Kristin Cipollone

In the Guise of STEM Education Reform Opportunity Structures and Outcomes in Inclusive STEM-Focused High Schools

In this article, we present findings from a three-year comparative longitudinal and ethnographic study of how schools in two cities, Buffalo and Denver, have taken up STEM education reform, including the idea of “inclusive STEM-focused schools,” to address weaknesses in urban high schools with majority low-income and minority students. Although introduced with great fanfare, the data indicate that well-meaning efforts toward expanding opportunities in STEM-focused schools for low-income underrepresented minorities quickly dissolved. We focus on mechanisms that seem to underlie this dissolution and consider its contributions to short- and long-term inequalities.

Walking the Methodological Tightrope Researcher Dilemmas Inside an Urban School District in Times of Public Disinvestment

Though researcher dilemmas are not new to the pages of Qualitative Inquiry, we argue that the current contemporary context has both altered and intensified issues associated with conducting qualitative research within sites most affected by more recent social, political, and economic shift. Navigating such sites as researchers poses new questions and new “speed bumps,” going well beyond those highlighted by Weis and Fine more than ten years ago. In this article, the authors revisit and extend the work by Weis and Fine using a set of informed reflections on engaging ethnographic research inside an iconic and beleaguered, large Northeastern, urban school district, a context that, we argue, establishes an increased range of new and largely unanticipated “speed bumps.”

Shadow Capital: The Democratization of College Preparatory Education:

In this article, we examine the manifestation and consequences of shadow capital within two public, urban, nonselective, college preparatory–designated high schools serving exclusively nondominant students. Informed by three years of ethnographic data, we argue that the transference of a historically elite college preparatory education from dominant institutions to nondominant schools results in fundamental changes to the dominant capital it is expected to yield. Rather than generating highly valued capital within the field of education, it produces what we call “shadow capital.” As a distinct form of cultural capital, shadow capital outwardly resembles yet contains only traces of dominant cultural capital, thus failing to yield the same kind of exchange value in the postsecondary marketplace. Shadow capital offers explanatory power for the many unmet promises of educational reform and further challenges the often well-intended democratizing forces that paradoxically reinforce inequality in education.

“A paradigm of possibility”: Community mentors and teacher preparation

In this paper, we investigate mentor perspectives of their roles as de facto “teacher educators.” Drawing upon three years of qualitative data, we argue that community voices and knowledge should be reflected in decisions regarding what and how children are taught. We assert that, by broadening the definition of “teacher educator” beyond university faculty to include community members, we create spaces through which the development of culturally responsive teaching can more authentically emerge. The larger study from which this paper is derived examines the innovative practices of a teacher preparation program at a Midwestern university in the United States of America, wherein majority White, female, middle-class candidates are paired with mentor families in a low-income African-American neighborhood. This program of cultural immersion builds relational ties between community members, and mentors facilitate candidates’ movement beyond deficit perspectives of communities of color and simplistic notions of celebration to see cultural affirmation and contextual knowledge of children’s lived experiences as critical to student success. In the present study, we challenge neoliberal “commonsense” in the preparation of teachers by privileging community voices and highlighting how mentors perceive their respective roles as teacher educators.

Loving out Loud: Community Mentors, Teacher Candidates, and Transformational Learning through a Pedagogy of Care and Connection.

Although there has been significant research examining the practice of culturally responsive teaching, little empirical work to date has examined the role that community-engaged, teacher preparation models play in shaping prospective teachers’ orientation toward cultural responsiveness. This study of 60 preservice teacher candidates enrolled in a program of community-engaged teacher preparation at a midsized Midwestern public university specifically examined the ways in which caring relationships between preservice teachers and volunteer community mentors scaffolded candidates’ contextualized understanding of culture, community, and identity of children and families. Findings provide evidence that as candidates experience authentic caring within the space of supportive relationships, they emerge equipped to care in more authentic, culturally responsive ways for their students.

In and Through the Urban Educational “Reform Churn”: The Illustrative Power of Qualitative Longitudinal Research

The purpose of this article is to bring attention to the illustrative power and capacity of qualitative longitudinal research within the context of the urban educational “reform churn.” In this art...