Majoritarian Stories and Counterstories: Critical Race Theory Approaches to Countering Deficit Discourse in Higher Education

This paper employs critical discourse analysis to interrogate rhetorics of academic deficit subtending institutional neglect of equitable opportunity for students of color at U.S. postsecondary institutions. It further reviews Critical Race Theory literature in education, paying special attention to research that foregrounds social class as a discriminate variable distinguishing truly liberatory pedagogies from the merely critical.

Building Racial Justice Into a Master's Program

This chapter describes a five-year equity initiative to transform a language teacher education professional master's program into one that cultivates racial justice and equity-minded practices in graduates. This chapter will review program work over the last five years on two critical efforts involved in the ongoing five-year equity-minded initiatives. The program activities include data review and planning from 2017 to 2018 and equity curricular re-design from 2018 to 2020, where faculty revised program goals, curriculum, and syllabi. Critical race theory and equity-mindedness frameworks guided this equity initiative's process, goals, and content. The authors argue that building racial justice into a professional master's program requires applying a critical race analysis to the normative assumptions about academic program redesign. Individual and institutional challenges are discussed, and recommendations for building racial justice into the curriculum, instruction, and program policies are provided.

Not White Saviors, but Critical Scholars

Gifted Black and Brown students are not voiceless; their voices are suffocated under the knee of systemic racism and white supremacy. This chapter proposes that the field of gifted education advocates for needed structural and systemic change through the discourse of critical race theory. A model of gifted critical race studies (GTCrit) is presented and described as both a way to understand race and racism in gifted education and to drive social change. GTCrit theorizes about the ways in which race, racism, ability, potentiality, and deficit ideology are built into daily interactions and discourses, informal and formal policies and procedures, and systems and structures of education, which disproportionately impact students of color qualitatively differently than white students.

Challenging boundaries to expand frontiers in gender and policy studies

Gender and policy studies needs to face challenges and cross boundaries if the discipline is to develop. This article argues that gender and policy studies needs to explicitly foreground the centrality of politics – the analysis of power – in approaching policy. The discipline confronts boundaries in relation to inclusivity, diversity and relevance. Inclusive gender equality demands challenging the hegemonising and marginalising boundaries in the field, which contributes to its relevance by placing politics and power centre stage. Openness to the diversity of gender and policy approaches, a more systematic and thoughtful application of intersectionality, cooperation with LGBTQI+, critical race studies and normative political theory provide opportunities to challenge boundaries and advance knowledge. We argue that explicit reflexivity about power dynamics and knowledge production, employing a plurality of approaches, will better equip the discipline to navigate major challenges and crises, and offer more nuanced democratic and egalitarian societal contributions.

Critical Theory in Research

Based on critical theory, this chapter focuses on the first generation of Frankfurt School (mainly to authors such as T.W. Adorno, M. Horkheimer, and W. Benjamin). For discussing methodology in research, these authors are considered more representative than the younger generation (e.g., Habermas and Honneth) mainly because of the renewed interest in the direct critique of society and because of the failure of the younger generation to produce empirical research. The proponents of critical theory establish connections between theory and practice, in the sense that the social content of research must have human dignity at its centre. The difference between method-led and content-led research is discussed and considered central for this kind of approach to empirical research. Feminist research methodologies and critical race methodology are considered as closely associated with critical theory. These different approaches have developed autonomously from critical theory and are not directly related to it. However, feminist research methodologies and critical race methodology are expounded here because of their similarities to the critical theory of the Frankfurt School aimed at providing an emancipatory approach to empirical research.