Great Lakes Equity Center
Indiana University Indianapolis, Education, Midwest and Plains Equity Assistance Center/ Great Lakes Equity Center
The mission of the Great Lakes Equity Center is to ensure equitable, responsive education for all. The Midwest and Plains Equity Assistance (MAP) Center, a project of the Great Lakes Equity Center, provides equity-focused technical assistance in the areas of sex, race, national origin and religion to PreK-12 public schools within the center's 13-state region, including ND, SD, NE, OK, MO, KS, IL, MI, OH, IN, MN, IA, WI. The contents of this site were developed under a grant from the U.S. Department of Education (Grant S004D110021). However, the content does not necessarily represent the policy of the Department of Education, and endorsement by the Federal Government should not be assumed
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When your spirituality is the lens through which you examine life, isolation and marginalization in the academy are magnified (Cozart, 2010). Despite the hardships faced while navigating the troubled waters of academia, we continue to persevere. We continue to challenge and dismantle the many forms of oppression that seek to render us powerless, voiceless, ineffective, and irrelevant. Even though trials may come on every hand, we continue to move on, but we do not move on alone. For many of us, another Black woman, or women, prepared us for the waters ahead by imparting wisdom, providing support and thoughtful critique.
In this paper, we borrow from Clandinin and Connelly (1989, 1990) concept of narrative inquiry, Cozart’s (2010) conceptualization of spirituality as God consciousness and Collins (2000) and Bernard, et al. (2000) notions of othermothering, to situate, understand, and analyze the “storied life” of two Black women. The telling of our stories through our voices enables us to claim space and visibility. Sharing our stories within the academic literature provides a lens for others to understand the struggles, barriers, and challenges faced by Black women in the academy while also shedding light on the role of “spiritual sistering” as a tool to push back and overcome those struggles, obstacles, and challenges.
In this chapter, Dr. Seena M. Skelton discusses dis/ability as culture at the intersection of race, and more generally, in relation to her childhood experiences as a Black student with a disability who attended a segregated elementary school for students with disabilities in Detroit, MI. Skelton examines how her racial and disability identities were both sustained and marginalized in school, and provides readers with rich descriptions of troubling as well as transformative experiences. Skelton is director of operations for the Great Lakes Equity Center in the Indiana University School of Education-IUPUI, where she also serves as director for the Midwest and Plains Equity Center.
In the introduction to the text, Sustaining Disabled Youth, editors Dr. Waitoller and Dr. Thorius expound upon the purpose of the book: The purpose of Sustaining Disabled Youth is to expand asset pedagogies through a cross pollination of ideas and practices across fields, as well as theoretical and practical arenas, with an emphasis on disability studies in education. The book curates a collection of works that situate disability as a key aspect of children and youth’s cultural repertoires and identity constructions, and thus, a necessary pillar for developing and practicing pedagogies that sustain them. The book creates a dialogical space for placing disability into conversations with asset pedagogies, centering how disability intersects with other markers of difference to create unique cultural repertoires to be valued, sustained, and utilized for learning. In Sustaining Disabled Youth, established and emerging community and university scholars and activists, many of whom identify as disabled, engage with the following critical questions:
• How can disability culture, identity, and anti-ableist teaching and learning develop and sustain asset pedagogies that attend to intersecting forms of oppression?
• How can understandings of cultures of disablement in schools serve to interrogate and/or complement the production and implementation of asset pedagogies that attend to intersecting forms of marginalization?
• How can disability culture, identity, and anti-ableist teaching transform teacher education programs?
In this chapter, Dr. Kathleen A. King Thorius considers her history of encountering and perpetrating the intersection of ableism and racism, and her own practice as a school psychologist and technical assistance provider, including the reproduction of racial and ability hierarchies in her professional and personal life. She describes coming to learn more about how her individual and collective action can contribute to systemic transformation toward equitable, just schools for students at the intersection of race, disability, and other minoritized identities through the framing and practice of equity-expansive technical assistance. Thorius is the Great Lakes Equity Center’s founding executive director, and co-editor of this volume with Federico Waitoller.
Despite the U.S. government's funding and provision of technical assistance as a prevailing approach to remedy special education racial disproportionality, and considerable research on the explanations, causes, and frameworks for addressing the phenomenon, there is little documentation of research or technical assistance efforts for actually doing so. As a white, nondisabled professor and executive director of a federally funded Equity Assistance Center, I theorize and offer for critique ways I have facilitated (mostly white, non-disabled) educators' en/counters with culturally historically embedded systemic and individual practices contributing to the construction of special education as a cloak of benevolence for white supremacy and ableism. Drawing from a theory of expansive learning, I illustrate how purposeful introduction of artifacts into the activity system of a technical assistance relationship brings educators in contact with contradictions between their expressed goals of eliminating disproportionality and their pathologization of children's differences at the intersection of race and disability.
In this essay, I reflect on how an equity-focused technical assistance (TA) practitioner who holds intersectional minoritized social identities is in a unique position to introduce tensions in the TA activity system, disrupt marginalizing dominant narratives about difference, and affect educators’ development of new ideas about the treatment of difference in schools. To start, I situate myself as the TA provider by focusing specifically on the socio-historical context in which I experienced public K-12 education as a Black, woman with a dis/ability. Next, I outline three reflections related to my experience with the treatment of difference during that time, particularly in terms of race and dis/ability; I consider how my personal history informs my current interactions within the provision of equity-focused TA. I identify three marginalizing impacts resulting from educators’ treatment of my and other students’ difference; and describe three strategic moves I employ to disrupt and mitigate these impacts. Additionally, I reflect on the question: How might my social identities, intersectional education history, and lived experiences serve as instruments that evoke tensions and affect interactions within the TA activity system?
Though the formal and informal mathematics learning experiences of Black girls are gain ing more visibility in the literature, there is still a paucity of research around Black girls' mathematics learning experiences. Black girls face unique challenges as learners in K-12 educational spaces because of their marginalized racial and gender identities. The inter play of race and racism unfolds in complex ways in Black girls' learning experiences. This interplay hinders their development as mathematics learners and limits their access to transformative learning. As early as elementary school, Black girls are labeled as having limited mathematics knowledge and are often disproportionately placed in "lower level classrooms" devoid of any rigorous and transformative learning experiences. Teachers spend more time socially correcting Black girls rather than building on their brilliance. Even though Black girls value mathematics more and have higher confidence in mathe matics than their White counterparts, they are still held to lower expectations by their teachers and are less likely to complete an advanced mathematics course. Nationally and globally, mathematics serves as an academic gatekeeper into every avenue of the labor market and higher education opportunities. Thus, the lack of opportunities Black girls have to engage in rigorous and transformative mathematics potentially locks them out of higher education opportunities and STEM-based careers. The mathematics learning expe riences of Black girls move beyond challenges in K-12 spaces to limiting life choices and individual and community progress. To improve the formal and informal mathematics learning experiences of Black girls, we must understand their unique learning experiences more fully.
This article describes a summer enrichment science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) camp for African-American girls and young women aimed at addressing mathematical and science self-efficacy and reinforcing the importance and usefulness of mathematics and science with a socially transformative curriculum. The research questions guiding this study are (1) How do African-American girl participants describe their experiences in Girls STEM Institute (GSI)? and (2) How does the STEM program experience affect their mathematics and science self-efficacy and valuing of mathematics and science? The data, which included journal entries and interviews, were collected and analyzed from four participants and indicated that participating in the Girls STEM Institute led to improved mathematics and science self-efficacy and increased perceptions of the value of science and math knowledge.
of students identified as English language learners (ELLs) and to
prevent inequitable outcomes such as overrepresentation in special
education. However, some scholars have questioned how RTI is
conceptualized and implemented with ELLs. This systematic literature
review explores how the existing research on RTI for ELLs has
addressed (a) the quality and appropriateness of Tier 1 practices
for ELLs and (b) linguistic factors as contexts that impact this quality.
A key finding is that current research is not sufficiently linked
to general education instruction. Thus, we suggest that future RTI
research address instruction for ELLs in general education settings,
including the incorporation of Title I supports, bilingual education
and language acquisition programs, and culturally responsive
pedagogy into Tier 1 universal interventions.
on multidisciplinary collaboration to support struggling readers.
From our perspectives informed by experiences working with diverse
student and family populations in urban settings, preparing
pre- and in-service educators and specialists to do the same, and
working in federally funded technical assistance and dissemination
centers focused on equity issues in general and special
education, we highlight themes and raise issues across the articles.
Accordingly, we discuss learning to read in the broader context
of literacy acquisition, and examine issues of effectiveness, power,
and privilege within consultative and collaborative professional
relationships aimed at addressing diverse learners reading capacities
and outcomes.
those populations, as well as important differences for various populations. Finally, the brief provides recommendations for practitioners.