This creative nonfiction dissertation study sought to describe the process by which three self-identified White teachers—who are engaged in structural initiatives in their schools, districts and/or communities for racial equity—transitioned from colorblindness to understanding white supremacy and structural racism. The following overarching research question guided the study: What are three self-identified White teachers’ perceptions of their process of shifting from colorblindness to understanding their role in white supremacy and structural racism? The study also addressed the following sub-questions: (1) What are the pedagogical pivot places that occur in three self-identified White teachers’ processes of coming to understand white supremacy and structural racism? And (2) How do these pedagogical pivot places contribute to new ways of knowing in teachers’ shifting from colorblindness to understanding white supremacy and structural racism? This study contributes to the literature on White teachers’ process of shifting from colorblindness to racial consciousness and understanding white supremacy. It offers implications for shifting ideologies of White pre-service teachers and teachers in schools. However, efforts to dismantle structural racism need to extend beyond helping White teachers to understand their role in upholding white supremacy and fighting against structural racism to better meet the needs of their diverse students. Schools in the United States function to reproduce the hidden curriculua of whiteness and work. Because schools are amplifiers of the ideologies of the greater society, by disseminating the findings in the form of creative nonfiction, the study attempts to extend this work outside of schooling and into society to address the problem of structural racism in society.

Given the profound influence that schools have on students’ genders and the existing scholarly research in the field of education studies which draws clear implications between practices of schooling and sanctioning and promoting particular gender subjectivities, often in alignment with traditional norms, I conduct a critical ethnography to examine the practices of gender in one eighth grade English language arts (ELA) classroom at an arts-missioned charter school. I do this to explore how ELA instruction at an arts charter school may provide opportunities for students to do gender differently. To guide this dissertation theoretically, I rely on the process philosophy of Erin Manning (2016, 2013, 2007) to examine the processual interactions among of student movement, choreography, materiality, research-creation, language, and art. Thus, methods for this study include field notes, student assignments, interviews and focus groups, student created art, maps, and architectural plans. In the analysis, I attempt to allow the data to live on their own, and I hope to give them voice to speak to the reader in a way that they spoke to me. Some of them speak through ethnodrama; some of them speak through autoethnography, visual art and cartography, and yet others through various transcriptions. Through these modes of analysis, I am thinking-doing-writing. The analysis also includes my thinking with fields – the fields of gender studies, qualitative inquiry, educational research, English education, and critical theory. In an attempt to take to the fields, I weave all of these through each other, through Manning and other theorists and through my ongoing perceptions of event-happenings and what it means to do qualitative research in education. Accordingly, this dissertation engages with the various fields to reconsider how school practices might conceive the ways in which they produce gender, and how students perceive gender within the school space. In this way, the dissertation provides ways of thinking that may unearth what was previously cast aside or uncover possibilities for what was previously unthought.

ABSTRACT

This dissertation addresses the question of how participation in an arts-based sojourn influences university instructors’ perspectives and understanding as related to working with international female Muslim students (FMS). It also addresses what participation in a social justice oriented arts-based inquiry reveals about transformation of perspectives and practices of FMS in instructors’ long-term trajectories. Social justice oriented arts-based inquiry is a powerful tool to unearth issues and challenges associated with creating and sustaining equitable practices in the classroom. This type of inquiry provided instructor-participants with a platform that facilitated their use of “equity lenses” to examine and reflect on external phenomena which may influence their classroom practices as related to FMS. Participation in the art-based sojourn facilitated multiple opportunities for the instructor-participants to reflect critically on their practices, understanding, and perspectives of FMS. This study revealed that the most significant shifts in understanding and perspectives about FMS followed from long-term events and moments in the instructor-participants’ teaching careers.

This study enters on the heels of a trend of public school closures across the United States. Using qualitative methods, the study concerns the curriculum experiences of six African American students attending a majority-white high school in a white, middle-class community in the Midwest, one year after the closure of their predominantly Black high school in their hometown.

The study draws from Michel Foucault’s philosophy on care of the self as an analytical tool to look at students’ care of the ‘racialized’ self, or more specifically, how African American students are forming a ‘self’ in a majority-white school in relation to the ways they are being racialized. Background of the schools and a description of the conditions under which the school change occurred are provided for context. Data collection involved conducting life history interviews with students, observing students in their classes, and shadowing students throughout their school day.

Findings show that African American student-participants are contending with what they describe as a “them”/“us” racial, cultural, and class divide that is operationalized through the curriculum. Students are in a struggle to negotiate how they are perceived and categorized as ‘racialized’ bodies through the curriculum, and, their own perceptions of these racializations. In this struggle, students enact self-practices to make maneuvers within curriculum spaces. A student can accept how the curriculum attempts to constitute her/him as a subject, resist this subjectification, or perform any combination of both accepting and resisting. In this way, a curriculum, with its distinctive and potentially polarizing boundaries, becomes a negotiated and contested space. And, because this curricular space is internally contradictory, a student, in relation to it, may practice versions of a ‘self’ (multiple ‘selves’) that are contradictory. Findings illuminate that in this complex process of self-making, African American students are producing a curriculum of self-formation that teaches others how they want to be perceived.

This project offers an exploration of the constitution of English language learners (ELLs) in the state of Arizona as subjects of government through the discursive rationalities of rule that unfolded alongside the Flores v. Arizona case. The artifacts under consideration span the 22 years (1992-2014) of Flores' existence so far. These artifacts include published academic scholarship; Arizona's legislative documents and floor debate audio and video; court summaries, hearings, and decisions; and public opinion texts found in newspapers and online, all of which were produced in response to Flores. These artifacts lay bare but some of the discursive rationalities that have coagulated to form governable elements of the ELL student population--ways of knowing them, measuring them, regarding them, constituting them, and intervening upon them. Somehow, some way, students who do not speak English as their first language have become a social problem to be solved. ELLs are therein governed by rationalities of English language normalization, of enterprise, of entrepreneurship, of competition, of empowerment, and of success. In narrating rationalities of rule that appear alongside the Flores case, I locate some governmental strategies in how subjects conduct themselves and govern the conduct of others with the hope that seeing subject constitution as a work of thought and not a necessary reality will create a space for potentially unknown alternatives. Through this work, I'd like to make possible the hope of thinking data differently, rejecting superimposition of meaning onto artifact, being uncomfortable, uncertain, undefinitive, and surprised. With that, this work encourages potential paths to trod in the field of curriculum studies.

The experiences of lesbian and gay (LG) administrators in school and district-level positions are different than their heterosexual counterparts, not just because their social lenses are different, but because the policies and climates of the communities where they work has a significant impact on their relationships with stakeholder groups in the schools/offices. In this qualitative study I document and analyze the stories of LG educators, how they navigate their professional relationships, how they evolve as leaders, and their understanding of how their choices to be out or not have influenced their careers and professional relationships. The study also explores how performativity and sexuality relate to the professional relationships of the participants. Finally, the leaders' stories provide insight into the experiences of marginalized groups of professionals whose stories are often absent from the professional and research literatures on school administration. These eight school and district administrators live in the Southwestern and Northwest, many of them are out at work and a few are not. They range in age from mid-20s to late 50s, and their experiences as educational leaders spans from just one year to over 25 years. The participants sat for two to three interviews each over the course of approximately four months. The names of the participants, institutions, and specific communities have been changed to maintain confidentiality. I found that all the participants' relationships with stakeholders groups and individuals were impacted to varying degrees by fear - specifically the fear that results from the heteronormative rules, biases, and expectations of the public school system. The heteronormativity of the public education system is often a reflection of its community's belief system, as well as a reflection of the larger, more unconscious heteronormative belief system that shapes schools and educational leadership, a leader's professional capacity, and the relationships that are critical to being an effective leader. Essentially, the heteronormative fear reflected in the policies and practices of a community, an educational institution, and its members has a dramatic effect on the decisions and relationships that educational leaders have with key stakeholder groups on both an unconscious and conscious level.

This is a hermeneutic study on experiences being gifted, teaching gifted students and/or raising gifted children. This study focuses on how our horizon, which is a result of our past experiences, has an impact on how we make sense of our world and influences our attitudes and actions. As became clear during the conduct of the research, gender was the dominant characteristic of the horizon and unconscious hermeneutic processes these women used to make sense of their experiences. Gender, it became clear also impacted their self-understanding of who they were, what were their possibilities in life, and the decisions they now make as parents and teachers. For this study the researcher interviewed twelve teachers and parents from two different districts who are involved in gifted programs. Some of them had children involved in gifted classes, some were in gifted programs as a child, some worked in gifted programs as an adult and some were a combination of the three. Data consisted of twelve original interviews. Four of the original twelve were selected and each was interviewed a second time. Data from both interviews was analyzed hermeneutically. Included in the study are each participant's horizon and a topical analysis of the interviews. In addition, a thematic analysis is included which ties each interview to themes and cultural norms.