Improving Education for African American Gifted Students Through African American Intellectualism

Researchers have consistently advocated for more culturally relevant and responsive practices in gifted education to better meet the academic and social-emotional needs of Black gifted students. This chapter provides overviews of contemporary views of culturally relevant practices but also provides alternative perspectives of the elements that comprise culturally relevant experiences for Black gifted students by exploring the lives and work of early Black gifted scholars. Recommendations for designing culturally relevant and responsive learning experiences by utilizing elements of African American intellectualism along with curricular models from gifted education will be discussed and shared.

Enhancing Informal Stem Learning Through Family Engagement in Cooking

Informal learning has the potential to play an important role in helping children develop a life-long interest in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). The goal of this review is to synthesize the evidence regarding the features of effective informal learning, provide effective ways to support learning within these contexts, and illustrate that cooking is an optimal opportunity for informal STEM learning. We review evidence demonstrating that the most effective informal learning activities are authentic, social and collaborative experiences that tap into culturally-relevant practices and knowledge, although there are limitations to each. We propose that cooking provides a context for authentic, culturally-relevant learning opportunities and includes natural supports for learning and engagement. Specifically, cooking provides many opportunities to apply STEM content (e.g., measuring and chemical reactions) to an existing foundation of knowledge about food. Cooking is also a family-based learning opportunity that exists across cultures, allows for in-home mentoring, and requires no specialized materials (beyond those available in most homes). It may help overcome some limitations in informal STEM learning, namely scalability. Finally, cooking provides immediate, tangible (and edible) results, promoting interest and supporting long-term engagement.

“Where is Our Space Within this Ivory Tower?” The Teaching Experiences of Black Women Faculty in Education Programs

Black women faculty represent a small percentage of full-time faculty in higher education and are often invisible, marginalized, and expected to perform duties beyond teaching, research, and service. Yet, their success in higher education positions them as possibility models for change on their campuses. The purpose of this study is to investigate the experiences of three Black women faculty who teach in graduate education programs. Specifically, we examined how teaching using culturally relevant practices may cause Black women faculty to negotiate their identity within higher education organizational structures. Using a theoretical framework informed by Black feminism and the Culturally Relevant Leadership Learning Model, three salient themes were identified: roles and responsibilities, resistance, and limitations within the academy. Implications for practice include the creation of identity specific support for Black women faculty and attention be given to faculty and student readiness prior to engaging in culturally relevant practices beyond critical self-reflection.

Culture and Conversation: Rethinking Brown v. Board of Education a Postponed Commitment to Educational Equality

The Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision was a significant change in social justice and human rights. There is ongoing debate about public education not as a private commodity but as a public good that must be made available on equal terms. Recently, schools are entering an era of second-generation segregation. Poor outcomes, language acquisition programs preventing access to college-readiness courses, and teacher quality are causes for concern. Research on second-generation segregation found that African-American children experience lower rates of academic achievement than their White peers. This was a case study analysis to investigate the impact of teacher preparation and culturally relevant practices related to educational opportunities. The results hold implications on misconceptions of educational improvements for Black children and identify the need to increase cultural responsiveness and an intentional focus on students’ assets and needs.

Toward Increasing Equity and Inclusion in Mathematics Classrooms: Exploring the Potential of Proactive Confrontation in Teacher-Education

Expressions of racial bias in middle grades math classrooms pose a threat to the full inclusion and equitable treatment of students of color. To combat these biased expressions, mathematics education scholars have recommended that math teachers undergo special training to employ culturally relevant practices as part of their teacher education. According to teacher-educators, however, motivating and helping their teacher-pupils implement culturally relevant classroom strategies has proven somewhat challenging. This is in part due to reluctance among teachers to adopt culturally relevant practices in their own teaching and a lack of fidelity when attempting to enact culturally relevant strategies. To overcome the challenges of reluctance and fidelity and to support teacher-educators as they train their teacher-pupils to adopt culturally relevant strategies in math classrooms, we propose that teacher-educators employ a proactive confrontation approach. We view proactive confrontation as a practical and useful tool for math teacher-educators to challenge racial bias expression and to create more equitable and inclusive math learning environments that inspire and motivate learning and performance among all students. By using proactive confrontations, teacher-educators can raise their teacher-pupils’ self-awareness that engaging in biased expression is common (but not inevitable) in math classrooms and raise their concern that bias expression is harmful to students of color and, therefore, deserves proactive attention and action. Lastly, teacher- educators can provide examples of culturally relevant classroom activities to their teacher-pupils and help them to develop and implement such practices on their own. In the present synthesis, we provide examples of how the proactive confrontation approach can be integrated with math teacher-education programs and discuss some of the persisting challenges facing math teacher-educators who choose to proactively confront racial bias.

Teacher Proof

This study examines the experience of four student teachers in an intentional community of practice focused on culturally relevant pedagogy for ELs who learn of the implementation of a newly-adopted scripted literacy curriculum in their ethnically diverse elementary school. As students are more motivated to learn when curricula are relevant to their lived experiences (Howard, 2003), it is incumbent upon teachers and district leaders to consider ways in which to tailor pedagogy to their unique student populations. In the current sociopolitical educational climate of accountability and standardization, this goal is increasingly more difficult for educators to achieve. With ten percent of the United States’ student population made up of English learners (ELs), amounting to 4.6 million students (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2017), it is imperative that school systems shift to support culturally relevant practices.

The Asset-Focus of Youth Social Entrepreneurship

This chapter explores the “asset-based” frameworks in both positive youth development and community. This chapter also orients the reader to the link between youth social entrepreneurship’s grounding in the central theme of positive psychology: human flourishing. Instead of focusing on the incremental steps toward getting any job at all, the emphasis is on youth capacity for creating a positive career trajectory, supported by exposure to a breadth of opportunity instead of a narrow pipeline. To accomplish meaningful and authentic positivity, the cultural reality of each young person and each community must be included in the experience of development. Therefore, a review of culturally relevant pedagogies and the need for valuing cultural funds of knowledge is included. All together, the asset-focused, culturally relevant practices can foster youth leadership with social entrepreneurship that paves a road toward thriving.