That Wasn’t My Reality: Counter-Narratives of Educational Success as East St. Louis’ Educators “Reimagine” Savage Inequalities

East St. Louis educators provide critical counter-narratives to Jonathan Kozol’s depiction of teaching and learning in East St. Louis, Illinois in Savage Inequalities. Teachers, educators, and administrators provide a complex view of urban schooling beyond deficiency, inadequacy, and despair. Findings highlight educators’ voices as they privilege “unnamed” forms of capital (such as aspirational, navigational, social, familial, and resistant) identified by Yosso (2005) that influence their practices. Ultimately, this study provides a comprehensive and unfettered account of the meaning of teaching and learning in urban communities.

Keeping It Relevant: Student-Centered Reflections, Choices, and Actions of Critical Race Womanist Pedagogues

This article examines how three Black women educators disrupt oppressive norms in urban schooling through their applications of critical race womanist pedagogy (CRWP). Using narrative excerpts formed from semi-structured interviews exploring how they contend with sociopolitical injustices through their pedagogical choices and actions, CRWP characterizes their daily classroom practices in four ways: (1) teacher reflexivity and student-centered curriculum, (2) authentic and reality-based curriculum, (3) culturally and politically relevant pedagogy, and (4) self-actualization and capacity-oriented approaches. Concretizing enactments of CRWP can inform the work of teachers, teacher educators, and administrators committed to prioritizing student-centered, politicized, academically responsive, and asset-based urban education.

Gentrifying Neighborhoods, Gentrifying Schools? An Emerging Typology of School Changes in a Gentrifying Urban School District

An increasing number of central cities across the U.S. are experiencing a growth in white middle-class population, which is associated with gentrification in historically disinvested and racially segregated urban neighborhoods. These changing neighborhood dynamics are starting to shift the context of urban schooling in some districts across the nation. While we know that racial and socioeconomic demographic shifts are associated with neighborhood and school gentrification, there is little conceptual clarity about how school gentrification unfolds over time and the varying conditions of schools in gentrified neighborhoods. To advance scholarship on the topic, researchers need an organizing framework. This study addresses this gap by drawing on existing research, 16 years of Census and American Community Survey data, and 6 years of district data in Austin, Texas. Highlighting Austin, an urban city with growing neighborhood gentrification, we put forth a typology to explain the experiences of schools in the district. We conclude with implications for future research.

Urban Schooling and Social Integration of Ethnic Migrant Students in China

A great migration from rural to urban areas is happening in China and dramatically changing China society. This qualitative study examines the educational experience and social integration of ethnic migrant students in urban China. Contextualized within the huge rural-urban divide, findings indicate challenges in urban schooling and study adaption, including language barriers, achievement gaps, incompatibility of teaching and learning, and high-stakes tests. This study also interprets their negotiation with host and home places and cultures, and cultivation of cultural capital and cross-cultural competence. The unification and competitiveness in urban schooling and the need for culturally responsive teaching are discussed.

The Contested Discourses of Yoga, Youth, and Urban Schooling: Paradox and Possibility

Background/Context Yoga, as a recent cultural phenomenon in the United States, is often marketed as a way to relieve stress and anxiety. This has led to yoga becoming widespread in schools, particularly schools that serve low income youth of color. While some advocates argue that yoga can help students navigate highly controlled, standards-based school environments, others assert that yoga is being used as a tool for student compliance rather than liberation. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study This study addresses the tensions between schooling discourses and yoga discourses, and how youth use their own discourses and agency to navigate those complications. Setting/Population This study took place in an alternative high school program for students who were in danger of not graduating because they had too few credits. Reflecting the community, the participants were low income youth of color. Research Design In this yearlong critical qualitative study, I served as an observer for weekly yoga classes at the school, interviewed the student participants during the fall and the spring, and interviewed the yoga teacher and classroom teacher during the fall and spring. I kept a field journal and wrote memos after every class and analyzed the data from the observations and interviews using critical discourse analysis. Conclusions/Recommendations Even as yoga may serve as a counternarrative to schooling discourses, it is only with intention and practice that it does not reify narratives of power and patriarchy. This is particularly true when the participants themselves may replicate these narratives, such as the participants’ complex use of heteronormative masculine discourses. For yoga to be liberatory in schools, the following aspects should be included: a sense of community where all students feel valued, classroom teacher participation, explicit instruction in the discourses of yoga around acceptance and compassion for oneself and others, and acknowledging school and youth discourses around sports and heteronormativity.

Race and Social Emotional Learning for Black Students in Urban Schooling Contexts

Social and emotional learning (SEL) has gained notable significance in educational research over the last three decades, and has been widely conjectured to promote students’ academic learning. In its initial construction and practice, however, SEL did not consider the indelible impact of anti-Black racism and dehumanization of Black people. This special issue convenes scholars from the fields of education, human development, and psychology who examine the ways in which race and racism mediate the social–emotional learning of Black youth, a significant portion of whom attend urban schools. Collectively, the articles in this Special Issue aim to broaden the scope and impact of SEL research.