment. Frey, R. (1993). Can a white professor teach African-American history?—A personal perspective. Transformations, 4(1), 45.

138   C. REILLY Gordon, J. (2005). Inadvertent complicity: Colorblindness in teacher education. Educational Studies, 38(2), 135–153. Jara, B. R. (2010, October). The personal is pedagogical: (Dis)locating a male feminist subjectivity. Paper presented at the 11th Annual Curriculum and Pedagogy Conference, Akron, OH. Juárez, B. G., Smith, D. T., & Hayes, C. (2008). Social justice means just us White people: The diversity paradox in teacher education. Democracy & Education, 17(3), 20–25. Li, X. (2007). Multiculturalize teacher identity: A critical descriptive narrative. Multicultural Education, 14(4), 37–43. Lorde, A. (1984). The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. In A. Lorde, Sister outsider: Essays and speeches (pp. 110–113). Santa Cruz, CA: The Crossing Press. McIntosh, P. (1990, Winter). White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack [Electronic version]. Independent School, 49, 31–35. Mueller, J., & O’Connor, C. (2007). Telling and retelling about self and “others”: How preservice teachers (re)interpret privilege and disadvantage in one college classroom. Teaching & Teacher Education, 23(6), 840–856. Pennington, J. (2007). Silence in the classroom/whispers in the halls: Autoethnography as pedagogy in White pre-service teacher education. Race, Ethnicity & Education, 10(1), 93–113. Raible, J., & Irizarry, J. (2007). Transracialized selves and the emergence of postwhite teacher identities. Race, Ethnicity, & Education, 10(2), 177–198. Romo, J. J., & Chavez, C. (2006). Border pedagogy: A study of preservice teacher transformation. The Educational Forum, 70(2), 142–153. Ross, D. A. (2008). Culturally competent and socio-politically conscious teaching: A teacher educator works to model the journey to critical cultural competence. International Journal of Multicultural Education, 10(1). Retrieved April 8, 2009, from http://ijme-journal.org/index.php/ijme/article/view/71 Stanovsky, D. (1997). Speaking as, speaking for and speaking with: The pitfalls and possibilities of men teaching feminism. Feminist Teacher, 11(1), 10–19. Thomas, S., & Vanderhaar, J. (2008). Negotiating resistance to multiculturalism in a teacher education curriculum: A case study. The Teacher Educator, 43(3), 173–197. Thompson, F. (2009). The instruction and assessment of multicultural dispositions in teacher and counselor education. Journal of Invitational Theory & Practice, 15, 32–54. Turkel, S. (2011). C. P. Ellis. In K. L. Koppelman (Ed.), Perspectives on human difference: Selected readings on diversity in America (pp. 329–335). Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon. Ukpokodu, O. N. (2007). Preparing socially conscious teachers: A social justice oriented teacher education. Multicultural Education, 15(1), 8–15. Wise, T. (2011). Membership has its privileges: Thoughts acknowledging and challenging whiteness. In K. L. Koppelman (Ed.), Perspectives on human difference: Selected readings on diversity in America (pp. 345–347). Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

To What Extent Am I Part of the Problem?    139 Wise, T. (Writer/Speaker), & Jhally, S. (Producer/Editor). (2008). On white privilege: Racism, white denial and the costs of inequality. [Invited Lecture Recording] Northampton, MA: Media Education Foundation.

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CHAPTER 9

Dramatic Encounters The Role of the Private and Public in Understandings of Social Justice through Conflict Antonino Giambrone University of Toronto

The term social justice has become a catchphrase in education circles, with many schools, school boards, and faculties of education incorporating the term into their mission statements and curriculum documents. Indeed, diverse understandings of social justice manifest themselves through various approaches to education. For example, anti-oppressive, multicultural, and democratic citizenship education all, to various extents and with different emphases, claim to incorporate social justice goals. One way of exploring how various notions of social justice are understood involves using drama as an inquiry tool. Drama engagement, for example, can effectively reveal student understandings concerning diversity and identity (Gallagher, 2007; Neelands, 2006; Saldaña, 2005). Drama is an example of a pedagogy that can engage students in ‘generative’ conflict. Conflict is generative when it allows for divergent student perspectives and Surveying Borders, Bounderies, and Contested Spaces in Curriculum and Pedagogy, pages 141–159 Copyright © 2011 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. 141

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understandings to emerge (Bickmore, 2008; Freire, 1970). The improvised dramatic encounter then becomes a site of meaning-making (knowledge creation). Dramatic, conflictual encounters as events in which students embody situations and other people have the potential to serve as catalysts for creating and communicating ideas of social justice (Boal, 1979). In this article, I argue for the potential of the improvised dramatic encounter, one that engages students in (generative) conflictual situations, as a site of meaning-making with matters of social justice, particularly as these encounters connect to complex notions of private and public. I see schools, as potential sites of dramatic conflictual encounters, as mediating spaces between of the world of home, what is traditionally considered the private realm, and the world beyond schools, what is traditionally considered the public realm (Grumet, 1991). This argument is guided by four questions. First, how is social justice education conceptualized in the field of curriculum studies? Second, what role might generative conflict play in communicating and challenging understandings of issues of social justice? Third, how can drama pedagogy, as drama education associated with social justice goals, be used as an inquiry tool? Finally, how can improvised dramatic encounters become a means of making public students’ private understandings of social justice? I am particularly interested in elucidating the theoretical interstices between social justice education, generative conflict, and drama as both pedagogy and a mode of inquiry, as well as how such interstices reflect a complex understanding of the relationships between notions of private and public. What follows is structured around these core ideas, and provides a theoretical framework for a project that proposes to examine various conceptions of social justice education in elementary school classrooms and how diverse students understand issues of social justice. An exploration of the work of the artist Artur Żmijewski is offered as an example of how conflictual, dramatic encounters can be used as a site of meaning-making. Influenced by such an example, I propose a research design that engages students in dramatic conflictual encounters as potential catalysts for creating (and communicating) meaning about issues of social justice. This article aims to move beyond thinking about curriculum as structured plans with predictable outcomes (Tyler, 1969), or as strictly about content and instructional strategies (Schwab, 1970). It reflects a view of reconceptualist view curriculum studies that connects school and society and pursues emancipatory goals (Pinar, 1988). The arguments also reflect the (generative) tensions inherent in post-reconceptualist curriculum theory (Malewski, 2009) with respect to the ever-unfolding ideas that poststructural and postcolonial theories, for example, contribute to the field. Moreover, the arguments are premised on an understanding that learning and knowledge are constructed in relation to a learner’s previous experi-

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ences, history, and social context; encounters are understood as moments of knowledge creation. What follows, therefore, is speculative analysis of how views and understandings of social justice, conflict, drama (as pedagogy), and notions of public pedagogy might shape the educational contexts of elementary school students. I do not claim to relate how elementary school students view and understand issues of social justice, but attending to such an inquiry, I argue, should be the focus of future research. Such research would use drama as an inquiry tool, and consider, for example, how drama might serve as a catalyst for communicating ideas about social justice, as well as how students might engage their multiple identities with issues of social justice. This paper, therefore, lays the groundwork for future research. Social Justice Education Social justice education has been widely acclaimed as an overall goal of various approaches to education that address oppression (North, 2008). Oppression derives from the privileging of certain ways of being (particular identities) and the marginalization of others (Kumashiro, 2000). Across the field of curriculum studies, scholars have developed various frameworks to explain and teach about the causes of social injustices, and solutions for addressing them (Banks, 2004; Kincheloe & Steinberg, 1997; Nieto, 1996; Sleeter & Grant, 1994). These conceptualizations of social justice fall loosely into three areas, reflecting emphasis on: • Individual acts and attitudes (such as charity or tolerance); justice as a distributive problem (inequitable access to resources, opportunities, and/or recognition) • Critical analysis of the underlying causes of social inequities; justice as social-structural critique • Social action, within and beyond schools, to address and redress injustices on a societal level; justice as social transformation Much social justice education emphasizes goals of distributive justice (Boyles, Carussi, & Attick, 2009) and equality of recognition (North, 2008). Such goals frame social justice as equal distribution of material resources, and equal access to opportunities such as education. While redressing inequitable access to resources and opportunities is a key component of justice, the systemic issues that cause such inequality remain unchallenged, and therefore, continue. A more complete view of social justice would also aim to expose the underlying causes of oppression and to challenge inequitable power structures.

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To provoke learning that engages students in working toward social justice goals, it is necessary for curriculum to involve critical dialogue that addresses social inequalities and fosters action in and beyond schools. Such approaches to social justice education are embedded in critical pedagogy, based on the work of Paulo Freire (1970; 1998a). Central is Freire’s (1970) notion of conscientization—development of critical self-consciousness through students and teachers engaging in dialogue with the goal of critically examining societal power relationships. What Banks (2004) calls transformative multicultural education, and Westheimer & Kahne (2004) call justice-oriented citizenship education, emphasizes preparing students to improve society by addressing inequities through critical analysis of social justice issues. Rather than fostering “passive” individual empathy (Boler, 1999), this approach aims to develop skills to critique social structures and awareness of assumptions and biases embedded in dominant culture. Westheimer and Kahne’s (2004) study of how various conceptions of citizenship are enacted by students in different contexts, shows that knowledge fostered in a curriculum that used a critical, justice-oriented approach did not necessarily lead to real-life social action. Conversely, an approach that focused on facilitating student action did not necessarily translate into a critical analysis of societal power structures and the root causes of oppression. Thus it is important, in curriculum addressing injustices, to create opportunities for social action, but to also acknowledge the complexity and intertwining nature of approaches. Post-structural theory provides such a means of acknowledging such complexities by both offering critique and further insight to critical pedagogy, particularly by attending to the unpredictability and uncertainty inherent in teaching and learning (Britzman, 1998; Ellsworth, 2005). Critical pedagogy, moreover, has been criticized as an attempt to get students to think a certain way (Ellsworth, 1989). While post-structural theory complicates notions of social justice education in productive ways, it does not necessarily address colonization in all its forms (Tjeda, Espinoza, & Gutierrez, 2003). Post-colonial theory provides insights into the historical role of colonialism in the oppression of Indigenous peoples around the world (Bhaba, 1992; Spivak, 1996). Moreover, although Indigenous knowledges are important resources for any attempt to bring about social justice (Freire & Faundez, 1989), few approaches to social justice education have directly addressed past and current colonial relationships between ‘Western’ and other cultures. Seeking out culturally specific Indigenous perspectives in social justice curricula can lend to a decolonizing of assumptions that otherwise contribute to the perpetuation of injustices. I view social justice education as an approach that, rather than focusing on individual attitudes and distributive justice, interrupts assumptions

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about self and ‘others,’ and interrupts inequitable power relationships. Such an educational approach critiques societal structures and provides opportunities for students to act on critical awareness. Post-structural theory contributes to this social justice education approach and the acknowledgement and embrace of the uncertain nature of teaching and learning. Post-colonial theory provides a framework to also address decolonization as a goal of social justice education. Both post-structural and postcolonial theories acknowledge the multiplicities of identities inherent in individuals, and caution against universalizing or essentializing the experiences of ‘others’ (Mohanty, 2003). I argue that engaging social justice education through drama (e.g., Boal, 1979) provides opportunities for encounters that have the potential to interrupt current assumptions, societal norms, and oppressive power structures. These interruptions are (or, make visible) conflict. Such confrontation of various perspectives challenges the status quo, which facilitates opportunities for meaning to be created— such conflict is generative. Conflict Social justice goals require social change. Change, which can be seen as interruptive, provokes uncertainty and conflict (Bickmore, 2008). Conflict involves opposing interests, disagreement, or struggle and can involve competition for power and scarce resources (Davies, 2004). While conflict can be defined in various ways, it is not necessarily negative, destructive, or associated with violence. Conflict theorists (Apple, 2004; Bickmore, 2008; Davies, 2004; Lederach, 2003) describe the potentially constructive nature of conflict. The existence of appropriate channels and processes for dialogue, negotiation, participation, and dissent are key ingredients that may allow for conflict to play a constructive role. Thus, improvised conflictual dramatic encounters offer examples of a process that creates channels for dialogue, negotiation, and participation (O’Toole, Burton, & Plunkett, 2004), and also for interruption of status quo assumptions and relationships. Conflict, therefore, is potentially generative in curriculum—a means of engaging differences in perspectives, interests, needs, and experiences in a way that creates meaning, however uncertain, for those engaged. Bickmore (2006) found that curriculum mandates in various Canadian provinces tended to avoid conflict and discourage critical disruption (although curricula did not disallow critical conflict education entirely). Social studies, health, and language arts curricula usually emphasize values associated with social harmony, and appear to promote assimilation over democratic engagement. Such avoidance of constructive conflict in the name of social cohesion would tend to impede complex, critical social

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justice education by providing little opportunity for engagement with the multiple dissenting perspectives inherent in issues of social justice. Apple (2004) also argues for more positive attention to conflict in schools. Curriculum that presents conflict as absent or negative helps to maintain current societal power relations, and views students as mere “recipients of values and institutions” (p. 80), not as creators or re-creators of meaning and structures. There is pedagogical value to conflict, particularly as a means of enabling students to challenge complex and repressive power dynamics. Conflict in curriculum has the potential to create new situations that might challenge assumptions—again, conflict as generative. Attention to conflict may create spaces in the curriculum for meaningful engagement in complex, critical education toward social justice. For conflict to generate dialogue and expression of multiple and dissenting perspectives, democratic educational structures are required. Ellsworth (2005) connects concepts of democracy and conflict: “New forms of encounters and the conflicts they inevitably entail are the raw materials that democracy needs to keep itself in the making” (p. 84). Particular types of pedagogy can foster such encounters that are so important to democracy. Good pedagogy, according to Ellsworth, is conflictual—it is a way to materialize the “space of difference between self and other” (p. 85). Democratic pedagogy is a means of eliciting and engaging difference to provoke meaning-making. Such pedagogy is uncertain and unpredictable, as it involves facilitating risks: “the putting of self in relation to the world and to others in order to test and to see what happens” (pp. 85–86). The improvised dramatic encounter is an example of a pedagogy that facilitates such experiential risks (conflict), to see what meaning can be created. Conflict, moreover, can offer what Benjamin (cited in Ellsworth, 2005) calls “productive irritation” (p. 89), which provokes a reconfiguration of how learners view ‘others’ in relation to themselves. Thus, selves, as multiple, are constantly being formed through struggles in relation to others (Fanon, 1967). Experiences involve the risk of irritation and conflict. Such experiences, in the form of dramatic encounters, open up unpredictable possibilities for the creation of new forms of the self. Part of the function of conflict in curriculum is to facilitate critical analysis of the structural forces that structure individuals’ actions. This implies that teaching would create opportunities for students to engage in difficult and uncomfortable situations, even in the context of conflict being typically suppressed by official curriculum. The potential for meaning-making, and creation of possibilities for action and transformation, are made more likely by engaging in conflict rather then suppressing it.

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Drama as Pedagogy as Inquiry My intent to challenge social injustice provokes my interest in mobilizing drama as a means of exploring conceptions of social justice. For the purposes of this article, I will refer to drama work embedded within goals of social justice education as drama pedagogy. Drama pedagogy is closely associated with applied drama, which has its roots in the ideas of Freire (1970). In particular, the theatre work of Augusto Boal (1995) applies the ideas of critical pedagogy to drama and theatre. Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) provides an apparatus for fostering conscientization by using drama methods to examine power relations, conflict, and social injustices. Learning through drama, therefore, becomes a means of overcoming oppression. An important assumption underlying Boal’s theory is that what is performed dramatically reflects real life situations as well as imagined possibilities, and that individuals have the capacity to influence reality. Boal’s work has been mobilized in various ways in drama education research. Drama education scholars, particularly in the area of applied drama, have also extended notions of power in liberation explored in the TO. Research embedded in TO has shown the complexities inherent in drama work with emancipatory intentions, exploring the usefulness of TO not only for the exploration of political structures, but for participants’ inner explorations (Howard, 2004; McDermott, Daspit, & Dodd, 2004; Shelton & McDermott, 2010). Exploring his use of TO in anti-racist pedagogy to confront white privilege, Linds (1998) problematizes the simple power duality sometimes implied in emancipatory theatre, framed as a conflict between the oppressor and oppressed. He examines how solidarity (alliances) can be fostered through using TO strategies. Österlind (2008) explores how Boal’s theatre methods might be a way to break the hegemony inherent in Bourdieu’s (1990) notion of habitus—people’s embodied history (linked to the culture of one’s social class) that becomes second nature and that is very resistant to change. Saldaña (2005) provides rare insight into how children engage with TO strategies, finding that Boal’s methods overtly revealed interpersonal power relationships within classrooms. These studies provide insight into how TO might provide a means of performing multiple identities, and as a way to confront and disrupt previously unquestioned assumptions and ‘habits.’ Beyond questions of emancipation, TO provides a means for participants’ inner exploration, whether or not they see themselves as oppressed. Based on Freire and Boal’s notions of emancipation, transformation, and empowerment, Neelands (2004) argues that dramatic encounters have the potential to provoke transformative articulations of difference. Thus, drama pedagogy provides tools to highlight the existence of conflictual social and cultural difference, rather than invoking celebratory notions of

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difference aimed at consensus and assimilation (as in some uncritical forms of multicultural education). Neelands’ (2004) view of drama education is “para-aesthetic” (p. 50), acknowledging the dialectic between the social and the artistic. In contrast, an “intra-aesthetic” view of drama education focuses on artistic and technical development, mostly associated with development of theatre skills. By reflecting social ideals rather than artistic and theatre competencies, para-aesthetic approaches to drama education are embedded in a critical view of social justice education. Such drama pedagogy acknowledges that power works through educational systems and other systems of representation—and insists that these be “subject to critique and ‘decolonization’” (p. 52). When reflective of para-aesthetic goals, drama pedagogy carries the potential to destabilize and decentre dominant structures and ideologies, particularly when enacted outside of the drama-specific curriculum. As with critical social justice education, drama pedagogy requires exploration of what is meant by transformation and emancipation. For example, how does the practice of drama pedagogy avoid imposing ideological frameworks in the name of empowerment (Ellsworth, 1989)? Nicholson (2005) asks this question of transformative claims in drama education, and offers the notion of ‘transportation’ instead. In ‘transportation,’ participants engaged in drama travel into a fictional world that offers new perspectives and different ways of seeing what had seemed familiar (Nicholson, 2005). Unlike the implied predetermined goals of transformation, the concept of transportation embraces uncertainty, where (although goals might exist) conclusions are not predetermined. Drama pedagogy provides a flexible space where identities and characters can shift and take action, while at the same time being restricted by the impossibility of ever fully knowing the strategies and limits of ‘others’ (Gallagher & Lortie, 2007). Indeed, drama pedagogy provides the possibility for encounters that serve as starting points from which to engage such tension (and conflict), not only as a tool to implement a liberatory vision of social change. Perhaps there are even further ways of understanding the dramatic encounter. A dramatic encounter, as an event, might be seen as an assemblage of fields. For example, Deleuze and Guattari (1987) theorize the notion of the plateau, as an assemblage, which in its multiplicity does not involve a division between the field of reality (the world), the field of representation (e.g., dramatic performance), and the field of subjectivity (the creator of meaning or performer). Such an assemblage develops connections between multiplicities drawn from each of the fields. While Nicholson’s (2005) notion of transportation implies a voyage—leaving and returning—I wish to explore other ways of moving as well. Instead of viewing the dramatic encounter as an opportunity to leave one world to enter another, it might be seen as “proceeding from the middle, through the

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middle . . . ” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 25). Such a view involves no real start or finish. The dramatic encounter then, is a ‘field’ that is inhabited— where the world, the performance, and the creator are the event, with all the influences, hopes, fears, and relationships contributing to meaning being made in that moment. The dramatic encounter becomes what Erin Manning (2009) refers to as a ‘technique of relation’ (Manning & Himanda, 2009)—an event in which meaning unfolds in the moment, unpredictable and uncontrollably, but with the potential for interruption and disruption of unquestioned assumptions and power relations. So while drama pedagogy upholds the idea that change through art is possible, notions of emancipation become limited. For example, I always wonder about who is being emancipated, by whom, and for what goals? Rogoff’s (2006) notion of criticality continues a similar line of questioning. Much emancipatory work is based mostly on critique and works to illuminate hidden conditions and reveal inequitable power relations. Moving beyond critical judgment might involve exploring the notion of how to produce meaning through “inhabiting a problem rather than analyzing it” (p. 1). Criticality is the notion of producing meaning as events unfold and a recognition that we are living out the very things we aim to analyze. It is a mode of embodiment that makes what we know and our experience one in the same, an assemblage of fields. Rather than finding an answer, the point of criticality is to “access a different form of inhabitation . . . a ‘living things out’ which has hugely transformative power” (p. 2). The implications of embodied criticality for the use of drama pedagogy in classrooms as a way to make meaning, particularly in exploring how meanings of social justice are created, negotiated, and conveyed, is significant. Dramatic encounters, facilitated through drama pedagogy, have the potential to become events in which students inhabit/embody situations (and “others”), where knowledge and meaning is created, and through which Manning’s concept of relational techniques can be employed within a dramatic event, with unknown, yet new realities produced. Such dramatic events, as sites of meaning making, are research events where drama is a mode of inquiry. My interest in the dramatic encounter as an event reflects a shift from a focus on artistic representations of research findings in arts-based educational research. In the drama arena, such representational focus is enacted mostly through performed ethnography (Denzin, 2003), ethnodrama (Saldaña, 2008), and readers’ theatre. While such work provides significant contributions to educational research, particularly with respect to the dissemination of research findings, I see drama as a means of engaging research participants in an “active participation of doing and meaning making” (Springgay, Irwin, & Kind, 2005, p. 898). Thus, I argue for the potential of focusing inquiry on the moment of interaction and meaning making. .

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Some arts-based drama researchers have begun to focus more on drama as process than as dissemination. Norris (2000) uses the playbuilding process as a means of generating data. Conrad (2002), while incorporating the use of ethnographic performance texts as a way to represent her data, calls her work a reflective case study that uses drama as a means of eliciting student understandings toward the media. Shelton & McDermott (2010) combine an examination of literature with drama, mobilizing the work of TO to dramatically engage pre-service teachers in examining their own perceptions of justice-based issues. Such work provides insights into how educators may be researchers, and researchers may be facilitators of dramatic encounters. Drama, therefore, has the potential to be a tool of inquiry. Fels (2004; Fels & Belliveau, 2008) has developed a method she calls performative inquiry, which frames curriculum as site of learning, and involves the researcher or educator in engaging participants in dramatic explorations as a way of exploring meaning (Fels, 2004). Drama pedagogy methods are an example of performative inquiry. Such methods facilitate moving beyond discussion and toward enacting: “the fictional, active, and even unconscious world of the drama elicits understandings and utterances that would otherwise be inaccessible” (Gallagher, 2007, p. 128). Drama as a method incorporates drama pedagogy as a means of eliciting such understanding, while also sparking the creation of meaning in the moment of the dramatic encounter. Drama is, in essence, a research act (Norris, 2000). Participants articulate, embody, and enact what they think, feel, and understand, and are then provided with opportunities to debrief and reflect. The opportunity to debrief and reflect on the improvisational encounters provide a further means for participants to articulate choices, motivations, and understandings of what they enacted and why. According to Henry (cited in Gallagher, 2007), “The structures of qualitative research and of dramas take innovative forms in which means and ends, through and action, intertwine in an unpremeditated, improvisational fashion” (p. 75). The nature of improvisational drama reflects an uncertainty, unpredictability, and possibility of conflict that make the dramatic encounter a site of meaning-making. It brings together complex conceptions of social justice education that emphasize difference, conflict that is generative, and drama education not focused on theatre as a form, but as improvisational encounters in a particular space and time—a public performance of private understandings. Public Pedagogy: the connections and implications for drama Drama provides a means through which to blur the boundaries between usual conceptions of public and private. While most discourses of public

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pedagogy have to do with “spaces, sites, and languages of education and learning that exist outside the walls of the institution of schools” (Sandlin, Schultz, & Burdick, 2010, p. 1), categorizing the role of the public as outside formal education actually dichotomizes rather than acknowledges the porous and complex relationship between what is considered private and public. Savage’s (2010) notion of “multiple and disparate publics” as “rubbing against each other” (p. 104) resonates with the way I conceptualize notions of public. The concept of public exists, therefore, on at least two levels with respect to this article: within the classroom, where the private is made public through performance (dramatic encounter); and, the influence of public pedagogy, seen as existing outside of schools, on students. Perhaps, as Grumet (1991) argues, we need to think of schools as “middle places, mediating the worlds, values, relationships, and languages of the private and the public” (p. 86), of the world of home and the world beyond school. For students, schools are potential sites where the private or “home” is valued, can be played out, and acknowledged as “a place of conflict, of improvisation, of shifting loyalties” (p. 75). Grumet’s view of the private as home, as our place of origin, where our “deeply felt motives, and the ideologies most intricately intertwined with our bodies, feeling, and habits” (p. 86) are rooted, points to notions of identity formation. It is possible to understand the home, or private, as the only root of our multiple identities or selves. Instead, it is necessary to acknowledge and value the role of the private in the formation of multiple and intersecting identities, particularly when private and public have been traditionally dichotomized into female and male, infantile and adult, with concepts associated with public being privileged. School, again, becomes the mediating space where aspects of the private merge with the public. The dramatic encounter might provide the tool for students to embody such private understandings in a public way, in the context of the school. Then what of the role of pedagogy that takes place outside of schools? Public pedagogy, generally seen as education that takes place outside of the institution of the school, plays a crucial role in facilitating an understanding of the development of student identities (Sandlin et al., 2010). Schools are not the sole sites of teaching and learning, and perhaps, they might not be the most influential. Giroux (2004) points to the powerful influence corporate public pedagogies of neoliberalism that, he argues, disempower citizens to think for themselves. Giroux calls for a countering of such public pedagogy. Some scholars have critiqued what they refer to as Giroux’s totalizing conceptions of public pedagogies (e.g., Pykett, 2009; Savage, 2010), but the powerful influence of corporate, neoliberal public pedagogies cannot be dismissed, even as we acknowledge that they are not the only powerful form of public pedagogy.

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Savage (2010) argues that schools, alongside and connected with more informal sites of pedagogy, offer spaces of opportunity for students to create knowledge and communicate understandings of social justice, particularly through the facilitation of dramatic encounters. Thus, local spaces have the power to “mediate the ways forms of knowledge are received and experienced” (p. 105). While classrooms and schools are not the only such spaces, they provide a mediating context for the facilitation of conflictual, dramatic encounters as a means of exploring student understandings of social justice. Facilitating the creation of meaning and communication of understandings of social justice through dramatic encounters provides an opportunity for the private and public to be placed in relation—for the notion of private and home to mingle with multiple publics in the context of schools and beyond. The facilitation of dramatic encounters is a form of pedagogy, one that allows for opportunities for “knowledge in the making” (Ellsworth, 2005, p. 1), as well as for a complex and relational view of private and public. Making the Private Public Through Conflictual Encounters: An example An example of an artist who openly seeks, engages, and facilitates conflictual encounters in an overtly public way is Artur Żmijewski. While his work is not drama, and the ethics of many of his pieces are questionable in my opinion, the frame of his methodology connects to my arguments for creating or facilitating encounters where unpredictable meaning is made. Disseminating his art through film, Żmijewski “orchestrates situations . . .  and allows them to unfold without determining their meanings in advance” (Baird, 2008, p. 3). Thus, he facilitates encounters under a predetermined context, but with uncertain results. To be clear, Żmijewski does not just facilitate encounters, he facilitates conflict, and while much of his work is what can be considered ethically challenging and morally ambiguous, the conflict is generative—it produces effects, a bodily response, although not necessarily positive ones. For example, one of his pieces involves the artist aggressively convincing a Holocaust survivor to re-tattoo his concentration camp number! A much more applicable example for my purposes here is Żmijewski piece Them, where the artist brings together groups of ordinary people with diverse visions of their nation, religion, and politics, and asks each group to create an emblem for their country (Poland) that reflects their vision of the country. After each group completes their emblem, each is free to

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modify the others’ representation. Such a premise creates a context that engages the participants in direct conflict with each other—specifically, the lighting on fire of each other’s emblem representations. The results are not ‘positive’ per se, but the work does engage those involved in a form of meaning-making that has the potential to bring to light how people inhabit a situation, without any predetermined outcome, where things are left to simply ‘play themselves out’ (Rogoff, 2006). While it is clear that work in schools should not take such an aggressive stance or engage students in destructive conflict, I do see possibilities for facilitating similar encounters as pedagogically productive, particularly if those encounters are dramatic. I am not sure about Zmijewski’s pedagogical intentions, nor do I know if, for example, after his artistic events, the participants have the opportunity to discuss, reflect, or express further the meaning made during the encounter—to further clarify their private understandings of what was shown publically. While I understand the actual encounters the artist facilitates as pedagogical and as sites of knowledge creation, I also see such a furthering of Żmijewski’s strategies as increasing the pedagogical and inquiry potential of the encounters (as creating new encounters). The goal would not be to resolve tensions and difference, but to further engage and make meaning, particularly as such work might relate to school contexts. A Proposed Possibility The example of Żmijewski’s work provides an intertwining of the core ideas of conflict as generative and post-structural notions of encounters as sites of meaning-making. The following proposed study aims to examine the possibilities of embedding an example from the arts field within the context of social justice education, facilitated through drama pedagogy in schools. The above theoretical framework lays the groundwork for the following proposed study that incorporates multiple qualitative, arts-based (drama) methods in order to generate data rich in detail and embedded in the context of schools. The study involves examining instances of drama pedagogy in multiple (e.g., three) classrooms (grades 4–8) in different schools in an urban, public school district. The main criterion for research sites pertains to the classroom teacher’s claim to use drama pedagogy in various subject areas (drama used beyond the drama-specific classroom), and to focus pedagogically on social justice education. The research participants are the teachers and the students in each classroom context. While teacher and student interviews will be used to gain classroom context and initial insights into how students understand social justice, the core methods of the study

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are centered upon a drama intervention with students in each site, and a performance exchange between sites. Drama Intervention: In each of the classroom sites, the researcher, in collaboration with the classroom teacher, will facilitate various improvised conflictual dramatic encounters through drama pedagogy influenced by TO (Boal, 2002) and applied drama strategies (Neelands, 2006; Nicholson, 2005). The researcher will develop a plan for the facilitation of the dramatic encounters in each classroom in coordination with each teacher participant. The purpose of the intervention is to elicit generative conflict through drama as a means of serving as catalysts for creating and making public private understandings of social justice. As an example, the context for Żmijewski’s piece Them might be recreated dramatically, but based upon a theme more relevant to the particular students involved. Multiple encounters will be facilitated and debriefed based on issues of social justice chosen by students and will form the basis for the development of short (e.g., five-minute) improvised performances by students. Beyond the performances, data will be derived from the entire process of preparing, performing, debriefing, and reflecting on the improvised drama work (Norris, 2000). Such methods aim to provide insight into how student engagement in the drama process might have elicited their understandings of social justice and what might have influenced those understandings. Performance exchange among classroom sites: Students from each site will recreate their improvised performances for students in the other sites, in order to elicit reaction and interpretation. Such an experience involves an encounter between audience and performers, and will provide a context for students to generate and ask questions of each others’ performances and motivations. The purpose of the performance exchange and subsequent data collection is to provide insight into how students engage their diverse identities with issues of social justice. That is, the goal of this phase is to gain insight into how students view themselves in relation to others, particularly in the context of issues of social justice, and how such views might reflect a relationship to the data that emerges from the drama intervention. The proposed study does not aim to be comparative, but aims to develop an in-depth understanding of the various sites as spaces where students experience and negotiate their understandings of social justice through conflictual dramatic encounters—where they make their private understandings public. Employing drama as an inquiry tool allows for the possibility of generating theory through spontaneous talk and improvised action. Such a method reflects the dialogic relationship between theory and practice (Freire, 1970; 1998b).

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Conclusion Rather than ‘liberating’ students, I am interested in the potential of engaging students in meaning making through conflictual dramatic encounters. The above analysis and proposed study attempts to move beyond approaches to social justice education in elementary school classrooms that remain focused solely on unquestioned notions of distributive justice, individual attitude shifts, and assumed emancipation. By theoretically exploring the potential of improvised conflictual dramatic encounters as a way to engage elementary school students in critical and complex social justice education, I hope to provide a foundation for an examination of how such encounters may serve as catalysts for creating (and communicating) meaning about issues of social justice. To inform pedagogical practice in schools, such an examination has clear implications for shedding light on how notions of social justice may manifest themselves in elementary school classrooms in North America as curriculum and teaching approaches. In particular, it has implications for what role drama might play in contributing to goals of various views of social justice. Such research would also offer models of practice in drama pedagogy that can potentially facilitate engagement with conflict as a generative learning opportunity. This can inform practitioners’ work, particularly in relation to pedagogy that addresses social identities in students’ conceptions and negotiation of meanings of social justice, as an alternative to attempts to manage or minimize conflict in ways that decrease engagement with social justice-based issues. A facilitation of generative conflict has the potential to open up the space between private experiences or thoughts and public performances of them, moving beyond dichotomized notions of private and public. Dramatic conflict, rooted in a complex view of social justice education, provides a meaningful context for student learning, and has the potential to be mobilized as an effective challenge toward myriad injustices. References Apple, M. (2004). Ideology and curriculum. New York: Routledge. Baird, D. (2008), The rubbish heap of history. (Retrieved May, 2010 from http://www. gallerytpw.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=100&catid= 5&Itemid=11) Banks, J. A. (2004). Multicultural education: Historical development, dimensions, and practice. In J. A. Banks & C. A. M. Banks (Eds.), Handbook on research in multicultural education (pp. 3–29). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

156    A. GIAMBRONE Bhaba, H. K. (1992). Freedom’s basis in the indeterminant. October, 6(1), 46–57. Bickmore, K. (2006). Democratic social cohesion? Assimilation? Representations of social conflict in Canadian public school curricula. Canadian Journal of Education, 29(2), 359–386. Bickmore, K. (2008). Social studies for social justice: Learning/ navigating power and conflict. In L. Levstik & C. Tyson (Eds.), Handbook of research in social studies education (pp. 155–157). New York: Routledge. Boal, A. (1979). Theatre of the oppressed. London: Pluto Publishers. Boal, A. (1995). The rainbow of desire: The Boal method of theatre and therapy. London: Routledge. Boal, A. (2002). Games for actors and non-actors (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge. Boler, M. (1997). The risks of empathy: Interrogating multiculturalism’s gaze. Cultural Studies, 11(2), 253–273. Boyles, D., Carusi, T. & Attick, D. (2009). Historical and critical interpretations of social justice. In W. Ayers, T. Quinn, & D. Stovall (Eds.), Handbook of social justice in education (pp. 30–42). New York: Routledge. Bourdieu, P. (1990). The logic of practice. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press. Britzman, D. (1998). Lost subjects, contested objects. New York: SUNY Press. Conrad, D. (2002). Drama as arts-based pedagogy and research: Media advertising and inner-city youth. Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 48(3), 254–268. Davies, L. (2004). Education and conflict: Complexity and chaos. London: Routledge Falmer. Deleuze, G. & Guattari F. (1987). A thousand plateaus, translated by B. Massumi. London: Continuum. Denzin, N. (2003). Performing [auto] ethnography politically. The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 25, 257–278. Ellsworth, E. (1989). Why doesn’t this feel empowering? Working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy. Harvard Education Review, 59(3), 297–324. Ellsworth, E. (2005). Places of learning: Media, architecture, pedagogy. New York: Taylor and Francis. Fanon, F. (1967). Black skin, white masks. New York: Grove Press. Fels, L. (2004). Complexity, teacher education and restless jury: Pedagogical moments of performance. Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education, 1(1), 73–98. Fels, L. & Belliveau, G. (2008). Exploring curriculum: Performative inquiry, role drama, and learning. Vancouver: Pacific Educational Press. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (1998a). Pedagogy of hope: Reliving pedagogy of the oppressed. In P. Freire , A. M. Araújo Freire, & D. P. Macedo (Eds.), The Paulo Freire reader (pp. 237–264). New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (1998b). Pedagogy of freedom: Ethics, democracy and civic courage. Lanham, MD: Roman and Littlefield. Freire, P., & Faundez, A. (1989). Learning to question: A pedagogy of liberation. New York: Continuum.

Dramatic Encounters    157 Gallagher, K. (2007). The theatre of urban: Youth and schooling in dangerous times. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Gallagher, K., & Lortie, P. (2007). Building theories of their lives: Youth engaged in drama research. In D. Thiessen & A. Cook-Sather (Eds.), International handbook of student experience in elementary and secondary school (pp. 405–453). Dordrecht: Springer. Giroux, H. A. (2004). Cultural studies and the politics of public pedagogy: Making the political more pedagogical. Parallax, 10(2), 73–89. Goldstein, T. (2008) Performed ethnography: Possibilities, multiple commitments, and the pursuit of rigor, In K. Gallagher (Ed.), The methodological dilemma: Critical, creative, and post-positivist approaches to qualitative research. New York: Routledge. Grumet, M. R. (1991). Curriculum and the art of daily life. In G. Willis & W. Schubert (Eds.), Reflections from the heart of educational inquiry: Understanding curriculum and teaching through the arts (pp. 74–89). Albany: State University of New York Press. Howard, L.A. 2004. Speaking theatre/doing pedagogy: Re-visiting theatre of the oppressed. Communication Education, 53(3), 217–33. Kincheloe, J. L. & Steinberg, S. R. (1997). Changing multiculturalism. Berkshire: Open University Press. Kumashiro, K. (2000). Toward a theory of anti-oppressive education. Review of Educational Research, 70(1), 25–53. Lederach, J. P. (2003). The little book of conflict transformation. Intercourse, PA: Good Books. Linds, W. (1998). Theatre of the oppressed: Developing a pedagogy of solidarity? Theatre Research in Canada, 19(2). Malewski, E. (2009). Introduction: Proliferating curriculum. In E. Malewski (Ed.), Curriculum studies handbook: The next moment (pp. 1–39). New York: Routledge. Manning, E., & Himada, N. (2009). From noun to verb: The micropolitics of ‘making collective’. Inflexions: A Journal for Research-Creation, 3, 1–17. http://www. senselab.ca/inflexions/volume_3/node_i3/manning_en_inflexions_vol03. html McDermott, M., Daspit, T., & Dodd, K. (2004). Using theater as pedagogy: Implications of dramatic approaches for democratic dialogue. In R. Gaztambide-Fernandez & J.T. Sears (Eds.), Curriculum work as public moral enterprise (pp. 96– 112). New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Mohanty, C. T. (2003). Feminism without borders: Decolonizing theory, practicing solidarity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Neelands, J. (2004) Miracles are happening: Beyond the rhetoric of transformation in the western traditions of drama education. Research in Drama Education, 9(1), 47–56. Neelands, J. (2006). Re-imagining the reflective practitioner. In J. Ackroyd (Ed.), Research methodologies for arts education (pp. 15–40). London: Trentham Books.

158    A. GIAMBRONE Nicholson, H. (2005). Applied drama: The gift of theatre. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Nieto, S. (1996). Affirming diversity: The sociopolitical context of multicultural education (2nd ed.). New York: Longman. Norris, J. (2000). Drama as research: Realizing the potential of drama in education as a research methodology. Youth Theatre Journal, 14, 40–51. North, C. (2008). What is all this talk about “social justice”? Mapping the terrain of education’s latest catchphrase. Teachers College Record, 110(6), 1182–1206. Österlind, E. (2008). Acting out of habits—Can theatre of the oppressed promote change? Boal’s theatre methods in relation to Bourdieu’s concept of habitus. Research in Drama Education, 13(10), 71–82. O’Toole, J., Burton, B., & Plunkett, A. (2004). Cooling conflict: A new approach to managing bullying and conflict. White Plains, NY: Pearson/Longman. Pinar, W. (1988). The reconceptualization of curriculum studies. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 10(3), 205–214. Pykett, J. (2009). Pedagogical power: Lessons from school spaces. Education, Citizenship, and Social Justice, 4(2), 102–116. Rogoff, I. (2006) ‘Smuggling’—An embodied criticality (Retrieved June 2010 from http://transfrom.eipcp.net) Saldaña, J. (2005). Theatre of the oppressed with children: A field experiment. Youth Theatre Journal, 19(1), 117–133. Saldaña, J. (2008). The drama and poetry of qualitative method. In M. Cahnmann & R. Siegesmund (Eds.). Arts based research in education (pp. 220–225). New York: Routledge. Sandlin, J. A., Schultz, B. D., & Burdick, J. (2010). Understanding, mapping, and exploring the terrain of public pedagogy. In J. A. Sandlin, B. D. Schultz, & J.  Burdick (Eds.), Handbook of public pedagogy: Education and learning beyond schooling (pp. 1–6). New York: Routledge. Savage, G. C. (2010). Problematizing “public pedagogy” in educational research. In J. A. Sandlin, B. D. Schultz, & J. Burdick (Eds.). Handbook of public pedagogy: Education and learning beyond schooling (pp. 103–115). New York: Routledge. Schwab, J. J. (1970). The practical: A language for curriculum. Washington, DC: National Education Association. Shelton, N. R. & McDermott, M. (2010). Using literature and drama to understand social justice. Teacher Development, 14(1), 123–135. Simons, J. (1997). Drama pedagogy and the art of double meaning. Research in Drama Education, 2(2), 193–201. Sleeter, C. E. & Grant, A. (1994). Making choices for multicultural education: Five approaches to race, class, and gender (2nd ed.). New York: Merrill. Spivak, G. C. (1996). How to teach a “culturally different” book. In G. C. Spivak, D. Landry, & G. MaClean (Eds.). The Spivak reader (pp. 237–266). New York: Routledge. Springgay, S., Irwin, R., & Kind, S. (2005). A/r/tography as Living Inquiry through Art And Text. Qualitative Inquiry, 11(6), 897–912. Tejeda, C., Espinoza, M., & Gutierrez, K. (2003). Toward a decolonizing pedagogy: Social justice reconsidered. In P. Trifonas (Ed.), Pedagogies of difference: Rethinking education for social change (pp. 10–40). Halifax: Fernwood.

Dramatic Encounters    159 Tyler, R. W. (1969). Basic principles of curriculum and instruction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1949) Westheimer, J. & Kahne, J. (2004). What kind of citizen? The politics of educating for democracy. American Educational Research Journal, 41(2), 237–269.

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Section D Troubling Capital and Deficit

There’s an old proverb that states: Wherever you go, there you are. As we trouble boundaries and borders around the issues of capital and deficit in American education I keep this proverb in mind because it suggests that while borders might shift, rupture, transform, or even downright dissolve, and that as we move across the sociopolitical and historical terrain of our existence, we bring ourselves with us. That “being” that is you or me, is not fixed or finite. Our identities are shaped by the racial, gendered, linguistic and cultural facets embedded within the socio-historical and political structures that determine what has “value.” As McLaren (1997) illustrates, [L]ived experiences constitute more than subjective values, beliefs, and understandings; they are always mediated through ideological configurations of discourse, political economies of power and privilege, and the social division of labor. (p. 287)

This idea leaves me to wonder, as we traverse in between the spaces of privilege, separation, and in(ex)clusion . . . while we focus on the negotiation of a boundary (whatever it might be), how do we (or do we) change in relationship to it? A “post-humanist” subject, one who challenges and crosses borders . . . is a subject that is constantly remade, reshaped as a mobiley situated set of relations in fluid context. The nomadic subject is amoeba-like, struggling to Surveying Borders, Bounderies, and Contested Spaces in Curriculum and Pedagogy, pages 161–166 Copyright © 2011 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. 161

162    SECTION D win some space for itself in its local situation. The subject itself has become a site of struggle, an ongoing site of articulation with its own history, determinations and effect. (McLaren, 1997, p. 72)

Each chapter in this section examines two primary questions: 1) how do we perform our identities in ways that disrupt the boundaries between manifestations of capital and deficit in schools and society? And, 2) do we move ourselves around, over, under, through or within those boundaries only to discover that nothing else has moved but ourselves? As the editors of these proceedings, we debated about the myriad of ways in which the authors interact with various borders and boundaries that are constructed by status quo and socially unjust policies and practices: transcend, transform, transgress, trouble, traverse, tip-toe, tight rope walk (playing with the T words). Whatever word you choose, I suggest that boundaries defined by capital and deficit, like the pink spots in the story of The Cat in the Hat (Geisel, 1957) that move from the bathtub, to the walls, and finally out into the snow, never fully disappear. Perhaps they change form, but they never go away. Deficit is commonly associated with difference in spite of two parallel, yet contradictory, myths grounded in commonplace American ideology. First is the myth of individuality as a strength in American identity; second, that difference is celebrated in K–12 classrooms—the “melting pot” metaphor of American identity. Deficit is defined as something that is lacking, and by logic, assumes that there is something that serves as a point of comparison in which that same attribute is “not lacking.” That which is not lacking is defined by the language of power, and is thus pronounced “normal” —esteemed even as an enviable model for assimilation. Difference is only perceived as an asset when it’s the “right kind” of difference, adhering to some ideal, which ironically receives popular support [i.e., the rebel archetype who “bucks” the system and plays by his/her own rules, and wins in the end]. The melting pot myth we subconsciously consume offers only bubblegum narratives of how a protagonist exercises his/her unique cultural traits to combat the antagonist, and becomes embraced in the end by the mainstream community, who now realizes what they saw as a difference might be understood an asset, not a liability. This second myth is more a tale of Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer than it is a real sense of difference painfully and radically experienced by students of color who face racism and oppression within an institutionally racist culture of schooling. Provoking boundaries might be easy, but issuing actual change in the deeper narrative structure of what (who) belongs and what (who) does not isn’t. Two chapters—one written by Ndemanu, entitled “The Influence of West African Languages on African American Vernacular,” and the other by López, Chumbes & Belden, called “Literacy sin Fronteras: Deconstructing Borders

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for Language and Cultural Inclusion”—consider the complex movements of borders and boundaries surrounding a particular type of marginalized student populations. These scholars focus specifically upon the circumstances faces by students of color whose linguistic identities are inextricably woven into the fabric of their access [or lack of access] to dominant culture. For such individuals, their language differences are socially constructed as deficits. In her arts-based perspective piece, entitled “Photos from the Wall Along the Mexican-American Border(lands),” Martinez uses photography as part of her narrative to explore the relationships between physical and cultural borders between Mexico and Texas. In effect, her visual narrative also troubles boundaries of capital and deficit centered around language in research. Without even reading the written text (thus requiring the reader to draw on the appropriate “academic language” to do so, as is common in most academic journals), a reader can engage with Martinez’s ideas through her photographic journey. The images reflect a “Chicana feminist epistemology borderland” embodied by the “geographical, emotional, and/or psychological space occupied by mestizas” (Bernal, 2004, p. 92). The images offer the reader a visceral change in perspective, one shared by the photographer. She writes, “The camera is my mouth while the photo is my voice.” While the wall has not moved as a result of her aesthetic disorientation from the norm, perhaps some of the oppressive attitudes held by current policy will. Martinez reflects: “I hope the reader of these images will begin to question how a nation came to a point where building a wall that can be scaled in minutes is the solution to our ever expanding pitfalls in immigration policy.” In “Anti-Racist Teacher Education Curriculum,” Williams offers insight into the ways pre-service teachers need to re-examine the hegemonic lenses of culture that create borders between themselves as White teachers of privilege and K–12 students of color. Issues of capital and deficit are interwoven with the ways that marginalized individuals and groups navigate the multiple identities embedded in the eye and I of who one “is”—how one perceives oneself, how others perceive him/her and how one perceives others perceiving him/her. Williams illustrates this point succinctly when she considers how White middle class females, still the predominant demographic in K–12 teacher education, perceive their identity in relationship to the “Other.” Citing Solomon, Portelli, Daniel, and Campbell (2005) she writes: A person’s identity becomes a lens through which they [sic] see themselves [sic] and which informs their [sic] understanding of others . . . that serve to mark one group as dominant and the unquestionable centre . . . that simultaneously marks others as subordinate. (p. 163)

López, Chumbes and Belden write specifically about the struggles for identity confronted by English Language Learners (ELLs) for whom Span-

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ish is their first language. These scholars challenge the politics of dominance through language in schools with bilingual students. In keeping with the argument of Bernal (2004) who writes, “bi-lingualism is often seen as un-American and is considered a deficit and an obstacle to learning” (p. 92) López et al. illustrate how empowerment of communities through bilingual programs can trouble the notion of deficit, transforming not the language of the oppressed but the dominant narrative around language; in essence through this counter narrative, López, Chumbes, and Belden charge that borders around public perception should redefine deficit as capital—strength from the margins. Using similar comparisons of socially assumed/consumed perceptions of capital and deficit in regard to language differences, in his chapter, Ndemanu describes the historical and current roles that Ebonics plays in school policies, highlighting clearly how the personal is political. What is public in policy affects the very personal nature of what students value [or are encouraged to value] or dismiss in their own cultural identities. Both López et al. and Ndemanu consider whether one should be willing (or required) to lose one’s cultural identity in order to conform to dominant social norms—to pay the price to gain access to social capital? Illustrating this point, Ndemanu deftly explains: Even though a good number of them grew up speaking Ebonics, they believe that not shunning it in schools will adversely affect their children’s ability to learn Standard English, an inevitable gateway to competing with European Americans in the job market.

And, how can counter-narratives from the margins demand the boundaries which keep out spaces for difference be challenged from outside, or from below, as in the case of grassroots movements? Sometimes borders are real in the physical sense. Other times the borders are emotional or psychological leading to physical manifestations. For example, López, Chumbes, and Belden describe the fear inculcated by the NCLB act—a palpable fear. Such fears are born from what dominant norms define as a deficit as well as fears that create deficit models as a result. They write: This blame game results in a public perspective of incompetent teachers, students and parents who are useless, inept, incapable, unskilled and ineffective. This is a deficit lens [MacSwan, 2000; Valencia, 1997) predominant in our present educational system. It postulates a self-fulfilling prophecy that can impact reality. (Reza-López, 2006)

The constructed lens of deficit is what manufactures the fear, and it is the results of fear-based policies that create real deficits in teaching and learning as a result. Some might consider this ironic. I call it fascism. The fear

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promoted by authoritarian movements such as NCLB pushes schools into one singular state-driven model of education which silences differences in langage and culture; favoring the elimination of difference by performing it in schools as a “deficite” to be eradicated, leaves students identities on the chopping block. The defcit model message is “conform or fail. The opposite of fear would be empowerment, transforming the deficit into capital. Grass roots means to emerge from “below” and perhaps force cracks in the sidewalks of hegemonic practices. López et al. write, “We hope this demystifies the university as a space ‘over there’ that is unattainable by people of color—i.e., the ivory tower. Hopefully, by browning the tower, it will be more attainable.” In the ideology of dominance, deficit equals blame and capital equates to solution. In other words, is one excluded because s/he possesses a deficit, or, is a deficit created as the result of his/her exclusion? Ndemanu challenges the historically held assumption that Ebonics is the result of physiological “deficits” in the word formation of Black speakers (making it a deficit in and of itself). Similarly, Smedley and Smedley (2005), as cited in William’s chapter contend that: [I]n the United States race is more specifically defined by the culturally invented ideas and beliefs we have about the differences in skin color, hair texture, nose width, and lip thickness that give meaning to the word race . . . In other words, race-based societies such as ours have a biologically discrete grouping of races based on the above-stated profound and unchangeable physical characteristics that justify social hierarchical ranking.

Further, Ndemanu contends that the dominant perception of Ebonics is what makes it a deficit. He explains how the term Ebonics was developed originally in order to disrupt the negative barriers that were placed on Black children by associating their language with terms such as “slang” or “abnormal.” Yet this seemingly well-intended attempt at border crossing—namely calling the language difference “Ebonics”—did little to lift the veil of shame for Black children, and instead became the new way to re-frame the same boundaries. Ebonics simply became the new, negative term. Once certain borders between inclusion and exclusion are shifted in a particular front, where does it move and what happens to the people who have been granted “insider” status? Ndemanu writes: Many African American teachers who have successfully gone through a formal education often use the same standards, comparative lens of mainstream culture, to judge the academic performance of young Black students since they have painstakingly crossed the river that separates the oppressors and the oppressed [Freire, 1970]. Since they are now on the side of the river of the oppressors, they can then tell the “Othered” (those who are oppressed)

166    SECTION D to work hard to cross the bridge in order to join their ranks; here, the myth of meritocracy is reproduced by convincing the “Other” to work hard to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

The image by Martinez’s work that I selected for a visual dialogue with this section on capital and deficit, entitled “Wall of Shame” speaks imagistically to the question of capital and deficit troubled by each author of this section: with whom does the real deficit lie? Williams brings this question to the foreground in her observation of White pre-service educators who “were able to speak to the power of other White individuals in their encounters . . . [and yet] . . . they did not verbalize their own White power in their encounters.” Perhaps in addressing this question, and in being continuously willing to critically re-examine how issues of power are never fully resolved, all groups, both dominant and historically marginalized, can resist the lull of hegemonic discourse, which tells us that borders no longer exist. You see, the fish is the last one to see the water. The relational positionality between “self” and boundaries of power and privilege might shape-shift in fluid unpredictable ways but they are ever-present like the water in the societal fishbowl. The authors here remind us all to be wary of the idea that such complex divisions of space can be simply erased, so long as we achieve a place on the “correct” side of the metaphorical or literal wall (whatever that may be) and are afraid to peer over at the other side. We might just see ourselves looking back at us. —Morna McDermott References Bernal, D. (2004). Using Chicana feminist epistemology in educational research. In R. Gatzambide-Fernández, H. Harding & T. Sorde-Marti (Eds.) Cultural studies and education: Perspectives on theory, methodology, and practice (pp. 87–107). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Educational Review. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: The Continuum Publishing Company. Geisel, T. S. [a.k.a. Dr. Seuss] (1957). The cat in the hat. New York, NY: Random House. McLaren, P. (1997). Revolutionary multiculturalism: Pedagogies of dissent for the new millennium. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. MacSwan, J. (2000). The threshold hypothesis, semilingualism, and other contributions to a deficit view of linguistic minorities Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 22(1), 3–45. Smedley, A. & Smedley, B. (2005). Race as biology is fiction, racism as a social problem is real: Anthropological and historical perspectives on the social construction of race. American Psychologist 60(1), 16–26. Valencia, R. R. (1997). The evolution of deficit thinking in educational thought and practice. New York, NY: Falmer Press.

The Wall of Shame

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CHAPTER 10

Border Inquiry Melina Martinez University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College

Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them. A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. (Anzaldúa, 1987, p. 3)

In her work, Gloria Anzaldúa (1987), a South Texas native, carefully describes what it means to live in a borderland. Her words acknowledge the space of constant transition embedded in daily life on the border. Together two federal laws, the Real ID Act of 2005 and the Secure Fence of 2006, make the construction of a fence along the U.S.–Mexico Border Fence possible. In 2008, I found out the Border Fence (Wall) will take up residents in South Texas. What I present in this chapter are the sights I witnessed in my immediate environment. During the wall’s construction (2009–2010) I was living in a house less than a mile away from the wall. As I drove to classes each morning I watched as a path was cleared for the wall. I watched as the wall began to take shape. I watched as the wall was completed.

Surveying Borders, Bounderies, and Contested Spaces in Curriculum and Pedagogy, pages 169–178 Copyright © 2011 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. 169

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Figure 10.1  Posts of U.S. Border Fence, Silver Gelatin Print, 8" × 10", 2010.

Figure 10.2  U.S. Border Fence Under Construction, Silver Gelatin Print, 8" × 10", 2010.

I began seriously wondering what a construction such as this would mean to the local community. Addressing the border wall as opposed to ignoring the construction is my way of responding to the issue. What is this structure? What does it mean? How did it come to be? How does it influence local communities? These are some of the questions sparking my curiosity and compelling me to act in someway. Being an artist, I began using the arts as a way of attempting to find answers. I started to film interviews with individuals having direct connections to the wall such as Dr. Eloisa Tamez, the first landowner who did not sign away her land rights to the U.S. Government, Dr. Terrance Garrett, an associate professor at UTB who has studied the U.S. government’s methods of response to crisis situations such as in the case of the Oklahoma City bombing, as well as home owners who live near the wall. I also started dialoguing with my own mother who has lived and worked on or near the U.S. border her entire adult life.

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Figure 10.3  U.S. Border Fence Posts in Grass, Silver Gelatin Print, 8" × 10", 2010.

The border wall became a theme of my art. Apart from creating paintings and drawings, I began taking black and white photos of the structure with a 35mm SLR Manual Focus Camera in order to create silver gelatin prints. The photos enter a state of inquiry. The photos are a record asking “what?” The photos are a way of telling a story from another perspective. Film and photography became ways of knowing and understanding the subject as an aesthetic text. I have created images with the purpose of creating a space where dialogue about border issues has room to emerge. I first saw the power of images and their ability to instigate dialogue in an art exhibition I organized in 2008 entitled Que Piensas? The U.S. Border Fence, For or Against? A heated discussion broke out on opening night. Upon reflection, I realized what triggered the discussion were the silent images hanging on the gallery walls. This was a moment when I realized that creating imagery would stimulate dialogue. For those with the ears to listen, the images would speak on their own. I interpret taking photos of this structure as an act of showing what others may want to keep hidden. According to Bull (1999): (T)he hidden is usually no more than a hypothetical condition marginalized by rationality. But for anyone who feels that there are things that they have not fully grasped, that there is something held back, that everything is not necessarily as it appears to be, this will never be enough. (p. 2)

The history of the border has a hidden curriculum (Anzaldúa, 1987; Brown, 1973). The photos are a way of showing different perspectives of the same concept as told from a different knower. The photos are a way of writing history as it happens. With curricular goggles, I interpret the name of the structure to be part of the hidden curriculum presented by the structure. The hidden being, “there but not yet revealed” (J. Dadds, personal communication, February 10, 2011). Along with the name of the structure (U.S.–Mexico Border

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Figure 10.4  U.S. Border Fence Bars, Silver Gelatin Print, 8" × 10", 2010.

Figure 10.5  Welds of the Wall, Silver Gelatin Print, 8" × 10", 2010.

Fence), one could consider the placement of the structure to signify a hidden curriculum. Before the walls construction, an analysis of demographic disparities associated with the proposed U.S.–Mexico border fence in Cameron County, Texas part of a larger paper released by The Working Group on Human Rights and the Border Wall identifies a hidden curriculum embedded in the construction of this structure. The Working Group conducted a study in which census data was compared to where “gaps” (in the wall) would appear and where they would not. The term gap is used because the barrier is not a continuous structure but interrupted by large openings. The Department of Homeland Security released a map indicating where the proposed fence would be erected. On the map the fence is indicated by a solid line however, there are also areas with a dotted line. The dotted line represents where gaps in the fence would exist. The Working Group took a map of pre-existing census data and compared the two maps to see if any disparities could be identified. Some of the factors, which the study compared, are education and income, race, ethnicity, and language, and citizenship and origins. The study found there were vari-

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ous disparities. Places marked for “gaps” had higher incomes and a lower population of Hispanics (Wilson et al., 2008, p. 152). In a panel discussion titled Seeds of Hope: the Border Wall One Year Later held at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College on April 26th 2009, the term used to describe this kind of phenomenon as the “gaps of privilege.” Dr. Elosia Tamez provided a prime example for how the “gaps of privilege” work. The wall has cut directly through Eloisa’s property. While a few miles down the road at a local resort community featuring golf, RV lifestyle, and a decrease in Hispanic population the fence abruptly pauses for the resort and then resumes its course. There is an enormous structure cutting through the property of poor Hispanic individuals intimidated to sign away their land rights and there is an enormous gap appear in the structures construction where there a wealthy Caucasian residing. Interviewing Dr. Eloisa Tamez helped me to understand the value of speaking up for what I feel is right. Dr. Tamez was asked to sign over her land to the U.S. government. She is a single individual standing up against an entire government. She has lost a great portion of her land but her solace now comes from speech. She says the government can take her land, they can even build a wall on it, but they will not silence her. No matter the odds or the threats, she is the woman who stood up to her government. She made a point to tell me that she loves her country and in the beginning of this wall ordeal she often questioned how her country that she had been loyal to her entire life could treat her this way. On one occasion as she asked this question a friend responded that her country was not doing this to her,

Figure 10.6  Land Meets Wall, Silver Gelatin Print, 8" × 10", 2010.

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Figure 10.7  The Wall’s Shadow, Silver Gelatin Print, 8" × 10", 2010.

it is her government treating her this way. Understanding the situation in these terms gave Eloisa clarity. She could still love her country while simultaneously disagreeing with the actions of her government. This realization gave Eloisa a sense of empowerment that she transmitted to me during our interview. She serves as a rich source of inspiration driving me to continue dialoguing about critical issues. Also at this panel, Dr. Garrett spoke to me about how the name of the structure helped make it possible to be built. He said the name “U.S. Border Fence” helps to put a friendly face on the structure. When a person thinks of a fence they might think of a structure to contain their dog. They don’t think of an 18 foot steel structure. It’s not a fence. It’s a wall (T. Garret, personal communication, April 27, 2010). When I brought up the topic of the Border Wall to my mother we began to exchange experiences. She mentioned how the city she lives in, Nogales Arizona, shares the same name as the city on the other side of the border, Nogales, Sonora. In cities like El Paso and Brownsville, Texas there is a river separating the people who live along either side of the border. Yet, as my mother describes: Nogales has the unique history of being divided by “the line.” I guess in many towns when the US was still forming the border was the river, which was already a natural “barrier.” However, in Nogales, families were divided when the border was “drawn.” People who originally lived just down the street from each other became citizens of two different countries pretty much overnight. There is no river barrier in Nogales the border is just an arbitrary line on a map. I think that makes the huge steel fence even more significant. (S. Sotelo, personal communication, July 6, 2010)

Nogales offers an example of how the unnatural “line” that is the border only exists as a concept. The notion of constructing a wall between two friendly countries raises complex questions. The construction of the border wall will have direct and indirect consequences yet to be discovered. The

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Figure 10.8  U.S. Border Fence Cutting Through Hope Park, Silver Gelatin Print, 8" × 10", 2010.

intricate nature of the national issue will require critical evaluation on a number of levels by a wide range of individuals. Autoenthnography is the perspective I take in this project. The rationale of autoethnography shares similarities with that of an investigator observing through the lens of a/r/tographical approaches to understanding. A/r/tography is based on the idea of coming to a point of understanding through the process of making artwork that otherwise would not have been possible through any other kind of inquiry (J. Dadds, personal communication, February 10, 2011; Irwin &Springgay, 2008). The idea of making art to answer questions illuminated the idea of designing inquirybased curriculum aimed at using the art making process as a way of learning through exploration. According to Irwin, writing for the a/r/tography webpage: A/r/tographical work are often rendered through the methodological concepts of contiguity, living inquiry, openings, metaphor/metonymy, reverberations and excess which are enacted and presented/performed when a relational aesthetic inquiry condition is envisioned as embodied understandings and exchanges between art and text, and between and among the broadly conceived identities of artist/researcher/teacher. A/r/ tography is inherently about self as artist/researcher/teacher yet it is also social when groups or communities of a/r/tographers come together to engage in shared inquiries, act as critical friends, articulate an evolution of research questions, and present their collective evocative/provocative works to others. (n.p.)

I seek to contrast the notion of “rationalist thought which imposes system and order, classifying and categorizing the world in dualistic terms, where individual consciousness is viewed as private, self-contained, and invisible” (Irwin & Springgay, 2008, p. 107) with a way of knowing the world that encompasses not one or two perspectives but several all at once. Through

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spaces of connecting with knowledge meaning is created (Koshy, 2006). My images are records of sifting through personal experiences to find new ways of understanding and knowing resulting in, “outcomes that can be seen to be individually liberating and culturally enlightening” (Sullivan [2004] cited in Irwin & Springgay, 2008, p. 109). From this standpoint I use photography as my means of research praxis. The camera is my mouth while the photo is my voice. I feel the understanding of the border wall I now have would not have been possible without the creation of artwork. The first time I saw the border wall I experienced an array of emotions. I had a sensation of terror generated from the understanding that this is the U.S. Government’s way of addressing immigration issues feels extreme. I felt tiny as though seeing the wall was like seeing the physical embodiment of modern government. There was a handprint that looked like it was left from a construction worker on a steel post of the fence. In comparison to the steel structure that handprint was like a ping-pong ball resting in the center of an arena style stadium. My spectrum of emotions expanded further as I took in the strength and size of the structure. My eyes travelled along the pattern created by the succession of steel posts. A massive industrial structure propped up at the boundary of a farm field. As I looked at the repeating posts, I felt small. I could see the wall and my own feet planted to the ground. Yet, somehow I conjured up an image that expanded my view beyond the field I was standing. In an instant I could see above all of my surroundings. My vision continued to expand until it seemed as though I was looking at a photo of the entire Earth in front of me. Seeing this image connected a realization that the site before me was completely my own. I felt as though other people would never see what I could see unless I made an effort to show them. The uniqueness of the experience I had upon my first visit to the wall stayed with me. I then decided to devote time to capture the essence of the wall through photography. I became enraptured in the process of working with a sense of

Figure 10.9  U.S. Border Fence in a Farmer’s Field, Silver Gelatin Print, 8" × 10", 2010.

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Figure 10.10  Plethora of Wall, Silver Gelatin Print, 8" × 10", 2010.

urgency. I do this work to generate imagery for understanding, imagery for sharing, imagery for acknowledging what is. The images would be my way of saying what I wanted to say without ever speaking a word. A year after creating artwork about the wall I started grasping how my understanding of the topic had grown. I began to see how following my artistic curiosity had opened up a world of understanding. For me photography became a form of literacy. In The Kind of Schools We Need, Eisner (2002) seeks to redefine literacy as “the encoding or decoding meaning in whatever forms are used in the culture to express of convey meaning . . .  literacy becomes a process through which meanings are made” (p. 581). For me, photography becomes a “theoretical, practical, and artful way of creating meaning through recursive, reflective, responsive yet resistant forms of engagement” (Irwin & Springgay, 2008, p. 107). History has been made in my backyard. The wall is here. The images are my way of documenting this historical and culturally transformative event (Sullivan [2004], p. 74 cited in Irwin & Springgay, 2008, p. 109). I may not be able to immediately make the wall go away but what I can do is generate spaces for dialogue about border issues to take place. What I see and what I know are real.

Figure 10.11  Wall of Shame, Silver Gelatin Print, 8" × 10", 2010.

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References Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands la frontera: The new mestiza. San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books. Bowden, C. (2007). U.S.–Mexico border. National Geographic. Retrieved from http:// ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/05/us-mexican-border/bowden-text Brown, D. (1972). Bury my heart at wounded knee: An Indian history of the American west. New York, NY: Bantam Books. Bull, M. (1999). Seeing things hidden: Apocalypse, vision, and totality. New York, NY: Verso. Campbell, L. H. (2005). Spiritual reflective practice in pre-service art education. Studies in Art Education,47, 51–69 Retrieved from Questia database. Clark, K. (2009). Budget cuts take toll on education: budget cuts have hit public colleges hard, even as the demand for a well-educated workforce soars. U.S.News & World Report, August 19, 2009. Retrieved from http://www.usnews.com/ Del Bosque, M. (2009, September, 17). Homeland security doesn’t know if the border wall works. Texas Observer, La Linea. Ericksson, L., & Taylor, M. (2008). The environmental impacts of the border wall between Texas and Mexico. Unpublished manuscript. Retrieved 2/2010, from http:// www.utexas.edu/law/academics/centers/humanrights/borderwall/analysis/briefing-papers.html. Garza, E. (2007). Becoming a border pedagogy educator: Rooting practice in paradox. Multicultural Education, 15(1), 2–3–7. Hendricks, T. (2007, January 08). Study: Price for border fence up to $49 billion study says fence cost could reach $49 billion / lawmakers’ estimate falls far short of total, research service says. San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved from http://articles.sfgate.com/2007-01-08/bay-area/17225174_1_border-fenceborder-patrol-arrests-san-diego-border Hise, S. (2008). Wild versus wall. Retrieved from http://arizona.sierraclub.org/conservation/border/borderfilm.asp Immigration Policy Center. (2009). Breaking down the problems: What’s wrong with our immigration system? American Immigration Council. Irwin, R. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://m1.cust.educ.ubc.ca/Artography/ Irwin, R. & Springgay, S. (2008). A/r/tography as practice-based research in M. Cahnnmann-Taylor, & R. Siegesmund (Eds.), Arts-based research in education: Foundations for practice (103–124). New York, NY: Routledge. Olson, L. N. (2004). The Role of Voice in the (Re)construction of a Battered Woman’s Identity: An autoethnography of one woman’s experiences of abuse. Women’s Studies in Communication, 27(1), 1–6. Retrieved from Questia database, http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5006413589 Wilson, J., Benavides, J., Reisinger, A., Lemen, J., Hurwitz, Z., Spangler, J., et al. (2008). An analysis of demographic disparities associated with the proposed U.S.–Mexico border fence in Cameron county, Texas (Briefing papers. University of Texas at Austin; School of Law: The Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice. (The Texas–Mexico Border Wall) Retrieved from http://www.utexas.edu/law/centers/humanrights/borderwall/ analysis/briefing-papers.html.

CHAPTER 11

The Influence of West African Languages on African American Vernacular Ebonics Crisis in Oakland, California Revisited Michael Takafor Ndemanu Indiana University

This chapter examines how language barrier complicates the fluidity of dialogic relationships between teachers and their students of non-Standard English backgrounds in academic arenas. As Gallagher-Geurtsen (2007) suggests, it is difficult for teachers to demonstrate love and care for their students when they reject their students’ home language like Ebonics. The term Ebonics which is literally referred to as Black sound and known as African American Vernacular (AAVE) is spoken mainly by descendants of slaves in the United States; it has long been ridiculed, derided, and styled as slang spoken by those from the ghettoes (Williams, 1997). According to some Surveying Borders, Bounderies, and Contested Spaces in Curriculum and Pedagogy, pages 179–194 Copyright © 2011 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. 179

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linguists and historians, Ebonics emanates from an imperfect imitation of European-American Standard English (Rickford, 1998). The term Ebonics was coined in 1973 by Dr. Robert Williams, an African American psychologist during a conference of Black and White Scholars in St. Louis, Missouri. The conference was convened to brainstorm on the cognitive and language development of African American children. These scholars converged to find ways to curb the misrepresentation of African American speech. To circumvent any further use of offensive and despicable terms like Black English, abnormal, dysfunctional, defective (Todd, 1997), and slang, conference participants decided to assign Ebonics as a name to this language (Williams, 1997). It was against this backdrop that the Oakland Unified School District in California set up a task force to study the causes of marginal academic achievements of African American students within the district and report their findings to the Oakland school board for immediate action. A resolution ensuing from the task force recommendations and adopted by the school board gave African American Vernacular full language status. The adoption of this resolution did not sit well with many people, including some influential Civil Rights activists because they thought African American children were going to be taught Ebonics in Oakland schools instead of Standard English, a dialect of economic opportunities for Americans. One of the strongest critics of the first version of the resolution was another African American, Rev. Jesse Jackson who said: While we are fighting in California trying to extend affirmative action and fighting to teach our children so they become more qualified for jobs, in Oakland some madness has erupted over making slang talk a second language. You don’t have to go to school to learn to talk garbage. (CNN, 1996)

Rev. Jackson made this statement based on the information he gathered from the media. When he understood later on that the resolution was out to facilitate the teaching of Standard English through the implementation of a training program that would ease teachers’ recognition of Ebonics, Rev. Jackson then softened his position and even blamed his earlier harsh criticism of the resolution on the mainstream media’s biased coverage of the Ebonics debate. Although he softened his position, he did not back down on the point that Ebonics is “a language pattern” and not a separate language. According to another influential Black figure, Maya Angelou, “the very idea that African-American language is a language separate and apart can be very threatening because it can encourage young men and women not to learn Standard English” (CNN, 1996). It is appalling to see how some members of the historically and linguistically oppressed groups have suddenly joined ranks with the oppressed. Is it because of their limited

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knowledge of the origin and history of Ebonics or it is inferiority complex at work? Having been intrigued by the similarities of Ebonics and other West African languages that I speak, I thought it was worthwhile revisiting the polemics in order to analyze some of the causes of its failure to the benefit of policy professionals and educators in general. I also thought it would be vital to affirm the influences of West African speech patterns on the English of most descendants of slaves. Most of the previous researchers on this issue have neither lived in West Africa nor do they speak one of the West African languages to easily make a direct and viable comparison between Ebonics and some of the African languages to determine the origin of the former. My background experiences as a fluent speaker of Pidgin English, French, and two of the Bantu languages, otherwise called West and Niger-Congo African languages (as alluded to in Oakland’s resolution on Ebonics), have enabled me to compare some of the grammatical, lexical, and syntactical structures of Ebonics to determine their relationships between West African Pidgin English, Standard English, and some West African languages. Based on these investigations, the study contends that the Oakland School Board had a legitimate cause by attempting to institute a program that would have facilitated the process of code switching between Ebonics (home language to many descendants of slaves in America) and Standard English, in order to cope with rigorous exigencies of state-mandated testing in reading and mathematics. Contextual Background Educators, psychologists, anthropologists, and sociolinguists consider language barrier as a huge factor to the underachievement of African Americans (Harper et al, 1998; Ogbu, 1999). In the wake of the past dismal academic achievement of children of color in Oakland in the 90s, reports from Oakland School District (1996) continued to show that African American students were outperformed academically by their white counterparts and other minority students in language arts and reading, and math as their average GPA stood at 1.8, the lowest for any ethnic group in the nation (Ogbu, 1999; Perry & Delpit, 1998). Specifically, in the case of Oakland Unified School District, 53% of the students are African Americans whose home “habitus” (Bourdieu, 1965) is very different from that of the school. The home language of many African American students is considerably different from the dominant Standard English commonly used in official settings, including schools across the country. Immigrant students in the United States whose home languages are not English take advantage of the bilingual programs and/or English as a second language programs

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(ESL) that abound in cosmopolitan cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, and other major border cities. Conversely, nativeborn black students do not benefit from similar Standard English remedial classes because what they speak is considered by the mainstream society as “bad” English that can be corrected. Although many Americans consider English spoken by African Americans as significantly different from Standard English, they do not think it should gain a full status of a language. The fact that Ebonics is not considered by most mainstream Americans as a separate language from English negates the potential positive impacts of the resolution that the board members of Oakland Unified School District adopted. Why the Resolution Failed: Review of the First and Revised Versions of the Resolution Although the failure to implement the resolution has been blamed solely on the media (Rickford, 1999; Taylor, 1997) a critical study of the wordings of the resolution also puts the blame on the school board as well. One of the failures of implementation can be attributed to the publication of the non-revised version of the resolution. The first resolution was loaded with linguistic malapropism and terminological inexactitude, which included phrases like: “Pan-African Communications Behaviors” or “African language systems,” and even the so-called “Ebonics” which literally means Black sounds. There is no gainsaying that the African American speech has been influenced by Bantu languages in West Africa, West African Pidgin English (known as Creole in the Caribbean) and Standard English. However, seeking the endorsement of a resolution with the afore-stated inflammatory terminologies was likely going to encounter a lot of resistance, especially in a society where there is almost a general consensus in what is considered Standard English and where it should be used. The most controversial of those statements was “African Language Systems are genetically based and not a dialect of English” (Oakland School Board Resolution, 1998, p. 170). This was an overstatement, which did not help advance the cause of the debate in Oakland. Does it mean an African American who is adopted at birth and raised in a White family will speak differently from his/her adopted family? No. African American children who live in suburbia and whose parents do not speak Ebonics will more likely not speak it either. Additionally, another reason why the resolution did not go beyond the confines of the school board was because of the influence of political power among speakers of the dominant language. There is no doubt that monolingual nationalists with marginal formal education tend to be very defensive when they feel that one of their cultural treasures is threatened. This

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explains why in order to appease his base, President George W. Bush could not sell his immigration bill to the public without including a provision that would make English the national language of the United States (Stolberg, 2006). As the Linguistic Society of America (1997) stated in their resolution on the Ebonics controversy: The distinction between “languages” and “dialects” is usually made more on social and political grounds than on purely linguistic ones. For example, different varieties of Chinese are popularly regarded as “dialect,” though their speakers cannot understand each other, but speakers of Swedish and Norwegian, which are regarded as separate “languages,” generally understand each other. What is important from a linguistic and educational point of view is not whether AAVE [African American Vernacular English] is called a “language” or “dialect” but rather that its systematicity be recognized. (p. 174)

The argument of the Linguistic Society of America is in line with Pierre Bourdieu’s reflections on the promotion of a national language to the rank of an official language which by the fact itself means elevating the speakers of that language to the class of bourgeoisie to the detriment of speakers of other regional dialects in France before the French Revolution in 1789 (Bourdieu, 1991). The Influence of Niger-Congo (Bantu) Languages According to Holloway (1996), many slaves shipped into North and South Carolinas in the 17th and 18th centuries were the Bantus from West and Central Africa. Although an increased solitude of slaves from their fellow ethnic kinsmen caused them to lose most of their local languages, they did not lose their cultures. They could barely communicate amongst themselves because they were brought from different tribes with different languages in Africa. Those who happened to speak the same language were isolated from one another. While those who could speak a bit of Pidgin prior to leaving Africa made good use of it by combining it with the new language that they were exposed to (Asante, 1996; Williams, 1997). These slaves finally adopted no language as a lingua franca because within the Bantu ethnic group, there were many languages. When these languages came into contact with English they created Pidgin English which is referred to as Creole in Southern and Central America (Rickford, 1998). Considering the entrenched level of racial segregation in the slavery era, children born to African slaves had very little exposure to speakers of Standard English. Thus they spoke the language of their parents, which was a mixture of Bantu languages, Pidgin English, and a fraction of the Standard English, which their parents had acquired from their masters. The combination of all these languages

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is what constitutes Ebonics today. It is worth noting that most of the Bantu languages were not written during the slave trade; and they are still not written today because it remains prestigious today in Africa to be learned in the colonial languages than in an African language (Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 1986). So, it was easy for the slaves to give in to immense pressure to communicate in English with their masters and fellow slaves from different ethnic groups. A gradual and persistent code switching between their mother tongues and English finally led to the adoption of the dominant language, English, which has exerted the most influence in the subsequent generations, but not without the scars of African languages (Asante, 1996). The influence of English-derived pidgin on Ebonics Pidgin is defined by Naro (1978) as “a rule-governed system of verbal communication, used by two or more groups, which is neither nor pretends to be the native linguistic competence of any speaker or group” (p. 314). Pidgin English is therefore a simplified version of Standard English that was formed when the British traders began interacting with Africans in the west coast of the continent. It is the combination of predominantly English words and the Bantu languages. It is no one’s mother tongue because it was a middle-ground language for Standard English speakers and the NigerCongo language speakers (Halloway & Vass, 1997). When Pidgin becomes a mother tongue, it can be called Creole. Some forms of Pidgin English and Creole were spoken in the coast of West Africa following the establishment of Britain’s first posts in 1631 (Hancock, 1969). The countries where it was and is still commonly spoken include The Gambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana, Togo, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Fernando Po (known today as Equatorial Guinea). Today, Pidgin English remains a lingua franca to many citizens with less formal education in some of the foregoing countries. In fact, linguists in Cameroon have now ascribed a name to it known as Kamtok because the word Pidgin devalues this important language which is a mother tongue to many; and which cuts across religious and geopolitical boundaries in Cameroon (Ngefac, 2011) in particular and in West Africa in general. It is worth noting that almost all of the countries cited above did not bear those names prior to the European invasion. They were organized under ethnic chiefdoms or kingdoms. The term Creole, which denotes a language widely spoken in Southern and Central America by the descendants of slaves from West Africa, is known as Krio, a native language in Bonthe Island and Banana Islands in Sierra Leone. The type of Pidgin spoken in Sierra Leone before 1800 is published in the 1791 journal with sentences like:

The Influence of West African Languages on African American Vernacular    185 Oh! He be fine man, rich too much, he got too much woman, . . . God amity sen me dat peginne, true, suppose he no black like me, nutting for dat, my woman drinkee red water and suppose peginine no for me, he dead. (Huber, 1999, p. 117)

The quote can be translated into Standard English as: Oh! He is a handsome man; he is rich; and he has got many wives . . . God Almighty sent me that child to this world, even though he/she is not as black as I am. My wife will drink fetish and if the child is not mine, she will die. (Ibid)

Turner (1949) posits that slaves who came from West Africa to the Southern part of the US had little or no prior exposure to English. Slaves from West Africa spent roughly six months on board the ship at a given sea port as the captain waited for more captives to be brought on board. Considering the amount of time spent on the trans-Atlantic voyage, it is probable that most of these slaves who had not been exposed to Pidgin before became familiar with its syntax, vocabulary and grammar through their acquaintances with fellow captives before they ever arrived in the Americas (Hancock, 1969). The vocabulary of Pidgin was gradually expanded with words borrowed from different languages including the Standard English as the slaves workers in the plantations searched for effective means of interpersonal communication. It is very likely that the first contingents of slaves in the 1600s spoke less Pidgin as compared the last contingents in the 1800s given that toward the end of slave trade, Europeans had a more coordinated dominant and expansive influence in Africa. This means the number of Europeans visiting Africa increased and their need for a common language for transactional purposes with Africans became more apparent. It is important to understand that the Portuguese were the first Europeans to begin trading ivory and gold with West Africans in the late 1400s. Prior to the beginning of the forced transportation of West Africans for slavery in the new world in the 17th Century, many of them living in the coastal regions had been exposed to Proto-pidgin as a result of Portuguese people doing business with them. Prince Henry, the navigator of Portugal, ordered the capture of some African men, who were then taken to Portugal to learn Portuguese so that they could become Portuguese translators during their subsequent trips to Africa (Klein, 2010). In 1627 and 1669, Villault, a French traveler and a Spanish priest respectively acknowledged the existence of a “corrupt” Portuguese in the regions of Sierra Leone and Sao Tome. Reinecke (1938) notes that whenever traders meet with people with whom they do not share a common language, the jargon of that business is often born in order to enable mercantile transactions to flow. The life span of that jargon often depends on time, duration, and place.

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According to Naro (1978) Africans were noted for speaking the Portuguese language with the loss of final consonants on words with consonant clusters ending with -r, -s, -l, and -t. For example, they would pronounce old as ol and witchcraft as withcraf. These differences with cluster consonants in Portuguese are reminiscent of the way many African Americans and Africans speak English or Ebonics today. The Portuguese also noticed some aspects of diphthong reduction to simple vowels in many situations, as it is often the case with many Ebonics speakers when it comes to English words like over, orange, and open. Just as in Ebonics, Africans found difficulties conjugating the verb “to be” in their Portuguese’s speech. The absence of this copula verb in the Bantu languages contributes immensely to the divergences between African American Vernacular and Standard English. Here are some examples where the copula verb was not used in the Portuguese spoken by Africans prior to the beginning of trans-Atlantic slave trade: Portuguese: Bosso barba ja cajaro. English: Your beard [is] already white Portuguese: Porque tu nam bruguntando? English: Why [are] you not asking? (Naro, 1978, p. 331)

The purpose of this brief analysis of how West Africans spoke Portuguese is principally to buttress the point that Ebonics has precedence, stemming from the exposure of their ancestors to European languages prior to the beginning of slave trade. It is worth noting that those Africans never spoke any of those European languages without the influences of their native languages. Even today, most Bantu language speakers who speak French would not pronounce any r that follows a vowel. For example, frère a French word for brother is often pronounced by most speakers of Bantu languages in West Africa as fre, while maire a French word for mayor will be pronounced as mai that instead means the month of May in French. This explanation is to argue that West African languages as well as West African Pidgin have influenced African American speech. Those influences are still traceable today, despite the huge dominance of American Standard English. Similarities Between Ebonics and Bantu Languages Given that these slaves were mostly adults who were already fluent in their native languages, there were a lot of linguistic interferences in their second language (English) acquisition emanating from their previous languages. Thus the replacement of “th” with “d” in the pronunciation of words like

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“that” to “dat” remains endemic in Sub-Saharan Africa and a huge African American community in the United States. Williams (1997) also analyzes the absence of double consonants in African American speech, which is commonplace in Africa. Some of the words ending with double consonants whose last consonants are hardly pronounced by African Americans and Bantu Africans are: past, ask, asks, test, craft, crafts, and text. The last consonants are often dropped in the pronunciation of test, text, send, and gold while ask is pronounced as though it is written aks or aksk. In reflection upon my own experiences, my 12-year old twins who left Cameroon at the age of seven prior to acquiring a Bantu language have a hard time pronouncing words with double consonants at the end. They would pronounce ask as aks, asks as aksk, asked as akst while their younger brother who came to the United States at four and started school in kindergarten has almost fully immersed himself in Standard English and pronounces those same words almost the way native English speakers do. This example is to affirm that younger children acquire languages more speedily than adults (Mack, 2003; Flege et al., 1999; Flege, 1995; Krashen, 1973; Krashen et al., 1979). Some speech correctionists have erroneously construed the pronunciation patterns of Ebonics speakers as inherent deficiencies in Black physiological disabilities such as cleft palate (Dillard, 1972). Many native speakers of other languages find it difficult to pronounce my last name starting with nd. What I used to do is tell them that the n at the beginning of my name is silent though that is not the case. Their difficulties in pronouncing my name is just because in their mother tongues, they probably do not have such consonant clusters at the beginning of words. It will be absurd for me to label anyone who cannot pronounce my name correctly as having some physiological disabilities. The absence of possessive noun forms in African languages is also reflected in African American speech. For example, in one of the Bantu languages of Cameroon, known as Nweh, my mother’s bag or the bag of my mother will be translated as, A bo mama gha which literally means the bag of my mother. Unlike in English where there are two alternative ways of expressing possessions, Nweh and many other Bantu languages have only the foregoing alternative. In addition, the plural of nouns in the Bantu languages precedes the nouns they modify. They do not come after the noun, as is the case in English language. In fact, it is rare to hear s-sound used between two nouns to mark possession or plural in most Bantu languages. For instance, a house in Ngemba (one of the Bantu languages) will be nda and houses will be mènda while John’s houses will be translated as mènda John. So mè is the plural marker that appears only before the noun it modifies. In fact, nouns ending in s are very rare in Bantu languages. This explains why in Ebonics, the speakers still have problems pluralizing the nouns as in two door, four table, and five book. A similar rule also applies with the con-

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jugation of verbs. Tense markers appear before the verbs and not after the verb, as it is the case with Germanic languages. That is why Pidgin English is very easy for Bantu speakers because all the different tense markers are placed before the verb, as is also true with their native dialects. So there are no morphemes placed as suffixes to the stem of the verb as you can see in the example provided below: West African Pidgin: I de go school Standard English: I am going to school West African Pidgin: I go go school Standard English: I will go to school West African Pidgin: I be go school Standard English: I went to school West African Pidgin: Who be you? Standard English: Who are you?

Bidialectalism as a Solution to Ebonics Versus Standard English Contention In 1977 there was the Bridge Program published by Houghton Mifflin which had a series of graded readings accompanied with recordings that encompassed African American folklore. The readers enabled the students to start reading in their home language and then proceeded to Standard English (Wheeler, 1999). This is a commonplace pedagogic approach in which the teacher moves from the known to the unknown. The results of the Bridge program were very successful: These dialect readers were tested over a 4-month period ‘in five areas of the United States, with 14 teachers and 27 classes from the 7th through 12th grades, involving 540 students-all but 10 of them black’ (Labov, 1995 as cited by Wheeler, 1999, p. 63). The experimental group (21 classes) used the dialect readers, whereas the control group (6 classes) did not. Instead, the control group used standard remedial English techniques. When tested under on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, after four months of instructions, the African American students using the dialect readers showed 6.2 months of progress, while African American students using Standard English books made only 1.6 months of progress. (Simpkins & Simpkins 1981, p. 238 as cited by Wheeler, 1999, p. 63)

The success of the Bridge program was intriguing. Many similar programs were carried out in Chicago and DeKalb County in Georgia with resounding successes, even though most of the programs were ephemeral, owing to

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continuous protests by parents and the community against the teaching of what they called a slang language. Implications A critical examination of African Americans’ opposition to the Oakland resolution on Ebonics indicates that it was economically motivated. On voting to pass the resolution, Oakland board members did not anticipate much opposition from the public in general (Ogbu, 1999), and from African American parents in particular. Even though a good number of them grew up speaking Ebonics, they believe that not shunning it in schools will adversely affect their children’s ability to learn Standard English, an inevitable gateway to competing with European Americans in the job market. Here is what one Black parent had to say about the resolution: “Your policy that attempts to legitimize poor grammar and identify it with Black America will set us back 100 years” (CNN, 1997, p. 1). This African American parents’ argument against Ebonics was not only predicated on the misinterpretation of the resolution but also on a brainwashed colonial mentality, which considers non-European languages and cultures as inferior. They have been implicitly and explicitly made to understand that any aspect of their own culture and identity that is different from the American mainstream macroculture is deficient and worth discarding. Similarly, the agents of colonialism and neo-colonialism of African people are Africans themselves. Till today, many educational institutions in Africa still prefer the use of Standard English on school campuses for formal and informal conversations; and sometimes-draconian policies are employed to attain this goal (Ngefac, 2011; Ngugi, 1986). Understandably, African American parents did not want their children to be placed at a comparative disadvantage with mainstream children as a result of limited Standard English proficiency. In fact, it is about language and power (Bourdieu, 1991). In many societies, there is always a dominant language, sometimes called official or national language, which serves as a determinant of upward social mobility. Those who are born into it are lucky while those who are born out of it will have to work hard to master it (Ibid). These African American parents have certainly learned that lesson and do not want their children to be victims of the language barrier. If Ebonics were given the same dominant platform as Standard English, African Americans would not be craving to be bidialectal as it is the case today because they would be able to fit anywhere in the society with their own home language. Considering that Ebonics does have limited lexical differences with Standard English, it becomes illogical to mainstream America to agree with Ebonics proponents who argue that it is “genetically based” and that

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it originates from Niger-Congo languages. When mainstream Americans cast a superficial look around and cannot find any substantial foreign vocabulary in the African American Vernacular, they tend to assume that it is another form of independence its speakers want to declare (Palacas, 2001). However, following the history of the origin of Ebonics sketched out in this paper, it becomes clear that there have been huge grammatical, morphological, syntactic, and phonological influences of the Bantu languages, otherwise known as West and Niger-Congo languages on Ebonics. The argument should not be whether Ebonics should be classified as a language or dialect. Rather, the differences between Ebonics and Standard English should be recognized and bidialectalism be embraced to facilitate the integration of speakers of this variety of English in the mainstream classroom generally taught in Standard English. Although some African American educators acknowledged that differences in a student’s home language and school language are impediments to learning, they still believe that African American students have deficiencies in concepts (Dillard, 1972). One would wonder what concepts and whose concepts these educators are talking about. If the students’ conceptual abilities could be judged based on what they learn informally, as well as validates their own ways of knowing, the debate would look different. It becomes a problem when those who decide what counts as knowledge have a different social location from those whose knowledge is being evaluated. Many African American teachers who have successfully gone through a formal education often use the same standards, comparative lens of mainstream culture, to judge the academic performance of young Black students since they have painstakingly crossed the river that separates the oppressors and the oppressed (Freire, 1970). Since they are now on the side of the river of the oppressors, they can then tell the “Othered” (those who are oppressed) to work hard to cross the bridge in order to join their ranks; here, the myth of meritocracy is reproduced by convincing the “Other” to work hard to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. It is unreasonable for those educators to intimate that children who have habitus (Bourdieu, 1965), funds of knowledge (Gonzalez et al, 2005) and zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978), that are all different from those of the mainstream students, to learn at the same pace because they do not start on a level playing field. Similarly, children who grow up in a home where their parents often tell them bedtime stories are more likely to write or tell fictional stories than children who do not. That does not mean that those children who cannot tell the stories are deficient in conceptual thinking. Rather, what they need are teachers who understand why they cannot tell bedtime stories at that moment and who is ready to facilitate that transitional process from non-fictional stories to fictional ones. Similarly, a smooth transition from non-Standard English, Ebonics, to Standard

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English for Ebonics speakers will entail embracing the former while introducing the latter progressively. Conclusion The purpose of elaborating on the influences of Bantu languages and West African Pidgin English on African American speech is to enlighten those who still believe that African American children do not master Standard English because of some physiological handicap, specifically a cleft palate (Dilliard, 1972) and not because there are speaking a language that has ancestral ties to West Africa. An ESL teacher who is also knowledgeable in his/her students’ first language is better placed to teach those students than a teacher who is monolingual because he/she will understand the intricacies of linguistic interferences as well as comprehend easily the sources of errors. For example, an ESL teacher with no knowledge of French may never know why his/her French-speaking students learning English repeatedly say, Tim has 12 years old while the teacher keeps saying over and over that Tim is 12 years old. It is because French uses the verb to have in order to say how old someone is. Similarly, a Standard English teacher who does not understand the syntax and the semantics of Ebonics will likely have some difficulties in helping Ebonics speakers learn Standard English if he/she is unable to recognize the sources of linguistic interferences and deceptive cognates in their expressions. Even though the absence of a broad-based consensus on the rationale of the resolution short-circuited the entire process in the past, the general idea is worth revisiting for it has improved students’ reading abilities considerably in some school districts, including Oakland itself. As the Linguistic Society of America (1998) stated, the debate should not be about whether it is a language or a dialect, rather it should be about looking for many plausible and feasible ways to assist African American students. One of the most successful approaches will be teaching students how to code switch; that is to navigate between home language and academic language (Croghan, 2000). If ESL programs, which are being funded by the US government, have been said to be very successful in helping limited English proficient students to learn English and succeed academically, a bidialectal program could also be established to assist Ebonics speakers learn academic English. This will be a step in the right direction that can dramatically level the playing field for African Americans to achieve the required test scores that are often expected of them in each state as the incorporation of one’s way of knowing (through their own specific histories) can shape how students learn and will succeed. Thus deconstructing the linguistic borders for successful academic learning for African American children who speak Ebon-

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ics entails a dialogic pedagogic approach in which the epistemology of the current curriculum is complicated and other ways of knowing incorporated by teachers in their teaching philosophy. References Asante, M. (1996). African elements in African-American English. In J. E. Holloway (Ed.), Africanisms in American culture (pp. 19–34). Bloomington, IA: Indiana University Press. Beyond Language Development. Oakland School District. (1996). Number of limited English proficient (LEP) and fluent English proficient (FEP) students by language. Oakland, CA: Division of Planning, Research, Evaluation, and Policy 182. Black English proposal draws fire. (1996, December 22). CNN, pp. 1. Retrieved from http://articles.cnn.com/1996-12-22/us/9612_22_black.english_1_blackenglish-oakland-school-board-performance-of-black-students?_s=PM:US. Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bourdieu, P., Passeron, J., & St Martin, M. (1965). Academic discourse. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Croghan, M. (2000). History, linguistic theory, California’s CLAD, and the Oakland Public Schools resolution on Ebonics: what are the connections? World Englishes, 19(1), 73–87. Dillard, J. L. (1972). Black English: Its history and usage in the United States. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Flege, J. E., Yeni-Komshian, G. H., & Liu, S. (1999). Age constraints on second language acquisition. Journal of Memory and Language, 41(1), 78–104. Flege, J. E. (1995). Second language speech learning: Theory, findings, and problems. In W. Strange (Ed.), Speech perception and linguistic experience: Issues in cross-language research (pp. 233–272). Baltimore, MD: York Press. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: The Continuum Publishing Company. Gallagher-Geurtsen, T. (2007). Linguistic Privilege: why educators should be concerned. Multicultural Perspectives, 9(1), 40–44. Gary, R. H. (2006). We can’t teach what we don’t know: White teachers, multicultural schools. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Gonzalez, N., Moll, L.C. & Amanti, C. (2005). (Eds.). Funds of knowledge: Theorizing practices in households, communities, and classrooms. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Hancock, I. F. (1969). A provisional comparison of English-based Atlantic Creole. African Language Review, 8(7), 72–93. Harper, D. F., Braithwaite, K. & LaGrange, R. D. (1998). Ebonics and academic achievement: The role of the counselor. Journal of Negro Education, 67(1), 25–34.

The Influence of West African Languages on African American Vernacular    193 Holloway, J. E. & Vass, W. K. (1997). The African heritage of American English. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Holloway, J. E. (1996). The origins of African American culture. In J. E. Holloway (Ed.), Africanisms in American culture (pp. 1–18). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Huber, M. (1999). Ghanaian Pidgin English in its West African context: A sociohistorical and structural analysis. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins Publishing. Klein, S. H. (2010). The Atlantic slave trade. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Krashen, D. S., Long, A. M., & Scarcella, R., C. (1979). Age, rate, and eventual attainment in second language acquisition. TESOL Quarterly, 13(4), 573–582. Krashen, S. D. (1973). Lateralization, language learning, and the critical period: Some new evidence. Language Learning, 23(1), 63–74. Labov, W. (1972). Language in inner the city. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Linguistic Society of America Resolution on the Oakland “Ebonics” Issue. (1998). Journal of English Linguistics, 26(2),174–176. Mack, M. (2003). The phonetic systems of bilinguals. In M. T. Banich & M. Mack (Eds.), Mind, brain, and language: Multidisciplinary perspectives (pp. 309–349). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Naro, A. J. (1978). A study of the origins of Pidginization.  Linguistic Society of America, 54(2), 314–347. Ngefac, A. (2011). Globalizing a local language and localizing a global language: The case of Kamtok and English in Cameroon. English Today, 27(1), 16–21. Ngugi, T. (1986). Decolonizing the mind: The politics of language in African literature. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Oakland School Board Resolution on Ebonics (Original Version). (1998). Journal of English Linguistics, 26(2), 170–179. Oakland School District. (1996). Average 1995–96 language NCE by Language category. Oakland, CA: Division of Planning, Research, Evaluation, and Policy 182. Oakland school board amends Ebonics policy. (1997, January 16). CNN, pp. 1. Retrieved from http://articles.cnn.com/1997-01-16/us/9701_16_black.english _1_language-patterns-distinct-language-african-language-systems?_s=PM:US Ogbu, U. J. (1999). Beyond language: Ebonics, proper English, and identity in a Black-American speech community. American Educational Research Association, 36 (2), 147–184. Palacas, L. A. (2001). Liberating American Ebonics from Euro-English. College English, 63(3), 326–352. Payne, R. C. & Welsh, H. B. (2000). The progressive development of multicultural education before and after the 1960s: A theoretical framework. In A. C. Grant & K. T. Chapman (Eds.), History of Multicultural Education (Vol 2) 346–360. New York, NY: Routledge. Perry, T. & Delpit, L. (1998). (Eds.) The real Ebonics debate: Power, language, and the education of African American children. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Reinecke, E. J. (1938). Race, cultural groups, trade jargons, and creole dialects as marginal languages. Social Forces, 17(1), 107–118.

194    M. T. NDEMANU Rickford, J. R. (1999).The controversy in my backyard: A sociolinguist’s experiences and reflections. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 3(2), 267–275. Rickford, J. R. (1998). The Creole origins of African American Vernacular English: evidence from copula absence. In Mufwene, S., Rickford, J., Baugh, J., & Bailey, G. (Eds.). African-American English: structure, history and use. New York, NY: Routledge. Stolberg, G. S. (2006, June 8). Bush suggests immigrants learn English. The New York Times, Sec. A, p. 18. Taylor, O. L. (1997). The Ebonics debate: Separating facts from fallacy. Black Issues in Higher Education, 13(24), 84. Todd, L. W. (1997). Ebonics is defective speech and a handicap for black children. Education, 118(2), 117. Turner, L. D. (1949). Africanisms in the Gullah dialect.  Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes (M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, & E. Souberman, Eds. & Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wheeler, R. S. (1999). (Ed.). The Workings of language: From prescriptions to perspectives. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers. Williams, R. L. (1997). The Ebonics controversy. Journal of Black Psychology, 23(3), 208–214.

CHAPTER 12

Literacy sin Fronteras Deconstructing Borders for Language and Cultural Inclusion Elva Reza-López Boise State University Blanca Caldas Chumbes University of Texas Austin Christian Belden Boise State University

We are guilty of so many errors and many faults, but our worst crime is abandoning the children, neglecting the fountain of life. Many of the things we need can wait. The child cannot. Right now is the time. His bones are being formed, his blood is being made, and his senses are being developed. To him we cannot answer ‘Tomorrow,’ his name is Today. (Gabriela Mistral in UNESCO, 1996, p. 31)

According to national media, public education in America is deemed broken. There is a crisis and Mistral’s words echo, it cannot wait until tomorrow: it must be resolved today! Many stakeholders of our educational system can be accused of this predicament; however, scholars point to No Child Surveying Borders, Bounderies, and Contested Spaces in Curriculum and Pedagogy, pages 195–208 Copyright © 2011 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. 195

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Left Behind (NCLB) (2002) implementation in present day public schools as a major culprit. The undercurrent goal of this policy is for public schools to fail so that public education can be privatized. (Giroux & Schmidt, 2004; Lipman, 2007). As Lipman (2007) states: The centerpiece of NCLB is mandatory testing and a system of sanctions tied to the test . . . By 2014, all students in subgroups . . . are to be proficient in all subjects tested. Schools in which any subgroup does not make adequate yearly progress (AYP) toward this goal are subject to a set of progressively more stringent sanctions including permitting students to transfer to another school, corrective action and provision of supplemental education services, reconstitution (including replacement of school staff), and restructuring (including state takeover, reconstitution as a charter school, or private management). (p. 37)

This accountability system with its punitive sanctions victimizes and blames crucial stakeholders of our educational system: teachers, students and parents. Teachers whose students do not pass the states’ high-stake tests are blamed for not teaching effectively. Students who score low on tests are blamed for not trying while parents are blamed for not caring about the education of their children. This blame game results in a public perspective of incompetent teachers, students and parents who are useless, inept, incapable, unskilled and ineffective. This is a deficit lens (MacSwan, 2000; Valencia, 1997) predominant in our present educational system. It postulates a self-fulfilling prophecy that can impact reality (Reza-López, 2006). These individuals begin to depend on a system that will tell them what to do instead of trusting their own intellect. Teachers, students, and parents await policymakers’ decisions on best strategies, approaches and scripts for classrooms. They wait on policies mandated by policymakers or state boards of education who are not educators and have very little experiential knowledge about classroom environments, educational context, curriculum and pedagogy. As a result, we have an educational system of dependency; one not grounded on teachers’, students’ and parents’ experiences. This is especially true for the Latino English Language Learner (ELLs). No Child Left Behind mandates signed into law in 2002 for best teaching and learning are not supportive of the language and culture of Latino students and their parents, thus creating a pedagogy of exclusion. As critical educators and students of color, we, the authors of this paper, are aware of the need to shift the current educational paradigm away from its top-down mandates to an organic approach that empowers all individuals. Our educational system must value the lived experiences of teachers, parents and students and validate the diverse funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff & Gonzalez, 1992) that they bring into the educational classroom (Moll, et al., 1992).

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In this article, we discuss a counterhegemonic initiative influenced by critical biliteracy and social justice. It is literacy contextualized in a landscape without borders/sin fronteras. In this landscape, a curriculum and pedagogy of inclusion for marginalized Latino students whose language and culture differs from mainstream education in the U.S. is evolving. It provides spaces for diverse voices of Latino minorities to be heard. What follows is a descriptive narrative of Literacy sin Fronteras; an evolving grass roots program that is enriching our understanding of diverse ways of thinking. It is our hope that when fronteras/borders are non-existent or are deconstructed, social justice pedagogical spaces will surface. Literacy Sin Fronteras: The Initiative For many ELLs of Latino descent, speaking or reading in English becomes a barrier that impacts academic learning. Latinos have a 60% drop out rate and 40% of these dropouts do so before the 8th grade (Schwartz, 1995). This is a disturbing statement that needs to be addressed since Latinos (of which 65.6% are Mexicans) are the fastest growing population and a major force in the United States with a growth rate of 28.9% from 2000 to 2007. Also disturbing is the retention rate of Latinos who enter universities; as of March  2007, for persons 25 years old and over, only 12.7% of Latinos had completed a college education compared with 28.7% for whites (U.S. Census Bureau, 2009). In the state of Idaho, the 2010 US Census has revealed a Latino population growth of seventy-three percent with one in eleven residents of Idaho being Latino/as. As the state’s population is almost 1.6 million, this translates to more than 175,000 Latinos now living in Idaho (U.S.  Census Bureau, 2011). This number is making Latinos in Idaho more visible in their communities and education; justifying the need for a change in the way they are educated. Our attempt at transforming education for this special population began with the creation and the implementation of Literacy sin Fronteras: Expanding Bilingual/Bicultural Horizons as a pathway that values diverse ways of viewing education for Latino students and their families. It focuses on their assets in order to provide spaces for their voices to be heard. By cultivating the resources they bring to the classroom, their language, their culture and their lived experiences, Literacy sin Fronteras works to close the achievement gap between Latino English Language Learners (ELLs) and mainstream students. This is being accomplished by means of weekly biliteracy classes held at the university, mentored by pre-service bilingual students enrolled in the Bilingual Department at the university. Children’s parents commit to attend parental involvement classes while their children are being mentored.

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The initiative was awarded $7,000.00 dollars through a mini-grant offered to beginning assistant professors at the university. It began in the fall semester of 2009 in collaboration with a rural elementary school that had begun dual-language instruction as a strand within its school. Here university bilingual student teachers work with dual-language elementary students in order to complete their state’s practicum requirements for licensure. This program is in the early stages of implementation and dual-language instruction is provided only up to the third grade. This school, however, provided us the early elementary grade levels we wished to work with and the population we wanted to serve: English Language Learners taught in a dual-language and ESL setting. The latter was of great concern for us due to Jesus,1 an immigrant, non-reader who caught our attention for the need to advocate for change. We discovered that ELLs not enrolled in the dual-language strand of this school did not receive native language support. They were serviced via an ESL pullout program where all instruction was in English; the norm for most bilingual schools in Idaho. Hard questions, then, needed to be asked concerning how to address issues of exclusion in language and culture for English Language Learners. From the initial activities, the following questions surfaced that set our journey and research in motion: 1. What can we do if schools are unable or refuse to provide equitable services for Latino minority children? 2. What is the responsibility of a democratic citizenry in meeting the educational needs of the underserved child? 3. What educational services from the university can be provided for this type of student to become literate in his/her own language to better support transfer of language and literacy skills? We found the following literature that supported and justified our initiative and the selection of the participants. Methodology During the initial stages of this endeavor, children and mentor pre-service teachers were the principal participants we had in mind since Literacy sin Fronteras would be simulating a project already in progress at another university in El Paso, Texas (2010). Parents (at that time) however, were not active participants of the program in El Paso as they would wait outside the classroom while their children were being mentored. For us it was imperative to include these students’ parents in the process as well. This triad was

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crucial for the implementation of Literacy sin Fronteras since each individual invested in it benefited from the project: 1. Children would be able to become biliterate in a critical and creative environment; 2. The university would provide a unique opportunity for prospective bilingual teachers to put into practice what they learn in classes by serving as mentors; and 3. Parents would have a voice in their children’s education. We grounded our study in qualitative research applying a Critical Race Therory / LatCrit theoretical framework (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001; Ladson-Billings, 1999, 2000). These frameworks provide for us the methodology of using storytelling and narratives because “epistemologically, both CRT and LatCrit privilege the experiential knowledge of people of color as critical ways of knowing and naming racism and other forms of oppression. [It] place[s] race, racialization, and racism as central to the narratives” (Nash, 2010). Classroom observations, field notes, and personal interviews triangulated the study (Ladson-Billings, 2000). Bridging Parallel Pathways Critical theorist Donaldo Macedo (2000) states that an English-speaking child learning Spanish as a second language does not receive reduced language instruction as does a Spanish-speaking child learning English in the USA. The former does not experience the diminishing of his or her language since their primary language is considered the language of power. The former is not reprimanded while using a second language and, on the contrary, is encouraged and cheered when using it since it is seen as an addition to his or her education. The Spanish-speaking child in the USA, on the other hand, faces a different experience; his/ her tongue is yanked out of his/her mouth (Anzaldúa, 1987), and his/her identity and culture is stripped and modified to fit into mainstream America. Research shows that in a best-case scenario, a first grader of Latino descent who is surrounded by Spanish speaking relatives and acquaintances will spend less than four hours a day immersed in Spanish. Contrary to the ten or more hours each day the same child is exposed to English while in school and out of school (Tse, 2001). Although, for some this may seem enough to maintain the native language, we need to examine the different types of exposure of the languages. While English exposure will consist of both conversational and academic language, the less than four hours in Spanish is conversational, lacking the academic component.

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Nationwide, under NCLB schools are required to test ELLs with the state exam in English when they reach third grade. As a result, by second grade an English language learner may be totally submerged in English; limiting his/her native language from his/her vernacular (Abedi et al., 2005). This language shift may disrupt the learning schema of the child who needs native language support for meaningful learning. This core belief impacted and formed the foundation of Literacy sin Fronteras and is the reason why we continue to collaborate with schools implementing dual-language immersion programs. The foundation English Language Learners and English dominant children acquire in their native language bridge and support the second language, creating a dual pathway for academic success—i.e., maintaining both languages academically and socially is crucial. The Triad Component of Literacy sin Fronteras: Students, Pre-service Teachers and Parents Students: Humanizing Statistic Jesus was a child like any other boy. He loved to eat McDonald’s hamburgers for lunch and play video games with his brothers. He liked playing sports and he did so every time he had a break at school. Due to his lack of English, he was placed in second grade with other children who were as eager to learn as he was, even though he was over age. He would wake up early every morning in order to be on time at school. However, he was not the same as his peers: he was originally from Mexico and had been in the United States for only a few years. His mother tongue was Spanish and, unlike his classmates, he was generally unable to understand his teacher in class who spoke only English, even though she showed compassion and did the best she could to include him. Some of his classmates would not play with him during break because of the language barrier. He was known as the boy who would ask permission to go to the bathroom in order to escape the drudgery of the classroom due to a language he did not understand. He would prefer to be outside, in the middle of silence, which he understood. It was painful to observe his behavior in class: he was not disruptive or loud, but he would look at the walls and play with his pencil as if it were a paper plane. He would make eye contact with us, researchers, every time we visited his classroom. It was, as if he were pleading with us to say something, anything because he knew we would understand. Sadly, he was a child, like many others in the United States, who struggled to learn a seemingly incomprehensible language, worsened by the fact that literacy in his native language was almost non-existent.

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The above vignette is descriptive of an educational system that victimizes students who do not speak the language of the school and thus are coerced into learning to speak that language first, before being taught other subjects. Instead of being valued for knowledge of lived experience—his/ her world—the child is viewed through a deficit lens that negates prior knowledge due to it being acquired in another language. Year after year, such children are not valued, existing only to be tested in a language barely understood and being silenced by an educational system that pretends to give help, but only on its own terms. The consequences of this educational violence against this type of student are visible from the first day; eventually such children mentally withdraw from classes and, if this trend continues, they dropout physically as well. This is the reason why most of the student participants in Literacy sin Fronteras are primarily elementary Latino students. Our aim is to prevent them from failing school at a young age. Mentor Pre-Service Teachers The “authorship of one’s own world also implies the use of one’s own language, giving voice to all who dare to speak about and present their world to others” (Macedo, 2000, p. 22). For Latinos, this implies authenticity of their literacy and the natural development of their first language in order to demonstrate the assets of being able to read the dual worlds they belong to as components of their identity. It aims at providing what the U.S. school system is failing to provide many minority children: biliteracy. Instead, “literalcy” what Bahruth (2000) defines as the narrowing of literacy to a behaviorist point of view that encourages the use of prepackaged, pseudo-scientific techniques, and standardization of knowledge is set in motion for the teaching of literacy. This type of teaching negates and dismisses the multiple dimensions of literacy. It excludes folklore that describes the world of indigenous, subaltern groups (consider by many as illiterate), and the students’ experiences of diverse backgrounds and ways to see the world. Bahruth (2004) claims “approaches to reading that ignore the full spectrum of human conditions produce ignorance” (p. 511). Literacy sin Fronteras, then, takes into account the diverse ways that children learn and how teachers and/or pre-service teachers should respond to the actions of the child (Smith, 1988). How is the child viewing the world? What language is the child using in interpreting and presenting his/her world? The role for pre-service teachers, as mentors and facilitators of the reading process for student participants, becomes one of allowing space for voice and exploration of meaningful texts. This is vital in the creation of critical citizens and in Literacy sin Fronteras opportunities are provided for children to see critically because “in reading we produce a text within

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a text; in interpreting we create a text upon a text; and in criticizing we construct a text against a text” (McLaren & Giroux, 1992, p. 26). If learning has voice, is meaningful, collaborative and non-threatening, students are able to experience success and positive self-esteem, and that feeling will lead them to look for similar experiences (1988). In our program students are provided with books authored mostly by Latino authors that connect to Latino culture and deal with issues of dual identity: i.e., Carmen Lomas Garza’s Magic Windows and In My Family; Tomas Rivera’s Y no se lo trago la tierra; and Juan Felipe Herrera’s, Super Cilantro Girl. Mentor teachers are selected among prospective teachers enrolled in two essential classes in undergraduate bilingual/ESL coursework at the university. These courses prepare them to not be not only effective teachers, but also agents of change. In these classes future teachers design lesson plans geared towards multiculturalism and biliteracy taking English Language Learners into account when selecting and adapting materials.  One of the classes has a co-requisite, field experience component. It is a literature-based course required for extending opportunities in expressing and comprehending ideas in Spanish as it relates to the context of the bilingual classroom. Mentorship in Literacy sin Fronteras provides the preservice teachers with unique opportunities that involve advocacy, activism and critical reflection: what Paulo Freire (1970) refers to as praxis. Mentor teachers are also given the opportunity to implement their evolving pedagogical perspective in reading as they mentor English Language Learners who attend the sessions. An important element in this initiative is the place where these classes are held. We decided that the Literacy sin Fronteras biliteracy classes would be held at the university campus so that Latino parents and their children could enjoy and be inspired by the university atmosphere. We hope this demystifies the university as a space “over there” that is unattainable by people of color—i.e., the ivory tower. Hopefully, by browning the tower, it will be more attainable. The Selection of Parents and Parent Involvement Sessions “¿No sabe dónde dan clase para poder mejorar mi acento?” [“Do you know where I can take classes to improve my accent?”] (Personal conversation)

According to Moll, Amanti, Neff & Gonzales (1992), immigrant families welcome the opportunity to participate in their children’s classrooms as educators. They welcome the opportunity in applying their own experiences, expertise, languages, and sources of knowledge. However, Osterling,

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Violand-Sanchez & Von Vacano (1999) claim that Latino parents are not seen as educators, this is due to a conscious to subconscious dismissal of the contributions of Latino parent as stated below: Their efforts are not acknowledged in an English-only environment. In many schools, administrators and teachers think that immigrant families cannot provide the literacy support needed for academic success. They express this ‘deficit perspective’ unconsciously by such comment as if they would read and speak in English to their children we would not have reading problems. (p. 64)

This mindset may explain also why schools in Idaho favor an Englishonly approach in the education of Latino children. Although, bilingual education programs are available in Idaho, rarely do these programs offer academics in Spanish. Instead an ESL pullout program is offered for these students as the bilingual education approach. Parents feel unwelcomed with this English-only mentality. De Gaetano (2007) explains that the challenge for inclusion of minority parents lies in, “how to involve them in the schooling process in ways that are both affirming and empowering to them and of benefit to schools” (p 145). Teachers often marginalize parents, and parents involved in our program mentioned this often. Many parents that speak Spanish feel they are not heard by educators and feel alienated from their child’s education (Personal conversations). Gloria Anzaldúa (1987) in Borderlands/La Frontera speaks about “no longer be[ing] made to feel ashamed of existing” by “overcom[ing] the tradition of silence” (p. 81). For a Latino parent, living in the border means having to negotiate identity to not feel ashamed of who she/he is since they live in a country that continues to marginalize and exclude them. It is about finding voice by overcoming silence since many Latino families first came to this region as migrant workers. With this is mind, Literacy sin Fronteras also created a space for parents to discuss issues pertaining to education, culture, advocacy and civil rights. It was decided that topics for discussion during the parent sessions would be generative (Freire, 1970; Glassman, 2001) increasing in variety according to the parents’ needs and interests. At these parent meetings, parents who participated shared the following stories: I was born in California but at 15 years old came back to California after living in Mexico for the better part of my youth. I find differences between the school culture in the USA and Mexico as having to run to another classroom for another class or having to choose classes feeling lost because of the language. Due to this, I graduated one year after my wife graduated from the same school. (M. L. Perez, personal interview, November 25, 2009)

204   E. REZA-LÓPEZ, B. C. CHUMBES, and C. BELDEN I was also born in Oaxaca and I also struggled at school here in the United States. It also took me longer to graduate from high school. Since I grew up in a Spanish speaking home I feel that I have an accent in English that is looked down upon and I feel I need to change it somehow so I can fit in. (G. Mendez, personal interview, November 25, 2009) I was born in Mexico like my husband. We both finished secundaria 2 and did up to 9th grade in Mexico but we did not finish school because we needed to work. I found a job as a nurse’s assistant and my husband as a mechanic. When we were getting ready to come to the United States I remember a friend of mine, who did not know how to read, telling me not to forget our language and not to let our children forget their language. We want our daughters not to forget their Spanish. (R. Mendez, personal interview, November 25, 2009)

Mr. and Mrs. Pérez have been in the United States for thirteen years, four in California and the remainder in Idaho. Their story is different from the Chávez’s due to their “legal” status in this country. Like many of the 9.3 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States until 2002 (Capps, Fix, & Passel, 2002) the Pérez family moved to California because of the economic conditions in Mexico. The Mexican regional economy is virtually stuck in time and salary since the minimum wage is estimated to be about $4.50 a day, an amount that makes crossing the border the only hope of making a decent living for many Mexicanos (2008) such as the Pérezes. Both of them finished secundaria but decided not to attend the preparatoria 3 which would have provided an opportunity for college. Instead, Mrs. Pérez worked as a nurse assistant and Mr. Pérez as a mechanic. Since both were born in Mexico and studied there, they value the importance of their mother tongue and cultural traditions so they instilled the importance of their culture in their two daughters, ages 7 and 12. The Perez family successfully taught their daughters how to read and write in Spanish. They were fluent in English as well, even before they started to attend school. During the first meeting, the Pérez family felt validated when they realized that their efforts to teach the children to be bilingual and bicultural, was seen as beneficial, and that this was supported by research (Collier & Thomas, 2004; Lopez, Chumbes and Belden Estrada, Gomez, & Ruiz-Escalante, 2009; Reyes & Halcón, 2001). As such, they were immediately willing to participate and even encouraged some other families to join the project. Mrs. Perez’s sister-in-law, her child and some neighbors also attended. Although shared stories of lived experiences from these parents have been very rewarding and enlightening for our program this segment has been the most challenging. To alter the deficit perspective used in public education to prevent from victimizing the parents, the parent sessions as per their request included:

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1. The Lemon Grove Incident (Espinoza, 1985) a documentary film focusing on one of the earliest Latino school desegregation case: a 1930 school board attempt to create a segregated Mexican school in the district. The film uses dramatizations, archival footage, and recollections of witnesses to examine the response of the Latino community in Lemon Grove, California; 2. The PBS documentary A Class Apart (Miller & Sandoval, 2009) focuses on a civil right case that challenge discrimination a la Jim Crow against Mexican –Americans; and 3. 30 Days: Immigration (Spurlock, 2007), a TV show about a minuteman who lives for 30 days with an undocumented family. This documentary motivated great discussions. All families were eager to learn more about Mexican-American struggles in the USA for their rights and empowerment. In this ongoing process, we have learned from parents. They have given us themes to include in future sessions such as: ESL classes, GED classes in Spanish, and the involvement of the Mexican Consulate for possible classes in Spanish so they can complete the preparatoria. They continue to hope for a better education not only for themselves, but for their children as well. For us it is inspiring to work with such parents who are helping to transform education with a curriculum and pedagogy of inclusion without borders. Conclusion In educating Latinos, our present system of public education should be echoing Mistral’s sentiments with regard to educating Latino children. These children should not have to wait until tomorrow for an equitable education. Education must begin by deconstructing borders of exclusion and implementing pedagogical spaces of inclusion. The initiative, Literacy sin Fronteras: Expanding Bilingual/Bicultural Horizons, germinated from community-based seeds and the realization that many Latino students and their parents were being underserved and marginalized by an educational system that does little to value their language and culture. Due to a deficit lens this population has been victimized and positioned in a category that needs “saving.” Thus, a pedagogy of exclusion is implemented by local school districts that have Latino students who do not speak English being pulled out of their regular classrooms to attend ESL programs. This type of instruction connects to an English-Only ideology that creates and complicates borders due to its beliefs that a child must first learn to speak the English language before being taught academics; knowledge in another language is irrelevant. In an attempt to combat this

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mentality and perspective, Literacy sin Fronteras aims at providing an alternative view that values and dignifies the language and culture that these students bring to the educational arena through a pedagogy of language and cultural inclusion. It provides space with voice for a triad of players crucial to the educational success of all children: teacher, student, and parent. Through their collaboration and their understanding of the value of biliteracy and biculturalism, the text and world connect to a better understanding of their world and otherness. Inclusive is the perspective that all participants in this endeavor—university pre-service and service bilingual teachers, bilingual Latino students and their parents—hold advocacy, activism, critical reflection and hope as its foundation. As a result, Literacy sin Fronteras’ curriculum and pedagogy of inclusion is evolving through collective dialogue not for the people but in communion with the people (Freire, 1970). Notes 1. Names of persons in this manuscript are pseudonyms. 2. In Mexico secundaria is equivalent to middle school in the United States. 3. In Mexico preparatoria is equivalent to high school in the United States.

References Abedi, J., Bailey, A., Butler, F., Castellon-Wellington, M., Leon, S., & Mirocha, J. (2005). The validity of administering large-scale content assessments to english language learners: An investigation from three perspectives. Los Angeles, CA: Regents of the University of California Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands/ la frontera: The new mestiza. San Francisco, CA: Spinsters/Aunt Lute. Bahruth, R. (2000). Changes and challenges in teaching the word and the world for the benefit of all of humanity. Paper presented at the Annual Symposium on English Teaching, Taipei, Taiwan. Bahruth, R. (2004). Critical literacy vs. reading programs. International Journal of Learning, 11, 509–515. Capps, R., Fix, M. E., & Passel, J. S. (2002, November). The dispersal of immigrants in the 1990s. Immigrant Families and Workers: Facts and Perspectives Series, Brief No. 2. Retrieved from http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/410589_ DispersalofImmigrants.pdf Collier, V. P., & Thomas, W. P. (2004). The astounding effectiveness of dual language education for all. NABE Journal of Research and Practice, 2(1), 1–20. Corchado, A. (2008). Promise of U.S. jobs lures migrants who vowed to stay in Mexico, Dallas News. Retrieved from http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/ dws/news/world/stories/021308dnintstayingput.3d11132.html

Literacy sin Fronteras    207 De Gaetano, Y. (2007). The role of culture in engaging Latino parents’ involvement in school. Urban Education, 42(2), 145–162. Delgado, R., & Stefancic, J. (2001). Critical race theory: An introduction. New York, NY: New York University Press. Espinoza, P. (Writer) & F. Christopher (Director). (1985). The lemon grove incident. Published: New York, NY: Cinema Guild [distributor]. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed (M. B. Ramos, Trans.). New York, NY: Continuum International Publishing Group. Giroux, H. A., & Schmidt, M. (2004). Closing the achievement gap: A metaphor for children left behind. Journal of Educational Change, 5(3), 213–228. Glassman, M. (2001). Dewey and Vygotsky: Society, experience, and inquiry in educational practice. Educational Researcher, 30(4), 3–14. Izquierdo, E. (2010). Literacy-Camp. Retrieved from http://www.elenaizquierdo. com/university-of-texas-at-el-paso/literacy-campcampamento-de-lectura Ladson-Billings, G. (1999). Just what is critical race theory and what’s it doing in a nice field like education? In L. Parker, D. Deyhle & S. Villenas (Eds.), Race is . . . race is not: Critical race theory and qualitative studies in education (pp. 7–30). Boulder, CO: Westview. Ladson-Billings, G. (2000). Racialized discourse and ethnic epistemologies. In N. K. Denzin & L. S. Yvonna (Eds.), The handbook of qualitative research (Second ed., pp. 257–278). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Lipman, P. (2007). “No Child Left Behind”: Globalization, labor market and the politics of inequality. In E. W. Ross & R. Gibson (Eds.), Neoliberalism and education reform (pp. 35–58). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. López, E., Chumbes, B. C., Belden, C., Estrada, V., Gomez, L., & Ruiz-Escalante, J. A. (2009). Let’s make dual language the norm. Educational Leadership, 66(7) 54–58. Macedo, D. (2000). The colonialism of the English only movement. Educational Researcher, 29(1), 15–24. MacSwan, J. (2000). The threshold hypothesis, semilingualism, and other contributions to a deficit view of linguistic minorities Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 22(1), 3–45. McLaren, P., & Giroux, H. A. (1992). Writing from the margins: Geographies of identity, pedagogy and power. Journal of Educational Change, 174(1), 7–30. Miller, P., & Sandoval, C. (Writers). (2009). A class apart: A Mexican-American civil rights story. In C. B. Productions (Producer): Independent Television Service. Moll, L. C., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & Gonzalez, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms Theory into Practice, 31(2) 132–141. Nash, C. (2010). Fractured minds, mended lives: The schooling experience of latina/os in rural areas. Curriculum & Instruction. Chico University. Chico. Osterling, J. P., Violand-Sanchez, E., & Von Vacano, M. (1999). Latino families learning together. Educational Leadership, 57(2), 64–68. Reyes de la Luz, M., & Halcón, J. J. (2001). The best for our children: Critical perspectives on literacy for Latino students. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

208   E. REZA-LÓPEZ, B. C. CHUMBES, and C. BELDEN Reza-López, E. (2006). A critical case study of high school academic English on the U.S. Mexican border: Toward a pedagogy of human dignity. Unpublished Doctoral Thesis. Curriculum and Instruction. New Mexico State University. Las Cruces. Schwartz, W. (1995). School dropouts: New information about an old problem. Available from ERIC Clearinghouse on Urban Education. Smith, F. (1988). Joining the literacy club: Further essays in education. Portsmouth, MA: Heinemann Educational Books, Inc. Spurlock, M. (Writer). (2007). 30 days: Immigration. In R. Productions (Producer): FX Networks. Tse, L. (2001). “Why don’t they learn English?”: Separating fact from fallacy in the U.S. language debate. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. U.S. Census Bureau. (2009). Statistical abstract of the United States. Retrieved September 15, 2009, from http://www.census.gov/prod/www/abs/statab.html U.S. Department of Education. (2002). No Child Left Behind Policy. Washington, D.C.: Retrieved from http://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/index.html. U.S. Census Bureau. (2011). 2010 Census Data. Retrieved from http://2010.census. gov/2010census/data/ UNESCO. (1996). Our creative diversity: Report of the world commission on culture and development Summary Version. Paris, France: United Nations Educational, Scientifical and Cultural Organization. Valencia, R. R. (1997). The evolution of deficit thinking in educational thought and practice. New York, NY: Falmer Press.

CHAPTER 13

Anti-Racist Teacher Education Curriculum Toward a Reconceptualization of the Racial Framework of Prospective Teachers Nicole V. Williams The University of Findlay

Teacher educators, prospective teachers, and P–12 students do not share the same ethnic, social, racial, and linguistic backgrounds. In 2004, the National Collaborative on Diversity in the Teaching Force reported that 40% of America’s public school students are children of color whereas 90% of America’s public schoolteachers are White. Forty percent of America’s public schools do not even have one teacher or staff member of color (National Collaborative on Diversity in the Teaching Force, 2004). This gap in cultural congruency is expected to increase within the coming years (Cross, 2003) in an increasingly complex educational environment. In 1995, Ladson-Billings and Tate asserted that despite the confounding problem of race in the United States, it remains untheorized as a topic Surveying Borders, Bounderies, and Contested Spaces in Curriculum and Pedagogy, pages 209–224 Copyright © 2011 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. 209

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of scholarly inquiry in education. Fifteen years later it is still a confounding problem despite its increased theorization. The few, existing studies demonstrate that “unfavorable teacher perceptions of students, specifically African-American students, even if justifiable by prior performance and other relevant information, strongly undermine their academic performance” (Oates, 2003). In 2003, Gary L. St. C. Oates reported on his investigation into teacher-student racial congruence conditions and their effects on teacher perceptions of student performance. He found the “(mis) match between teacher’s and student’s race seems primarily consequential to the standardized test performance of African-American students— shaping both the way teachers feel about students, and (to a lesser degree) the extent to which these perceptions ultimately matter” (p. 520). We all carry different worlds in our heads. And, yet, we expect new teachers to reach students in worlds they do not even know exist (Delpit, 1995). In the United States, new teachers are primarily White whereas their students are increasingly diverse. Although White teachers are not solely responsible for the academic struggles of their students of color, they are responsible for the reproduction of the racial inequality that haunts these students (Hyland, 2005) through self-fulfilling prophecies and racial bias (Blaisdell, 2005). Inherent in teacher education is an imperative responsibility to provide opportunities for prospective teachers to better understand who they are and how they connect with those around them. The purpose of this study is twofold: To provide prospective teachers with an opportunity to make meaning of their encounters with racism and how they believe these encounters shape their past, present, and future experiences in teaching, learning, and interactions with others and to provide the teacher education inquiry community with research that demonstrates the power of narrative in teacher education and more importantly the power of teacher education as a narrative (Cochran-Smith, 2004). Guiding questions for this study included: 1. How do prospective teachers believe their encounters with racism shape their past, present, and future experiences in teaching, learning, and interactions with others? 2. How do prospective teachers make meaning of their encounters with racism? Race Defined Throughout the history of the United States, race has often been associated with “cultural, material, physical, and linguistic differences which need not imply inequality of social status” (Adams, 2001, p. 211). More specifically,

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Smedley and Smedley (2005), define race within this historical perspective as “a means of creating and enforcing social order, a lens through which differential opportunity and inequality are structured” (p. 24). They further argue that “in the United States race is more specifically defined by the culturally invented ideas and beliefs we have about the differences in skin color, hair texture, nose width, and lip thickness that give meaning to the word race” (p. 24). In other words, race-based societies such as ours have a biologically discrete grouping of races based on the above-stated profound and unchangeable physical characteristics that justify social hierarchical ranking (Smedley & Smedley, 2005). Despite these constructions, race is not a biological construct determined by a single gene or a cluster of genes. There are in fact no genetic characteristics specific to Blacks and non-Blacks and the same is true of Whites and non-Whites. Genetic variation is actually greater within these populations than between them (Haney Lopez, 2000). DeCuir-Gunby (2006) more accurately defines race as a socially and historically constructed ideological system that permeates all social, cultural, economic and political domains. Haney Lopez (2000) further defines race as “a vast group of people loosely bound together by historically contingent, socially significant elements of their morphology and/or ancestry” (p. 165). Race, then, is a social construction. It is a “human interaction rather than natural differentiation [and] must be seen as the source and continued basis for racial categorization” (Haney Lopez, 2000, p. 168). It is a human production that constitutes an integral part of an ever-changing social meaning-making system (Haney Lopez, 2000). More specifically, understanding race as a social construction is fundamental to the identity development of White persons, especially, because “a person’s identity becomes a lens through which they see themselves and which informs their understanding of others . . .  that serve to mark one group as dominant and the unquestionable centre . . .  that simultaneously marks others as subordinate” (Solomon, Portelli, Daniel, & Campbell, 2005, p. 163). Racism, within this situation, is not merely “an individual pathology, rather it is a systemic structural problem that is constructed and maintained by the collective acts of many individuals, but which is larger and far more powerful than any individual” (Vaught & Castagno, 2008, p. 101). Whiteness The history of whiteness has progressed from simply denying Black children access to schooling to separate schools, and, now, White flight and the growing insistence on vouchers, public funding of private schools, and schools of choice and resegregation via tracking (Ladson-Billings & Tate,

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1995). However, most White educators do not view whiteness as part of their identity so the importance of its impact on student learning often goes unnoticed (Blaisdell, 2005). Speaking to her experiences with White pre-service teachers, Picower (2004) describes: Many new white teachers see whiteness as the absence of race, or only recognize it in opposition to “others” and this leads to a level of discomfort when issues of race are raise. Having lived in among primarily other whites, many whites see themselves as part of a “racial norm” and believe that they are “color-blind,” holding no prejudices towards others. (n.p.)

Cheryl Harris (1993) defines whiteness within this context as an “aspect of self-identity and of personhood and its relation to the law of property as complex” (p. 1725). Wherein, it has functioned as “self-identity in the domain of the intrinsic, personal, and psychological; as reputation in the interstices between internal and external identity; and, as property in the extrinsic, public, and legal realms” (p. 1725). According to Perez Huber, Johnson and Kohli (2006), whiteness is further presented as “the normalized standard, and people of color are therefore rendered as abnormal . . .  and students are in jeopardy of believing in this racial hierarchy” (p. 196). Dixson and Rousseau (2005) describe this normalization of whiteness through the framework of Critical Race Theory: Rather, race, within the scheme of whiteness, is seen as a malady. That is, if we accept the notion of whiteness as normal, then any person who is not white is abnormal. Thus, within polite, middle class mores, it is impolite to see when someone is different, abnormal, and thus, not white. Hence, it is better to ignore, or become color-blind, than to notice that people of color have the physical malady of skin color, or not whiteness. (p. 16)

White Prospective Teachers In respect to the field of teacher education, Solomon, Portelli, Daniel and Campbell (2005), believe the study of whiteness “seeks to have teachers and teacher candidates examine their overall understanding of their racial identity; the ideologies with which they enter the classroom; explore the impact of those ideologies on their teaching practices and their interactions with students” (p. 149). Ladson-Billings and Tate (1995) specify property functions of whiteness specific to the educational system. For example, they believe students are rewarded for conformity to perceived “white norms” or sanctioned culture practices. Whiteness then allows for extensive use of school property and to identify a school or program as lacking this whiteness is to diminish its reputation or status. In her work to better understand

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the resistance of White pre-service teachers to develop a critical consciousness, Picower (2009) investigated how the life experiences of pre-service teachers’ predispose them to systematic understandings of race and their response to a multicultural education course that challenged these understandings. She found: Participants responded to challenges to these understandings by relying on a set of “tools of Whiteness” designed to protect and maintain dominant and stereotypical understandings of race—tools that were emotional, ideological, and performative . . . these tools are not simply a passive resistance to but much more of an active protection of the incoming hegemonic stories and White supremacy and therefore require analysis to better understand when and how these tools are strategically used. (p. 197)

Theoretical Framework Critical Race Theory According to Dixson and Rousseau (2006), Critical Race Theory (CRT) scholarship is neither qualitative nor quantitative. Instead, they argue it is more “accurately described as a problem-centered” approach wherein the researcher should “employ any means necessary to address the problem of inequity in education” (p. 49). Within this problem-centered approach it is not only necessary to identify the many issues of racism that plague the educational system but also to identify strategies that combat these issues of racism. Critical race theory methodology formulates research questions for the purpose of understanding how people construct their identity based on race, gender, social class, national origin, or other aspects of culture while acknowledging institutional interpretations of rigid racial categories that create conflict within these identities (Parker & Roberts, 2005). According to Yosso (2006), “CRT is a framework that can be used to theorize, examine and challenge the ways race and racism implicitly and explicitly affect social structures, practices and discourses” (p. 168). The fundamental CRT argument was (and still is) that race and racism are “normal, not aberrant, in American society” (Delgado & Stefancic, 2000, p. xvi). Racism, specifically, “is an ingrained feature of our landscape, it looks ordinary and natural to persons in the culture” (Delgado & Stefancic, 2000, p. xvi). CRT begins with a number of basic themes that have remained fairly consistent throughout its history. First and foremost, as mentioned above, CRT holds that racism is pervasive and endemic to American norms and therefore it rejects dominant claims of meritocracy, neutrality, objectivity, and color-blindness. It also rejects ahistoricism and insists on

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a contextual historical analysis of the law and challenges the presumptive legitimacy of social institutions. Within this challenge, CRT demands recognition of both the experiential knowledge and critical consciousness of people of color in understanding law and society, which includes an interdisciplinary and eclectic claim that the intersection of race and law overruns disciplinary boundaries. Finally, CRT works toward the liberation of people of color as it embraces the larger project of liberating all oppressed people (Mutua, 2006). Critical Race Theory in Education Ladson-Billings and Tate (2006) further identify some of the central themes of CRT as particularly relevant to the field of education. They include but are not limited to the understanding of race and racism as endemic and ingrained in American life and the importance of challenging claims of neutrality, objectivity, colorblindness, and meritocracy. CRT demands the “naming” of race and racism as “central, endemic, and permanent” in defining and explaining teacher education as a function of U.S. society. Yosso (2006) explains “CRT addresses the social construct of race by examining the ideology of racism . . .  [it] finds that racism is often well disguised in the rhetoric of shared ‘normative’ values and ‘neutral’ social scientific principles and practices” (p. 173). Methodology Participants To explore the research questions, the researcher interviewed one African-American female prospective teacher, eight White, female prospective teachers and two White, male prospective teachers who were in their third of five quarters in the Middle Childhood Education (MCE) Master of Education program at a large mid-Western university. The MCE program handbook states the mission of the program: Our mission is to prepare professionals who possess the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to interpret and construct learning environments in ways that are critical, engaging, culturally responsive, and anti-oppressive. Faculty, program managers, mentor teachers, school administrators, and graduate associates are committed to ongoing communication, collaboration, and research that will support professional relationships with school communities and improve

Anti-Racist Teacher Education Curriculum    215 conditions for teaching and learning in middle level classrooms. In particular, the MCE program is committed to building relationships and improving conditions for teaching and learning within urban educational settings.

One of the entry-quarter course requirements for all (MCE) students is a cohort-specific technology integration course, through which the participants were recruited. Eleven of approximately forty prospective teachers voluntarily agreed to participate in the interview from this course. Ten of the eleven participants were in the primary researcher’s laboratory section of the course therefore she developed a professional relationship with them prior to the interviews. Interviews Prior to the interview, participants received the following prompt to consider: I would like you to think back to your most memorable encounters with school-related racism. Think of these situations from the time you started school until now recalling each one and describing it very briefly. We’ll go back later and look at each of these situations in greater detail so all we need here is a brief description.

This prompt was not meant or used as a formal interview schedule but rather a guideline for the less informal interview to follow. It also provides the development of mutual trust and respect through information-gathering questions devoid of confrontation before engaging in issues of race and racism (Marx, 2006). Upon arrival for the interview, the participants were asked to read and sign a consent form with a brief statement of the research purposes. After the participants were read the prompt once more, they were asked to participate in the interview. The interview followed the predetermined interview instrument which included the questions such as what leads you to call this situation racism, what ideas, thoughts or confusions did you have, what feelings or emotions did you experience, and looking back at this encounter with racism, do you think it impacted or will impact your interactions with others? These specific interview questions prevent the researcher from manipulating the interview by imposing her “presumed power, social status and knowledge” on the participants (Barbour & Schostak, 2005, p. 43).

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Data Analysis Discourse Analysis Gee’s introduction and interpretation of discourse analysis provided the data analysis framework for this study. Gee (2005) argues that discourse analysis provides the researcher with the opportunity to look for “patterns and links within and across utterances in order to form hypotheses about how meaning is being constructed and organized” (p. 118).” More specific to the analysis process, Gee (2005) states: Essentially, a discourse analysis involves asking questions about how language, at a given time and place, is used to construe the aspects of the situation network as realized at that time and place and how the aspects of the situation network simultaneously give meaning to that language (remember reflexivity). Institutions, in turn, create forces (e.g., laws, disciplinary procedures, apprenticeships) that ensure the repetition and ritualization of the situations that sustain them. Studying the way in which situations produce and reproduce institutions, and are, in turn, sustained by them, is an important part of discourse analysis. (p. 102)

Each interview was analyzed independent of the others. The interviews were first coded for themes based on Gee’s seven themes of significance, activities, identities, relationships, politics, connections, and sign systems and knowledge and the corresponding questions for each theme. From the synthesis of the seven themes, a framework emerged in respect to the prospective teachers’ definition of racism and how they believe racism influences the social, emotional, and political position of those involved. Definition of Racism Racism was intentionally undefined within the prompt, however; the participants were required to personally define “racism” as a prerequisite for their self-selection of the perceived racial encounters to discuss in the interview. In response to the interview prompt, the participants described a variety of encounters they perceived to include racism. Based on their definitions of racism, the participants collectively described three elementary school, five middle school, eight high school, eight undergraduate, and thirteen graduate school encounters with racism. The way in which the participants defined racism contributed not only to the types of encounters included in their interviews but also the manner in which the definitions were reflected in their discourse throughout the interviews.

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The majority of the participants defined racism within the black-white or “African-American-Caucasian” paradigm. For example, when asked, “what leads you to call this situation racism?” Rebecca prefaced one of her descriptions with the statement, “well, it was obvious that there was a sort of racism coming into play. Because they are all African American students, she is a Caucasian teacher . . .” In another encounter, Rebecca depicted her emotional response to her students based on their race when she described, “I was coming in as a Caucasian . . . I have no idea what they have been through, what they have gone through, [and] the feelings that they encounter every day with racism because I am from the majority and from the power race.” The participants also strongly associated racism with obvious prejudice and stereotypes between people of different races. Although they described racial prejudice at a variety of levels their definitions were analogous. For instance, when asked, “what leads you to call this situation racism?” Krista responded, “Other than the open, umm . . . racial slurs, umm . . . I would say just because it’s, it is almost like hatred toward people that are different.” The participants also believed racial stereotypes were most often related to assumptions about specific groups of people based on their outward, perceived racial group membership. Social Change as a Result of Racism The prospective teachers in this study believed the racist behaviors of a specific individual or individuals influenced the social interactions around them. The participants did not reference themselves as the racist individuals or the individuals who committed the racist behaviors. For the majority of the prospective teachers, they perceived they were merely innocent or neutral in the encounter. The exception would be Sharon, the only African American participant, who was the victim of her racial encounters. However, all of the participants described how they were socially impacted by the encounter with racism. In perceiving themselves as innocent and neutral in their encounters with racism, the White prospective teachers did not speak to their White identity and how it influenced their perception of their encounters with racism. Of the ten participants who self-identified as White, only six of them referenced themselves as White in their interviews. Within the six references, the actual discourse around their individual whiteness was even more troubled. Brad explains: I mean, it is probably really not an issue because I am White. And, it doesn’t seem to be an issue for me. Sadly enough, I don’t think about it as much. But,

218   N. V. WILLIAMS if I was in that situation, I mean, it would probably play a bigger part of what I do. I mean not actually encountering it myself, I mean, I don’t know what to think of it.

In other words, in over twelve hours of interviews in which the topic of conversation was encounters with racism, the White prospective teachers only referenced their personal race fifteen times or once every 50 minutes and of these fifteen times the discourse was reflective of a “dysconscious racism” (King, 1991). Emotional Change as a Result of Racism Although the prospective teachers were unable to situate themselves in their social role within their encounters with racism, they were very articulate about their emotional role within their encounters with racism. All of the participants described their emotional reactions to their encounters with racism: the most common emotion of which was their anger. Anger was the strongest affect encountered in the identity component of the situations described by the prospective teachers. It has actually been one of the more challenging aspects of this study. While some of the prospective teachers were somewhat angered by family or friends who committed racist acts, the majority of the participants were very angry with the teacher preparation program managers, supervisors, and/or faculty members. Many of them did not become orally or visually angry until they discussed their encounters with racism during their teacher preparation program. For example, Abby states: Pent up anger [laugh] I can’t really express my anger to any one that’s really going to be able to make a change because like I said I’d be put back in my place and it would be even worse. So, just angry that I [pause] I feel like I’m paying so much money for this program and I can’t have my own opinion. Like, I’m forced on an opinion and I have no choice about it because if I want to get through the program I have to have that opinion and if I don’t I’m going to have wasted all this money on nothing.

In addition to their anger, the White participants also spoke to how they felt guilty and ashamed for their White identities. They also believed they were forced to feel guilty and ashamed as a result of the “racist” teacher education program faculty. Anthony articulates the feelings of the majority of his peers: “like I feel, guilty for expressing my cultural identity because it’s seen, I would, I think it’s viewed as the majority.”

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Political Change as a Result of Racism The prospective teachers defined racism as an overt behavior committed by an individual or group of individuals that impacted the political positions of those involved. Power was an especially influential component of the politics of racism for the participants in this study. Power here is defined as “a racial group’s capacity to push for its racial interests in relation to other races” (Bonilla-Silva, 1997, p. 470). In other words, the “racist” individual(s) and/or the “racist” behavior influenced the political power of the other individuals in the encounter. For example, Rebecca described her first substitute teaching experience in which one of the White teachers made a racist comment about the predominately Black students: I would say with her, she was a Caucasian and felt that she was above the students she was teaching. I think that she felt that if she was at a suburban district or even at another school in that district that she would not have to put up with the things that she did at this certain building. And, that she was above it all. So, she felt the power both with her race and her profession.

In Rebecca’s encounter, the “Caucasian” teacher had the power, as perceived by the prospective teacher. Her power influenced not only the students in that school but also, Rebecca, who was only in the school for one day as a substitute teacher. Although the prospective teachers in this study were able to speak to the power of other White individuals in their encounters, they did not verbalize their own White power in their encounters. Quite the contrary, many of the participants perceived their White identity as lacking power, especially in respect to their experiences in the teacher education program. For example, Kara states, “I also think it has to do with power issues of the people that are in charge of the program. I think that they are doing things in their best interest rather than ours . . .” Finally, although the participants spoke to numerous school-related encounters with racial discourse, they were unable to articulate how these encounters would influence their teaching other than they generally felt they could do it different or even better. Conclusions, Implications, and Recommendations Conclusions The analysis of the data revealed a racial framework through which the prospective teachers in this study defined racism and how they believe rac-

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ism influences the institutions (specifically, the educational institutions in this study) and the social, emotional, and political position of the people involved. This framework was the foundation from which the prospective teachers understood how their previous encounters with racism would influence their future teaching, learning, and interactions with others, specifically their students. Through this framework, the prospective teachers defined racism as an overt behavior committed by an individual or group of individuals. The person or persons who committed the racism, as defined by the participants, was referenced by the participants as “racist.” The behaviors were also termed “racist” and these behaviors impacted the social, emotional, and political positions of the people involved. The prospective teachers also believed the racist behaviors impacted institutions, such as their teacher education program. A visual representation of this framework is presented in Figure 13.1a. Unlike the first image, the second image (Figure 13.1b) represents how prospective teachers need to be challenged to view racism and its influence on the social, emotional, and political as situated within these institutions to more wholly recognize the “larger historical patterns, institutionalized process, and every day practices” of racism (Lewis, 2000, p. 625). In other words, racism must be accurately understood within the institutions through which it has been constructed and maintained. Bonilla-Silva (1999) explains: I argue that races exist as a social phenomenon wherever a racial structure is in place-that is, wherever there are social, political, and ideological practices that produce differential status between racialized social groups (races). Racial (and class or gender) consciousness is always a contingent matter in all

 

(a)

(b)

Figure 13.1  From the prospective teachers’ racial framework to a reconceptualized racial framework.

Anti-Racist Teacher Education Curriculum    221 social collectivities. Consciousness thus cannot be taken as the factor determining whether races have a social existence. (p. 900)

Thus, the initial step in an understanding of racism that eradicates the individual and the overt actions of the individual as the primary operatives is to focus more purposefully on the institutions through which the social, emotional, and political constructs of racism may be further deconstructed. Racism through this framework is understood as located within, not separate from the institution. The prospective teachers in this study not only defined racism as an overt behavior committed by an individual or group of individuals, but they also believed the behaviors were “racist” and these behaviors in turn impacted the institutions and social, emotional, and political positions of the people involved. They were only cognizant of the influences of racism on the institution and failed to see the influences of the institution on racism. More specifically, the participants believed the racist behaviors of a specific individual or individuals influenced the social interactions around them. However, they did not reference themselves as the racist individuals or the individuals who committed the racist behaviors. I would argue this was attributed to their conceptualization of racism as an individual behavior that influences the separate entity of social interactions. If the prospective teachers were able to re-envision the concept of racism as occurring within institutions and social interactions as an element within racism in an institution, they would be less inclined to view themselves as simply an individual outside of institutions, racism, and/or social interactions. Similarly, the participants could then view their own emotional reactions to their encounters with racism, anger, guilt, and shame of their White identities as another component of racism within the institution. These emotions then become an explicit developmental constituent in their further question and deconstruction or racism and their own racial identities. Anger, guilt, and shame are normal and to be expected as part of the transition through racial understanding and reconciliation as opposed to emotions to be battled and utilized to distract racial discourse from its purpose. Finally, the prospective teachers defined racism as an overt behavior committed by an individual or group of individuals that impacted the political positions those involved. Although the prospective teachers in this study were able to speak to the power of other White individuals in their encounters, they did not verbalize their own White power in their encounters. Within an understanding of social, emotional, and political positions as mechanisms within racism, the prospective teachers may better understand “all social divisions based on race are intrinsically about power and lead inevitably to divergent interests among the races” (Bonilla-Silva, 1999, p. 903). More particular to the participants perception of their White identity as lacking power, especially in respect to their experiences in the teacher

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education program, they may be more readily able to analyze “the connections between white daily lives and discursive orders may help make visible the processes by which the stability of whiteness—as location of privilege, as culturally normative space, and as standpoint—is secured and reproduced” (Frankenberg, 1993, p. 528). Therefore, they inherently have the power within their position as Whites to their further need to study their whiteness to “expose white lies, maneuvers, and pathologies that contribute to the avoidance of a critical understanding of race and racism” (Leonardo, 2009, p. 265). Implications The implications of the findings from this study demonstrate a strong need to reconceptualize the racial framework of prospective teachers in our teacher education programs. And, yet, how do we begin to challenge their current racial framework? What are the unforeseen implications of this challenge? How can we prepare them for this challenge? How do we continue their ability to challenge once they are in the classroom? The social, political, and emotional positions through this framework are understood as mechanisms within racism as opposed to their localization as individual mechanisms outside and separate of racism. However, there are, of course, other components that have perhaps been overlooked in the simplification of this framework. What are the other components that necessarily need to be addressed to further understand this framework? How could this framework be further expanded to include other aspects of the institution and racism? Recommendations The recommendations of the study include a curriculum of teacher education that from its inception of prospective teachers into the program encourages a focus, application, implementation, and evaluation of this racial framework. In addition, teacher educators must also critically self-reflect and be able to focus, apply, implement, evaluate and even more so, research this framework and finally prospective teachers should be challenged to similarly critically self-reflect and focus, apply, implement, evaluate this racial framework. In an era of accreditation and standardization, how do we challenge and begin to reform the current curriculum of teacher education? How do we ensure critical self-reflection of all teacher educators in our programs? How do we ensure they focus, apply, implement, evaluate and research racial frameworks such as the one proposed in this study?

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Finally, how do we determine if our prospective teachers do the same and know that in fact these theoretical recommendations and modifications do in fact improve the educational endeavors of our young people? References Adams, M. (2001). Core processes of racial identity development. In C. L. Wijeyesinghe & B. W. Jackson III (Eds.) New perspectives on racial identity development: A theoretical and practical anthology (pp. 209–242). New York, NY: New York University Press. Barbour, R. S., & Schostak, J. (2005). Interviewing and focus groups. Postmodernist perspectives. In B. Somekh & C. Lewin (Eds.), Research methods in the social sciences (pp. 41–48). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Blaisdell, B. (2005). Seeing every student as a 10: Using critical race theory to engage white teachers’ colorblindness. International Journal of Educational Policy, Research, & Practice, 6(1), 31–50. Bonilla-Silva, E. (1999). The essential social fact of race. American Sociological Review, 64(6), 899–906. Bonilla-Silva, E. (1997). Rethinking racism: Toward a structural interpretation. American Sociological Review, 62(3), 465–480. Cochran-Smith, M. (2004). Walking the road: Race, diversity, and social justice in teacher education. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Cross, B. E. (2003). Learning or unlearning racism: Transferring teacher education curriculum to classroom practices. Theory Into Practice, 42(3), 203–209. Decuir-Gunby, J. T. (2006). “Proving your skin is white, you can have everything”: Race, racial identity, and property rights in whiteness in the Supreme Court case of Josephine DeCuir. In A. D. Dixson & C.K. Rousseau (Eds.), Critical race theory in education: All God’s children got a song (pp. 89–112). New York, NY: Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. Delgado, R., & Stefancic, J. (Eds.). (2000). Critical race theory: The cutting edge. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Delpit, L. (1995). Other people’s children: Cultural conflict in the classroom. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co., Inc. Dixson, A. D., & Rousseau, C. K. (2005). And we are still not saved: Critical race theory in education ten years later. Race ethnicity and education, 8(1), 7–27. Frankenburg, R. (1993). White women, race matters: The social construction of whiteness. Routledge. Gee, J. P. (2009). An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method, second edition. New York, NY: Taylor and Francis, Inc. Haney Lopez, I. F. (2000). The social construction of race. In R. Delgado & J. Stefancic (Eds.), Critical race theory: the cutting edge (pp. 163–175). Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Harris, C. I. (1993). Whiteness as property. Harvard Law Review 106(8), 1707–1791. Hyland, N. E. (2005). Being a good teacher of black students? White teachers and unintentional racism. Curriculum Inquiry, 35(4), 429–459.

224   N. V. WILLIAMS Ladson-Billings, G., & Tate, W. F. (1995). Toward a critical race theory of education. Teachers College Record 97(1), 47–68. Ladson-Billings, G., & Tate, W. F. (2006). Toward a critical race theory of education. In A. D. Dixson & C. K. Rousseau (Eds.), Critical race theory in education: All God’s children got a song (pp. 11–30). New York, NY: Taylor & Francis. Lewis, B. F., Collins, A., & Pitts, V. (2000). An investigation of preservice teachers’ perceptions of African American students’ ability to achieve in mathematics and science. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, LA. Leonardo, Z. (2009). The color of supremacy: Beyond the discourse of “white privilege.” In E. Taylor, D. Gillborn & G. Ladson-Billings (Eds.), Foundations of critical race theory in education (pp. 261–276). New York, NY: Routledge. Marx, S. (2006). Revealing the invisible: Confronting passive racism in teacher education. New York, NY: Routledge. Mutua, A. D. (2006). The rise, development and future directions of critical race theory and related scholarship. Denver University Law Review, 84(2), 329–394. Oates, G. L. (2003). Teacher–student racial congruence, teacher perceptions and test performance. Social Science Quarterly, 84(3), 508–525. Parker, L., & Roberts, L. (2005). Critical theories of race. In B. Somekh & C. Lewin (Eds.), Research methods in the social sciences (pp. 74–80). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Perez Huber, L., Johnson, R.N., & Kohli, R. (2006). Naming racism: A conceptual look at internalized racism in schools. Chicano-Latino Law Review, 26, 183–206. Picower, B. (2009). The unexamined whiteness of teaching: How white teachers maintain and enact dominant racial ideologies. Race Ethnicity and Education, 12(2), 197–215. Picower, B. (2004). Teaching outside one’s race: The story of an Oakland teacher. Retrieved from http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/scmsAdmin/uploads/000/743/teaching% 20outside%20published.pdf. Sleeter, C. E. (2005). How white teachers construct race. In C. McCarthy, W. Crichlow, G. Dimitriadis, & N. Dolby (Eds.), Race, identity, and representation in education (pp. 243–256). New York, NY: Routledge. Smedley, A. & Smedley, B. (2005). Race as biology is fiction, racism as a social problem is real: Anthropological and historical perspectives on the social construction of race. American Psychologist 60(1), 16–26. Solomon, R. P., Portelli, J. P., Daniel, B. J., & Campbell, A. (2005). The discourse of denial: How white teacher candidates construct race, racism, and “white privilege.” Race Ethnicity and Education, 8(2), 147–169. Vaught, S. E., & Castagno, A. E. (2008). “I don’t think I’m a racist”: Critical race theory, teacher attitudes, and structural racism. Race Ethnicity and Education, 11(2), 95–113. Yosso, T. J. (2006). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. In A. D. Dixson & C.K. Rousseau (Eds.), Critical race theory in education: All God’s children got a song (pp. 191–212). New York, NY: Taylor & Francis.

EPILOGUE

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Editing this Book Considering Borders & Boundaries Between “Public” & “Art” in Framing Arts-Based Education Research

A few weeks ago I was having a conversation with four parents of children at Westchester Elementary School in Baltimore County, MD. We are all “art parents” for this school. Our task was to present posters of famous paintings, provided by the Baltimore Museum of Art, to the various grade levels by going into classrooms and facilitating lessons and activities on these pieces of art. One of the five parents on our team has a degree in art history. Across from her at the coffee shop where we were meeting, sat a parent who works with computers and engineering. A heated debate ensued. While the two other “art parents” appeared to be thinking “What the fu@&?!” I am wishing I had my hand-held tape recorder with me. This was great raw data! The engineer-father stated that he thinks Pollock’s work is no more than a bunch of random splatters on a canvas-what skill or talent does that take, really? I saw the art historian’s face grow red and she began to respond. He Surveying Borders, Bounderies, and Contested Spaces in Curriculum and Pedagogy, pages 225–232 Copyright © 2011 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. 225

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retorted that art is in the eye of the beholder. How could she tell him what he should think! Clearly her background in art history gave her insight into the context, purpose, and theories behind Pollock’s work. But does it, or should it, privilege her opinion? My own answer to that is yes . . . and no. Arts-based educational research (ABER) has not escaped this conundrum either. In fact, the very terminology of “art” launches many ABER scholars into heated debates over what constitutes “good” ABER scholarship (Norris et al, 2010), and what “good art” in ABER looks like. Like our postmodernist and modernist counterparts, ABER scholarship typically gets published and performed in . . . well . . . limited scholarly arenas, which are not as public as perhaps they could be, nor “speak” with relevancy to a public audience wider than those who can speak the ABER language. So whom does such scholarship serve? Within academic publications, I assume most of the readers (or audience) are more like the art-historian art parent. They have at least some form of a scholarly working background to situate their response. But what happens when ABER work “goes public?” Additionally, in a broader public scope, how is ABER work perceived and received as a form of inquiry, and not just art? These questions arose for me most recently while my fellow co-editors and I were conducting our blind reviews for the manuscripts submitted for this book. One happened to include the powerful images of the MexicanAmerican wall taken by Melina Martinez, which can be found on the cover of this book, published throughout the various book sections, and within her own chapter. We, the editors, spent an intensive day with a group of graduate student-reviewers discussing their various feedback regarding all the manuscripts submitted for consideration. Martinez’s particular manuscript came to the reviewers first only as images, without the ensuing written narrative. After they had looked at and reflected on the images themselves we shared a draft of Martinez’s accompanying narrative that explains the content and methodology of her photographic journey. And then something unexpected happened. First let me backtrack a little, since I need to situate what happened next. As one who has worked in the ABER field for over 10 years, I have become so familiar with the language, the “expectations” of “good” ABER scholarship, and the ways in which it could be (or dare I say, “ought” to be) presented to readers and viewers. The “anti-dominant ideology” methodology of ABER indeed has an unspoken system itself. Anyway, our graduate student-reviewers for these book proceedings while thoughtful, educated, informed individuals, were NOT familiar with ABER scholarship. So while I had my own set of expectations for how they might (or even, “should”) respond to the text, they neatly and roundly disrupted every assumption I had.

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As a whole, the graduate student-reviewers almost all agreed that the images WITHOUT the text were more meaningful and effective than pairing the images WITH the narrative. Their collective reaction to the images was most favorable. Something about these pictures resonated with most every reviewer. Yet, some of their written feedback included: The submission needs to use less words . . . let the reader interpret more meaning  . . . let the pictures talk! Allow the reader to make decisions based on the art. If we talk about studentcentered learning, let the piece reflect that . . . not the author telling the reader what to think.

As the reviewers shared their thoughts in discussion a little voice inside my head was screaming: “What? You can’t do that! Art does not speak for itself. Good ABER scholarship situates the work in context of self, space, history etc. How can a viewer know anything about the methodology or purpose of this work without the narrative?” Mind you, I did not say any of this. Rather, I nodded calmly and asked them why they thought this way. Some of them expressed that they felt that the narrative interfered with their own personal reading of the images. What became clear was that they held this work less as a piece of educational inquiry, and more as a work of art. Many said the draft of her narrative explanation (otherwise known as a theoretical framework and methodology) felt “cluttered and unnecessary.” I couldn’t help but note that not one reviewer made this comment about the research presented in any of the other papers submitted for consideration. In fact often the opposite critique was true; that some manuscripts, they said, felt too vague and were not telling the readers specifically enough “what to think.” But with Martinez’s images, they felt as if the artists own scholarly description was an infringement upon their right to simply view the images as they wished. One reviewer even wrote that the images without the narrative description of Martinez’s framing and methodology “gave me a chance to react/interact with the text without the author imposing his/her own story on me.” They felt that the relationship between their response and the image was more powerful than when it was interceded by the artist/researcher’s narrative. What usually constitutes thorough research in a traditional inquiry model (i.e., the framing and methodology) became an “imposition” in this example of visual inquiry. I wondered quietly, “Curious. I am a bit stumped. Challenged. What the hell do I do with this?” After I moved through Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ five stages of grief (1969) for long held assumptions about ABER work, I was able to consider something I had not considered before: I still do not believe art can ever speak

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for itself in some vacuum. Art is somehow personally, politically, socially, historically and culturally situated. The perspective of meaning(s) is situated and rather subjective. One common but not absolute differences between “art” and arts-based research is that the latter has an intention and purpose, beyond simply the creation of the art itself. It is a way of communicating an inquiry into something beyond the artwork. The aim is to inquire about something and to share the insights/findings with others. There is a method of inquiry somewhere in the process, and the underlying purpose is to research something. While this may be true of art outside the scope of ABER work sometimes, it is not necessarily always true. One distinction between “art” and arts-based research is in the terms themselves; the latter engaging with aesthetics and art to inquire about something which itself may not be an arts-based issue. As inquiry, art can provide the methodology, process, or form of data representation (or all of these) within a purpose to research. While I acknowledge that there are many fine and grey lines here worth debating on this matter, they are beyond the purview of this paper. Martinez’s photographs are art . . . but I wondered if by themselves they constituted research. But here is what I have started considering anew, something that I think warrants extensive conversations within ABER itself: The messy and complicated borders and boundaries between the ABER scholar and the audience are worth taking a deeper look. Can we not envision inquiry that focuses more on the audience responses and less on the researcher’s own voice? What the grad-student reviewers of Martinez’s images were trying to say at the workshop was that they hold “art” to different standards than they do research in a written form. Somehow, when something is written, the author maintains possession of the ownership for those ideas more than a scholar who uses, for example, photographs. As viewers of the images, our reviewers illustrated how when viewing (not reading) research, the viewer demands more of an active role in engaging with the material. When reading a written document, they are more willing consumers of the text. But with a visual image, they are active interpreters (or owners) of the image, its purpose or message. The implications of this are both problematic and promising in my opinion. What is problematic is that the purpose and methodology an ABER scholar may use to support his/her work might be received with less credibility or value than similar work of peers using more traditional written modes of inquiry. I believe that an arts-based researcher’s intention and point of view do matter in a work of art and in a work of research, and as such cannot simply be co-opted by viewers at will, while maintaining the same power and purpose. A public viewer/audience of ABER work might more easily discredit the researcher’s work as lacking what is historically called “validity.” Since ABER work often provides an avenue for communicating perspectives, voices and experiences of marginalized groups and

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individuals historically left out of, or colonized by traditional scholarship (Battiste, 2007) there exists a danger in re-entrenching the racist rationalizations that discredit experiences of the “Other.” By reserving the “right” to interpret arts-based research, the viewer can also discredit the experience being expressed through the work when/if it is seen as not as “real” as “real” research. However, what is promising, as exemplified in the experience between Martinez’s photos and our reviewers, is that arts-based research may have the potential to become agents of public engagement and change in ways that that traditional research does not. Because we view things and hear things and feel things using sensual processes of immediacy within our bodies, the response toward ABER work is different than the intellectual and perhaps disembodied ways that we read and think through knowledge presented in seemingly “objective” and distanced reporting. Art has the potential (not a given right) through the senses, to provoke emotions as well as “logic.” There is a culturally assumed expectation in the West that while one’s writing retains the voice of the writer [Barthes’ The Death of the Author (1993/1967) notwithstanding], art is intended to be interpreted, and hence at least co-owned by the viewer/audience. Because it evokes one’s emotions, perhaps one feels a need to maintain some sort of ownership: “It makes me feel this way, therefore I have entered some relationship with the work.” While the work of scholars of visual semiotics (i.e., Roland Barthes, Ferdinand Saussure, and Uberto Eco to name but a few) goes into these relationships and processes in depth, they are beyond the scope of this one narrative. Suffice it to say, how one “reads” sense based texts (i.e., images, sounds, scents, flavors, textures) is different than how one reads words. What ownership is assumed by the author of a written text in terms of the meaning of the words is often different (in many ways) than is the assumed ownership over meaning of, or interpretation of, images to compose a work of art. The reality is that by creating ABER work that is more public, we address an audience who may have little working knowledge of art as a form of scholarship; they do not necessarily bring with them a formal academic background of knowledge with which to interpret the work. But their engagement with ABER inquiry is vital to bridging the divide between scholarship and public activism. And here it is boys and girls, a form of research that has the power to bring embodied conversations between scholars and public audiences. The educational system and educators in the United States right now are under the greatest attack in our history. Rights of students and teachers are being undermined, and facism is currently acceptable legislative policy. Data driven policymaking perpetuates the illusion that so long as we rely on ob-

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jective, “Truth” based numerical findings, that the path toward educational reform will be crystal clear. The perspectives of educational advocates and social justice workers are still rendered invisible and silenced by the popular media. One obstacle in the path of many scholars dedicated to social change is the language used. As my husband (a plumber by trade) likes to remind me, “If you want to go out and tell people like me about what is bothering you, start by not using the word ‘pedagogy’; it sounds like a dinosaur!” I hate to admit this in writing, but he has a point. Yet images like those by Martinez are a means by which experiences and ideas can be communicated to a broader public audience; to convey ideas without the heavy-handed language of academia. When we think about inquiry for social justice, we need to consider that many of the individuals (outside the walls of higher education who have been silenced or rendered invisible), for whom scholars speak or hopefully better yet speak with, might not use academic terminology in their everyday discourse; they do not need to—they live it. One does not need to be able to define “hegemony” when it becomes understood as one’s experience. One can know things without defining them. Arts-based expressions of social issues have a sense-based immediacy to them. They can invite the audience to engage with issues that other forms of scholarship might render inaccessible, or less accessible. Additionally, one does not need to be able to define terms and phrases like “hegemony” or “meta-narrative” when looking at Martinez’s photographs in these pages, because one can still hopefully “feel” a sense of oppression and fear that is expressed through the lighting, the angles of the shots, or the viewers visual relationship to the object (the wall) within the images. You can glean a sense of isolation, injustice, and despair when looking at the images of the Mexican–American Wall. The images are a bridge, and sometimes a border, between the lens or perspective of the artist/researcher and the viewer. The results are, for better or worse, open to interpretation. According to Weber (2008): It is the paying attention, the looking and the taking note of what we see that makes images especially important to art, scholarship, and research. Indeed the discourse of the academy is all about persuading others to see what we see. (p. 42)

Yet, art, as a form of representation of inquiry, is subject to the interactive reading between the audience, the artist, the content and the process; the results of which cannot be predicted or controlled. Weber suggests that not all images “per se are ‘good’ or guarantee any sort of research outcome or automatically lead to deeper understanding or theoretical insight” (p. 49).

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There is still an erroneous assumption in Western culture that “numbers don’t lie.” Simply look at the push in schools for “data driven instruction” as the embodiment of our need for numbers to supposedly “measure” student success. While 2+2 does equal four, in research we eliminate the reality that even numbers as a form of research data are always filtered through a subjective lens in much the same way that Martinez holds a lens to take pictures of the wall. Therefore (public) readers of research (such as reports published in any mainstream newspaper) will often assume a right to the interpretation of aesthetic or narrative data which fronts its subjectivity at the outset, while becoming more passive readers of traditional data; ordaining a certain right to the Truth in something that is presented as objective and data driven. Authority of meaning is privileged to traditional inquiry in a way that it is not in ABER work. So as we engage ABER as a public practice, how do we navigate the influences of privilege that public audiences give to hard data, over a more questionable “trust” of research presented in artistic form? Is art simply open to anyone’s interpretation? Maybe. There are too many contingencies needed to answer that question sufficiently here. A deeper challenge to ABER is to provoke a public questioning of the taken for granted assumptions which consumers of research hold about traditional inquiry. Might ABER work plant the seeds that encourage a public critical questioning of all research, especially that which seems to hold an authoritative sway over policy making, because it comes in the guise of objectivity and therefore “Truth”? So I propose two things. First that we explore possibilities for arts based educational research to become arts based educational ACTION. Moving forward from my proposal for outlaw arts-based research (McDermott, 2010), where I suggest that how one “moves” matters more than what one “is” or is “not,” let us turn our focus from publications circulated within smaller audiences, to acts of public spectacle that reach audiences beyond those in the scholarly arenas, those who effect public and policy changes, those who attend PTA meetings and community events, and those who vote. The works of artists such as Guillermo Gómez-Peña (2009) are excellent models we might follow. On his website he writes: The question for us artists is, what will our new role in the post-Bush era be? We have been left standing atop a political, economic, cultural and spiritual disaster site. This tragic inheritance requires the immediate intervention of artists, activists and intellectuals. Not only should we articulate and chronicle the change, but we also can partake in the healing process. Art can save lives. Politicians have contaminated the language of freedom. Words like democracy, liberty and justice mean nothing anymore. It is the job of poets to heal the word.

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We need to challenge the traditional paradigm in academia that privileges scholarship in tier-one journals over service work in communities. Until academics themselves can support the value of public work, public scholarship will continue to be undervalued. Secondly, as the experience between the manuscript reviewers and Martinez’s work illustrates, we need to continuously challenge our assumptions of what makes “good” art OR “good” research. I argue that quality of both might be considered less in the work itself but rest more in the quality of the ABER scholarship in relationship to the audience. What we in academia, or in smaller cliques of research such as ABER think is worthy of our attention is not necessarily shared by a broader audience. And for our work to foster effective social change, what matters “out there” in terms of reach-ability should be at the forefront of our consideration. Martinez’s photographs don’t hand statistics and facts to the viewer. They do not proclaim a truth. But through her lensed perspective, they share her experience. The images provoke the viewer to feel something—but what that is, is in large part what the viewer brings to the table. References Barthes, R. (1993). The death of the author. (S. Heath, Trans. of 1967 original). In P. Rice & P. Waugh (Eds.), Modern literary theory: A reader, 2nd ed. (pp. 114–121). New York, NY: Edward Arnold. Battiste, M. (2007). Research ethics for protecting Indigenous knowledge and heritage: Institutional and research responsibilities.  In N. Denzin & M. D. Giardina (Eds) Ethical futures in qualitative research:  Decolonizing the politics of knowledge. (pp. 123–140). Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Gómez-Peña, G. (2009). A toast to the Obama era. Retrieved from http://www. pochanostra.com/dialogues Kübler-Ross, E. (1969). On death and dying. New York, NY: Macmillan. McDermott, M. (2011). Outlaw arts-based research. Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 7(1), 7–10. Norris, J., Blumenfeld-Jones, D., Stone-Hanley, M., McDermott, M., Carpenter, S., & McElfresh, B. (2010, May). Reexamining the complex aesthetic ecologies of artsbased educational research for a changing world. Panel presented at the AERA Annual Conference, Denver, CO. Weber, S. (2008). Visual images in research. In J.G. Knowles & A. Cole (Eds.) Handbook of the arts in qualitative research (pp. 41–53). Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publishing.

AFTERWORD

Something about Hats Teaching, Researching, and Teaching Research for Understanding

For me, working in post-secondary education has always been about my students. From my first days teaching in higher education, my primary focus has been to submerse teacher candidates and current practitioners in educative experiences. I hope that they will find value in these experiences and, in turn, engage in such practice in their own P–12 classrooms. Or, in other words, I want to teach teachers to teach through good teaching. Since my days as a high school English teacher, every curriculum I have designed has been informed by Henderson’s (2001) notion of teaching for democratic living. This is a strategy for curricular and pedagogical planning that encourages students to seek a lifestyle that is both “generous” and “generative,” and scaffolds the students’ “3S Understanding.” To that end, Henderson invites teachers to focus upon fostering intelligence in their students and encourage them to engage in critical thinking over rote memorization and habit; this is “subject matter learning” and the first of the three Ss. The second is derived from the notion of encouraging students to consider themselves life-long scholars. Henderson encourages teachers to share with students the personal and social rewards that result from purposeful study and the value in seeing one’s Self as a learner. Finally, the third S in 3S UnSurveying Borders, Bounderies, and Contested Spaces in Curriculum and Pedagogy, pages 233–240 Copyright © 2011 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. 233

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derstanding pertains to social learning. Henderson suggests that teachers should promote individuals’ understanding and respect of diversity and the countless unique Others with whom the world is shared. These three student-learning considerations can be characterized as the 3S’s of teaching for democratic living. The 3S’s refer to (1) thoughtful subject learning, (2) learning to see oneself as a life-long learner, and (3) learning to interact socially with diverse others. (Henderson, 2001, p. 8, emphasis in original)

Henderson primarily forwards this curricular design concept for engagement in the P–12 environment (i.e., Henderson and Kesson, 2004; Henderson and Gornik, 2007), but I maintain that it is just as applicable in any post-secondary curriculum. In my daily practice, I endeavor to engage in teaching for democratic living and scaffold my candidates’ 3S understanding in every graduate course I teach. Therefore, when my fellow editors and I crafted our proposal to engage in this work, I was most interested in how the project might translate into my graduate classroom. This is very much in keeping with one of the foci of the Curriculum and Pedagogy Group, which endeavors to encourage and support emerging scholars. Fortuitously, there was a seamless fit, and my colleagues were wholly supportive of integrating the creation of this book into my course. The Master’s of Education program at Monmouth University was re-created in 2008 to include a set of five courses in the field of curriculum studies; among these is “ED630: Research in Curriculum Studies.” The prerequisite for Research in Curriculum Studies is another course that focuses entirely upon action research. While action research is a valuable tool for many practitioners, those candidates who consider the possibility of pursuing a terminal degree require a broader examination of the field of research. Such examination was the rationale to develop and implement this second course, Research in Curriculum Studies, which was designed to introduce candidates to qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research existing in and around the field of curriculum studies. In keeping with Henderson’s (2001) notion of teaching for 3S understanding, all candidates go through the steps of their own small-scale research study. Through that work, they employ their knowledge of research (the Subject matter) to explore a facet of their personal/professional lives that is of particular interest to them. The experience is intended to foster candidates’ understanding of the importance of critical reflective practice and continued academic growth, or, Henderson’s third “S”: Self, life-long learning. It is hoped that through the successful employment of research, the candidates might find the value in ongoing research-based exploration and scholarship. As the course summative assessment, candidates generate both a manuscript and formal presentation about their research findings.

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To achieve that end, they must consider not merely the immediate impact of their work upon their professional environment and the educative space they share with their classmates, but also their place in the greater milieu of educational research and the field of curriculum studies (connections to both local and global Social environs). Through this employment of Henderson’s (2001) teaching for democratic living, the Research in Curriculum Studies course has been successful in the past. Course evaluations have been higher than comparable averages and, I believe more importantly, several candidates have taken their work to professional conferences and submitted manuscripts for publication. But, as any reflective practitioner will attest, the fact that a course has been well received by candidates in the past does not eliminate room for improvement. The first and perhaps most daunting problem is the fact that, like so many P–12 and university classrooms, the course essentially takes place in a vacuum. Candidates share with one another in class-based writers’ workshops as well as presentations, and some even go on to present work in more public venues. But any authentic engagement as public scholars has been previously difficult to achieve. In the course, as is so often the case in my practice, I have been frustrated by the boundaries of the calendar; a 15-week semester offers little in the way of time to create a study, go through the Institutional Review Board process and collect data, let alone engage in authentic dialogue and critical reflection. As a junior professor, scholarly activity is an integral part of my daily life. Of course I discuss this with my candidates, but so often I wish I could somehow involve them more authentically in scholarly work. Often, I am aware of the underlying sense that I am always switching hats. I have a professor hat and a researcher hat (and a committee-member hat, a mom hat, and several other hats that are not immediately relevant here) and as much as I wish it to be otherwise, it has seemed impossible to wear these hats at the same time. But when our proposal for the book project was accepted, my co-editors graciously agreed to afford me an opportunity to finally weave those hats together. I hoped that my own professional opportunity might also serve to significantly enhance my work as a professor and genuinely enrich the experiences of the candidates in the spring 2011 section of Research in Curriculum Studies. In keeping with the notion of teaching for democratic living (Henderson, 2001) the reviewing process served to engage the candidates’ in a “thinking-centered, performance-based activit[y]” and afford them the opportunity to “[draw] connections between their pertinent past experiences and the content they are studying” (p. 9). Candidates had employed journals articles to write papers and create projects throughout their graduate programs, but this project afforded them the opportunity to authentically engage in the very same process through which those journals were created.

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As valuable as I imagined the experience certainly might be, I needed to integrate it into the course in such a way that would be both fair and balanced; the candidates still needed to engage in their own research, so the project could not be so time-consuming that it would overwhelm the remainder of the course content. An additional challenge was the fact that there were only seven candidates enrolled in the Research in Curriculum Studies course. While this intimate class size was spectacular for the candidates, it was too small a group to comfortably manage all of the manuscript submissions that were put forward for consideration. Therefore, I selected eight other individuals, all former Master’s of Education degree candidates who stood out in my memory as exemplary writers and professionals, and extended to them an invitation to participate in the project. Of those invited, six people agreed to participate, and without compensation of any kind they engaged in the project with the same level of responsibility and commitment as those individuals enrolled in the Research in Curriculum Studies course. To integrate the process of reviewing manuscripts into the course curriculum, I created an assessment entitled “Becoming Responsible Consumers of Research.” Serving as 15% of the course grade, this was a completionbased project that spanned two course meetings. In one class meeting I distributed all of the necessary materials (instructions and materials were distributed to those reviewers not enrolled in the course either in person or electronically) and another session was “Reviewer Day.” At the end of that day, I offered all of the reviewers the option to email me their thoughts and reflections. I did not require them to do so, nor did I provide any specific questions or guidelines. The reasons for this, primarily, were first to insure that the responses were authentic. Several of the reviewers shared their reflections, and many of their thoughts are integrated here with their permission. In the first class session I explained and diagramed the peer-review process. As mentioned previously, all of the candidates had read peer-reviewed journal articles, but a surprising few had any understanding of how those articles were chosen for publication. Looking back, Doug Spishock, a middle school science teacher, realized that “reviewing helped [him] to understand part of the arduous process of getting a personal piece accepted and printed in a published book,” which was one of the goals I hoped to achieve by engaging candidates in this project. After elucidating the basic characteristics of the peer-review process, I announced that the candidates would serve as reviewers for a curriculum studies text that will be published in the fall. To provide a rationale for the project, I explained that the experience is valuable in several ways. First, they would have the opportunity to read and respond to relatively raw manuscripts. Other than engaging in the peer-editing process, which is a scaffolded activity in one of the last class ses-

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sions, candidates often have very little exposure to considering others’ research prior to publication. As Doug Spishock wrote: “in public education, it is hard to find someone–supervisors and administrators included–that can contribute to a meaningful conversation about topics in curriculum. Having an opportunity to discuss other people’s thoughts as well as our own is valuable to my own personal development as a current teacher and graduate student.” To that end, not only would the candidates explore and appraise these manuscripts independently, but they would also do so in small-group discussion. Second, they would be reading pieces they would not typically choose for their own work. Particularly in graduate school, which is often a hectic balancing act between teaching and graduate courses, scholars often seek out research that serves to support or extend their understanding of their own discipline and interests as they write papers and prepare for presentations. Therefore, when I was organizing the manuscripts to be read by each candidate I consciously assigned pieces that were outside of their immediate area of interest. One hallmark of the curriculum studies focus of the program is its commitment to preparing candidates for work in terminal degree programs, should they choose to pursue that end. This project provided candidates with authentic exposure to the peer-review process in a manner that simply could not be previously achieved. In the past, I could explain the peer-review process. In this course, the candidates were the process. Once I introduced the project and shared potential benefits with the candidates, their immediate response was genuine excitement. I, too, was very excited because I realized that I was finally able to wear both hats at once; I felt that, for the first time, I had the chance to work with my candidates. I could finally wear the professor hat and the researcher hat both at the very same time. With the project organized and the stage set, I knew this was going to be a very interesting semester. When I had the final list of reviewers, which consisted of those on the course roster and the additional people who accepted the invitation to participate in the project, I matched each reviewer with three manuscripts. As mentioned previously, I made every attempt to choose pieces that served to diversity each reviewer’s knowledge in the field. To scaffold the reviewers’ experience and understanding, my fellow editors and I co-created a reviewer’s template1 specific to the graduate candidates with which they generated both quantitative and qualitative feedback. The materials, including manuscripts and reviewer templates, were distributed to all of the reviewers several weeks prior to Reviewer Day. To further enhance the experience of Reviewer Day, my co-editors from Towson made the journey north to spend the day with the class. Prior to our meeting, we determined the schedule. First, we employed the fish bowl technique to have a conversation about a manuscript in order to demonstrate to

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the Reviewers how such a discussion might play out. Using a manuscript not initially included in the original pool, the four co-editors modeled a conversation in which we analyzed the piece based on the reviewer template. This was something we had discussed only briefly, so the conversation was authentic and not scripted. When later reflecting on the experience of the day, one of the reviewers, Heather Cellary, wrote, “the fish bowl discussion really put the project into perspective of how ideas are discussed and problems are solved.” Alicia Somers also thought that the example “provided clear expectations for the reviewers.” After a brief conversation about the fish bowl and a few logistical questions, we began the process of reviewing the manuscripts. Each reviewer had been assigned three manuscripts; they brought printed copies of those pieces, as well as their Reviewer Template written reflections about each, to the meeting. Because there was not an exact distribution of pieces, we had four, 25-minute discussion sessions. In most, two reviewers talked about a piece while an additional reviewer acted as an observer who could ask questions and help guide conversation. During these sessions, small-groups were spread out among several rooms, so there was plenty of space to have conversations and not worry about volume. Each pair of reviewers was given a “quick response” feedback form, which they were asked to complete together; the form had three categories which identified the manuscripts as exemplary, in need of small changes, or in need a significant revision. Reviewers were to discuss each manuscript, negotiate into which category it fell, and then answer the correlating questions pertaining to the piece. During these small-group discussions, the editors floated between the conversations. This was a particularly interesting and rewarding experience for me. I was afforded the rare and wonderful opportunity to observe my candidates in a way I never really had before. I was wearing both hats, listening to my candidates take part in a level of critical discussion that I had not often experienced, and engaging them in collegial dialogue as co-workers on the project. The other editors also drifted around from room to room. Sometimes they participated in conversations as guides, and other times they simply listened to the reviewers’ conversations. One of the reviewers, Alicia Somers, reflected that she “gained insight interacting with the professors as they floated into our groups hearing our comments and provided questions to further our thought process and dialog.” As a professor, I believe it was an incredibly rewarding experience to hear my current and former candidates engaging in high levels of academic conversation. I was genuinely proud of their professionalism and how seriously they all took the experience. At the end of the class session, the editors lead a large-group discussion about the overall events of the day, and encouraged reviewers to share

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their thoughts about the experiences of participating in this process. Quite spontaneously, after a short conversation about the entirety of the book, the reviewers and editors worked together to brainstorm themes that emerged from the manuscripts and discussion. The words or themes we had been mulling over for the title included “boundaries” and “borders.” Tina Parisi reflected on that brainstorming activity: “At the end of the session after looking at all of those words and phrases listed on the whiteboard, I thought, ‘Well, this is depressing’. The words worked together to communicate something negative but I’m not sure that’s what we meant to do. It was probably the result of us immediately reacting to each other’s responses and providing very raw feedback.” It was this kind of hands-on, scaffolded reflection, I believe, that was most valuable to the candidates in this experience. Heather Cellary, one of the reviewers enrolled in the Research in Curriculum Studies course, most succinctly shared the impact that the experience had on her as a researcher and consumer of research. She wrote: “I now look carefully at the articles I am reading for my research project to analyze the information. I look to see how well the concept is presented. I am also looking at the references to see how current they are . . . I have also learned that there are many forms of research and depending on the topic, sometimes strictly quantitative research is best and other times, qualitative is what will better reach the reader. Overall, being able to reach and relate to the reader, I think, is very important; to have people thoroughly understand a concept may also inspire them to do further research. This project was a great learning opportunity, which allows me to value research more.” Heather’s 3S understanding is evident in this reflection; she has learned about the subject matter of research, herself as a creator and consumer of research (which may, hopefully, evolve in her life-long engagement with research) and the social aspect of writing in which one must “reach and relate to the reader.” I must reiterate the fact that these reflections, while invited, were unprompted. Heather’s response to the experience is entirely her own. Like so many of the candidates, Heather concluded that “it was truly a privilege to be part of this project,” and I could not agree more. This was a unique opportunity for me to experience teaching in an entirely new way. I got to wear my professor hat and my researcher hat both at the same time, and work with my students on a project that we will all remember. As Doug Spishock surmised, it was rewarding to “collaborate with so many other minds that have significant experience in curriculum; [this experience] further deepened my own understanding in the field.” As a professor, I am hard-pressed to imagine a more authentic experience in which my candidates could learn such valuable lessons about research. As Dewey wrote, “if an experience arouses curiosity, strengthens initiative, and sets up desires and purposes that are sufficiently intense to carry a

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person over dead places in the future, continuity works in a very different way. Every experience is a moving force” (1938, p. 38). Since the activity concluded, I cannot count the number of times one of the reviewers has approached me to ask if we have chosen a title or when the book will be in print. Since Reviewer Day, I have occasionally wondered how I will possibly re-create such an authentic experience in future courses. Of course, I could collect manuscripts with diverse subject matter and varying degrees of quality for future classes to read and evaluate. But the fact that these pieces were actual submissions to a project that concluded with published book brought a heightened level of excitement and commitment from the candidates. This experience was, for me, a “moving force.” It has moved my teaching with such profundity that it seems to have forever changed my hats. Now that they have been woven so intimately together, they are inextricably bound in a way that will surely carry me through those inescapable “dead places” in future courses and project that will surely arise. I can only hope that the experience was as moving for my candidates. Note 1. All manuscripts were initially reviewed by at least one editor, and then reviewed by volunteer experts in the field. So, while there was a great deal of participation on the part of the Monmouth University reviewers, they were not the sole evaluators of these pieces. Further, the expert reviewers had a less scaffolded Template.

References Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York, NY: Touchstone. Henderson, J.G. (2001). Reflective teaching: Professional artistry through inquiry (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall. Henderson, J.G. & Kesson, K.R. (2004). Curriculum wisdom. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall. Henderson, J.G. & Gornik, R. (2007). Transformative curriculum leadership. (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall.

About the Editors

Cole Reilly is an assistant professor of education at Towson University, where he teaches elementary methods courses to undergraduate seniors as well as graduate-level, curricular coursework for practicing K–12 educators. He also co-facilitates a yearlong Professional Development School (PDS) practicum experience locally. Cole’s scholarly interests often draws upon teacher inquiry, reflection, service learning, feminist pedagogies, and curricular (re)design. His also conducts empirical research with regard to social constructivist meaning making around notions of gender(ing), sexuality, race, and/or class, etc. He was recently honored for this work, receiving C&P’s outstanding dissertation award. Victoria Russell is an assistant professor in elementary education at Towson University. She serves as a university supervisor to interns in a Professional Development School setting and researches teacher development, mentoring, assessment, and the use of new media in constructing teacher identity and professional networks. Her early career included working as a special education teacher, instructional leader, research director, and K–12 social studies curriculum coordinator. Laurel K. Chehayl is an assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Monmouth University. Prior to teaching in higher education, Laurel taught secondary English, public speaking, and drama for 6 years. At Monmouth, she has served as the Director of the Master’s of Education Degree Program since 2007. Laurel teaches courses in Curriculum Studies, diversity, and foundations. Her research trajectory has been foSurveying Borders, Bounderies, and Contested Spaces in Curriculum and Pedagogy, pages 241–242 Copyright © 2011 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. 241

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cused upon fostering curriculum leadership among current practitioners. She has also published several theoretical pieces, including two entries in Craig Kridel’s (2010) Encyclopedia of Curriculum Studies, and articles in Journal of Curriculum Theorizing and Middle School Journal. Morna M. McDermott is an associate professor at Towson University, where she teaches various theory and methods courses in the College of Education. Her research interests focus on democracy, social justice, and artsinformed inquiry in K–post-secondary educational settings, and working with beginning and experienced educators. She is the author of various publications including Outlaw Arts Based Research in Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy; Using Children’s Literature and Drama to Understand Social Justice (2010), co-authored with N. Rankie-Shelton for Teacher Development; and (De)constructing Fragments: Arts-Based Inquiry as Passion Pieces, in J. G. Knowles (et al.) (Eds.) Creating Scholartistry: Imagining the Arts-Informed Thesis or Dissertation.

About the Contributors

Christian Belden obtained his master’s degree in bilingual education from Boise State University in 2011 and is currently working in the Austin Independent School District as a bilingual teacher. He worked on the Literacy sin Fronteras initiative for one year as the logistics manager. He is currently working on research about the implementation of rigid policies specifically designed to develop and maintain pacified classrooms, especially in communities represented by the poor, working class, and racial minorities. Blanca Caldas Chumbes has worked as a teacher for more than fourteen years in both Peru and the United States. In her last semester as a master’s student in bilingual education at Boise State University, she co-founded the Literacy sin Fronteras initiative and worked as a project manager. Currently, Ms. Caldas is a Ph.D. student in Curriculum and Instruction at University of Texas in Austin. Melissa Castañeda is a former third grade bilingual teacher in Texas. She currently holds the position of campus literacy coach at the Brownsville Independent School District. Melissa is committed to educational equality for all students. She is pursuing an Ed.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with a specialization in Educational Leadership at the University of Texas at Brownsville. Antonino Giambrone is a doctoral student in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at OISE/UT. His research interests include social justice and equity education, drama pedagogy, and arts-based educaSurveying Borders, Bounderies, and Contested Spaces in Curriculum and Pedagogy, pages 243–245 Copyright © 2011 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. 243

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tional research. Antonino is also an Instructional Leader in Equity with the Toronto District School Board. David L. Humpal has been teaching high school English for the past 23 years in South and North Central Texas. His current areas of research include diversified cultural and social issues-oriented English Language Arts, transportation theory, and critical white pedagogy. He is currently a Ph.D. student in Culture and Curriculum at Texas A&M University, and holds a Masters of Science Degree in Curriculum and Instruction from Texas A&M Corpus Christi. The following manuscript is from his emerging autoethnography. Erin M Humphries currently teaches at Woodbridge High School in New Jersey. Her passion for education is reflected through her motivation and enthusiasm in and outside of the classroom as a secondary mathematics teacher. While studying for her Master’s of Education degree at Monmouth University in NJ, Erin worked closely with her professors and colleagues to complete a research project directed toward high school mathematics. She presented her research at the Curriculum and Pedagogy Conference in October 2010. Erin continues to pursue new and challenging opportunities as an educator and in curriculum research. Jaime Lopez is currently a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Brownsville, pursuing an Ed.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with a specialization in Educational Leadership. He is the District Director of Operations for IDEA Public Schools located in Weslaco, Texas, serving the entire Rio Grande Valley, and has been an elementary, middle, and high school principal in schools along the Texas–Mexico border. Melina Martinez was born in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and transplanted to South Texas at an early age. She received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College in Arts Education. She is a Certified Texas Educator pursuing a Master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction with an Emphasis in Art Education. Most of her graduate research involves the construction of the United States Border Fence constructed a few miles from her home in South Texas. Myosha McAfee, a doctoral candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has studied race from five disciplinary/field lenses (sociology, anthropology, comparative literature, social psychology, and law) and four schools of thought (structuralism, symbolic interactionism, microethnography, and phenomenology). Her research agenda involves intersections between racialization, pedagogy, and the production of academic work. She studies the racial anatomies of schools and how they may magically communicate who is smart, whose intelligence is malleable, whose per-

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sonhood embodies success, and who is expected to persist in the face of academic obstacles. Michael T. Ndemanu is a Ph.D. candidate and Associate Instructor of Multicultural Education at Indiana University. He majors in Curriculum and Instruction with emphasis in secondary education and minors in Language Education. He holds a Masters degree in English as a Second Language from Langston University, Oklahoma City. He earned a Bachelor’s degree with a dual major in French and English from the University of Yaoundé I in Cameroon. He has been teaching English and French for over 10 years. Elva Reza-López is an assistant professor in Bilingual Education at Boise State University. She received her Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from New Mexico State University. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in bilingual critical literacy and supervises bilingual pre-service teachers in dual-language schools. She worked as a teacher in bilingual classrooms for over 25 years. Her research interests lie primarily in critical bilingual literacy, dual-language pedagogy, and Nepantla, a third space of possibilities for social justice. Amy Shema is an elementary school teacher and doctoral candidate at the Warner Graduate School of Education, University of Rochester. Her areas of interest include social justice pedagogies, literacy studies, queer theory, and authentic student engagement. The students of Editing Crew are excited to know that other teachers are learning about Student Author of the Week and hope that their work inspires others to write. Nicole V. Williams is an assistant professor at the University of Findlay, having recently graduated from Ohio State University. Nicole is also this year’s winner of the James T. Sears Award.