NIUSI

part of the Education Reform Networks

Identity

• Why are so many minority students in special education? Understanding race & disability in schools
  Scholars have discussed the overrepresentation of minority students in special education programs for high-incidence disability categories since long before the first federal law P. L.
• Rethinking Education in the Global Era
  The author of this article covered an exemplary school in Sweden, the Tensta Gymnasium, as a successful model of education in the global era that tries to promote lifelong learning and engagement with the world, as well as socialization for cross-cultural work. The author reviewed the general characteristics of the Tensta Gymnasium experimental high school.
• How racial identity affects school performance.
  Today in the United States, race still affects where we live, pray, go to school, and socialize. It seems that for many years to come, race will undoubtedly continue to be a significant source of separation within our society.
• Educational change over time? The sustainability and nonsustainability of three decades of secondary school change and continuity
  This article is about long-term systemic sustainable change and applies to all educational leaders and policy makers. Based on a comparative research students conducted in Canada and the United States (US), the authors presented a conceptual framework, methodological design, and key research findings from a Spencer Foundation-funded project of long-term educational change over time.
• Reimagining Race in Education: A New Paradigm from Psychology
  The author discusses paradigms underlying current approaches to multicultural education, introducing a typology of philosophical assumptions that has been used to classify approaches to multiculturalism in the field of psychology. The author discusses racial identity theory as an important psychological component of a race-based perspective for understanding race and culture in education and examines how racial identity affects educational thought and practice.
• African American Giftedness: Our Nation's Deferred Dream
  The author addresses issues that have perpetuated the underrepresentation of African Americans in gifted and talented programs, which include: inadequate definitions, standardized testing, nomination procedures, learning style preferences, family and peer influences, screening and identification, and gifted underachievers. He concludes by discussing alternative theories of giftedness and the implementation of multicultural education in teacher education programs.
• The Care and Education of Young Bilinguals: An Introduction for Professionals
  This book is a comprehensive introduction for all professionals working with bilingual children. For speech therapists, physicians, psychologists, counselors, teachers, special needs personnel, and many others, this book addresses the most important issues at a practical level.
• Dismantling White Privilege: Pedagogy, Politics, and Whiteness. Counterpoints: Studies in the Postmodern Theory of Education, Vol. 73
  The author of this book critically interrogated whiteness across contexts, from the experiential level to the different ways in which whiteness is deployed in contemporary cultural politics. The editors and contributors contend that "marking" whiteness is an important step in dismantling white privilege within the context of concerns for equity and social justice.
• Identity and Learning: Student Affairs' Role in Transforming Higher Education
  Self-definition plays a crucial role in complex learning. This article offers a framework for making identity central in learning to promote learning and self-authorship.
• The social worlds of immigrant youth
  This article applies to all of you who know that your classes are filled or are soon to be filled with minority and immigrant students. In many states and schools districts this is the reality.
• Personal Transformations from the Inside Out: Nurturing Monocultural Teachers' Growth toward Multicultural Competence
  This article contends that the transformation of incoming preservice teachers into multiculturally competent, committed advocates for all students can be achieved through a combination of sound multicultural research and best practice, discussing mediated cultural immersions, the role of attending faculty in student growth, and the three phases of mediated cultural immersion. The origins of mediated cultural immersion programs are described.
• Dewey, Freire, and a Pedagogy for the Oppressor
  The author asserts that cultural diversity and democracy will always be in conflict with each other. The author discusses an oppressor's view of the world; a pervasive dualism in perspectives; the inadequacy of current efforts to overcome the conflict between the oppressors and the oppressed; traits of oppressors that must be changed; a three-pronged approach to consciousness raising; and common themes within this approach.
• On Infusing Disability Studies into the General Curriculum
  This On Point was produced by the National Institute for Urban School Improvement (NIUSI). It is about inclusion and applies to all people with disabilities, families and teachers.
• Breaking the Silence: The Stories of Gay and Lesbian People in Children's Literature
  The author discusses how for gay or lesbian youth, the issues of identity and acceptance that are ignored both in life and in literature are not only profound but also dangerous. She notes that books that include gay or lesbian characters usually elicit a strong negative reaction to their content by vocal conservative groups.
• The Color of Discipline: Sources of Racial and Gender Disproportionality in School Punishment.
  The disproportionate discipline of African-American students has been extensively documented; yet the reasons for those disparities are less well understood. Drawing upon one year of middle-school disciplinary data for an urban school district, the authors in this report explored three of the most commonly offered hypotheses for disproportionate discipline based on gender, race, and socioeconomic status.
• Empowering Pedagogies That Enhance the Learning of Multicultural Students
  The author discusses the tenets of critical pedagogy, describing research on the presence of those tenets within discourse patterns and pedagogical practices in urban, community-based classrooms. Discourses and pedagogies of three female, African American teachers are highlighted, examining how teachers challenge students to consider alternate life possibilities, become critical thinkers, and consider transformation of their own and others' life situations.
• Emic and Etic Perspectives on Chicana and Chicano Multicultural Literature
  This study outlines historical perspectives on Chicano self-definition and identity. The authors examine emancipation in Chicano literature, and contrast the ideological positioning of two prominent authors deemed culturally relevant for "Hispanic" students.
• Why Pick on Me? School Exclusion and Black Youth
  This book examines school exclusion in the United Kingdom, particularly the exclusion of black males, using data from the author's experience as an advisory teacher for multicultural education and from four studies of black students. The book highlights school-related determinants of young people's life chances.
• Educational needs and barriers for refugee children in the United States: A review of the literature.
  Today around globe, 20.8 million refugees are striving to seek a safe place in more than 150 countries. Approximately, half of the refugee population in the world is younger than 18 years old.
• Learning and Living Difference That Makes a Difference: Postmodern Theory and Multicultural Education
  Multiculturalism that both transforms and informs is important. The author recommends applying postmodern theory to transformative understanding of multiculturalism.
• "White Privilege": Discrimination and Miscommunication--How It Affects/Effects Underrepresented Minority [Groups] on College Campuses
  The author discusses that thirty years after the enactment of civil rights legislation, the meaning of race has become a problem in the United States, largely because the legacy of centuries of white supremacy lives on. Monolithic white supremacy is over, but in a more concealed way, white power and privilege linger.
• Preparing Teachers of Color at a Predominantly White University: A Case Study of Project TEAM
  The authors examined the experiences of preservice teacher participants in Project TEAM, an initiative at a predominantly white university to increase the number of minority students who completed teacher education and became teachers. Case study data highlight three themes: developing a sense of community with minority student peers, developing a stronger ethnic identity, and working for social justice through multicultural education.
• "The Politics of Location": Text As Opposition
  In this opinion paper, the author foregrounded issues of race, ethnicity, and education, and ties together two important issues in teaching basic writing: how social and pedagogical issues in higher education shape possibilities for bicultural students' writings, and how these students can use their developing sense of literacy and their texts to explore identity. The author discussed ethnographic research conducted in a writing course, focusing on texts a student wrote.
• Over-Identification of Students of Color in Special Education: A Critical Overview.
  The purpose of this article is to present an overview of the overrepresentation of students of color in special education programs. For this purpose, the authors outlined background history on the problem and discuss its magnitude.
• Re/Making Identities in the Praxis of Urban Schooling: A Cultural Historical Perspective
  In cultural historical activity theory, the entities that make a system are not conceived as independent but as aspects of mediated relations. Consequently, an individual, a tool, or a community cannot be theorized in an independent manner but must he understood in terms of the historically changing, mediated relations in which they are integral and constitutive parts.
• Identity as an analytical lens for research in education
  Students' identities, academic engagement and learning are found to be closely connected. Since Erik Erikson, psychologists believe that identity formation of children and youth plays a central role in human development to have an intimate, satisfactory and productive life as adults.
• From Our Readers: Preparing Preservice Teacher Candidates for Leadership in Equity
  The author describes the importance of moving beyond identity labels like Black, Hispanic, or female to examine how gender intersects with other social memberships like race and class. By considering more inclusive, individualized ways of viewing multiculturalism, educators can forge more meaningful conversations with students about diversity and equity.
• The Schoolyard as a Stage: Missing Cultural Clues in Symbolic Fighting
  The author investigates how social conflict was enacted at one racially diverse, urban middle school. He discusses symbolic fighting, the use of body language, the location of symbolic fighting, and symbolic fighting as a source of transformation, proposing to redefine the socializing role of social conflict in the lives of students and adults in schools.