The field of teacher education is dominated by whiteness, perpetuating the influence of white ideologies in designing and implementing teacher education at each phase of the continuum (pre-service teaching, in-service teaching, teacher educators). This study employs a critical autoethnographic approach to examine how my experiences as a Black…

Drawing from queer perspectives, critical and abolitionist teaching and practices, and somatic embodiment, my dissertation calls attention to historically embedded practices of the invisible and every practice of the lived experience. My dissertation explores the development and rendering of learning design encompassing cognition and intellect as…

Children in elementary schools think, talk, and reason in big ways that reflect how they live and experience race, racism, and racialization. Some elementary school teachers -- or critical-race teacher change agents -- intentionally include this work in their classrooms. My aim is to find out what motivates critical-race teacher change agents to…

The purpose of this study was to analyze physical education teacher education faculty members and undergraduate students' perspectives on inclusion and social justice in Chile using a social constructionist lens as the theoretical framework. The participants were PETE faculty (n = 6) and students (n = 10) across three PETE programs in Chile. The…

Calls to strengthen and diversify our nation's STEM workforce outline the need for expansion and improvement of STEM learning opportunities made available to students from minoritized backgrounds. As broader systemic issues of educational inequity disproportionately exclude students from minoritized backgrounds from high-quality STEM learning…

This dissertation explored the perspectives of stakeholders within a university-level Spanish Heritage Language (SHL) program in Arizona, focusing on their language ideologies and critical language education efforts. The study, rooted in Critical Language Awareness (CLA) and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP) frameworks, challenges deficit-based…

This qualitative instrumental case study examines the practices, curriculum, and experiences of teacher educators and White preservice teachers at one credential program in NorCal through the frameworks of White Racial Identity Development and Critical Pedagogy. This study examined five teaching constructs: policy, pedagogy, curriculum, discourse,…

There is both a longstanding legacy of white supremacy in education, and a plethora of resistance movements to white supremacy. Correspondingly, there are scores of teachers who uphold white supremacy at the classroom level (through curriculums, pedagogies, behavior policies, procedures, and more), and many who work to challenge and critically…

A quality basic education that allows meaningful learning can serve to eradicate great social differences and conflicts existing in our society. The development of the citizen is one of the main goals of today's education, which seeks to promote the person as a whole. In the present study, I propose an intersection between "Temas…

This dissertation tells the story of how an experiment in university-based teacher learning blossomed into a rigorous and deeply meaningful learning experience for teachers and a teacher-centered partnership between a university-based institute and a group of justice-oriented K-12 teachers. This ethnographic study followed a group of California…

In an ethnographic study of one high school mathematics department made up of four African American teachers, I explored their co-construction of knowledge about teaching mathematics for social justice. This began with an in-depth study of each teacher's professional identity, their emotional connections to teaching in their local African American…

Using a theoretical framework of critical race theory and conceptual frameworks of cultural education, this study explores the intersection of district-university partnerships and culturally responsive education. The purpose of this mixed methods case study was to examine the formulation and outcomes of a district-university partnership…

This dissertation is about social studies teachers' perceptions of professional and personal preparedness to facilitate social justice discussions. Due to a focus on high-stakes standardized testing in Math and English Language Arts (ELA), there has been a lack of emphasis on the content of social studies. This phenomenological study explores the…

Adult education is a field that needs teachers that exhibit social justice dispositions in their classrooms. As the students in these classrooms are predominantly people of color, the teachers who support them in the pursuit of their educational goals need to have a deeper understanding of their culture and backgrounds in order to enable trust and…

The teaching force in the United States is largely White, female, and unprepared to acknowledge the significance of being White and work effectively with a racially diverse student population. To better serve students of color, teachers must be able to understand their own racial identity to be able to respectfully acknowledge the racial and…