Research

This volume examines the burden of poverty that children and young adults disproportionately share throughout the world. Contributions from international researchers examine some of the profound precursor issues that serve to inhibit the chances of children and young adults to education and social mobility in an international context. Issues such as housing and homelessness, family income, maternal and child health, child care, hunger, adolescent pregnancy, violence by and against children, the impact of war and famine, various forms of social deviance and early childhood education are investigated. The volume also examines the social, political and economic contexts in which poverty occurs, utilizing various theoretical perspectives by which to view issues such as human rights, social development and social cohesion in developing, emerging and transitional societies. Implicit throughout the volume are the decisions and non-decisions of governments as they confront issues of growing poverty and the repercussions of that poverty for future generations.

Gloria Ladson-Billings and William F. Tate argue that education scholars can and must undertake work that speaks to the pressing public issues related to education. In this volume, they are joined by renowned educators who have a reputation for engaging public interests and public policy in powerful and provocative ways. Together, they address such important issues as zero-tolerance policies, language-minority students, multicultural education, school reform, teaching for social justice, educational inquiry, curriculum, assessment, and much more. This compelling collection challenges policymakers and the public to take a greater hand in creating a quality education for all students.

Three themes underpin the tripartite structure of "Power, Voice, and the Public Good", including attention to the definitional and theoretical underpinnings of globalization; the ubiquitous nature and topical display of globalization; and, the possibilities of understanding, redefining and rethinking aspects of globalization with the backdrop of issues that relate to education, and the pursuit of public good. A plethora of examples how education and schooling respond to and are driven by larger global networks, demands, and discourses are explored. Each chapter of the book consistently addresses ways of looking at the hope and promise of education and schooling in spite of the advent, realities, and complexities of their globalized societies.e

Many would argue that the state of urban science education has been static for the past several decades and that there is little to learn from it. Rather than accepting this deficit perspective, Improving Urban Science Education strives to recognize and understand the successes that exist there by systematically documenting seven years of research into issues salient to teaching and learning in urban high school science classes. Grounded in the post structuralism of William Sewell_and brought to life through the experiences of different students, teachers, and school settings in Philadelphia_this book shows how teachers and students can work together to enact meaningful science education when social and cultural differences as well as inappropriate curricula often make the challenges seem insurmountable. Chapters contain rich images of urban youth and each strives to offer insights into problems and suggestions for resolving them. Most significant, in spite of the challenges, the research offers hope and shows that fresh approaches to teaching and learning can lead students_some who have already been pronounced academic, even societal, failures_to becoming avid and deep learners of science.

Traditionally, researchers and mathematics education practitioners have been engaged in parallel play, yet they have been segregated by the norms and cultural practices of their distinct institutions and professional reward systems. Rarely do mutually dependent and informing intellectual pathways emerge. This book explores what happens when tradition is disrupted by one purposefully designed research and practice pathway.

This book offers insights into, and examples of, developing mutually interdependent research and practice processes as part of efforts to improve teacher and leadership capacity, as well as positively influence student learning and related outcomes. This book raises valuable questions for the mathematics education community.

What forms have research and practice pathways taken?
What lessons have been learned from collaborations?

This book examines ways in which cancer health disparities exist due to class and context inequities even in the most advanced society of the world. This volume, while articulating health disparities in the St. Louis, Missouri metropolitan area, including East St. Louis, Illinois, seeks to move beyond deficit models to focus on health equity. As cancer disparities continue to persist for low-income and women of color, the promotion and attainment of health equity becomes a matter of paramount importance. The volume demonstrates the importance of place and the historical inequity in socio-environmental settings that have contributed to marked health disparities. Through original research, this volume demonstrates that addressing the causes and contributors to women’s health disparities is a complex process that requires intervention from a socio-ecological framework, at micro-, meso-, and macro-levels of influence. The book highlights critical aspects of a practical multidimensional model of community engagement with important influences of the various levels of research, policy and practice. More pointedly, the authors support a new model of community engagement that focuses on individuals in their broader ecological context. In so doing, they seek to advance the art and science of community engagement and collaboration, while disavowing the ‘parachute’ model of research, policy and practice that reinforces and sustains the problems associated with the status quo. The book concludes with broader national policy considerations in the face of the erosion of the social safety net for America’s citizenry.

When traditionally white public schools in the South became sites of massive resistance in the wake of the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision, numerous white students exited the public system altogether, with parents choosing homeschooling or private segregationist academies. But some historically white elite private schools opted to desegregate. The black students that attended these schools courageously navigated institutional and interpersonal racism but ultimately emerged as upwardly mobile leaders. Transforming the Elite tells this story. Focusing on the experiences of the first black students to desegregate Atlanta's well-known The Westminster Schools and national efforts to diversify private schools, Michelle A. Purdy combines social history with policy analysis in a dynamic narrative that expertly re-creates this overlooked history.

Through gripping oral histories and rich archival research, this book showcases educational changes for black southerners during the civil rights movement including the political tensions confronted, struggles faced, and school cultures transformed during private school desegregation. This history foreshadows contemporary complexities at the heart of the black community's mixed feelings about charter schools, school choice, and education reform.

The compendium of writings in this edited volume sheds light on the event “Race & Ethnicity: A Day of Discovery and Dialogue” at Washington University in St. Louis and the work current students, faculty, and staff are doing to improve inclusivity on campus and in St. Louis. The book includes speeches, reflections, art, and photography aligned with the Day of Discovery and Dialogue in addition to original academic work on race in higher education, race in St. Louis, and race in the United States. Leading scholars and emerging voices feature in this volume, filling a void in the race and higher education literature since it will foreground a case study of a single university at the epicenter of a national racial crisis and how a university-wide event brought a campus together. This praxis focus may have far reaching impact in aiding other universities across the country in addressing racial tensions in their own communities.

Although he spent his career as a lawyer and law school professor, Derrick Bell had a profound impact on the field of education in the area of educational equity. Among many accomplishments, Bell was the first African American to earn tenure at the Harvard Law School; he also established a new course in civil rights law and produced what has become a famous casebook: Race, Racism, and American Law. The man who could rightly be called, «The Father of Critical Race Theory,» Bell was an innovator who did things with the law that others had not thought possible. This volume highlights Bell’s influence on a number of prominent education and legal scholars by identifying some of his specific work and how they have used it to inform their own thinking and practice. What is contained here is an assemblage of contributors with deep commitments to the path-breaking work of Derrick Bell – a scholar, a teacher, an activist, a mentor, and a covenant keeper. 

In 1978, V. P. Franklin and James D. Anderson co-edited New Perspectives on Black Educational History. For Franklin, Anderson, and their contributors, there were glaring gaps in the historiography of Black education that each of the essays began to fill with new information or fresh perspectives. There have been a number of important studies on the history of African American education in the more than three decades since Franklin and Anderson published their volume that has pushed the field forward. Scholars have redefined the views of Black southern schools as simply inferior, demonstrated the active role Blacks had in creating and sustaining their schools, sharpened our understanding of Black teachers' and educational leaders' role in educating Black students and themselves with professional development, provided a better understanding and recognition of the struggles in the North (particularly in urban and metropolitan areas), expanded our thinking about school desegregation and community control, and broadened our understanding of Black experiences and activism in higher education and private schools. Our volume will highlight and expand upon the changes to the field over the last three and a half decades. In the shadow of 60th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education and the 50th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, contributors expand on the way African Americans viewed and experienced a variety of educational policies including segregation and desegregation, and the varied options they chose beyond desegregation. The volume covers both the North and South in the 19th and 20th centuries. Contributors explore how educators, administrators, students, and communities responded to educational policies in various settings including K-12 public and private schooling and higher education. A significant contribution of the book is showcasing the growing and concentrated work in the era immediately following the Brown decision. Finally, scholars consider the historian's engagement with recent history, contemporary issues, future directions, methodology, and teaching.

Urban Ills: Twenty First Century Complexities of Urban Living in Global Contexts is a collection of original research focused on critical challenges and dilemmas to living in cities. Volume 2 is devoted to the myriad issues involving urban health and the dynamics of urban communities and their neighborhoods. The editors define the ecology of urban living as the relationship and adjustment of humans to a highly dense, diverse, and complex environment. This approach examines the nexus between the distribution of human groups with reference to material resources and the consequential social, political, economic, and cultural patterns which evolve as a result of the sufficiency or insufficiency of those material resources. They emphasize the most vulnerable populations suffering during and after the recession in the United States and around the world, and the chapters examine traditional issues of housing and employment with respect to these communities.

As president of the University of Chicago from 1929 to 1951, Robert Maynard Hutchins came to be one of the most prominent and controversial figures in American higher education. To this day, his vision of what the university should be has given shape to twentieth-century debates over the content and function of education in the United States. In her critical biography, the first to focus on Hutchins' University of Chicago decades, Mary Ann Dzuback gives a full and fascinating account of this complex man—his development, his achievements and failures, and finally, his legacy.

Urban Ills: Twenty First Century Complexities of Urban Living in Global Contexts is a collection of original research focused on critical challenges and dilemmas to living in cities. Volume 1 examines both the economic impact of urban life and the social realities of urban living. The editors define the ecology of urban living as the relationship and adjustment of humans to a highly dense, diverse, and complex environment. This approach examines the nexus between the distribution of human groups with reference to material resources and the consequential social, political, economic, and cultural patterns which evolve as a result of the sufficiency or insufficiency of those material resources. They emphasize the most vulnerable populations suffering during and after the recession in the United States and around the world. The chapters seek to explore emerging issues and trends affecting the lives of the poor, minorities, immigrants, women, and children.

Living on the Boundaries: Urban Marginality in National and International Contexts examines the complex, often controversial issues impacting those who live on the margins of society in our densely populated cities. It describes and analyzes the living conditions of marginalized persons in cities and neighborhoods throughout the world and the consequential impact on their future social mobility. Chapters focus on key issues that include immigration, educational under-achievement, urban renewal, public health, immigration, homelessness, environmental issues, race, segregation, and the marginality of urban youth and economically disadvantaged groups. This volume is packed with research compiled by an international array of scholars and intellectuals from a wide range of disciplines, including but not limited to sociology, economics, political science, psychology, education, public health, law, criminology, history, urban studies, geography and demography, and urban planning. From the first chapter to the last, this immensely insightful anthology richly details and informs us about the human condition, from multidisciplinary perspectives, about urban life in global contexts.

Research on Schools, Neighborhoods, and Communities: Toward Civic Responsibility focuses on research and theoretical developments related to the role of geography in education, human development, and health. William F. Tate IV, the Edward Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis and former President of the American Educational Research Association, presents a collection of chapters from across disciplines to further understand the strengths of and problems in our communities. Today, many research literatures—e.g., health, housing, transportation, and education—focus on civic progress, yet rarely are there efforts to interrelate these literatures to better understand urgent problems and promising possibilities in education, wherein social context is central. In this volume, social context—in particular, the unequal opportunities that result from geography—is integral to the arguments, analyses, and case studies presented. Written by more than 40 educational scholars from top universities across the nation, the research presented in this volume provides historical, moral, and scientifically based arguments with the potential to inform understandings of civic problems associated with education, youth, and families, and to guide the actions of responsible citizens and institutions dedicated to advancing the public good.

Ask practically any academic department chair why they do not have more African Americans among faculty members and they generally respond with stock stories or folktales, which stimulated the title of this volume. Stock stories are akin to grand narratives that explain why things are in ways that satisfy those in dominant positions. Frierson and Tate argue it is time to move beyond these. The purpose of the book is to provide historical, conceptual, and empirically-based analyses focused on the development of African Americans in STEM fields. There is rarely any real understanding of the uneven contours of the education pipeline or the transition to academic life experienced in these situations and this volume will shed light on opportunities to advance African American attainment in STEM disciplines throughout the academic and professional spectra, and the mitigation of disparities that continue to be so prevalent. The editors hope that it will generate discussions and actions that are based on empirical evidence and policy analyses, rather than long standing stock stories and folktales that misrepresent the paths linked to African Americans attainment in STEM fields.

In 2002, this series was launched with its first volume, Literacy and the Second Language Learner, which contained many noteworthy research studies in the learning and teaching of second language reading. The selection of this theme for the series' entry on the scene demonstrates the importance of the topic of second language reading. Because reading plays a key role in the act of acquiring new knowledge, it is important to understand this complex process. The series again explores this multifaceted and fruitful area of inquiry in this, its seventh volume. In recent years, an explosion of work that strives to create a more complete understanding of second language reading has occurred and researchers today are making gains in fitting together a model of second language reading. This current volume brings together a range of high quality analyses of adult foreign language reading across languages and research methods. It provides important research findings that will assist foreign language readers and those who support their efforts.

Volume 1 in the two volume set about overcoming the odds in African American Education.