Papers by Chezare A Warren
Towards Anti-Carceral Leadership: Remaking Public Schools to Refuse Black Students’ Surveillance, Containment, and Control
Educational policy, Jan 27, 2024
Review of Educational Research
The series of high-profile Black deaths in the United States between 2012– 2022 (e.g., Trayvon Ma... more The series of high-profile Black deaths in the United States between 2012– 2022 (e.g., Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor) mark an impor- tant turning point in studies of Black life in education. The increasing use of anti-Blackness theorizing coupled with the introduction of Black critical theory (BlackCrit) to the field of education has inspired new research inves- tigations aiming to understand anti-Black racial harm more precisely. Growing interest in such study leads us to wonder how education researchers envision Black life in their work, and more specifically, the subject of Blackness and its relationship to notions of humanity. As scholars whose research demonstrates a disciplined intellectual commitment to Black humanity, we observe that a uniform scholarly conception of human- ity!Blackness remains elusive. In this systematic review of 226 peer- reviewed articles, we seek to better understand (a) how education researchers conceptualize Black humanity in articles published during a period of intense social change and political upheaval in the United States (i.e., 2012–2022); (b) what specific claims they make about Black life as a result; and (c) what long-term implications emerge as a result of this knowledge production. Ultimately, this paper offers insight for sharpening the theoretical and inter- pretive heft of education research that probes the substance of Black people’s lived education realities, the knowledge from which is desperately needed to imagine, design, and steward education futures that all America’s children need to thrive.
Making Relationships Work
Routledge eBooks, Jun 26, 2023
Educational Policy, 2024
The social movement for #PoliceFreeSchools (and the adjacent campaign on college and university c... more The social movement for #PoliceFreeSchools (and the adjacent campaign on college and university campuses called #PoliceFreeCampuses) welcomes an opportunity to reimagine school discipline and safety in contradistinction to current carceral forms. Scholars have moved away from notions of ‘‘school to prison pipeline’’ by demonstrating the many ways schools are organized as carceral spaces (e.g., school-prison nexus). A conceptual framework of Anti-carceral leadership is put forward in this paper to underscore the need for a leadership paradigm that actively refuses the logics of the carceral state (e.g., social control). The paper underscores how the logics of antiblackness may sustain mechanisms of social control in education policy intended to undo racialized harm. The tensions of be(com)ing an anti-carceral leader and its significance for undoing technologies of punishment, confinement, and constraint that reinforce schooling as a site of Black pain and suffering are discussed.
Philosophy and Theory in Higher Education
The “binary” language in Black-White binary discourse is reductive, and as such, is potentially a... more The “binary” language in Black-White binary discourse is reductive, and as such, is potentially antagonistic to the project of racial solidarity needed to divine racial justice. Such language reads as exclusionary of non-Black people of color who are indeed impacted by white supremacy and the structural racism that establishes and preserves it. Building from calls by critical race scholars to specify understanding of racial suffering (e.g., LatCrit, TribalCrit, BlackCrit, etc.), this essay argues that a Black-White relations intellectual frame substantially enhances critical race education research analyses. In other words, comprehending the political function of blackness to catalyze production of whiteness is essential to better discerning how hierarchies of racial power are (re)produced. Moreover, “mourning” is offered in the paper as a site for both lamenting the enduring consequence(s) of white supremacy, as well as for discerning possibility for an emancipated future in higher...
Research in the Teaching of English
a conversation that named and honored our origins and looked to our futures. Joyce reminded us th... more a conversation that named and honored our origins and looked to our futures. Joyce reminded us that the traditions of self-determination, self-awareness, and radical Black study are our inheritance to claim and cannot be contained nor exhausted by the formal structures of the academy, nor the seductive enclosures of nation-state narrative reckoning. The academy is just another place and we must constantly return to our source: The lineage, the genealogy, the heritage, the people that sacrificed for you to get here, that's what you need to be awed by. In recognizing that structures do not contain freedom, we can move toward liberation. While limited by page constraints, we are incredibly excited to be able to offer extended access to the conversation via an audio podcast that accompanies the digital publication of this In Dialogue. We conclude this introduction by again thanking our participants for their time and willingness. As editors, this opportunity remains a singular, unforgettable moment in our tenure with RTE. NAITNAPHIT LIMLAMAI: What does an insistence on the always already existing practices of Black creation mean for imagining the aims of justice-oriented pedagogies in classrooms and communities?
There has been growing scholarly interest in Black girls' and young women's matriculation across ... more There has been growing scholarly interest in Black girls' and young women's matriculation across the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) pipeline. This interest is fueled by the STEM field's maintenance of a largely White and male culture, despite the passage of Title IX laws in the 1970s. This exploration of Black women's and girls' STEM participation has been incredibly important for extending what is known about this group. Less discernible from the extant literature is Black women's and girls' first-person sensemaking about the moments, people, incidents, and environments that determine not just their participation but also their persistence into and through higher education to complete a STEM undergraduate degree. The language of trajectories implicates life course, growth, and development in ability over time with age and experience. The various environments influencing young Black women's and girls' learning about STEM, and their decisions about how or if to participate in STEM, are informed by constantly evolving understandings of their intersectional race-gender identity. This identity is changing over time as they grow older and come into contact with various STEM learning opportunities, people, and places. Young Black women and girls are keenly aware of race-gender limitations imposed on them by dominant cultural norms, institutional agents, and experiences with institutional policy and practice. Such perspectives are shaping how they come to view themselves aside from STEM and the decisions they make at each point on the STEM pipeline specific to their desire to own a STEM identity despite their subject position as a race-gender minoritized person in STEM subjects and majors.
Perspectives on Teacher Empathy with Diverse Learners
Perspectives on Teacher Empathy with Diverse Learners
Reply to “The Imperative for Social Foundations Revisited: A Technical Comment on Warren and Venzant Chambers (2020)
Educational Researcher, 2022
Our 2020 Educational Researcher article, “The Imperative of Social Foundations to (Urban) Educati... more Our 2020 Educational Researcher article, “The Imperative of Social Foundations to (Urban) Education Research and Practice,” emphasizes three particular social foundations of education (SFE) subdisciplines (sociology of education, history of education, and philosophy of education) to demonstrate the strength and necessity of SFE as a multi-perspectival approach to resolving persistent education justice dilemmas. In their technical comment, Aydarova et al. (2021) insist that our article potentially facilitates “erasure of SFE’s complexity and interdisciplinarity” (p. 1). They, like us, care deeply that SFE be understood as indispensable to advancing racial justice in and beyond education research, policy, and practice. These scholars foreground the invaluable contributions of anthropology of education to oppose racism and accentuate justice-oriented education alternatives. This essay responds to the technical comment by clarifying what we find to be a fundamental misinterpretation of ...
Race Ethnicity and Education, 2020
Increasing the number of Black men teachers and single-sex schooling options have been heralded a... more Increasing the number of Black men teachers and single-sex schooling options have been heralded as necessary to reverse trends in the failure of US education institutions to adequately educate Black boys. Too little research interrogates Black men teachers' interactions with Black boys for how they might reinforce anti-oppressive conceptions of race, gender and sexuality. A genre studythe multidimensional, intersectional examination of social identity to explain one's persistent dehumanizationwas utilized to investigate how Black men teachers' interactions with Black boys shape the boys' understanding of Black manhood and masculinities. Regardless of schooling arrangement, findings suggest Black men teachers must recognize and disavow hegemonic gender logics in interaction efforts aimed at improving Black boys' lives. Additionally, I argue the potential of Black men teachers' interactions with Black boys to function as sites for reimagining Black boys' humanity in ways that counter persistent messages of their inferiority and disposability (i.e. aniblackness).
Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education, 2016
This brief presents the most significant recommendations based on a review of key findings from r... more This brief presents the most significant recommendations based on a review of key findings from research presented in this special issue. The authors offer what they believe to be the most important considerations of what works for improving Black male school achievement in the domains of research, practice, and policy.
From Morning to Mourning: A Meditation on Possibility in Black Education
Equity & Excellence in Education, 2021
ABSTRACT This article insists on a reframe of mourning, away from a period of sadness or weeping ... more ABSTRACT This article insists on a reframe of mourning, away from a period of sadness or weeping alone, to a vision of its merits for discovering and unlocking possibility in Black Education. For example, mourning might be understood as involuntarily surrendered time necessary to properly grieve, concede, and embrace Black people’s subject position in the US sociopolitical context. Turning towards mourning, the dark moments that urge it and the dark(er) moments that it may produce, is argued as a launch pad to more fully understanding the depth and reach of Black people’s possibility. To make such an argument the author contemplates how mourning, and subsequent meditations on possibility, might have informed the activism of leaders in the Black radical tradition who urgently insisted that Black people’s human dignity be recognized and properly acknowledged. The article concludes with discussion of the significance of possibility to advance equity and excellence in education.
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 2018
Youth participatory action research projects forefront students' perspectives as they examine edu... more Youth participatory action research projects forefront students' perspectives as they examine educational opportunities in their schools and communities, enacting writing toward social justice. My school has some serious problems that I've been trying to address for a while. And a lot of people don't listen to me, and they just brush it off, and so I felt like this was my chance to be heard. (Grace, ninth grader; all names are pseudonyms)
Educational Researcher, 2020
This conceptual article aims to clarify the important relationship between the fields of social f... more This conceptual article aims to clarify the important relationship between the fields of social foundations of education (SFE) and urban education (UE). We argue that SFE (a) enables more precise understandings of urban in one’s preparation to practice in or conduct research with implications for urban schooling contexts and (b) strengthens one’s capacity to identify the questions and pedagogical and methodological approaches central to enacting justice-oriented education research and practice. This article calls attention to three specific SFE subdisciplines—history, philosophy, and sociology of education—as necessary complements to any education program of study, building our argument from an examination of SFE’s relationship to UE specifically. Accessing multidisciplinary perspectives to deeply understand and address vexing challenges posed by (urban) space and place is a central feature of this article.
Urban Education, 2020
Drawing from a larger study of teacher empathy, this article offers a critical race analysis of t... more Drawing from a larger study of teacher empathy, this article offers a critical race analysis of three teachers’ dispositions to discern (a) their social and emotional competencies (SEC) and (b) evidence of transformative social and emotional learning (SEL). Data sources include one-on-one teacher interviews, focus groups, document analyses, and more than 1,500 minutes of video-recorded classroom observations. Findings illustrate the influence of race, identity, and one’s conceptions of power for determining transformative expressions of teacher participants’ SEC. Implications for creating the conditions to effectively design and facilitate transformative SEL programming in urban school settings are discussed.
Multicultural Perspectives, 2018
Students' college aspirations precede any decision they may make to apply and enroll in college. ... more Students' college aspirations precede any decision they may make to apply and enroll in college. College aspirations broadly refer to the formal development of specific plans made by a young person to position themselves to enroll in a four-year college or university after high school. Regular, ongoing interaction with college-educated adults is one important approach for transmitting messages that positively influence young people's college aspirations. This article is an examination of young Black men's descriptions of their interactions with adult stakeholders (e.g., administrators, teachers, professional support staff, etc.), and the influence of those interactions on shaping these young men's ambitions to attend college. Data sources for this phenomenological study include one semi-structured in-depth interview with ten college-aged young Black men from a large midwestern city. Findings reveal the significance of care in adult stakeholder-student interactions, and specific messages about college, for sparking these young Black men's aspirations to attend a four-year college or university. The implications of interactions with youth of color that translate culturally responsive versions of care are discussed. 1 We use the language of urban-dwelling to describe Black and Latinx youth who are growing up in economically disenfranchised, high density communities of color characterized by multiple environmental risk factors (i.e., violence, drug abuse, joblessness, food deserts) and few neighborhood institutional assets (e.g., churches, universities, parks, social service agencies, cultural arts centers, etc.).
International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 2018
CC Visionan urban education reform effort launched to strengthen the cradle-to-career education p... more CC Visionan urban education reform effort launched to strengthen the cradle-to-career education pipeline in Central Cityprovides the impetus for our use of youth participatory action research (YPAR) to gather and activate student voice in the fight for education justice. Student voice can significantly enhance the quality of policy designed to expand access to education opportunity for poor and/or youth of color attending urban schools. Fifteen youth from seven different high schools in the Central City metropolitan area spent 18 weeks participating in the Central City Youth Co-Researcher Project as co-researchers. We aim to demonstrate the tensions of facilitating YPAR projects with diverse youth, and the benefits of YPAR as a student voice initiative intended to bolster justice-oriented education research. The influence of their scholarship visa -vis YPAR on wide-scale education policy-making, and education reform, in Central City is discussed.
Journal of Teacher Education, 2018
Journal of Teacher Education, 2017
Culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) offers elaborate empirical and theoretical conventions for b... more Culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) offers elaborate empirical and theoretical conventions for becoming an effective teacher of diverse youth. Empathy has been found to improve classroom teachers’ capacity to (re)act or respond to youth in ways that produce evidence of CRP. However, there are too few instructive models in teacher education that help connect teacher candidates’ knowledge of students and communities to development of efficacious physical habits, tendencies, and trends in observable behavior or teacher dispositions. The application of empathy operationalized through perspective taking is one such model useful to preparing teacher candidates to make professional decisions that produce evidence of CRP. Engaging teacher candidates in perspective taking—adopting the social perspectives of others as an act and process of knowing—invites them to obtain (and reason with) new knowledge of students and the sociocultural context where she or he will teach. Recommendations for m...
Scale of Teacher Empathy for African American Males (S-TEAAM): Measuring Teacher Conceptions and the Application of Empathy in Multicultural Classroom Settings
The Journal of Negro Education, 2015
Abstract:The flagrant failure of education institutions across the P-20 pipeline to adequately re... more Abstract:The flagrant failure of education institutions across the P-20 pipeline to adequately respond to the intellectual, emotional, and social needs of Black males is well-documented in the education research literature. Alternatively, empathy is theorized to improve the education practitioner’s professional interactions with students of color. This literature must be extended to include practicing teachers’ beliefs about empathy’s utility, relevance, and application to their work with Black male students. Using factor and correlational analyses, this study validates the Scale of Teacher Empathy for African American Males (S-TEAAM). Findings indicate that two scales comprising the S-TEAAM are reliable for measuring teachers’ conceptions of empathy and the application of empathy with Black males. Results further establish the utility of empathy in multicultural classroom settings.
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Papers by Chezare A Warren