Best known for arguing that individual development is part of social and historical development Vygotsky's entry into education may be captured by his concept of the "zone of proximal development" (ZPD). ZPD has not yet been synthesized with a critical study of whiteness. When ZPD is used to explain racial disparities in the service of…

Education has been a technology used to sustain black abjection across the African Diaspora. Employing Mills' Racial Contract and Althusser's theory of the Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA) through a racial lens, this article will discuss how white supremacist education has been used to promote the misrecognition of black subjects as sub-human.…

Derrick Bell's pronouncement and challenge that racism is likely permanent has captured the imagination of Critical Race Theorists in education. Equally important are his ideas about living with the concrete conditions of racism. This article focuses on a tension within Bell's work. On the one hand, his writings are characterized by a certain…

Recent research suggests that high-stakes standardized testing has played a negative role in the segregation of children by race and class in schools. In this article we review research on the overall effects of segregation, the positive and negative aspects of how desegregation plans were carried out following the 1954 Supreme Court decision…

In this article I take seriously the call for recruiting and retaining more preservice teachers of color by critically considering some of the pressing challenges they might encounter in teacher preparation programs. I draw from critical race theory (CRT) in education to review the extant literature on preservice teachers of color and teacher…

This article examines whiteness at the intersection of immigration and early childhood education as it was made visible during interviews with 50 preschool teachers in five US cities as part of the Children Crossing Borders (CCB) study. Findings show whiteness acting not only as a construct of privilege but also as an idea that manifests itself in…

This action research, which utilizes critical race theory's counter-storytelling, analyses a process of debunking White students' epistemology of ignorance in a history course at an urban public high school. After piloting a raced curriculum that deliberately re-centers marginalized counter-stories of students of colour, I document its…

In this article, we attempt to honor the rich legacy of Derrick Bell by detailing how exploring his specific contributions to critical race theory (CRT) provided lessons for developing and refining critical race pedagogy (CRP). We examine Bell's racial realism thesis in connection with his pedagogical work. In doing so, we find that he was as…

This article examines what it means to be a Black female researcher in contemporary Britain. Drawing on Black feminist theory and critical race theory (CRT), this article seeks to highlight some of the experiences and challenges that Black female researchers face when undertaking research, particularly research that has diversity, equality or…

The way in which anti-racist education is currently conceptualized and practiced holds very few benefits for students of color. By using whiteness theory and the politics of identity and difference, many educators have developed pedagogical interventions that are concerned with bringing white students into a consciousness about racism and white…

This article is an ethnographic examination of teacher attitudes towards race, racism, and White privilege in response to anti-bias in-service trainings in two major U.S. urban school districts through the theoretical lens of Critical Race Theory. We employ the analytic tools of Whiteness as property to make sense of the messages teachers…

This paper explores strategies to help prepare pre-service teachers from a predominantly white, relatively isolated island in Atlantic Canada to teach for diversity. The paper proposes a modified framework for "teacher identity development" that pivots around three foci for enhancing teacher awareness and commitment to action: (1)…