7th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON
EDUCATION AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
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1-3 December 2017
Honolulu, Hawai'i, U.S.A.
FULL SCHEDULE WITH ABSTRACTS
(UPDATED as of 11/28/17)
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 1
7:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Pre-conference Tour
INPEACE: Native Hawaiian Families and Anti-Colonial Education
Join Sanoe Marfil and the staff of INPEACE, the Institute for Native Pacific Education and Culture (http://www.inpeace.org), for a half-day tour about community-based cultural awareness and education programs to educate and empower Native Hawaiians. The tour leaves the hotel at 7 a.m., and during the one-hour bus ride to the sites, discusses the geographic, cultural, and political landscapes of the islands. At the INPEACE sites, participants visit the parent-run preschool program, Keiki Steps (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p7Mv42ZaSU&t=7s), and engage in hands-on work in the outdoor classroom, Kupu Ola (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKWAjjA-Luk&t=188s). Lunch is provided, which comes from and supports local farmers and businesses. The tour returns to the hotel around 12:30 p.m. Pre-registration is required. (Sorry, registration for the tour has filled and is now closed.)
12:30 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Pre-conference Meeting
Hawai‘i Education Scholars Speaking Collectively
Education scholars throughout Hawai‘i are invited to join a conversion to explore the possibilities for speaking collectively, strategically, and publicly on local and state education reforms as we leverage our scholarship, rattle political consciousness, and reframe public debates. How do we build on, learn from, and work in solidarity with grassroots organizing locally as well as on similar networks of scholars nationally, like CReATE in Chicago (createchicago.org), CARE-ED in California (care-ed.org), and the EDJE national network of education deans (educationdeans.org)? Facilitated by Kevin Kumashiro and William Ayers.
2:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Registration
2:30 p.m. – 3:45 p.m.
Pre-conference Session and Screenings
Troubling (Hi)stories and Advancing Justice: Movement Building through Film and Video (Samples will be screened!)
Can Justice Be Served Online?: From Slavery to Obama, an Ethical Response to the Corporatization of Education
What does online education look like if we orient it toward justice rather than profit, vocational education, career advancement, or even effective distance education? Can we use technology and course design to partner with community activists and serve activist projects? This presentation describes the opportunities, successes, and challenges raised by the development of From Slavery to Obama, an online course collaboratively developed by Dr. Clarence B. Jones, attorney, political adviser, and draft speech writer to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Carol Batker, Professor, University of San Francisco
Ka Waihona O Ka Na‘auao: Reflections on Culturally Sustaining and Revitalizing Pedagogy with Kumu Hula Snowbird Bento
Ka waihona o ka naʻauao, or “the repository of learning,” is said in admiration of a learned person. This presentation shares the insights gained from a video-cued conversation with an esteemed practitioner of Hawaiian culture-based education who is clearly a repository of learning on culturally sustaining and culturally revitalizing Hawaiian pedagogy. Julie Kaomea, Professor, Malia Kāne, Graduate Student, & Mia-Amor Porreca, Graduate Student, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
Making Media that Matters: A Platform for Girls to Tell Their Stories and Be Agents of Social Change
Hawai‘i Women in Filmmaking, a non-profit organization, is an informal place of learning where young women develop film and critical-thinking skills by examining issues in their communities. Since 2014 the program has provided a platform for girls to tell their stories and be agents of social change through film. This presentation highlights Making Media That Matters, a filmmaking for civic engagement and social justice curriculum, lessons learned, and future directions. Vera Zambonelli, Founder and Executive Director, Hawai‘i Women in Filmmaking
4:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Opening Plenary Session
Naming the Moment: National and Local Contexts for Movement Building
Manulani Aluli-Meyer, Professor and Director of Indigenous Education, University of Hawai‘i at West O‘ahu
William Ayers, Distinguished Professor (retired), University of Illinois at Chicago
Mari Matsuda, Professor, William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
Moderator: Vidya Shah, Assistant Professor, York University, Canada
5:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.
Welcome Reception
Meet other conference participants and reflect together on the first day’s events at the Welcome Reception. This unhosted (cash-bar) gathering will be in a designated area near the Splash Bar, where we can unwind in the outdoor lanai and enjoy the live musical entertainment.
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 2
7:00 a.m. – 8:15 a.m.
Breakfast (on your own)
Small-Group Reflections
These informal gatherings over breakfast provide everyone an opportunity to sit in small groups outside of the formal sessions to continue the conversations, process and delve more deeply into what was shared or raised, clarify take-aways, and imagine and strategize ways to implement what was learned in one’s own work. Meet at 7 a.m. at the Ilima Room where we will form small groups and head to the Pikake Terrace Restaurant (if you wish to purchase breakfast) or the outdoor lanai (if you wish to purchase only coffee or tea).
8:00 a.m. – 11:30 p.m.
Registration
8:30 a.m. – 9:45 a.m.
Breakout Sessions 1
1.1. Education and Curriculum About and For Hawai‘i: A Panel Sponsored by the Hawai‘i State Teachers Association
EA Ecoversity: Education with Aloha
Kū Kahakalau, Founder, EA Ecoversity
Hālau Kū Māna
Kuuleianuhea Awo-Chun, Teacher, Hālau Kū Māna School
Movement-building for Ea
Noelani Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua, Associate Professor, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
Military Occupation
‘Umi Perkins, Teacher, Kamehameha Schools
1.2. Across the Pipeline: Developing and Sustaining Educators toward Justice Movements
Radical STEM Teacher Activism: Collaborative Organizing to Sustain Social Justice Pedagogy in STEM Fields
This presentation investigates how and why several STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Making) educators became interested in, and how they conceptualized, teacher activism and social justice pedagogy both inside and outside the classroom, including by founding a Radical STEM Educators group, led by womxn of color, that incorporates ethnic studies and humanizing and naturalist pedagogy. Grassroots organizing with like-minded critical STEM teacher activists supported their survival within school environments hostile to social justice pedagogy. Kari Kokka, Assistant Professor, University of Pittsburgh
Community Engagement and Cultural Humility in Teacher Education: Building a Movement of Justice-Based Service-Learning
This presentation highlights the benefits and challenges of an award-winning, community-driven university education program aiming to foster cultural humility in pre-service teachers. Pre-service teachers are offered weekly community placements in which they can engage meaningfully with diverse children and youth. The program has grown to include agencies that work with intersectional identities of children and youth—namely, immigrant and refugee children, youth with disabilities, LGBTTQ youth, and Indigenous children and youth. Darren E. Lund, Professor, University of Calgary
You Are What You Teach: Linking Teacher Ideology and Curriculum Development
This study explores the links between aspiring teachers’ ideological understandings and the curriculum that they ultimately create. By highlighting teachers’ reflections about issues of race, justice, and inequality, and analyzing the curricular projects they created in the name of social justice, there is a powerful relationship between teacher’s ideological understandings and their capacity to teach from a critical stance. The importance of supporting new teachers to develop a political analysis around issues of oppression cannot be understated and appears to be a prerequisite of teaching for social justice. Bree Picower, Associate Professor, Montclair State University
A People’s Portrait: Building Grassroots Spaces for Critical Teacher Survival and Development
The People’s Education Movement is a multiethnic anti-colonial organization of educators of color that seeks to create sustainable liberatory spaces to promote growth, healing, and transformation. Focusing on transformative resistance, this study highlights the importance of reflection and healing while building proactive Teacher Survival Programs. Findings examine the use of reflection and accountability circles to ensure that the organization humanizes members and centers the voices and experiences of marginalized peoples while building community campaigns. Carolina Valdez, Assistant Professor, California State University at Fullerton, & Farima Pour-Khorshid, Doctoral Student, University of California at Santa Cruz
1.3. Latina/o/x Resistance along the Higher Education Pipeline: Challenging Inequities in College Access, Transition, Completion, and Beyond
Chair and Discussant: Edna Martinez, Assistant Professor, California State University at San Bernardino
Latina/o/x Students: Transitioning from School-Prison Nexus to Four-Year Colleges
This presentation derives from oral history and photovoice interviews to examine four-year-college pathways for Latina/o/x students who graduated from high schools that align with a school-prison nexus. K-12 schools with higher percentages of students of color consist of measures of control that are socially and spatially situated, resulting in a criminalizing and policed schooling context. Guided by critical race theory and sense of belonging, this study frames successful transitions from a school-prison nexus to four-year colleges as forms of resistance to educational inequities. Nancy Acevedo-Gil, Assistant Professor, California State University at San Bernardino
Transforming Developmental Education as a Space for Movement Building for Latina/o/x Community College Students
Community colleges are the most common entry point to postsecondary education for historically marginalized students, yet, transfer and degree completion rates are dismal. A handful of California community colleges are promoting equity by reviewing the structure and content of assessment and placement mechanisms with incoming students prior to being tracked into developmental (or, “remedial”) education. This study suggests that Latina/o/x student experiences with test preparation programs are transformative, personally and academically. Elizabeth Flores, Doctoral Student, University of California at Davis
Latinx Students Navigating the Post-Graduation Pathway
The transition from undergraduate education to graduate education is one of little research within the educational pipeline. This presentation examines individual and institutional characteristics that encourage Latinx undergraduate students to pursue a graduate degree upon completion of their bachelor’s degree. Faculty involvement is much more influential than other institutional factors such as orientations in influencing students’ successful transition to graduate education. Amber Gonzalez, Assistant Professor, California State University at Sacramento
Resisting Marginality and Claiming a Place: Recent Immigrant Indigenous Youth and Unaccompanied Minors Navigating College Access
This yearlong ethnographic study examines how recent immigrant Indigenous youth, some who are undocumented minors, navigate college access at a high poverty urban California high school. This presentation explores the multiple challenges this youth group faces when navigating college access; the ways that a program designed to offer support interrupts oppressive policies and practices that inhibit college access; and the student-led resistance to disrupt an oppressive school climate and culture that were present at the high school. Yanira I. Madrigal-Garcia, Doctoral Student, University of California at Davis
Building Campus Coalitions between Faculty and Student Organizations
This paper reflects on the experience of establishing a Latinx Faculty Advocacy organization at Florida State University, a majority white public institution, and ongoing work in building coalitions with other people-of-color faculty organizations as well as student groups centered on social justice. This reflection focuses on opportunities to link groups and organizations as steps toward collective actions, and shares an example of a student-organized campus event to commemorate the anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting. Delia Poey, Professor, Florida State University
10:00 a.m. – 11:15 a.m.
Breakout Sessions 2
2.1. Our Students in K-12 Schools: Understanding Differences, Engaging Strengths
Engaging with Teacher and Student Participatory Action Research in Constricting Institutional Spaces
This study utilizes teacher and student participatory action research, as well as critical race praxis for educational research, to examine students’ and teachers’ relationships while working in constricting institutional contexts. Our seventh-grade classroom community cultivated pedagogy by centering and honoring our collective process toward personal and social transformation. Building a beloved community while situated within an oppressive U.S. schooling system supported students and teacher toward cultivating pedagogy rooted in love and agency, with a collective commitment toward social justice. Annie S. Adamian, Assistant Professor, California State University at Chico
Empowering Indigenous Knowledge to Decolonize the Mind and Heal from Intergenerational Trauma
For America’s Indigenous people, education was a stealthy, powerful, and calculated strategy that obliterated our ancestors’ Indigenous identity and destroyed their families, culture, and traditional ways of life. The legacy of intergenerational historical trauma lives on today with a powerful destructive force evident in poor academic achievement, high dropout rates, and low college achievement levels, which can be countered by a community psychology decolonization intervention program derived from elder Indigenous knowledge. Hannah Kivalahula-Uddin, Doctoral Student, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
“My Proudest Legacy”: Toward Sovereignty in Mathematics Education for First Nations
Tribal Critical Race Theory asserts that colonization is endemic to U.S. society, and continues to operate in the education of Indigenous students. Tribal leaders from nations in Oklahoma and New Mexico are engaged in coalition-building work to unsettle mathematics education, including lobbying of state governments, creating and disseminating online resources for culturally responsive education, and organizing to offer workshops for teachers of Native American students. This presentation describes the values and goals that tribal leaders hold for their students’ mathematics education. Samantha Ann Marshall, Doctoral Student, Vanderbilt University
Rooted in Love: Fostering Socio-Academic Synergy in STEM Education for Black Boys
Socio-academic synergy is a process in which students’ real-life issues, concerns, joys, and respective socio-cultural and socio-historical ways of being are intentionally integrated into curriculum such that their identities are part and parcel of meaning-making and knowledge construction. This presentation will underscore the work that went into achieving this in one STEM-focused out-of-school program for low-income, middle-school Black boys where students apply STEM as a tool to redress issues or problems in their lives. Lasana O. Hotep, Dean of Equity and Student Support Services, Skyline College, & Jeremiah J. Sims, Director of Equity, College of San Mateo
2.2. “Bad” Teachers and Leaders: Representations, Transformations, Activism
“A Little More Radical”: Secondary Mathematics Teachers Moving Toward Justice and Equity
This study describes a research-practice partnership in which secondary mathematics teachers in a professional development organization explore shifting from focusing primarily on mathematics teaching to becoming a social justice organization. They are imagining and expanding what it means to be a group of justice-oriented mathematics teachers—and some of the dilemmas they grapple with in doing so—as they seek to align their own classroom practice with social justice goals, support each other’s learning and reflection, and consider possibilities for organizational activism. Grace A. Chen, Doctoral Student, Vanderbilt University
As Seen on TV: Media Portrayals of Teachers
Portrayals of schools, teachers, and teaching on television and in movies and other media deeply affect conceptions of teaching and learning, even for those of us who work in schools. If educators hope to advance equity and justice, and build a movement that sees education as a public good, it is vitally important to develop tools to examine critically these representations of teachers and understand how they limit thinking about schools, teaching, and learning. Kristidel McGregor, Doctoral Student, University of Oregon
Awakened Consciousness as Critical Consciousness
How might the unexamined ego (including the fears and insecurities) of educators for social justice influence their ability to engage in social justice pedagogy and movement building, and perpetuate inequity and oppression at various levels? This study draws on mindfulness and self-awareness as a methodology and employs aspects of intuitive inquiry to claim that awakened consciousness—that is, an intentional awareness of our inner emotions and thoughts—increases our ability to deepen levels of individual and collective critical consciousness in a process of socially engaged mindfulness. Vidya Shah, Assistant Professor, York University
Change Gon' Come: Theory, Praxis, and Policy
This presentation tells the tale of a Black academic, educator, and mother who could not sit on the sidelines in her school district—a district with some of the most stark racial and ethnic opportunity gaps nationally—and who jumped into the fray to win a school board campaign, rise in leadership, and ultimately engage in public policy debates about the intersection of race, class, power, and systemic institutional marginalization in a community once presumed reluctant to do so. This story explores the opposition and the coalition building that permitted progress, as well as the risks and the opportunities on the road ahead. Anya Tanyavutti, Vice President, Evanston/Skokie District 65 School Board
2.3. Neoliberalism and Whiteness in Teacher/Leader Preparation: Instruments, Modalities, and Technologies that Mediate Diversity and Justice
The Cruel Optimism of Diversity: Relational Skeins, Precarious Subjectivities, and the Neoliberal Teacher Preparation Program
Discourses and practices of diversity in teacher preparation have been depoliticized, demobilized, and aestheticized, failing to apprehend the historical, structural, and relational arrangements that contour social understandings of difference and the possibilities of constructing a new social imaginary. This presentation draws on critical autoethnographic tales as a queer teacher educator of color, and conceptual frameworks such as neoliberal multiculturalism, decolonial relationality, and Black biopolitical thought to disruptively work towards a more humanizing praxis. Justin P. Jiménez, Doctoral Student, University of Minnesota
Challenging the Whiteness that is edTPA
Worried about the impact of edTPA (teacher performance assessment) and its reinforcement of institutional racism, classism, and white supremacy through standardization and the centralization of authority that accompanies it, one university will soon replace it with the Assessment for Readiness to Teach (ART). The design of the ART as a curriculum project is intended to drive faculty to self-interrogate their positionality, confront whiteness in the context of school, and nurture hope while engaging students in unfettered inquiry into the common good. Sheri Leafgren, Associate Professor, & Scott Sander, Clinical Faculty, Miami University
Developing a Blended Course for Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Educational Leaders
Schools in the United States are experiencing a growing diversity of students, and administrators and educational leaders need to understand how to support them. The Educational Leadership Program at Edgewood College has incorporated social justice, equity, and culturally and linguistically responsive practices into its preparation programs. This paper explores the process of changing a face-to-face course into a blended/hybrid that keeps aspects of the face-to-face courses while adding online components. Gerardo Mancilla, Director of Education Administration and Leadership, Edgewood College
Social Justice in Adult Education: Exploring the Complexities in an Online, Asynchronous Course
Capitalism and empiricism have come to influence the field of adult education, including how adult educators perceive social justice work. Is the work of justice-minded adult educators to help improve chances for gaining wealth and status, or is it to promote critical reflection and positive social change? How might an online course frame adult education as social justice work? This paper explores student experiences in an online course, and considers whether and how students engaged in intersectional identity development and how their understanding of their role as adult educators did or did not evolve. Stacey Robbins, Assistant Professor, Seattle University
Online Teacher Education and Preparing Socially Just and Culturally Responsive Teachers of English Learner (EL) Students
Online coursework and programs are becoming increasingly popular in teacher education and is often framed as a solution for increasing enrollment and reducing costs. What does the work of preparing teachers to become socially just and culturally responsive look like online, and how might an online learning setting afford or constrain teacher development? This paper investigates how students do or do not engage with concepts, practices, and ideologies in an asynchronous online class that critically examines the roles of culture, context, race, ethnicity, language, and communities in the development and learning of English language learners. Kerry Soo Von Esch, Assistant Professor, Seattle University
11:15 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Bento Lunch & Plenary Session
Sponsored by the Hawai‘i State Teachers Association
Grab a Japanese-style “bento” boxed lunch (meat option and vegetarian option available) and head directly into the general session, or feel free to eat lunch in any of the meeting rooms, the lounge areas, your hotel room, or even the beach across the street. 11:40 Ukulele Performance by Bryson Kumashiro. 11:45 Welcome Remarks by Amy Perruso (HSTA Secretary-Treasurer) and Keynote Lecture by Kevin Kumashiro.
12:45 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Breakout Sessions 3
3.1. Troubling Curriculum: Race, Cultural Relevancy, and Critical Pedagogy
Whiteness and Linguistic Capital: The Implications for Racially Established English Education in Higher Education in Japan
This study examines how students and faculty viewed the global education and internationalization that have been promoted and pursued on campus at a Japanese university through the theoretical lens of critical white studies. The findings reveal that their views and attitudes toward race and English education are influenced by the historically established educational agenda of Japan’s Westernization movement during the Meiji era that privileged and pursued the cultural and linguistic capitals of western/white states. Kako Koshino, Associate Professor, Tokyo University of Social Welfare
A New Racial Literacy: Multicultural Education Beyond the Color-Bind
Multicultural education curriculums often utilize the same categories to define race in the United States that have been ascribed by the ideology of white supremacy, propagating the false, unscientific distinctions that these racial categories are based upon. Using a conceptual framework of micro-cultures, this presentation reports findings from 20 ethnographic interviews that document how the cultural positioning, practices, choices, and perspectives of people cannot be contained within any of the ascribed racial categories, suggesting the need for micro-cultural understandings of youth and adults, beyond the “color-bind.” Jabari Mahiri, Professor, University of California at Berkeley
The Pedagogy of “Fake News”: Empowering Students and Stakeholders
Libraries are core institutions in democratic societies, and Information Literacy is a paramount skill needed in the 21st century. In order to meet the challenges of intolerance, divisions, and fear being perpetuated in the political arena, Information Literacy classes need to be strengthened to achieve their avowed mission to create and empower critical thinkers. This research is focused on delineating the many layers and concepts surrounding “fake news.” In order to broaden students’ understanding of the power structures creating information in education and society, Information Literacy should be incorporated formally across the curriculum. Frederic W. Murray, Instructional Services Librarian and Assistant Professor, Southwestern Oklahoma State University
Talking about Race in the Classroom
Border Crossers utilizes creative tools to encourage educators in explorations of race and racism with K-12 students. We believe that if educators are prepared to have meaningful conversations about equity, students will be better equipped to interrupt patterns of structural racism and injustice in their own lives and thrive in a multicultural society. Benny Vasquez, Executive Director, Laura Shmishkiss, Executive Director, Border Crossers
3.2. Teacher Education Curriculum: Cultivating Social Justice Commitments and Capacities
Enhancing a Scientific Inquiry course using Critical Race Praxis for Educational Research
Of the STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) fields, the one that lacks diversity (race and ethnicity, gender) the most is the physical sciences. This presentation will share how a course in the physical sciences, designed for future K-8 science teachers, can be transformed to address the power dynamics and dominant cultural discourse in the field of STEM. This presentation will highlight how the presenter enhanced conversations addressing the lack of access and equity in science education, the role of the teacher when interacting with students, and the unconscious bias that is often perpetuated not only in the school system, but in society as well. Carolina Alvarado, Assistant Professor, California State University at Chico
Infusing Social Justice into the Science Classroom: Building a Social Justice Movement in Science Education
This presentation describes the creation and implementation of a methods course designed to prepare science teachers to make social justice a guiding principle in the curriculum and pedagogy of middle and high school science classrooms. It begins with a framework for understanding what social justice means in the context of teaching and learning about science, as well as a rationale for using this framework to understand and identify content, create a culture of critical inquiry, and apply learning to democratic citizenship. The presentation includes a review of the course structure, readings, and activities, and examples of student work. Liza Finkel, Associate Professor, Lewis & Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling
Motivated for Social Justice: Examining Teacher Candidate Perceptions of Efficacy, Value, and Cost
Even within a teacher education program explicitly committed to social justice, pre-service teachers differ in the degree to which they are motivated to engage in such work. Conducted at a large research university in the Pacific Northwest, this research applies expectancy-value theory to build on previous theoretical and empirical research examining motivational factors that underpin teacher candidates’ propensity for enacting social justice. The findings provide insight into curricular interventions that can increase pre-service teachers’ sense of efficacy and value in addition to decreasing the costs associate with incorporating social justice within their classroom practices. Matthew C. Graham, Doctoral Student, University of Oregon
The Struggle is Real: Cultivating Socially Just Practices in a Preservice Mathematics Content Course
This study addresses NCTM’s Principles to Actions call to develop pre-service teachers’ teaching practices that support productive struggle while simultaneously employing humanizing pedagogy in K-12 mathematics classrooms that builds upon students’ multiple mathematical knowledge bases. By linking productive struggle with underserved populations’ funds of knowledge and community culture wealth, this presentation aims to cultivate new ways of approaching teaching and learning mathematics by sharing socially just practices in a pre-service mathematics content course. Christine A. Herrera, Assistant Professor, California State University at Chico
Through Early Childhood Teacher Candidates’ Eyes: Representations of Social Justice and Equity Issues
This study uses auto-photography to examine how early childhood pre-service teachers document their knowledge, practices, and dispositions related to socially just and equitable instruction and their role as change agents. By understanding which aspects of equity and justice the teacher candidates represent through their photos and how they discuss their representations, teacher educators can resist an outcomes-only framework in P-20 education and promote field and classroom experiences that provide opportunities for teacher candidates to pose critical questions to confront inequalities woven into our society. Leah Schoenberg Muccio, Associate Professor, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
3.3. Developing Workforce Diversity in the Health Professions: From Pipeline to Practice
Toward a More Representative Health Care Workforce
Currently, 12% of graduating medical students and 13% of graduating physician’s assistant students are from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. In order to provide high-quality and accessible care, it is crucial that we advocate for a representative health care workforce and provide students opportunities to learn from, with, and about each other. This presentation describes the student outcomes associated with the first graduate program in the science of health care delivery: over the past four years, an average of 42% of the graduate class are from an underrepresented racial and ethnic group. Alison C. Essary, Clinical Professor and Interim Director of the School for the Science of Health Care Delivery, Arizona State University
Engaging Students to Bridge Gaps and Eliminate Health Inequities: A Multi-Sector Approach to Influence Responsive Policymaking
In this case study, graduate students assisted in the development of a model for responsive policymaking to address health inequity in a predominantly Latino, low-income, urban area. The team of academic researchers engaged policymakers, a local health care delivery system, and other community stakeholders to develop shared goals and a mutual understanding of constituent health inequities, as well as to identify place-specific factors, address gaps in providers’ knowledge, and inform a policymaker-defined toolkit. Swapna Reddy, Clinical Assistant Professor, Arizona State University
Facilitating Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Health Workforce
The purpose of this study was to explore how the racial and ethnic diversity of the health workforce has changed over the last decade, and the effectiveness of pipeline programs that seek to promote racial and ethnic diversity in the health workforce. Although the health workforce overall is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse, people of color are most often represented among the entry level, lower-skilled health occupations. While some efforts have been found to be promising in increasing the interest, application, and enrollment of people of color into health profession schools, there is still a missing link in understanding persistence, graduation, and careers. Cyndy R. Snyder, Research Assistant Professor, University of Washington
Race Matters: Occupational Therapy as a Career Choice by High School Students of Color
In the United States approximately 12% of the occupational therapy (OT) workforce are therapists of color. This presentation explores why the profession has little diversity within its ranks and what has led to the constructed racial barriers in our academic programs. Research will be shared on the issues that influence secondary to post-secondary pipeline decisions for six urban, high school students of color and their knowledge of careers in healthcare and OT in particular. Kristen Wilbur, Clinical Assistant Professor, University of Puget Sound
Integrating a Health Disparities and Cross-Cultural Communication Curriculum into an Interprofessional Training Program for Health Care Professionals
Health care professionals traditionally lack training in health disparities and cross-cultural communication. This case study describes the results of a unique partnership between a federally qualified health care center in urban Phoenix, AZ and an academic institution to develop a novel, interprofessional program for health care professionals, training them in the various aspects of health care delivery science. Action Learning Projects, such as creating a training program for front-line office staff to improve the patient experience through cultural awareness, incorporated course concepts in health disparities and cross-cultural communication. Kristen K. Will, Clinical Assistant Professor and Director of Executive Education and Professional Development, Arizona State University
2:15 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Breakout Sessions 4
4.1. It Takes a Village: Linking Schools and Universities with Families and Communities
Social Justice Action in Home-School Relations: Parents and Teachers Collaboratively Inculcate Positive Racial, Ethnic Identities
Home-school relations in early childhood and elementary education often focus on cooperation to achieve academic success, but they can also focus on developing racial/ethnic identity, understanding social justice in society, and proposing action to build a democratic society. Social and political movement building requires content, goals, a vision, and “players” or active participants. In this presentation, the content is racial and ethnic identity; the goal is to build a knowledge base of how children understand racial/ethnic identity and social justice; the vision is to build alliances between parents and teachers to promote social justice; and the “players” are teachers and school staff, parents and family members, and progressive university faculty. Susan Matoba Adler, Professor, University of Hawai‘i at West O‘ahu
“What They Bring to the Table”: In Pursuit of Social Justice with Communities and African Immigrant Girls in NYC
This three-year qualitative case study examined how an African community-based organization, Sauti Yetu’s Girl’s Empowerment and Leadership Initiative, leads, bolsters, and transforms the literacy development of African immigrant girls who are identified as English Language Learners and as Students with Interrupted Formal Education in New York City schools. In particular, the study addressed how community-based literacy practices mobilize African immigrant girls to strengthen and transform their local and global communities. Crystal Chen Lee, Assistant Professor, North Carolina State University
Pedagogy and Food Justice: Service Learning as a Multidisciplinary Approach
This presentation is a summary and reflection of project-based service-learning courses at two universities in the United States that centered on serving a non-profit organization, Schools for Sustainability, as it builds a sustainable school in Monte Plata, Dominican Republic. The service project was to design and build an aquaponic system and to collect data from the community on the needs for the school being built. In addition to the technical learning of aquaponics and permaculture, the students learned to grow food within the sociopolitical context of food injustice. Erica R. Davila, Associate Professor, Lewis University, & Jody Luna, Associate Professor, The Illinois Institute of Art
Cultivating Strategic Connections to Advance Equity and Excellence in Education in the South
For 150 years the Southern Education Foundation, the nation’s first education philanthropy, has been a strategic leader in advancing creative solutions to ensure equity and excellence in education for low-income students and students of color in the South. This presentation highlights major takeaways from its 150th Anniversary Forum, which convened change agents from education, advocacy, and philanthropy to strategize sustainable educational practices and policy supports needed to advance equity in schools across the region. Kelley Ditzel, Director of Research and Policy, Southern Education Foundation
Educating for Justice through Social Movement Groups
The power dynamics inherent in service-learning can be highly problematic as the practice relies upon and often reinforces the same structural inequality it seeks to ameliorate. Building from the lessons of critical service-learning and anti-oppressive education, this presentation conceptualizes what it might mean to construct a model of activist learning that connects students with groups working to organize against, protest, and boycott the dominant and intertwined pillars of white supremacy—capitalism, colonialism, and war—as well as lobby for policies that provide alternatives to these inherently unjust systems. Colleen Rost-Banik, Doctoral Student, University of Minnesota
4.2. Post-Secondary Pathways: Critical Perspectives on Access, Pedagogy, Success
Supporting Social Justice and Student Success through Community Partnerships
The Southern Education Foundation has collaborated with Georgia State University to leverage partnerships among higher education, K-12 schools, community organizations, and families to address educational inequalities and social justice, such as by exploring new ways to sustain student success and drive positive change through platforms such as an interdisciplinary college course and a public community forum. This presentation will highlight major takeaways from the collaboration with GSU’s Student Success and Social Justice research project, and discuss recommendations and next steps for advancing this work. Amanda E. Assalone, Postdoctoral Research and Policy Analyst, Southern Education Foundation
Advancing Institutional Equity & Inclusion Plans: Envisioning Our Collective Challenges and Opportunities in this New Era
This presentation provides strategies for creating collaborative change models for advancing inclusive policies and practices for increasing institutional or campus-wide commitment to diversity, equity, and social change under the current national and global political landscape. It explores best practices for responding to bias-related incidents and supporting students of color and international, undocumented, Muslim, LGBTQ and other underrepresented student communities, as well as steps for leading with social responsibility and integrity during challenging and difficult crisis situations. Monroe France, Associate Vice President for Student Affairs and Diversity Initiatives, New York University
Using Learning Communities to Create a Movement for Social Justice
Georgia State University graduates more low-income, Latino, and Asian American students than any university in Georgia and more African American students than any university in the country. This presentation will share how the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning began facilitating "courageous conversations" for social justice through the development of innovative learning communities, professional development such as the Teaching for Social Justice and Democracy series, and a grant to study Social Justice and Student Success. This movement is part of a process for partnering with the larger Atlanta community to reduce educational inequities. Tiffany Green-Abdullah, Manager of Learning Community Development, Georgia State University
Curriculum Design for Social Justice and Student Success
This presentation provides a content analysis of artifacts and online instructional tools used in an interdisciplinary course about social justice and student success for undergraduate and graduate students, and shares how students investigated and evaluated their own learning and knowledge acquisition. The course design promoted a social justice pedagogy, an in-depth and holistic view of learner needs, and the development of a course-planning tool that benefits course developers and social justice researchers. Valora Richardson, Manager of Faculty Development and Support, Georgia State University
3:45 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Breakout Sessions 5
5.1. Education, Not Incarceration: Violence, Health, and the Carceral State
The Impact of an Alternative Wilderness Program’s Effect on High-Risk Youth’s Attitude and Behavior on Substance Use
In every California county, coalitions have formed to prevent youth access and use of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs (ATODs), but many of these programs do not specifically consider students enrolled in continuation schools. This presentation shares data on students’ attitude and behavior of ATODs before and after an adventure-based wilderness experience offered at one continuation school, as well as efforts of the school principal to change the school’s environment. LisaMarie P. Miramontes, Associate Research Scientist
Navigating Conflict: How Youth Handle Trouble in a High Poverty School
Urban schools are often associated with violence, chaos, and youth aggression. But is this reputation really the whole picture? This presentation challenges the violence-centered conventional wisdom of urban youth and school studies, revealing instead the social ingenuity with which teens informally and peacefully navigate strife-ridden peer trouble. Grounded in sixteen years of ethnographic fieldwork in a multi-ethnic, high poverty school in the American southwest, this study complicates our vision of urban youth, along the way revealing the resilience of students in the face of carceral disciplinary tactics. Michael Musheno, Professor, University of Oregon
Solidarity Can’t Bear Silence: Including Incarcerated and Non-Traditional Community College Students in Movement Building
How do incarcerated and non-incarcerated community college students negotiate, internalize, and resist neoliberal discourses of meritocracy and deficit that are pervasive in higher education? How can we as educators, artists, and activists collectively subvert the marginalization of adult and incarcerated community college learners to encourage solidarity and transformation? This presentation considers the ways adult learners in the Oregon State Penitentiary and an adjacent rural community college narrate their desire for the potentiality of democracy through education with the realities of precarious labor, surveillance, vulnerability, social abandonment, and debt. Nadia Khalid Raza, Doctoral Student, University of Oregon
5.2. Growing Community Educators: A Critical Race Movement to Transform Education
Critical Race Theory as Movement Building Strategy
This presentation situates applied critical race theory as a foundation for movement building that transforms teacher education from a university-oriented endeavor to a community-centric, race-informed, activist-oriented process of developing and sustaining educators. Institutionalization within schools, districts, and states often results in and reflects colonial practice, and therefore, a national movement by, with, and for communities of color is needed to decenter whiteness while centering community funds of knowledge that empower societal resistance and transformation through education. Christopher B. Knaus, Professor, University of Washington at Tacoma
Defining Grow Your Own and Grow Your Own Collective
Using a collaborative approach that combines efforts across the nation to focus on growing and developing educators, the national Grow Your Own Collaborative has developed a model that provides intensive supports for recruiting, preparing, placing, and retaining culturally responsive community-grounded teachers of color to dismantle institutional racism and improve educational outcomes for students. This presentation pushes against the well-meaning appropriation that often occurs in self-proclaimed GYO programs across the country as it clarifies the design and implementation of the GYOC movement, lessons learned, and critical issues to guide future work. Rachelle Rogers-Ard, Executive Director of Organizational Effectiveness & Culture, Oakland Unified School District
INPEACE as Indigenous Movement Strategy
INPEACE’s Kūlia & Ka Lama Education Academy program began over 20 years ago in response to high rates of teacher turnover and a lack of teachers that reflect the student population in a community with the highest concentrated number of Native Hawaiians in the world and some of the state’s lowest performing schools. This presentation introduces a community-based model that partners with local school principals, community colleges, and four-year university programs to align recruitment, preparation, placement, and support of early childhood and K-12 teachers within the rural Waianae community of Hawai‘i. Kanoe Naone, Consultant, Institute for Native Pacific Education and Culture (INPEACE)
GYO-Illinois as Community Movement Strategy
Grow Your Own Teachers Illinois (GYO) is a statewide network of teacher development programs that values diversity and the wisdom of community while ensuring the best possible education for students in under-resourced schools. GYO grew from the work of Chicago community organizations in low-income neighborhoods, who identified high teacher turnover and a cultural disconnect between students and teachers as key barriers to sustained school improvement and student achievement. GYO confronts long held racist and classist assumptions and practices relating to teacher preparation programs, definitions of teacher quality, and who should be teaching our children. Kate Van Winkle, Executive Director, Grow Your Own Illinois
5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Networking Reception
Inspired by the dozens of presentations throughout the day, and to continue conversations with new colleagues, let’s come together again to conclude the evening with the Networking Reception. This unhosted (cash-bar) gathering will be in a designated area near the Splash Bar, where we can unwind in the outdoor lanai.
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 3
7:00 a.m. – 8:15 a.m.
Breakfast (on your own)
Small-Group Reflections
These informal gatherings over breakfast provide everyone an opportunity to sit in small groups outside of the formal sessions to continue the conversations, process and delve more deeply into what was shared or raised, clarify take-aways, and imagine and strategize ways to implement what was learned in one’s own work. Meet at 7:00 a.m. at the Ilima Room where we will form small groups and head to the Pikake Terrace Restaurant (if you wish to purchase breakfast) or the outdoor lanai (if you wish to purchase only coffee or tea).
8:30 a.m. – 9:45 a.m.
Post-conference Workshop 1
Kailua High School Educators and Students Lead the Way in Promoting a More Socially Just Deliberative Democracy through Ethnic Studies and Philosophical Inquiry
This experiential workshop offers a powerful counter-narrative to recent efforts to criminalize the teaching of Ethnic Studies in some U.S. K-12 public schools. It shares how the students and teachers of Kailua High School in Hawai‘i use philosophical inquiry to engage in Ethnic Studies course content and material, build empathy, increase personal understanding, and promote a more socially just deliberative democracy. Particpants learn of the history and rationale behind the decision to require Ethnic Studies for graduation at Kailua High School, and experience first-hand a sample Ethnic Studies discussion-based inquiry. Facilitated by Amber Strong Makaiau (Associate Specialist, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa), Chad Miller (Associate Specialist, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa), Jeanelle Sugimoto-Matsuda (Assistant Professor, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa), & Kailua High School Educators and Students
10:00 a.m. – 11:15 a.m.
Post-conference Workshop 2
Connecting History to Current Events and Re(ad)dressing Racial Injustice: From Japanese American Incarceration to Islamophobia
In this workshop, participants will be guided through a lesson plan that demonstrates the relevancy of the WWII Japanese American incarceration experience with more current issues of discrimination against American Muslims and Americans of South Asian and Middle Eastern ancestry since 9/11. Through collaborative group reflection on a variety of primary and secondary sources, questions about what it means to be an American and to what extent history is repeating itself will be examined. This lesson draws on resources of the Fred T. Korematsu Institute, an education nonprofit that advances racial equity, social justice, and human rights by connecting the Japanese American incarceration experience and civil rights hero Fred Korematsu with other stories of resistance. Facilitated by Freda Lin, Education Program Director, Fred T. Korematsu Institute
11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Post-conference Workshop 3
Leveraging Scholarship for Public Impact by Writing for the Media
This hands-on workshop presents an overview of the process of publishing op-eds, commentaries, and letters for newspapers and other public media outlets, as well as guidelines and tips for leveraging scholarship to raise public consciousness and influence public policy. It contrasts writing for the media with writing for academic venues, practice strategies for (re)framing and messaging, and engages participants in developing and workshopping the beginnings of such an essay. Facilitated by Kevin Kumashiro, who has published in Education Week, Huffington Post, New York Times, Progressive Magazine, Washington Post, and various city newspapers, and appears frequently in press releases and radio interviews. Bring your laptop and let’s get writing!