Dilys Schoorman

Moving beyond ‘diversity’ to ‘social justice’: the challenge to re‐conceptualize multicultural education

This is a study of teachers’ conceptualizations of multicultural education (MCE) and their implications for practice in both schools and university courses. Through survey and interview data, the results reveal that teachers associated multicultural education with demographic diversity rather than with social justice, strategies for instruction rather than with theory, and that patterns of communication within the school precluded school‐wide implementation of multicultural education. The implications for bridging the gap between university courses grounded in social justice and school practice are explored.

Reconceptualizing Teacher Education as a Social Justice Undertaking: Underscoring the Urgency for Critical Multiculturalism in Early Childhood Education

(2011). Reconceptualizing Teacher Education as a Social Justice Undertaking: Underscoring the Urgency for Critical Multiculturalism in Early Childhood Education. Childhood Education: Vol. 87, Teacher Education Programs: In the Midst of Change, pp. 341-344.

What is a critical multicultural researcher? A self-reflective study of the role of the researcher

Critical multiculturalism and social justice have emerged in educational contexts as primarily pedagogical concerns, confined to the processes of teaching and learning. This article raises the question about the application of these principles to the research process. Through a critical self-reflection on researcher roles and practices, this article highlights four emergent characteristics of the multicultural/social justice researcher: the commitment to a common good; the re-definition of the researcher—researched relationship; the interrogation of the traditional roles, norms and power dynamics of academic research and researchers; and the merging of the tripartite distinctions of teaching, research and service in the role of the professor. These serve as a starting point for dialogue on the re-conceptualization of the role of the multicultural/social justice researcher.

Viewing Faculty Governance within a Social Justice Framework: Struggles and Possibilities for Democratic Decision-Making in Higher Education

For many faculty members in colleges of education, social justice is a concept they teach or a lens that frames their scholarship about efforts to combat injustice in settings outside the university. Rarely does it serve as a lens for understanding or guiding the ordinary activities of faculty service, such as engagement in faculty governance. Yet the increasing corporatization of universities and its concomitant threats to academic communities as inclusive and democratic decision-making spheres necessitates the study of faculty governance within a critical social justice framework. This article, contextualized in a multi-campus college of education in a large, public university on the east coast of the US, addresses how leaders in faculty governance extended the principles of diversity and social justice taught in their classrooms to leadership practice and democratic decision-making within a college of education. Highlighted are practical strategies for increasing faculty voice and leadership listening and a critical reflection on the implications of the struggle for democratic decision-making within autocratic, corporatized organizational cultures.

Project CASAS: Facilitating the Adaptation of Recent Immigrant Students through Complex Community-Wide Efforts.

As the rate of immigrant students in the nation’s school systems grows—current estimates are that 20% of the nation’s school children are immigrants—the successful education and social integration of these students becomes a significant facet of school accountability. The relevance of immigrant education is even higher in states such as Florida (the state with the third highest immigrant population). Given the climate of high-stakes standardized testing and concerns of accountability within the state’s education system, the academic achievement of these recent immigrants has emerged as a central concern of educators and the community—even if only to assure schools of a desirable grade in the annual state-wide ranking. The primary focus of this article is a communitybased project initiated under the auspices of the Palm Beach County School District’s Office of Multicultural Affairs. The students in this district represent 150 countries and 104 language groups. The nation with the highest representation among this population is Haiti. Project CASAS (Community and Schools Accelerating Students) was designed to create a community-based supportive network whose primary focus was to facilitate the adaptation and, ultimately, the academic achievement of recent immigrant students. This article examines the activities of this project over its five year duration, and its impact on the immigrant students. It also addresses as a secondary focus the specific needs and experiences of Haitian students as they emerged within the project work. This study draws on the perspectives of social justice and critical pedagogy (Adams, 1997; Bell, 1997; Giroux,

Resisting the Unholy Alliance Between a University and a Prison Company: Implications for Faculty Governance in a Neoliberal Context

This critical case study of a decision to name a university’s football stadium after a private prison company is presented from an autoethnographic perspective to discuss individual and group responses to the decision. Highlighted in the analysis are implications for faculty governance. Readers are encouraged to consider how their own institution’s governance structures are equipped to address similar affronts to democratic governance and the moral obligation of a university committed to the public good. It is intended that the analysis of the reaction of one university will facilitate the opportunities for developing proactive agendas for safeguarding the role of universities as public spheres for democratic engagement.

How Should Researchers Act in the Context of Social Injustice? Reflections on the Role of the Researcher as a Social Justice Leader

This chapter draws attention to the role of the educational researcher in the context of social (in)justice at the local and global levels. It is framed as a challenge and a commitment to leadership as researchers, by reconceptualizing the ordinary, everyday actions of the professor in education as deliberate and conscious social justice praxis. Drawing on her experiences as an educator and researcher in local and international contexts, the author underscores the particular responsibility of senior professors in nations and regions where it is “safe” to engage in social justice work, to recast their roles from the perspectives of those for whom such professional engagement is life threatening. The author ends the chapter with a personal commitment to lead, teach, and research by example; to create spaces for social justice research; to engage persuasively with colleagues; and to view research as an act of courage.

Sister R. Leadership Doing the Seemingly Impossible

Sister R., the first author, is a Dominican Sister of Peace. Until recently, Sister R. had been the director of the Maya Ministry Family Literacy Program, working with the Maya Community in Lake Worth, Palm Beach County, Florida. She described her work with these indigenous, preliterate, hardworking peoples as “a university of the poor” in which “I do community.” She worked tirelessly and lived among a largely invisible community, but what she thought and did—as a leader—made the seemingly impossible possible. These case stories will describe how she brought leadership capabilities to indigenous, preliterate peoples, a seemingly impossible accomplishment when leadership is defined by traditional assumptions of power and literacy. As authors, we wrote these case stories specifically for the field of educational leadership, which urgently needs to develop new ideas and practices on how to integrate social justice into everyday school leadership. Sister R.’s leadership exemplifies a courage and humanity rooted in a philosophy of service and until these teachings are incorporated into school leadership development programs at the pre- and in-service levels, the failures associated with invisible and marginalized communities will continue.

What Does Empowerment in Literacy Education Look Like? An Analysis of a Family Literacy Program for Guatemalan Maya Families.

Educators in the field of family literacy have identified multiple approaches to family literacy programs (FLPs), and have underscored the need to identify and make explicit the philosophical orientations of their own programs. This was the task undertaken in this article, which focused on a FLP in south Florida that served the needs of Guatemalan Maya families where the adults were unable to read or write in any language upon program entry. This study analyzed the educational practices of the FLP to ascertain its ideological underpinnings, according to a tripartite typology derived from scholarship in literacy, multicultural, and immigrant education. This article addresses the complexity of identifying such ideological situatedness including the need to examine diverse program elements, the manner in which a program could have multiple ideological strands, and the ambiguity that sometimes emerges in such “readings” of programs in “real-world” contexts.

Forging the Needed Dialogue Between Educational Leadership and Curriculum Inquiry: Placing Social Justice, Democracy, and Multicultural Perspectives into Practice

History demonstrates that the relationship between curriculum studies and educational leadership is mediated by the conceptualization of curriculum adopted within specific community contexts. To this end, we identify four conceptualizations of curriculum that have been effected in the USA and explore the varied relationship between our two fields that each context portends. Our analysis demonstrates that only when both fields of study have come together for the benefit of society, the common good, will the emergent leadership and curriculum result in progressive attempts at multiculturalism, democracy and social justice. Towards that end, we offer a developmental dialogical framework transitioning from relations grounded in stratification, homogenization, transformation, and the stage we call leadership for social justice. This progressive dialogue is ever more problematic, as it has to navigate multiple obstacles of temporal policies and politics as well as ideological divides. Thus, the complicated conversations are among those who seek to maintain old values and norms (e.g., stratification and homogenization) with those who take a counterview (transformation), or critical perspective (social justice).