In this study I examined the ways minoritized students who serve as peer socialization agents made meaning of their collegiate contexts in relation to their identities and socialization positions. Using the framework of Critical Race Theory and the concept of a meaning-making filter, I explored the meaning-making of 13 minoritized peer…

In January 2014, the White House urged that college be made more accessible for low-income Americans. Yet, moving beyond access to success requires knowing more about the experiences of these students. A new research report captures the challenges low-income, first-generation students faced in their collegiate journey, examining the strategies…

Multilayered disciplinary policies including sophisticated surveillance mechanisms and harsh punitive practices increasingly characterize schools in the United States. Researchers contend that these modalities funnel students into prisons and produce "prison-like" conditions and/or militarized spaces. Most studies have examined the…

In the field of rhetoric and composition, literacy narratives are sometimes framed through the idea of "inventing the university"; this, unfortunately, creates a trope of literacy as success. I argue that the success trope limits student expression of "outlaw" emotions in literacy narratives--like loss, pain, and anxiety--and…

There is a growing body of scholarship in mathematics education that has attended to the salience of race in mathematics teaching and learning. However, in the context of secondary classrooms with equity-oriented instruction, we know little about race and processes of racialization, and even less from the perspectives of students of color and in…

This socioculturally framed case study focuses on children's sense of agency in educational settings. The study has two objectives: (a) to portray the modalities of children's sense of agency in preschool and first grade settings, and (b) to identify the sociocultural resources that mediate children's sense of agency in these two activity…

This narrative study of an Asian female prospective teacher describes a language minority student's ways of enacting critical literacy in a teacher preparation program in the United States. It discusses how she exerted her agency despite her perceived marginalization as a non-native English speaker. The findings demonstrate how she resisted…

In a context that is increasingly becoming more diverse, we consider it essential to promote activities to develop linguistic and cultural awareness among preservice teachers. This chapter is based on the narratives of college students who when enrolled in an English as a Second Language class participated in a project where they accompanied newly…

This study--a philosophical exploration, partly in an autoethnographical account-provides an empirical demonstration that one's personal project has a strong and positive impact on the dissertation process both for endurance to complete the process and for quality of the product. The concept of project is often explained as one's pursuit…

This article describes how the author, Nicole Keller, found that her writing grew richer and more honest as her understanding of movement and her own body evolved through an Introduction to Modern Dance course. For the first time in her life as an aspiring writer, she felt connected to art, literature, and her personal history in ways that…

It was years after this author's AP Art History course in high school, and two years after college. She and some friends decided to fill a day during the Thanksgiving visits appreciating fine art. Prior to that AP course her senior year of high school, touring an art museum had seemed like the equivalent of going to the dentist. But after…

In this article, Michele K. Sommer recalls the struggles she experienced during elementary school with daydreams so real that she was lost in them. She reports using her artistic skills to complete school assignments to no avail, becoming keenly aware even as a child that the adults in her life regarded her daydreaming as a defect (she was a…

The author, Victor B. Almanzar, reports on his introduction to the arts while growing up in New York as a young teenager. He felt like an outcast from society due to his language barrier and numerous ethnic groups different from his. He became involved with other students who, like himself, were harassed and suffered from bullying due to their…

Superintendents whose young children attend public schools in their school district face a special challenge. This article shares the author's experience as the son of a superintendent. Throughout his years in primary and secondary school, his mother, Jean Chrostoski, served as the superintendent of the schools he attended in the small Illinois…

In this article, we communicate the experiences of a bilingual/biracial Peruvian-Anglo European student teacher, Serina, enrolled in a "teacher education for diversity" program. Although the majority of the 13 (mostly Anglo European) students in Serina's cohort expressed satisfaction with the social justice focus of the program, Serina…