Safe Zones, Dangerous Leadership: Decolonial Leadership in Settler-Colonial School Contexts

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (6) ◽  
pp. 519-540
Author(s):  
Awaachia’ookaate’ (Jason D. Cummins, Apsáalooke) ◽  
Ethan Chang
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
District Leadership ◽  
Local Pressure ◽  
Critical Policy Analysis ◽  
School Contexts ◽  
Local Leadership ◽  
Native Communities ◽  
District Implementation ◽  
Critical Policy

Recent studies of Indigenous educational leadership have contributed instructive conceptual insights to decolonize public schools. Building on these theoretical insights, we investigate the organizational and policy constraints leaders face when attempting to enact decolonial strategies. Combining “safety zone theory” and Critical Policy Analysis, we examine how one Apsáalooke educational leader, Cummins negotiated and challenged institutionalized practices delimiting “safe Indian-ness.” These include: (a) transactional, policy inscribed relations between schools and Native communities; and (b) tepid district implementation of pro-Native legislation, such as policies expressing a commitment to preserving Native American cultures. We convey how Cummins made, unmade, and remade new policy meanings through local leadership practices, such as creating more humanizing Apsáalooke-defined spaces for community-school engagements and orchestrating local pressure to move district leadership to fulfill policy commitments to serve Native students. Data includes 18 interviews with Apsáalooke tribal members, education policy texts, and collaborative auto-ethnographic memos. Based on these findings, we develop the notion of dangerous leadership: a decolonial leadership praxis that challenges settler–colonial conceptions of safety and negotiates material, communal, and personal threats that such acts of subversion tend to provoke. We conclude by discussing implications for dangerous leadership amid nonideal and constantly shifting settler-colonial school contexts.

scholarly journals Policy advocacy, inequity, and school fees and fundraising in Ontario, Canada

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sue Winton ◽  
Michelle Milani
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Policy Analysis ◽  
Policy Advocacy ◽  
Critical Policy Analysis ◽  
The Past ◽  
Dominant Discourses ◽  
The Government ◽  
Critical Policy

Fundraising and collecting fees are ubiquitous in Ontario, Canada’s public schools. Critics assert that these practices perpetuate and exacerbate inequities between schools and communities. In this article we present findings from a critical policy analysis of an advocacy group’s efforts to change Ontario’s fees and fundraising policies over the past two decades. Rhetorical analyses of 110 texts finds that the group constructed the problem of each policy similarly, targeted the same audiences, and utilized many of the same strategies to appeal to logos, ethos, and pathos in their struggle over the policies’ meanings. However, only one out of four of the group’s policy meanings became dominant. The discursive and critical policy perspectives grounding the study directed us to examine how neoliberalism and the policies’ shared broader social, political, and economic contexts can help explain this outcome. Specifically, the group’s efforts to change Ontario’s school fees and fundraising policies confronted dominant discourses that construct parents as consumers of education and responsible for their children’s success in a competitive world, promote the meritocratic notion that successful people deserve their success and the benefits it brings, view the government as responsible only for providing the basic requirements of education, and support privatization and marketization of public schools.

scholarly journals The Discursive Tapestry of Economic and Educational Story Lines

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 234-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bradley W. Carpenter
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
The United States ◽  
Educational Policies ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Analysis Framework ◽  
Critical Policy Analysis ◽  
The Past ◽  
Critical Policy ◽  
Policy Solutions

Using a critical policy analysis framework, this article examines the discursive foundation of the most recent era of educational reform. The purpose of this article is to provide educational practitioners and scholars with a better understanding of how neoliberal and globalized discourse may codetermine what practitioners—the readers and implementers of policy—are offered as legitimate policy solutions for public schools. The findings of this article examine the ideological foundations of the educational policies put forward by the Obama/Duncan and Trump/DeVos administrations. Specifically, this article shows how, over the past 40 years, two historically related elements determined the purposes of educational policy: (a) the continual threat of economic instability that began in the 1970s as the interconnectedness of global economics became apparent, and (b) the subsequent institutionalization of economic policies intended to secure the health of the economy and establish the United States as a dominant force in the global capitalist marketplace.

Educational (de)segregation in North Macedonia: The intersection of policies, schools, and individuals

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 310-328
Author(s):  
Aryn Bloodworth
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Contact Theory ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Ethnic Segregation ◽  
Education Policies ◽  
Critical Policy Analysis ◽  
Negative Stereotypes ◽  
Integrated Education ◽  
Critical Policy

North Macedonia’s two main ethnic groups, the Albanians and Macedonians, have experienced increasing segregation in education, though recent political shifts have made social cohesion a priority, which could replace decades of segregationist policies and break down a damaging cycle of segregation. Using a qualitative approach, I examine the complex relationship between policies, schools, and individuals through analysing 18 years of education policies, interviews/focus groups with 30 participants, and four years living and working in segregated communities. To explore how educational policies, institutions, and practices perpetuate ethnic segregation in North Macedonia, and how growing up in a divided society shapes individuals’ conceptions of themselves and other predominant ethnic groups, I employ contact theory and critical policy analysis. I find that as students grow up in divided schools and communities, their conceptions of the self and of people from other ethnic groups are constituted by these experiences of segregation. While the nation’s education policies currently include more initiatives for integrated education, these have yet to be implemented satisfactorily, meaning that public schools could teach inclusion and serve as a mechanism for dispelling negative stereotypes, but to do so requires a reconceptualization of ethnic difference and a cohesive vision of national identity.

“I Hope to Hell Nothing Goes Back to The Way It Was Before”: COVID-19, Marginalization, and Native Nations

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Raymond Foxworth ◽  
Laura E. Evans ◽  
Gabriel R. Sanchez ◽  
Cheryl Ellenwood ◽  
Carmela M. Roybal
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Original Data ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
Native Languages ◽  
Native Communities ◽  
Tribal Health ◽  
Tribal Lands ◽  
Health Regulations

We draw on new and original data to examine both partisan and systemic inequities that have fueled the spread of COVID-19 in Native America. We show how continued political marginalization of Native Americans has compounded longstanding inequalities and endangered the lives of Native peoples. Native nations have experienced disproportionate effects from prior health epidemics and pandemics, and in 2020, Native communities have seen greater rates of infection, hospitalization, and death from COVID-19. We find that Native nations have more COVID-19 cases if they are located in states with a higher ratio of Trump supporters and reside in states with Republican governors. Where there is longstanding marginalization, measured by lack of clean water on tribal lands and health information in Native languages, we find more COVID-19 cases. Federal law enables non-members to flout tribal health regulations while on tribal lands, and correspondingly, we find that COVID-19 cases rise when non-members travel onto tribal lands. Our findings engage the literatures on Native American politics, health policy within U.S. federalism, and structural health inequalities, and should be of interest to both scholars and practitioners interested in understanding COVID-19 outcomes across Tribes in the United States.

The English Language Learning Progressions (ELLP): Challenge or opportunity?

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 21-37
Author(s):  
Judith Anthony
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
English Language ◽  
Future Research ◽  
English Language Learning ◽  
Learning Progressions ◽  
Ministry Of Education ◽  
Critical Policy Analysis ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Critical Policy

This article provides an overview and critical analysis of The English Language Learning Progressions (ELLP) (Ministry of Education, 2008). Identifying main themes through critical policy analysis, this review seeks to place ELLP in context through a comparison with The English Language Learning Framework: Draft (Ministry of Education, 2005) and English Language Learning Progressions (ELLP ) Pathway Years 1–8 (Ministry of Education, 2020a). Within this review, the structure of ELLP is explored along with key ideas and claims. It is argued that there are both challenges and opportunities in ELLP. Finally, the key issues are summarised and suggestions are made for future research.

scholarly journals Diversity for Whom? Gentrification, Demographic Change, and the Politics of School Integration

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Diem ◽  
Jennifer Jellison Holme ◽  
Wesley Edwards ◽  
Madeline Haynes ◽  
Eliza Epstein
Keyword(s):  
School Districts ◽  
Economic Integration ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Comparative Case Study ◽  
District Leaders ◽  
Critical Policy Analysis ◽  
School Demographics ◽  
The Face ◽  
Critical Policy

Gentrification and the displacement of low-income residents of color from neighborhoods where they have long resided has accelerated over the last 20 years. In some cities, this process has begun to impact school demographics. Although research shows that school districts experiencing gentrification are responding in ways that fuel segregation and inequality, in some contexts gentrification is viewed by administrators as an opportunity to seek racial and economic integration. In our exploratory comparative case study, we examined districts in gentrifying cities pursuing integration in the face of rapid gentrification. Our critical policy analysis illustrates how district leaders’ diversity efforts can be overshadowed by their desire to appease and attract gentrifying families. Although districts are maintaining or increasing diversity in gentrifying contexts, our study raises broader equity questions that call for further inquiry of within-district equity and the displacement of students.

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