R.A.C.E. Mentoring and P-12 Educators

Practitioners Contributing to Scholarship

By:
Aaron J. Griffen, DSST Public Schools

A volume in the series: Research, Advocacy, Collaboration, and Empowerment Mentoring Series. Editor(s): Donna Y. Ford, Ohio State University.

Published 2022

Seldom is the practicing P-12 educator, the P-12 practitioner, considered a scholar. R.A.C.E. Mentoring and P-12 Educators: Practitioners Contributing to Scholarship explores the unrecognized and infrequently considered teacher scholar, principal scholar, counselor scholar, librarian scholar - the practitioner scholar who if provided the platform and access can produce a unique and complex narrative and knowledge base to fields of study. This volume extends the current Research, Advocacy, Collaboration, and Empowerment (R.A.C.E.) knowledge in educational leadership, theory and practice, curriculum and instruction, teaching and teacher development, social justice, and diversity, equity and inclusion. R.A.C.E. Mentoring and P-12 Educators: Practitioners Contributing to Scholarship presents ways to conceptualize quality in educational research by engaging practitioners, researchers and policy makers in cross-disciplinary partnerships to provide an intentional platform for scholars and researchers in the P-12 school systems and pre-service programs, particularly those with/or seeking an active and emerging research and publishing agenda.

This volume is divided into four interrelated sections. Section I focuses on mentoring practitioners as scholars during pre-service and in practice. Chapters in this section promote the use of methods coursework, narrative analysis and culturally relevant pedagogy to enhance practitioner agency and roles as scholars. Section II includes Culturally Responsive School Leadership (CRSL) as a way to recognize and address the historical examples and barriers to practitioner social justice activism. These chapters center the school setting and graduate coursework, using practitioner scholarship as a way to cultivate critical consciousness and the use of counter-narratives to combat racism, settler colonialism, and classism among school staff. Section III engages practitioner scholarship as a revolutionary approach through case study, auto-ethnography, review of literature, mental models, and phenomenological study. This section fosters the value of practitioner voice as agency to disrupt oppressive ideologies and beliefs that sustain inequitable and unequal school environments. Section IV provides curriculum, instruction, and parent involvement as examples of practitioner advocacy via personal and collective identity development, Black/Crit, Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL) and engagement strategies. These final chapters provide details of policy and practice transformation methods that empower practitioner sustainability of student and parent access to equitable and inclusive school experiences.

CONTENTS
Foreword, Ramon B. Goings. Preface, Aaron J. Griffen. Acknowledgements. Introduction: Practitioners Contributing to Scholarship, Aaron J. Griffen. SECTION I: MENTORING PRACTITIONERS AS SCHOLARS. Mama, There Go That Man: Faculty Mentoring Practitioner as Researcher, Larry C. Bryant and Matthew R. Gaines. Preparing Skilled, Equity-Minded Teacher-Scholars: The Role of Research Methods Coursework, Annie M. Cole and Nicole Ralston. Mentorship of Practitioners as Scholars: Mentoring and Supporting Students using Culturally Relevant School Leadership, Ceceilia Parnther and Robert Simmons III. SECTION II: PRACTITIONER SCHOLARSHIP TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE ACTIVISM. Motherscholar Teacher Activists: Enacting Democratic Processes Between Neoliberal Institutions, Deanna Chappell and Rena Dunbar. Practitioner-Scholars as Social Justice Advocates for Discipline Reform, Detra D. Johnson and Leslie G. Constant. Challenging the Injustices in the Justice: Using Social Justice Action as a Revision of Lessons in Education, Larry C. Bryant, Sheila Williams-Lyons, Shonda S. Boston, and Derica Turner. Using a Critical Literacy Framework to Infuse Social Justice Issues Into the Curriculum: A Primer Written by a Public-School Teacher for Teachers and Teacher Educators, Lauren Emick and Crystal Machado. SECTION III: PRACTITIONER SCHOLARSHIP AS A REVOLUTIONARY VEHICLE. Recruiting and Retaining Black Men Educators: A Site of Resistance, George E. Jackson and Adam J. Alvarez. Schoolhouse Sarah: The Regeneration of BBQ Becky, But in Schools, Natalie L. Parker-Holliman and Garry E. Butler. The Third Rail of Curricular Choices: Religion in the Secondary Social Studies Classroom, Sara-Jean Lipmen. Ways of Knowing: Dismantling Master’s House, Nickolas Dawkins. Black Mentors Matter: An Examination of the Meaning of Black Mentors to Black Principals As Framework for Sustainable Leadership Development, Natalie D. Lewis. How to Actualize Transformative Outcomes via Participant Engagement, Victorene, L. King. SECTION IV: PRACTITIONER SCHOLARSHIP FOR ADVOCACY AND VOICE. Empowering Science Teachers and Students to Engage in Inquiry-Based Learning: A Team-Based Professional Development Project in Bangladesh, Crystal Machado and Lizoon Nahar. This is the X: Building a Structurally Antiracist High School in Racist America, Tanishia L. Williams and Kam Gordon. For the Sake of Black Children: Advocacy in Schools, Jarvais Jackson. Building Leadership Capacity: Establishing School Communities of Parents as Partners, Dwayne T. Wheeler and Omari Jackson. Conclusion: When Practitioners Write Our Own Scholarship, Aaron J. Griffen. Afterword, Michelle Frazier Trotman Scott. About the Contributors.