Mica Pollock

Race Wrestling: Struggling Strategically With Race in Educational Practice and Research

As researchers try to understand, improve, and equalize U.S. schooling, we talk too little about how to study race well. It is particularly crucial, I argue, that researchers struggle to interrogate education’s familiar racial practices more self‐consciously and strategically. I suggest that researchers “race wrestle” by struggling with race on two levels: researchers can (1) learn from the everyday struggles over race already taking place in U.S. schools and (2) struggle more actively with race talk and analysis in our own research. I argue that refocusing analytic attention on everyday struggles over race in educational practice and research is a necessary strategy for moving forward toward racial equality.

“But What Can I Do?”: Three Necessary Tensions in Teaching Teachers About Race

A core question of teacher education—“What can I do?”—plagues courses on race in particular ways. Teachers struggle for “concrete” applications of “theoretical” ideas about race, question the potential for “everyday” activity to dismantle inequality “structures,” and wrestle with the need for both professional and personal development on racial issues. In this article, we discuss how these three core tensions surfaced in one race-oriented teacher education course. We demonstrate that the teachers who seemed most invigorated and who expressed feelings of efficacy in serving students of color were those who pledged to continue ongoing inquiry into both sides of each tension. We propose that these three tensions require explicit attention in teacher professional development. Indeed, we suggest that to create inquisitive and efficacious teachers, teacher educators can encourage teachers to keep all three tensions in play for the duration of their careers.

You Can’t Fix What You Don’t Look At: Acknowledging Race in Addressing Racial Discipline Disparities

Racial/ethnic stereotypes are deep rooted in our history; among these, the dangerous Black male stereotype is especially relevant to issues of differential school discipline today. Although integration in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education was intended to counteract stereotype and bias, resegregation has allowed little true integration. Thus, old patterns continue to be reinforced through the ongoing processes of implicit bias, micro-aggression, and colorblindness. Thus, to effectively address inequity, the role of race must be explicitly acknowledged in addressing racial disparities in discipline. We close with a set of recommendations for talking about and acting on racial disparities.

How Educators Can Eradicate Disparities in School Discipline

Gregory, Bell, and Pollock offer principles and practices to help schools move beyond punitive discipline and toward conflict prevention and intervention. They argue that eradication of disproportionate punitive disciplinary sanctions begins by engaging and motivating students before the conflict occurs. Their chapter details four guiding prevention principles and practices: culturally relevant and responsive teaching, supportive relationships, academic rigor, and respectful school environments with bias-free classrooms. Additionally, Gregory et al. suggest four equity-oriented principles and practices for conflict intervention: problem-solving approaches to discipline, inquiry into the causes of conflicts, inclusion of the student and family on causes of and solutions to conflicts, and reintegration of students post-conflict.

Caricature and Hyperbole in Preservice Teacher Professional Development for Diversity

Professional development (PD) “for diversity” aims to prepare teachers to support students from varying backgrounds to succeed, often in under-resourced contexts. Although many teachers invite such inquiry as part of learning to teach, others resist “diversity” inquiry as extra to teaching, saying they cannot “do it all.” In this article, we discuss how preservice teachers at times caricature the requests of PD for diversity, hearing the task as a call to undertake superhuman tasks and to be people other than who they are. We argue that these caricatures require direct acknowledgment by both preservice teachers and teacher educators working in diverse contexts.

University-Partnered New School Designs: Fertile Ground for Research–Practice Partnerships:

This commentary suggests that new school design is a fertile policy context for advancing research–practice partnerships. The authors represent four public universities that have created new school designs in partnership with urban school districts. Unlike the laboratory schools of previous generations, these university-partnered public schools were intentionally designed to disrupt persistent patterns of inequity and prepare low-income students of color to flourish in college. The authors argue that these schools provide a promising context for marrying research and practice to bring about fundamental change in schools, with potential for spread of innovation to districts and universities.