Education and Urban Society

Smith, Joanna; Porter, Lorna; Harrison, Brandon J.; Wohlstetter, Priscilla

doi: 10.1177/00131245221076086pmid: N/A

Research has found that teachers of color contribute to better academic, behavioral, and socioemotional outcomes for diverse students. Despite these benefits, the diversity of the teacher workforce in the United States has not kept pace with increases in student diversity. States have adopted aspirational legislation aimed at increasing teaching diversity, but have fallen short of diversity targets. This qualitative study examines barriers to increasing teacher diversity by presenting the efforts to do so at 28 diverse-by-design charter schools across five locales. Despite a range of approaches, these schools struggled to meet teacher diversity targets, suggesting a need for states to adopt alternate policy instruments rather than relying on legislative mandates.

Williams, Teressa

doi: 10.1177/00131245221076100pmid: N/A

The purpose of this study was to examine faculty, staff, and administrative perceptions regarding implementation of trauma-informed care (TIC) in a small suburban school district. All employees of the district were invited to participate, with 91 submitting completed surveys. Participants completed the ARTIC-35 to measure perceptions of TIC. While no significant differences were found for the total or subscale scores, findings indicated the staff, as a whole, had positive perceptions of the program. Based on these findings, it appears that professional development before and during the program helped staff become more responsive to students who had experienced trauma.

Sonmez, Elif Dasci; Gokmenoglu, Tuba

doi: 10.1177/00131245221076095pmid: N/A

With the increasing cross-country immigration and human mobility, different cultures are reflected more in the schools. The behavioral patterns of educational leaders in multicultural settings and the affecting factors have been subject to many discussions and researches. This study examines the relationship between school principals’ distributed leadership behaviors and teachers’ social justice leadership and attitudes toward multiculturalism. A structural model has been created and tested through the mentioned variables integrative approach. The results partially confirm that teachers’ social justice leadership behaviors mediate the relationships between the principals’ distributed leadership behaviors and their attitudes toward multiculturalism. In a structure where leadership roles are shared at school, teachers can exhibit more social justice leadership behavior; their attitudes toward multiculturalism become more positive. Distributed leadership increases teachers’ support, critical consciousness, and inclusive behavior. Implications for practice, theory, and policy are also discussed in the paper.

McCorkle, William

doi: 10.1177/00131245211042392pmid: N/A

This work highlights the experience of eight education students from a public university in the American Southeast in their trip to Stewart Immigration Detention Center. A pre-interview and two post-interviews were conducted to understand students’ perceptions toward the topic, what they learned from their experience, and how the experience affected their views on immigration with a particular concern for the intersection of immigration and education. Some of the themes that emerged were the broader injustices of the profit driven immigration detention industry, the difficulties of structural change, the idea of American (industrialized world) privilege, the ease by which individuals are detained, and the dehumanizing treatment. In regard to education, participants highlighted the need for curriculum to focus on the topic of immigration including the integration of immigrant stories, a global education that counters xenophobic narratives, and the need for a more critical approach overall in the social studies classroom. This research is relevant to the larger intersection of immigration policy and education and the need for educators to become advocates for social change not only in their classroom but in regard to the larger injustices in the society.

Somers, Pat; Gao, Huajian; Taylor, Z. W.

doi: 10.1177/00131245211047207pmid: N/A

As campus carry policies are implemented at colleges and universities across the country, the concern for the safety of students, faculty members, and campus community members has heightened. In the state of Texas, broad sweeping campus carry policies were recently enacted by Texas State Legislature that allows individuals to conceal carry firearms within educational spaces on campus. Within these educational spaces, faculty members are often relied upon to deliver educational content without having their Second Amendment speech rights chilled by the prospect of loaded firearms within a classroom. Given this tension, this study fills an important gap in the research and explains how faculty members view campus carry as it relates to their personal safety and professional work. This study employed a mixed methods design (survey and qualitative) to expound upon the attitudes toward campus carry of 226 faculty and staff members working in a large research-intensive university within the state of Texas. Results suggest strong gender differences between how faculty members view campus carry policies and their safety on campus, with women often reporting feeling less safe and less able to perform their job duties under the pressure and anxiety of campus carry policies. Ultimately, this study’s results imply that women faculty members may more less safe, more marginalized, and further victimized by campus carry laws than men faculty members, transgressing gender equity progress in the professoriate, as women have been traditionally underrepresented on college faculties.