In this paper, the authors focus on everyday narrations of the nation as they are taken up by educators "in schools" in the United States, Denmark and Spain. As the primary institutions within which children from im/migrant communities are incorporated into the nation-state, schools are the key sites within which young people learn the…

Having served as a college and university instructor at several institutions, the author has taught numerous history courses that have dealt with race relations in the United States. A class that he currently teaches, titled "Race in America," focuses specifically upon this topic. It is designed for non-history majors who are in their…

At the conclusion of many courses on race and racism, students, having learned, some for the first time, about the existence, origins, and complex dimensions of racial domination in America, are left pondering their next steps. "What is to be done?" many ask. "And what, exactly, is it that we want?" Important as they are, these…

Between the turn of the twentieth century and the "Brown v. Board of Education" decision in 1954, the way that American schools taught about "race" changed dramatically. This transformation was engineered by the nation's most prominent anthropologists, including Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict, and Margaret Mead, during World War II.…

Research has documented the ways in which students of Mexican origin are not succeeding academically in the same proportion as the rest of the US population. This process of educational failure occurs in the context of overt and more subtle forms of racism experienced throughout their schooling and everyday lives. Undocumented Mexican students…

This critical review presents studies of Mexican American fathers in the United Sates to provide researchers with an understanding of contemporary fatherhood. It describes the myths that cause methodological and conceptual problems in interpreting the results of studies on Mexican American fathers. Several common challenges and limitations in…

In this post 9/11 era Western cultures are focusing on values that support war and violence. In this article an ethnographer explores the impact of these values on schools. These values, seen through the lens of restorative justice, include: (a) punishment, (b) adversarial relationships, (c) monopolization of power, (d) problemization and…

A total of 10 focus groups were conducted with students, parents, teachers, and school counseling and support personnel to investigate the cultural adjustment process of Chinese immigrant youth using an ecological framework. Multi-informant data were analyzed using the grounded theory (A. Strauss & J. M. Corbin, 1998) method. Findings reveal 6…

The problem highlighted in this qualitative inquiry is that literature in HRD exploring racism in the United States in the forms of individual, institutional, and cultural racism is scant. This inquiry serves to encourage research and dialogue in HRD for the purpose of getting HRD more involved in developing strategies that can be used to…

This article describes the author's concerns, as a brand new teacher, about competence and failure which manifested themselves in a focus on the body. It discusses the effects of diversity among teachers and students. While the author's fears corresponded to the situation, given that she would be subject to the specific and often intense gaze of…

This article focuses on the basic idea that having equality and justice for all in schooling cannot be achieved in the current climate where students are viewed solely as individuals. In fact, given the educational debt and achievement gaps, the ideas of equality and justice are necessarily contradictory. Achieving justice, in light of the…

There has been increased critical interest in the child as a rich and varied site of cultural inscription. Scholars from a wide range of disciplines have turned their attention to the child in order to interrogate how it comes to represent, and often codify, the prevailing ideologies of a given culture or historical period. Noting that narratives…

A critical issue in teacher education today is the mismatch between racially homogenous teachers and students from increasingly diverse cultural backgrounds. In the United States, the student population is becoming more diverse while the teaching force is becoming increasingly monocultural, white, and middle class. Current data on the teaching…