Decoteau J. Irby

Fresh Faces, New Places: Moving beyond Teacher-Researcher Perspectives in Hip-Hop-Based Education Research.

Grounded in critical and culturally relevant theory, hip-hop-based education (HHBE) research documents the use of hip-hop in educational settings. Despite the richness of the emerging field, overreliance on teacher-researcher perspectives leaves much to be desired. Little is known of the extent and ways HHBE is used by nonresearching K-12 teachers. The field of HHBE would be well served to begin exploring the practices of K-12 teachers in various school settings. To encourage such a move, this article demonstrates that a new set of educators whose identities and teaching contexts are not considered in the field are indeed interested in HHBE.

Trouble at School: Understanding School Discipline Systems as Nets of Social Control.

Getting in trouble at school is often a students first point of entry into the school-to-prison pipeline. What trouble entails is shaped by underlying and complex notions of justice that operate in a given school setting. These notions of justice shape the range of responses social actors use to address students who break school rules. These include, as is the case in society at large, establishing strategies to stop rule violations or repeat offenses, punishing wrongdoers for their offenses, removing offenders from the community, teaching wrongdoers a lesson, and helping offenders to help themselves (Daly, 2001). In this article, I argue that improving school discipline is a matter of balancing and managing complex, differentiated, systems of trouble. To advance this understanding, I use a social constructionist perspective to theorize school discipline systems as nets of social control that, if too expansive and overly punitive, can be counterproductive to the educational mission of schools.

Urban Is Floating Face Down in the Mainstream Using Hip-Hop-Based Education Research to Resurrect “the Urban” in Urban Education

Throughout this article, I argue that within the mainstream field of urban education, “the urban” is floating face down, lifeless, and devoid of significant meaning. “City” and “urban” function as taken-for-granted variables that stand in the rightful place of rich explanations, based in theory and evidence, of the city and its intersection with cultural transformations, pedagogies, movements, and knowledge(s) that comprise educational processes. To resurrect the urban concept, I present an overview of urban perspectives in two categories: old school (passive spatial theories) and new school (instrumental spatial theories). I highlight four recent urban education publications that reflect an emerging scholarly cypher on what I refer to as the urban education question. I then outline four spatial dimensions of hip hop and use these as a springboard for arguing that hip-hop pedagogues are uniquely positioned to be resurrectors of the urban concept. I conclude by exploring what such a theoretical pivot entails.

Re-examining participatory research in dropout prevention planning in urban communities

This paper explores the concept of what a community-based participatory dropout prevention planning process might entail. Specifically, it looks at a year-long research project that brought together formerly incarcerated school non-completers, researchers, and local policy-makers (stakeholders) to address low high-school completion rates in the community. Using our own project as a case study, we reflect on the challenges and promises that emerged when the knowledge of adults in urban communities, who themselves often did not complete school, become central to dropout prevention idea generation, strategy development, and decision-making processes. We re-examine the ‘participatory’ process using participatory action research principles as an analytical lens focusing on three central concepts: control, collaboration, and commitment.

Consistency Rules: A Critical Exploration of a Universal Principle of School Discipline.

The current study explores the principle of consistency and its relevance in the discipline cultures of three middle and two high schools in a Midwest US school district. We explore how educators (1) evoke consistency as a necessity for school discipline and (2) attempt to be consistent in practice to develop disciplined students, encourage academic-oriented school cultures, and maintain safe and orderly schools. We found that while consistency is important for collegiality’s sake and provides a cognitive frame for teachers to think about how to improve discipline, it may undermine the decision-making and discipline practices of individual teachers who are more apt to rely on relational rather that behaviourist discipline approaches.

Revealing Racial Purity Ideology: Fear of Black–White Intimacy as a Framework for Understanding School Discipline in Post-Brown Schools

Purpose: In this article, I explore White racial purity desire as an underexamined ideology that might help us understand the compulsion of disciplinary violence against Black boys in U.S. public schools. By pointing to the dearth of research on sexual desire as a site of racial conflict and through revisiting Civil Rights–era fears about interracial intimacy between Black men and White women, I encourage readers to consider if and to what extent fears about sexual desires remain in the fabric of our school and social lives. Proposed Conceptual Argument: I argue that in schools, White-supremacist patriarchy reproduces normative Whiteness through the continual surveillance, punishment, distancing, and removal of primarily heteronormative Black male bodies, locating its justification in protecting the bodily safety and academic achievement of heteronormative White girls. I suggest that in predominantly White desegregated schools, disciplining heteronormative Black boys represents a new policy-based campaign of institutionalized violence and intimidation that reflects a subtle, but nonetheless pernicious, White male segregationist agenda. Implications: Considering fear/desire of interracial intimacy as a lens, alongside economic and political explanations of resistance to desegregation, provides a more complete analytical framework to comprehend racial conflict and segregationism in contemporary school settings. Our collective failure to acknowledge and interrogate the ways schools produce Whiteness by seeking to protect White girls from Black boys ensures Black boys’ bodies and minds will continue to be unfairly subjected to the violence of harsh and disproportionate disciplinary measures.

Early arrival or trespassing? Leadership, school security, and the right to the school

School leaders are under constant pressure to ensure that schools are safe and to demonstrate that student safety and discipline are priorities. In many districts, schools rely on local law enforcement, school police, or security personnel to assist with promoting and maintaining safe schools. To encourage school leaders to think critically about the role of law enforcement and security personnel in schools, we present a school-level case where a principal is arrested for intervening to stop the arrest of a student. The case is appropriate for school- and district-level leadership courses that examine social, political, and cultural contexts that shape decision making.

Introduction. Black Bridges, Troubled Waters, and the Search for Solid Ground: The People, the Problems, and Educational Justice

Blacklack professional researchers often serve as cultural brokers or ”bridges“ between White-dominated institutions and marginalized Black communities that are in dire need of educational justice. Identifying as Black and as part of Black communities is important for many people of the African Diaspora, including academically trained researchers, especially since community itself serves as an important unit of identity.’ Black researcher racial self-identification and alignment with Black communities reflects a commitment to self-definition, determination, and liberation. One of the sites of struggle where these identities are leveraged to produce change is in the field of urban education.

Strategy Development for Urban Dropout Prevention: Partnering With Formerly Incarcerated Adult Noncompleters

This article highlights a research project that involved formerly incarcerated adults who were school noncompleters. The project engaged the participants in a series of activities to explore their experiences and gain insights into approaches to dropout prevention they believed would help students at risk to complete high school. This article focuses on the research participants’ perspectives on strategies for addressing the problem that included a community mobilization approach, a family wraparound approach, a cultural and psychological awareness education approach, and an intensive recruitment approach to offering support to at-risk students.

Multicultural girlhood: racism, sexuality, and the conflicted spaces of American education

about her work in rooster rehabilitation. She relates the suffering of animals to the everyday violence that women and girls face around the world. She poses and answers the question, What took me so long to include other animals in my activism? Twyla Francois’ essay talks about how women are the heart and soul of the animal rights movement and Miyun Park reminds us that individual animals matter and that each individual animal is worthy of moral consideration. Hope Ferdowsian reminds us through her stories of her work with chimpanzees that animals indeed have feelings and express empathy. Elizabeth Jane Farians describes her work with theology and animals and how she persevered to have a college-level course taught on the topic. Linda Fisher describes how she deals with the tension around being a Native-American with rituals that include pieces and parts of animals in describing her own advocacy for parrots. And finally Christine Garcia talks about her difficult yet rewarding work as a lawyer and advocate for non-human animals. The collection of essays is terrific. Each essay is worth spending time on analysing and reflecting on how we can change the way that we look at non-human animals. Although purportedly written for feminists, this is a book worth having on a personal and academic bookshelf to return to over and over again to remind ourselves that all species human and non-human deserve and need our protection and respect.