Dorinda J. Carter Andrews

The Effects of Zero Tolerance Policies on Black Girls: Using Critical Race Feminism and Figured Worlds to Examine School Discipline

Black girls are more likely to be suspended or expelled through exclusionary discipline than their female counterparts, but continue to be overlooked and understudied. This article presents a case for using critical race feminism and figured worlds as theoretical frameworks for examining the effects of zero tolerance policies on Black girls. We use these frameworks to explore how adults’ implementation of disciplinary policies not only affects the racial and gender identity development of Black girls, but perpetuates anti-Black discipline and represents behavioral responses to White femininity that may not align with Black girls’ femininity and identification with school.

Teacher Education and Teaching in the Present Political Landscape: Promoting Educational Equity Through Critical Inquiry and Research

The U.S. educational enterprise lacks no shortage of debate around divisive issues. Two recent events remind us of this. In October of 2016, the U.S. Department of Education released its revised regulations for teacher preparation programs, which have a heavy emphasis on using P-12 student success as a measure of quality for teacher education programs. (1) While some individuals and organizations have praised the federal government for pushing increased accountability on teacher preparation programs, many others have expressed strong opposition to the suggested ways to do so. For example, the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) joined approximately 35 groups (including P-12, higher education, state governments, among others) in expressing formal concerns about the new regulations via a formal written statement. (2) In addition, the national climate has been negatively affected by the aftermath of the 2016 U.S. presidential election and illuminates a heightened sense of vulnerability and alienation for members of certain social groups; these sentiments are realized for many individuals in our nations teacher education programs and P-12 schools. The campaign season brought rhetoric that perpetuated racism, sexism, misogyny, xenophobia, religious discrimination, homophobia, and ableism, and the aftermath permeates every formal institution in the nation. Continual discourse and behavior promoting bigotry has been evidenced in various forms most prominently in schools post-election. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), K-12 schools across the United States have been fertile ground for hate crimes and acts of violence against people of historically and traditionally marginalized groups (e.g., people identifying as immigrants, Muslims, African Americans, or lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender [LGBT]). In the first five weeks following the election, approximately 1,100 incidents were documented by the SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2016). The introduction of the new federal regulations for teacher preparation programs and the national divide caused by the presidential election are two major recent events that highlight the potentially costly ramifications of a new sociopolitical climate for teacher education and public education, and challenge each of us to consider what will be required to effectively prepare and support teachers and achieve educational equity for all children in the coming years. Regardless of ones political affiliation, this is a national sociopolitical climate in which we all must exist; however, our existence does not have to be defined by this climate. In our field of teacher education, the emerging educational landscape could have dramatic impacts on professional learning, research, and advocacy as we prepare current and future educators to help P-12 students learn and participate in an increasingly divisive society and help these students develop the ability to make informed decisions about issues that affect their lives and the lives of others in their local community and perhaps globally. The current and emerging sociopolitical climate compels us as teacher educators and teacher education researchers to more closely link our roles and identities as researchers and activists; our activism can be grounded in research, and our research occurs in sociopolitical contexts. Thus, it is incumbent upon us to consider how we prepare teachers in ways that reflect what we already know from research about high-quality preparation and which also prepares them to be advocates and activists for their preparation and subsequent work in P-12 schools. This sociopolitical climate presents an equity imperative that is focused on active resistance against policy directives at all levels (e.g., federal, state, local) that result in exacerbated gaps in access to opportunities to pursue a teaching career, teach with adequate support in a variety of schools, and learn in affirming and supportive environments. …

Teacher Education for Critical Democracy: Understanding Our Commitments as Design Challenges and Opportunities:

In most teacher education programs, there is regular examination of how best to prepare teachers to face the challenging conditions in which they will teach. These challenges are not isolated to the micro-environmental level (e.g., local schools and communities). Preservice teachers must also understand the national and global (i.e., macro) sociopolitical climate and the ways in which the current polarized political climate creates challenges that may undermine their best efforts at enacting humanizing, culturally responsive, and culturally sustaining pedagogies for their students and families (Carter Andrews, Bartell, & Richmond, 2016; Carter Andrews & Castillo, 2016; Gay, 2010; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Paris, 2012; Paris & Alim, 2014). Such consciousness is also paramount for teacher educators as they design programs that aim to provide critical and culturally situated classroom and field experiences for future teachers (Richmond, Bartell, & Dunn, 2016). The aforementioned climate continually manifests politics that support neoliberal and market-based educational reforms (see, for example, Kumashiro, 2010), while creating space for surfacing hidden or subversive individual and group viewpoints and actions that further marginalize, oppress, and dehumanize our most vulnerable youth, schools, and communities. In the current global landscape—where issues of anti-Indigeneity, anti-Blackness, citizenship, and LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) rights, among other forms of discrimination, are prevalent—we believe that teacher preparation program design elements have the potential to support the development of beginning teachers who not only have a social justice orientation to teaching and learning, but also understand issues of education from varying frameworks of scholarship, including historical, economic, sociological, philosophical, and psychological, and are prepared to respond to these issues. Furthermore, an understanding of teaching and learning as occurring within settler colonialist, imperialist, White supremacist, capitalist, cis-hetero-patriarchal learning contexts is also essential (Brighouse, Ladd, Loeb, & Swift, 2018; Cannon, 2012; Casey, 2013; hooks, 2000; Kerr, 2014; Ravitch, 2000; Sleeter, 2017). A dilemma for teacher preparation programs is how to prepare teachers who strive to understand the structure and operation of our systems of schooling, without taking partisan positions on contested issues. The growing extent of social inequality in the United States is amply supported by evidence from social science (e.g., Duncan & Murnane, 2011), but educators, analysts, and citizens disagree about whether this inequality implies that states should adopt market-based approaches to schooling. Education is inherently political, with varied views about aims, methods, and organization. Teacher education should prepare teachers to be thoughtful, informed actors engaged with political issues. Teacher education institutions, however, particularly public ones, which are supported by citizens from a mix of political parties, must not to be seen as partisan. The articles in this issue often refer to “communities.” With few exceptions, communities in the United States are divided in their political loyalties and often in their views about education. Teachers should have the skills and inclination to learn about the communities where they work. One challenge they will face is how to understand and work with the differences they find, both between themselves and community members and within the communities themselves. The work of teacher education cannot be accomplished unless there is a sincere commitment on the part of teacher educators and administrators to design programs that provide classroom and field experiences that build candidates’ capacities to actively engage with and learn from communities throughout their preparation to teach (e.g., Richmond, 2017). In addition, programs must have the financial and human resources to respond to these challenging and sometimes oppressive conditions. We recognize that what we suggest here is no easy task, and it should be coupled with a focus on critical democratic practices (see, for example, Crowley & Apple, 2009). In the teacher preparation program at our own institution, we work tirelessly to live out our collective and explicit commitments to produce teachers who not only 752363 JTEXXX10.1177/0022487117752363Journal of Teacher EducationCarter Andrews et al. editorial2018

Commitment and Retention of Teachers in Urban Schools: Exploring the Role and Influence of Urban-Focused Preservice Programs: Introduction to This Special Issue

This article was downloaded by: [Andrews, Dorinda Carter]On: 6 August 2009Access details: Access Details: [subscription number 913690340]Publisher RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House,37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Necessary but Insufficient: How Educators Enact Hope for Formerly Disconnected Youth:

This qualitative study investigated how educators in urban second-chance high school settings made sense of their work with formerly disconnected youth. Using Duncan-Andrade’s framework of critical hope, we examined how adults’ orientations toward hope shaped the educational context in ways that were necessary and sufficient for student success. Findings from this study highlight the need for more critical approaches to student engagement, specifically for students most affected by systems of marginalization. Implications for urban educators and the institutions that prepare them are discussed.

A Call to Action for Teacher Preparation Programs: Supporting Critical Conversations and Democratic Action in Safe Learning Environments

We write this editorial at a time when the political polarization in the United States and elsewhere leaves very little room for having complex and reasoned discussions that help establish trust in a diverse democracy. This is most recently evidenced by opposing views on gun control. As Hess and McAvoy (2015) state, “polarization causes distrust, and distrust causes polarization” (p. 8, citing research by McCarty, Poole, & Rosenthal, 2006). Moreover, the current polarization creates a culture where coming to a compromise that all can accept is seen as a loss for both sides, rather than as a victory for all. Reactions to recent episodes of school violence are, sadly, reflections of this growing polarization. This editorial is a continuation of conversations related to critical democracy and educational justice that have been expressed in several of our editorials (e.g., Carter Andrews, Richmond, & Floden, 2018; Richmond, Floden, Bartell, & Petchauer, 2017). These topics have continued salience given the recent school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and have led us to recognize the need to address critical democracy and educational justice in a more substantive way in the pages of the journal. We acknowledge that, unfortunately, school shootings are not a new phenomenon; yet, the Parkland tragedy has garnered national attention in ways that are elevating not only conversations about gun control and school safety but also other divisive issues such as free speech, environmental policy, and school choice. For these conversations to be productive and lead to democratic decisions, students must learn how to deliberate, work to understand others’ viewpoints, evaluate arguments and evidence in support of each point of view, and engage with others to reach decisions. We believe that teacher preparation programs have a moral obligation to ensure that future teachers understand how to cultivate school and classroom culture and climate that emanate humanity, dignity, and respect for all, and to ensure that teachers can support students’ ability to engage in discussions with those who hold opposing views. In this editorial, we outline three gap areas that currently exist in many teacher preparation programs. These areas are framed by three overarching questions that teacher educators and K-12 educators are asking in these challenging times: (a) How can we ensure student safety in learning environments? (b) How do we help preservice teachers (PSTs) and K-12 students develop foundational skills for critically discussing and analyzing controversial and sensitive topics? (c) How do teacher educators and teachers support students in justice movements and advocacy work that reflect the social justice mindsets and dispositions they aim to enact? We acknowledge that these questions are not easily addressed by program changes or curriculum reform. Collective structural change is required to achieve the type of transformative educational justice to which we aspire. Currently many teacher education programs are not designed with a curricular focus on issues of school safety, youth advocacy and resistance, trauma response, and cultivating teachers’ skills for facilitating conversations related to controversial and/or sensitive topics. Furthermore, many teacher educators are ill-equipped to facilitate dialogues in their classrooms on such topics, which can have implications for maintaining affirming, inclusive, and safe classrooms. Below we describe each of the gap areas facing teacher education programs and offer ways forward for teacher educators and practicing teachers as we collectively work to effectively educate all students in the current national and global sociopolitical climate.

Making Justice Peripheral by Constructing Practice as “Core”: How the Increasing Prominence of Core Practices Challenges Teacher Education

Reformers are increasingly calling for and adopting practice-based approaches to teacher preparation, with particular emphasis on identifying and centering core practices. In this article, we argue that organizing teacher education around core practices brings its own risks, including the risk of peripheralizing equity and justice. Situating our argument within the broad economic trends affecting labor and higher education in the 21st century, we begin by examining the linkages between the core practices movement and organizations that advocate market-based solutions to education. We then explore how constructs of practice and improvisation and commitments to equity and justice are taken up, and with what implications and consequences, in core practices scholarship and its applications. In conclusion, we consider how work being done around core practices might contribute to a collective struggle for greater equity and justice in schools and in society.