A number of social and ecological justice educators have long recognized the need for educational institutions to foster the development of a critical interest in civic engagement. They also have recognized the lack of appropriate education for students who are already civically engaged. One popular way to address this context in higher education…

This dissertation investigates a perennial problem in teacher education: the theory-practice divide. There has always been a rift between theory and practice; however, this gap and the responses to it take on different shapes and meanings based on the reforms, politics, and structures of the time. For example, in the 1980s and 90s Professional…

Research on academic achievement contrasting Black immigrant, second generation, and non-immigrant students as distinct groups is surprisingly sparse in the higher education literature. This study examined Black immigrant and second generation undergraduates from Africa and the Caribbean and non-immigrant Black American undergraduates, using the…

We examined the impact of a pedagogical strategy, ecological asset mapping, on 19 pre-service teachers' self-exploration, development of respect for others, and critical examination of social injustice. Data were analyzed from participants' ecological asset maps and essays describing the experience of completing and sharing the maps. The analysis…

This paper describes the results from a qualitative study of 72 preservice teachers' initial ideas about contextualizing science instruction with language minority students. Participants drew primarily on local ecological and multicultural contexts as resources for contextualizing instruction. However, preservice teachers enrolled in the bilingual…

Higher rates of school switching by students contribute to achievement disparities and are typically theorized as driven by attributes of individual pupils or families. In contrast the neoclassical-economic account postulates that switching is necessary for competition among schools. We argue that both frames fail to capture social-referential and…