Papers by keffrelyn brown
This book examines how the use of the "at-risk" category and label creates problems for students ... more This book examines how the use of the "at-risk" category and label creates problems for students and teachers. Drawing from research across various education sites, the author illustrates how educators recognize the label's potential to redress issues of equity, but warns that it can also stigmatize the students so labeled. Brown explores how the labeling and subsequent practices by teachers and schools actually affect students, such as classifying many individuals as deficient. The text provides a historical overview, discusses the role of federal education policy and teaching, and includes tools to help readers acquire more complex, critical understandings of risk in educational practice. After the "At-Risk" Label not only challenges the education community to reorient itself to a more equitable discourse, it provides a framework for changing the structural conditions of schooling to better serve all students.
Social justice-oriented teacher education can guide preservice teachers toward greater critical s... more Social justice-oriented teacher education can guide preservice teachers toward greater critical socio-cultural knowledge, analytic skills, social responsibility, and commitment to act in the interest of providing all students with high quality educational experiences. This qualitative case study examines how arts-based inquiries in social justice-oriented teacher education can provide the necessary generative spaces for developing preservice teachers' critical sociocultural knowledge. Data were drawn from student interviews and reflective papers across four sections of a course employing collaborative, arts-based inquiry. Findings highlight the cumulative knowledge, pleasure, anxiety, confrontation with material and symbolic bodies, and self-transformations that can develop from art practices and help to awaken preservice teachers' critical consciousness for teaching for social justice.
Teaching and Teacher Education, 2010
Questions abound in the U.S. based teacher education literature about the kind of knowledge teach... more Questions abound in the U.S. based teacher education literature about the kind of knowledge teachers should possess about learning and academic achievement that will enable them to provide all students with an equitable, effective schooling experience. This article examines how a group of preservice teachersdenrolled in a teacher education program that challenges deficit thinkingdunderstand and talk about academic achievement, paying particular attention to the extent to which the candidates account for academic achievement and recognize potential academic risk. Based on the paradoxical stability and tentativeness of teacher candidates' talk about risk, academic achievement and the deployment of the "at-risk" category, I suggest the need to illuminate the complex body of knowledge that informs teacher candidates' understanding, particularly the knowledge deployed in teacher education curriculum.
International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 2013
In this paper, I examine how what I call a pedagogy of fear played a role in the sociocultural co... more In this paper, I examine how what I call a pedagogy of fear played a role in the sociocultural context of research on teachers and teaching. Drawing from multiple literature on emotions, qualitative research, and race, I examine how a racialized field context framed my subsequent emotional responses and performance as an African-American researcher conducting research with white teacher participants. This examination highlights the ethical challenges researchers of color face when conducting research with white participants that is in the interest of people with whom the researcher identifies.
Ethnography and Education, 2011
In this article I take seriously the call for recruiting and retaining more preservice teachers o... more 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 education in the US. I excavate how the dominant, (dis)embodied and normalized culture of Whiteness, White privilege and White hegemony pervades contemporary
teacher education, and presents a formidable challenge to the goal of preparing teachers (of color) to teach in a manner that is relevant, critical and humanizing while also socially and individually transformative. I conclude by envisioning how teacher education programs might address these challenges in such a way that more effectively meets the needs of preservice teachers.
given to race and racism in the official school curriculum. Given that the field of education is ... more given to race and racism in the official school curriculum. Given that the field of education is generally located as a space to interrogate why these difficult issues of race in schools and society still persist, this study illustrates how contemporary official school knowledge addresses historical and contemporary issues of race and racism. To do this, we examine how historic acts of racial violence directed toward African Americans are rendered in K-12 school textbooks. Using the theoretical lenses of critical race theory and cultural memory, we explicate how historic acts of racial violence toward African Americans receives minimal and/or distorted attention in most K-12 texts.
Drawing from the work of philosophers Sylvia Wynter and Ian Hacking, in this conceptual article I... more Drawing from the work of philosophers Sylvia Wynter and Ian Hacking, in this conceptual article I argue why a humanizing critical approach to sociocultural knowledge is needed for teacher education, particularly in preparing teachers to work effectively with black students. In light of enduring concerns in teacher education with improving the educational experiences of black studentsa student population that is routinely discussed in extant education literature, policy and popular discoursesas in trouble, troubling, or troubledand the failure of teacher education programs to successfully meet this goal, I consider how regardless of their intent, these discourses exist within and help to reinscribe an already limiting notion of human constituted by historically contingent, Western epistemic notions of humanity. Highlighting both the shortcomings and possibilities that tackling dominant sociocultural knowledge might have on teacher candidates and teachers I conclude by offering a vision for how teacher education might more effectively engage in transforming such knowledge towards improving the education of black students in the US.
In this article, Julian Vasquez Heilig, Keffrelyn Brown, and Anthony Brown offer findings from a ... more In this article, Julian Vasquez Heilig, Keffrelyn Brown, and Anthony Brown offer findings from a close textual analysis of how the Texas social studies standards address race, racism, and communities of color. Using the lens of critical race theory, the authors uncover the sometimes subtle ways that the standards can appear to adequately address race while at the same time marginalizing it-the "illusion of inclusion." Their study offers insight into the mechanisms of marginalization in standards and a model of how to closely analyze such standards, which, the authors argue, is increasingly important as the standards and accountability movements continue to grow in influence.
Race Ethnicity and Education, 2011
Equity & Excellence in Education, 2011
Social justice-oriented teacher education can guide preservice teachers toward greater critical s... more Social justice-oriented teacher education can guide preservice teachers toward greater critical sociocultural knowledge, analytic skills, social responsibility, and commitment to act in the interest of providing all students with high quality educational experiences. This qualitative case study examines how arts-based inquiries in social justice-oriented teacher education can provide the necessary generative spaces for developing preservice teachers' critical sociocultural knowledge. Data were drawn from student interviews and reflective papers across four sections of a course employing collaborative, arts-based inquiry. Findings highlight the cumulative knowledge, pleasure, anxiety, confrontation with material and symbolic bodies, and self-transformations that can develop from art practices and help to awaken preservice teachers' critical consciousness for teaching for social justice.
Educational Researcher, 2005
... and stu-dents who performed during Diversity Days were seen as performing 'interesting&#... more ... and stu-dents who performed during Diversity Days were seen as performing 'interesting' or ... These youth frequently adopted an oppositional identity toward school, wore baggy clothes, and enjoyed ... the male students, as dan-gerous because of their possible "gang affili-ations ...
International Journal of Science Education, 2009
Understanding the particulate nature of matter (PNM) is vital for participating in many areas of ... more Understanding the particulate nature of matter (PNM) is vital for participating in many areas of science. We assessed 11 students’ atomic/molecular‐level explanations of real‐world phenomena after their participation in a modelling‐based PNM unit. All 11 students offered a scientifically acceptable model regarding atomic/molecular behaviour in non‐heated solids. Yet, 10 of 11 students expressed the view that, in response to added
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Papers by keffrelyn brown
teacher education, and presents a formidable challenge to the goal of preparing teachers (of color) to teach in a manner that is relevant, critical and humanizing while also socially and individually transformative. I conclude by envisioning how teacher education programs might address these challenges in such a way that more effectively meets the needs of preservice teachers.
teacher education, and presents a formidable challenge to the goal of preparing teachers (of color) to teach in a manner that is relevant, critical and humanizing while also socially and individually transformative. I conclude by envisioning how teacher education programs might address these challenges in such a way that more effectively meets the needs of preservice teachers.