Browsing by Author "Scheurich, James Joseph"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Are the racial disparities in school discipline the result of or a function of systemic racism mediated by educators' dispositions?
    (2015-08-28) Williams, Nathaniel Andrew; Scheurich, James Joseph; Hughes, Robin Lee; Skiba, Russell; Murtadha, Khaula H.
    With over 40 years of research on the well-documented issue of racial disparities in school discipline, scholars have begun to explore a plethora of plausible causalities for this phenomenon. Recent literature on the causal agents have centered on cultural differences and/or racial prejudices held by educators. Building from this emerging logic, this dissertation specifically focused on the disposition (e.g. enduring traits, character type, mentality, and temperament) of educators and its influence, if any, on discipline-related outcomes. Additionally, this exploratory study sought to build a conceptual map for future research to explore how educators' dispositions may act as conduits between systemic racism and the historic racial disparities in discipline-related outcomes. Through an intensive, multiyear embedded case study of four middle schools with both high and low rates of racial disproportionality in school discipline and with the creation and use of the Four Domains, this dissertation explored whether discipline-related outcomes are the result of systemic racism mediated by educators' dispositions. Findings from the analysis suggested the existence of shared characteristics among the dispositions of those categorized as high and low referring. Specific to those findings, trends within low referring teachers suggested that low referring teachers maintain high and consistent expectations of student behavior, but allowed for flexibility in how their discipline response was mediated out among their students. Despite a deferred approach within discipline response, low referring teachers were consistent and did not show favoritism. On the contrary, high referring teachers were inconsistent with their responses and demonstrated biases in actions and beliefs. Accordingly, it was found that high referring teachers held racially deficit beliefs about Black students and their families. Additionally, high referring teachers were more represented by the Four Domains in comparison to lower referring teachers. As a result, findings from the Four Domains support the existence of a causal link among systemic racism, higher referring teachers, and racial disparities in school discipline. In particular, it was found that classroom teachers engage in and hold racially deficit views of Blacks and these same teachers disproportionately refer Black students for out-of-school suspension.
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    Black Women as the Critical Link Between Traditional Institutions and Minoritized Communities
    (2024-12) Murphy, Stacia N.; Scheurich, James Joseph; Hyatt, Susan B.; Steensland, Brian; Haberski, Raymond J.
    Poverty plagues many U.S. urban communities, particularly Black and brown populations. Gaps in wealth accumulation continue to widen between whites and Blacks, and neighborhoods are increasingly segregated by race and income with Black and brown populations more frequently living in concentrated poverty. Unfortunately, these factors combine to negatively influence other quality of life outcomes such as economic mobility, food security, health disparities and medical costs, infant and maternal health, life spans, education, discriminatory policing practices, and environmental health issues, factors that have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Nonetheless, development continues to play an integral role in the way that urban cities attempt to solve their problems. In Indianapolis, the primary practitioners of urban development are housed within several key intuitions, and ultimately, typically held by white men or women, who make economic decisions that shape the lives of Indianapolis residents. Unfortunately, these institutions are often disconnected from populations at the margins and, thus, community engagement is the mechanism through which institutions attempt to connect with these communities. Consequently, it is common to see individuals who look like the populations that institutions want to serve in these positions. These individuals can be thought of as bridges between these communities and the institutions in which they work. Utilizing Black Feminist Thought (BFT) and Critical Race Theory (CRT), this study explores the lived experiences, knowledges, and practices associated with the role of bridge between institutions and community with a focus solely on Black women in these roles. Through textual analysis of transcribed interviews based in grounded theory with some mix of deductive and inductive coding, this study will help us better understand local perspectives about community engagement specifically and urban development more generally.
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    Introduction to Special Issue—Engaged Leadership for Urban Education: Explorations of Equity and Difference in Urban Communities
    (Sage, 2017-03) Willey, Craig; Sosa, Teresa; Scheurich, James Joseph; School of Education
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    Make me a new foundation, make me a new house: how education reformers can capitalize on current portfolio management model implementations as a viable and equitable urban education reform strategy
    (2016-05-24) Kyser, Tiffany S.; Scheurich, James Joseph; Henry Anthony, Ronda C.; Helfenbein, Robert J., Jr.; Hong, Youngbok
    The purpose of this research is to explore if policy makers and implementers shift and/or change their understandings of the portfolio management model (PMM) when engaged in equity-oriented transformative professional learning. The portfolio approach to urban education, at present, is being implemented or considered by over one third of the US. There are 20 states, 40 cities, and the District of Columbia that are pursuing and/or implementing the portfolio management model (PMM). This research study examines how systemic, socio-political, socio-historical, and interconnected policy networks have resulted in inequity. Furthermore, this study focuses on how policy makers and implementers engage with one another and their context(s) while learning about educational equity. This occurred via facilitating transformative professional learning opportunities aimed to illicit critical self-awareness, reflection, and examination of perhaps the more pernicious underpinnings of authentic decision and choice making in US education reform. The study also explores the ways in which institutional context and the research design itself may have impacted and/or impeded shifts in learning. The study’s theoretical frameworks guided the decision to use critical qualitative inquiry and narrative inquiry to investigate the raced, gendered, sexed, and classed experiences of policy makers and implementers, and further, implications for policy implementation regarding other forms of othering such as ableism, linguicism, ageism, etc. Thematic analysis of the data, analyzed using critical frameworks, were articulated as interspliced data vignettes. Findings suggest that learning is social and that designed experiences around educational equity can provide ways in which policy makers and implementers can formally intervene in their own practices of developing and/or cultivating critical consciousness, as well as decision-making toward PMM adoption and implementation in their respective contexts. Participant’s narratives both challenge and perpetuate dominant, historical approaches of urban education reform adoption and implementation, and exposes how US urban education policy arenas have not systemically centered critical consciousness, resulting in equity-oriented policies being interpreted and implemented in inequitable ways. Findings from this study guide future research and practice that focuses on urban education policy creation, adoption, and implementation.
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    Reframing parental involvement of black parents: black parental protectionism
    (2016-05-11) Moultrie, Jada; Scheurich, James Joseph; Lopez, Gerardo; Mutegi, Jomo; Scribner, Samantha; Waterhouse, Carlton
    In 1787, Prince Hall, a Revolutionary War veteran, community leader, and Black parent, petitioned the Massachusetts legislature on behalf of Black children demanding a separate “African” school. Hall claimed that Black children were met with continuous hostility and suffered maltreatment when attending White controlled schools. Many have documented similar claims and actions by Black parents throughout history. These experiences present a consistent insidious counter-narrative of parental involvement challenging the notion of race neutral schools but congruently demonstrate a racial phenomenon in the purview of parental involvement that is undertheorized. Considering these experiences, my central research question was, how is one involved as a Black parent in their child’s education? Among 16 sets of Black parents, this study explored the relationship between race, racism, parental involvement using critical race theory (CRT), and critical qualitative research methods. Findings indicate that Black parental involvement included the consideration of how race and racism in schools may impact, at the very least, their children’s academic achievement, which led to two means of protection of their children from anticipated or experienced school related racism; racial socialization, which was chiefly exercised as involvement at the home level, and racial vigilance, which seemed to be a pervasive form of involvement at the school and home level. I consider the totality of these parental involvement means, Black parental protectionism drawing from Mazama and Lundy conception of racial protectionism. This finding should reframe our understanding of parental involvement but the implications of Black parent protectionism suggest that Black children need protection from racist institutions. When considering the treatment of Black children in White dominated schools over the last four centuries, perhaps Black parents have been their children’s only saving grace to escape the continuous racial maltreatment in schools through time. Instead of falling into traditional research paradigms, which typically relate involvement to achievement, this study concludes with questioning if Black children can receive an optimal education in a pervasive system of racism in schools regardless of Black parental protectionism.