Katherine Cumings Mansfield

The intellectual landscape of critical policy analysis

What counts as critical policy analysis in education? Over the past 30 years, a tightening of national educational policies can be seen in the USA and across the globe. Over this same period of time, a growing number of educational policy scholars, dissatisfied with traditional frameworks, have used critical frameworks in their analyses. Their critical educational policy work has contributed to a unique intellectual landscape within education: critical policy analysis. This article presents a qualitative exploration of the critical policy analysis approach to educational policy studies. Participants included scholars known to utilize critical theoretical frameworks and methods in their research. Through a historical approach that makes use of oral history interviews with educational policy, we developed an understanding of the critical approach to policy studies, its appeal among critical education policy scholars, and the rationales driving its use.

How Listening to Student Voices Informs and Strengthens Social Justice Research and Practice.

Purpose: The purpose of this research article is to illustrate the value of including students’ voices in educational leadership and research practices, to more fully understand what students are actually experiencing in transformative learning spaces, and to determine what we might learn from them in terms of how to improve both leadership practice and our research efforts. Method: The first 2 years of an ongoing ethnography used participant observation, photography, a student survey, and focus group interviews to discover and describe the emergent school culture and the lived experiences of female secondary students in a single-sex public magnet school. Findings: Findings illumine why the young women in this study chose to attend an all-female STEM academy and what makes their schooling experiences at this particular school different from their prior experiences. Students’ voices also bring to the fore unintended negative consequences associated with attending a school devoted to social justice praxis and point to the ways leadership practices must evolve to provide an even more powerful, transformative learning space that better meet students’ needs. Implications: Findings have implications for leadership preparation programs as well as continuing professional development. That is, true transformative and social justice leadership is not static or linear. Rather, it is a fluid process that is dialectical and requires adaptation based on new knowledge and interaction with people and with systems. Moreover, findings implicate the need for educational leadership researchers concerned with social justice to include listening to students’ voices in their research endeavors to more adequately capture the lived experiences of students as well as promote more inclusive research and practice.

Truth or consequences: a feminist critical policy analysis of the STEM crisis

STEM education has received significant attention in the USA and is largely fueled by rhetoric suggesting the USA is losing its global competitive edge and that there is a lack of qualified workers available to fill growing STEM jobs. However, a counter discourse is emerging that questions the legitimacy of these claims. In response, we employed feminist critical policy analysis as both a theory and a method to further critique the STEM crisis discourse. We argue that the nature of the current discourse is misleading at worst and incomplete at best and show who is fueling the crisis discourse and who stands to win or lose as a result. We reveal how the crisis discourse draws attention away from the multi-layered complexity of the issue and surface what is missing in the discourse to re-center public attention on protracted problems that still need dismantling.

Courageous Conversations about Race, Class, and Gender: Voices and Lessons from the Field.

The purpose of this paper is to present a qualitative secondary analysis of two empirical studies that focused on the leadership practices of female practitioners at the secondary level engaging in discourse and practices to disrupt educational inequities. The guiding research question is, “How do school leaders engage in courageous conversations to: (1) transform beliefs and practices concerning educational inequities, and; (2) engender equity to enhance learning for all students?” Building on Singleton and Linton’s (2006) framework on courageous conversations, this study examines how some school leaders break the silence and interrogate educational inequities to improve schools. Findings explicate how conversations amongst practitioners can be the impetus for transformative actions, which in turn, lead to the educational achievement of all students. The voices of participants are magnified and lessons from the field are forwarded.

Mentoring Matters: An Exploratory Survey of Educational Leadership Doctoral Students' Perspectives

There is limited research on quantitative differences between men and women’s experiences in doctoral programs. We aim to fill that gap by sharing findings from a web-based exploratory survey of perceived gender differences on quality mentoring in educational leadership doctoral programs. According to survey results, there is limited statistical significance in terms of gender differences in programmatic supports and scholarly progress. However, women experience feelings of self-doubt due to negative experiences with advising and mentoring, including difficulties making connections to a quality mentor. Furthermore, both female and male participants shared common definitions of what constitutes quality mentorship and believed mentorship was important, but lacking in varying degrees. Finally, all participants agreed that their educational leadership preparation programs should provide additional support in terms of writing and research development. Participants also shared important recommendations for strengthening mentoring experiences as well as future research methods and foci.

The Color of Giftedness: A Policy Genealogy Implicating Educators Past, Present, and Future

This article offers a critical rereading of gifted education in the United States using a genealogical framework as defined by postcolonial theory. Using genealogy is appropriate because it sets the education profession within a family research tradition, implies the close connection between past and present, and enables us to systematically trace the evolution of exclusionary practices. The purpose of this article is to (a) demonstrate the utility of using historical research to undergird justice work in education, (b) show how gifted education policies and practices in the United States operate under a global context of whiteness and colonization, and (c) foster dialogue around ways educators can begin to disrupt taken-for-granted assumptions and work toward establishing more equitable schooling processes and outcomes.

Chapter 2 Listening to Student Voice: Toward a More Inclusive Theory for Research and Practice

The purpose of this chapter is to illustrate the value of student voice in educational leadership research and practice. While much research has explored leading schools for social justice, it has rarely considered the student perspective as an integral component of leadership decision-making. In fact, listening to the student voice should be the sine qua non of leadership responsibilities and investigations. This chapter provides examples of this more inclusive approach to researching and leading schools. It operationalizes student-focused and social justice practices that hold promise to sensitize our research efforts, destabilize oppressive school leadership structures, and create positive and innovative environments for students in all global contexts.

“Creating Smooth Spaces in Striated Places”: Toward a Global Theory for Examining Social Justice Leadership in Schools

This chapter shares an original social justice framework that emerged in conjunction with conducting a 2-year ethnography studying the culture of an urban all-girls’ secondary school. I refer to this new interpretive lens as “Facilitating social justice by creating smooth spaces in striated places” or the striated-smooth construct. The meaning-making that occurred during and after the study did not follow a firm temporal chronology or emerge linearly within tidy categorical disciplines. Essentially, my path of learning was a porous and rhizomatic interlacing of past, present, and future – germinating from the intellectual, spiritual, and corporeal –scaffolding upon knowledge, faith, and lived experience. In short, this theory-building experience was more akin to dialogue between mind, soul, and body. Rather than “own” this theory of social justice and explicitly detail a list of “rules” one must follow, I offer this inspiration as just one conception of social justice that might be used to facilitate the creative thinking of others that has potential to move the field forward as well as be applied to other societal contexts.

What Do Students Have to Do With Educational Leadership? Making a Case for Centering Student Voice:

The purpose of this article is to illustrate the value of educational leaders intentionally including students in shaping the policies and practices that affect young people’s schooling experiences. First, we share the literature on student voice and introduce Principal Orientations for Critical Youth Educational Leadership as a conceptual model, advocating ways leaders can engage young people in school governance. Second, we share an empirical example from our research that holds promise to build caring, equitable, and responsive classrooms and schools by centering students’ voices. Finally, we consider what our findings mean for educational leadership preparation programs.

What's in a Name? The Confluence of Confederate Symbolism and the Disparate Experiences of African American Students in a Central Virginia High School.

In 2015-2016, news stories from Charleston, South Carolina, and the University of Missouri, among others, motivated and inspired many people to organize against assaults on the Black community generally and Black students in particular. Similarly, Black students at Robert E. Lee High School in Virginia have come together around what they perceive as racist symbolism and inequitable educational policies and practices. The Black student leaders at Robert E. Lee High School have presented their school principal with a list of demands. Meanwhile, the school’s football and basketball teams, The Rebels, are threatening to go on strike until students’ demands are addressed. This case study could be used in educational leadership graduate programs as well as curriculum and instruction coursework, especially in courses that emphasize social justice and ethical decision making. Particularly relevant courses might include School-Community Relations, Organizational Culture, Politics of Education, Contemporary Issues in Education, Visionary Planning and Strategies, and Schools as Learning Communities. In addition, this case study aligns with Standards 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 of the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) Standards and can be integrated in leadership preparation programs accordingly. This case might also be used in school district–sponsored professional development workshops for current and/or aspiring administrators.