Papers by Rolf Straubhaar
Educar em Revista, 2020
This paper investigates how television news media deals with the financing of basic education, wi... more This paper investigates how television news media deals with the financing of basic education, with the aim of tracing theoretical and methodological elements for analyzing how the media can influence public opinion about schools and, consequently, underpin legislative debates and the implementation of educational policies. With an approach based on critical discourse analysis methodology, this paper originated in a quantitative and qualitative study of news media data in five cities in the state of Texas (United States of America). The data comes from these cities' primary TV channels and local newspapers, which was used to create a historical database capable of revealing the topics of greatest journalistic coverage regarding school funding. This article presents aspects of the materials and methods used in this larger research project, focusing on the study's quantitative results about television news coverage. The paper aims to contribute to the debate about the ideological matrices that permeate the socially constructed symbolic representation of public education and its financing through the journalistic media.
To many educators drawn to teaching through Paulo Freire, moving from the K-12 classroom to a uni... more To many educators drawn to teaching through Paulo Freire, moving from the K-12 classroom to a university position might seem an ideal career path for having time to reflect and build one's level of critical consciousness. Unfortunately, the dominant paradigm governing contemporary academia leans more toward what Freire (1970) called banking education. Instead of spending our time focusing on how to make our classrooms spaces of becoming for both professor and student, the messages we hear-in our case-from administration consistently focus on enrollment and graduation numbers, maximizing productivity, and promoting student "customer satisfaction."
i.e.: inquiry in education, 2020
Using Paulo Freire's (2005) theoretical construct of generative themes, this essay discusses the ... more Using Paulo Freire's (2005) theoretical construct of generative themes, this essay discusses the necessary elements of a relevant contemporary philosophy of education, drawing on dominant themes in the work of several representative, seminal thinkers: Rousseau, Wollstonecraft, Dewey, Du Bois, Freire, Morrison and hooks. Each of these thinkers addresses issues that are quite pertinent to contemporary educational practice, highlighting the importance and intersectionality of class, race, and gender, alongside the importance of democracy as both a political ideal and instructional method. The essay will end with a harmonization of the identified generative themes of each of these thinkers into the author's educational philosophy, formalized to be as pertinent as possible to the issues of today's classrooms.
Journal of Teacher Education
The last several decades have seen significant growth among private options in alternative teache... more The last several decades have seen significant growth among private options in alternative teacher education and certification. In this article, I draw on two parallel ethnographic studies of the experiences of participants in variants of one particular alternative teacher education model, developed by Teach For America in the United States and spread internationally by Teach For All. Through analysis of interviews with recruits from Teach For America and its Brazilian sister organization Ensina!, I explore the thinking processes that leads young people to join these organizations, as well as how that thinking changes after 2 years of teaching in the classroom. I find that while participants in these studies joined because they admired the Teach For All teacher education model, many left their 2-year commitment questioning the underlying theories of change driving it.
Journal of Latinos and Education, 2019
The purpose of this article, drawing on ethnographic data from several years of observation of La... more The purpose of this article, drawing on ethnographic data from several years of observation of Latinx children in schools throughout North Georgia, is to explore the racialization of Latinx EL children in a North Georgia classroom. Specifically, we explore the ways in which one teacher’s physical presence, as well as her language use (and the language use she facilitates and allows between students in her group), creates strong symbolic boundaries between White and Latinx students, boundaries which both White and Latinx students reinforce themselves.
Mellom, P. J., Straubhaar, R., Balderas, C., Ariail, M., & Portes, P. R. (2018). “They come with nothing:” How professional development in a culturally responsive pedagogy shapes teacher attitudes towards Latino/a English language learners. Teaching and Teacher Education, 71, 98-107. White Southern monolingual teachers often hold prejudiced opinions towards Latino/a students. IC ... more White Southern monolingual teachers often hold prejudiced opinions towards Latino/a students. IC pedagogy helps teachers get to know their Latino/a students in their own words. IC mitigated participating teachers' negative attitudes towards Latino/a students. a b s t r a c t Especially in the United States' " New South, " rapid growth in numbers of Latino/a students, particularly Latino/a English Language Learners (ELLs), has resulted in a cultural clash that is reflected in the often prejudiced attitudes of predominantly white monolingual teachers towards such students. Drawing on qualitative data collected as part of a mixed-methods multi-year study of the effects of teacher training in the culturally responsive Instructional Conversation pedagogy on ELL academic outcomes, the authors argue that while New South teacher attitudes towards ELLs often remain prejudiced, Instructional Conversation training seems to mitigate those negative attitudes over time.
The purpose of this article is to ethnographically document the market-based ideological assumpti... more The purpose of this article is to ethnographically document the market-based ideological assumptions of Rio de Janeiro’s educational policymakers, and the ways in which those assumptions have informed these policymakers’ decision to implement value-added modeling-based teacher evaluation policies. Drawing on the anthropological literature on meaning making (Anderson-Levitt, 2012), the focus of this study is on the common understandings and ideological assumptions regarding “good” teacher education practice that undergird the policymaking decisions of Rio de Janeiro’s public education policymakers. On the basis of ethnographic interviews, I argue that the then-current Secretariat of Education in Rio was run primarily by people whose backgrounds in business and administration heavily influenced their ideological assumptions about good educational management. I further explore the ways in which Rio’s implementation of value-added modeling and high-stakes accountability-based teacher evaluation mechanisms reflects these latent ideological trends.
Childhood in the United States, and in the American South more particularly, has several well-kno... more Childhood in the United States, and in the American South more particularly, has several well-known and popularized constructions, typically divided by social class and ethnic identity. More specifically, Southern childhood is constructed as an either white or black experience, with one's social world being extremely ethnically segregated in either case. Over the last several decades, as a post–North American Free Trade Agreement immigration boom has brought several generations of Latinos into the American South (in part because of these shifting demographics, the area is now often called the " New South "), this bifurcated popular conceptualization of childhood has been disrupted by the growing presence of Latino children in Southern schools and communities. Building upon Vygotsky's premise that identity (including ethnic identity) is constructed through a cultural–historical lens, we here use the nascent literature on Latino education in the New South to outline an initial construction of Southern Latino childhood.
Scholars throughout Latin America argue that instead of promoting equity, an increasing focus on ... more Scholars throughout Latin America argue that instead of promoting equity, an increasing focus on accountability in educational policy at the national level throughout the region has resulted instead in a shift in priorities from the governance of educational systems to evaluation of those systems, with the state functioning primarily as an Evaluative State. This argument is developed through secondary analysis of the Hispanophone and Lusophone academic education literatures of Latin America, whose robust and rigorous studies of these trends at both national and regional levels remain little explored within the Anglophone academic tradition.
The hegemonic ideology of racial democracy and rural cultural norms of racial silence continue to... more The hegemonic ideology of racial democracy and rural cultural norms of racial silence continue to inform racial identities and national racial discourse in Brazil, in this case within the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST), a left-wing movement for agrarian reform. In this article I engage in textual analysis of a textbook from the MST’s youth curriculum, arguing that the language used in this textbook does not recognize the centrality of race in world or Brazilian history, but rather focuses on the role of social class in marginalization. I also argue that race is largely ignored in the textbook’s description of the MST itself, despite the organization working in rural areas that are predominantly indigenous or Afro-descendant. Lastly, I argue that language is used which implicitly separates the MST leadership from indigenous and Afro-Brazilian populations. The implications of these findings are analyzed through the lens of critical race theory and Brazilian rurality.
Education and Urban Society, Jul 13, 2014
Building upon previous research on how personal and demographic characteristics of teachers are c... more Building upon previous research on how personal and demographic characteristics of teachers are correlated with larger issues in teacher recruitment and retention, this study contributes unique insight into the personal attributes, characteristics, and career aspirations of new teachers brought into teaching in Los Angeles through the Teach For America program. Drawing from ethnographic interviews with 25 current Teach For America teachers, this study finds that teachers in this study perceive themselves as embodying personal characteristics that prior research would support as less common among teachers in urban schools: That is, they see themselves as being competitive, high-performing, and enthusiastically committed to ending educational inequality. However, these participants tend to come from privileged backgrounds and colleges and consequently view their time teaching in urban schools as an interim period before pursuing other more “high prestige” careers. Implications of these findings are discussed.
In the United States and other Anglophone countries in the Global North, there exists a rich and ... more In the United States and other Anglophone countries in the Global North, there exists a rich and lengthy literature on how white teachers and teachers-in-training can and should begin to recognize, question and challenge their own privilege. Indeed, entire literatures have been developed around problematizing whiteness, and teacher education programs regularly incorporate this literature into preservice courses as an expected part of teacher training. However, despite similar proportions of white educators and researchers-in-training in comparative and international education, a similarly thorough discussion and unpacking of privilege is relatively lacking. Comparative and international education graduate programs rarely (if ever) incorporate multicultural education courses similar to those that have become staples in North American teacher education, and the literature interrogating whiteness in comparative education is still nascent. However, in 2015 several significant steps forward were taken into this dearly needed conversation, opening potential lines of continued inquiry. This essay outlines and begins to explore several of these directions for the future of the field: namely, critical self-studies of comparative educators, ethnographic research of racial dynamics in international education development organizations, and critical discourse analysis of prominent documents in international education and their recognition (or lack of such) of the role of race in sustaining global educational inequities.
In urban school systems, the percentage of teachers that leave the profession is disproportionall... more In urban school systems, the percentage of teachers that leave the profession is disproportionally high. Part of the driving force for this high rate of teacher turnover are alternative certification programmes, like Teach For America (TFA) which recruits teachers only for a short-term teaching commitment. This study contributes a novel perspective on these teachers’ decision to stay or exit the classroom after this two-year commitment by analysing extensive open-ended qualitative interviews with 30 TFA participants in Los Angeles. Within this sample, a majority enter the programme without viewing teaching as a long-term career option, though they are willing to extend their initial two-year teaching commitment for several years, though not much longer after that. Only a minority of these teachers entered TFA as a means of becoming long-term classroom teachers. No teachers changed their long-term career plans as a result of their participation in TFA. Implications are discussed.
The authors here outline three evidence-driven school-based initiatives of the Center for Latino ... more The authors here outline three evidence-driven school-based initiatives of the Center for Latino Achievement and Success in Education at the University of Georgia: an afterschool program, culturally-responsive pedagogy training, and a longitudinal study of Latino students. All these initiatives focus on improving educational outcomes for Latino students throughout the state.
While conducting research on the organizational cultures of elite nonprofit organizations in Rio ... more While conducting research on the organizational cultures of elite nonprofit organizations in Rio de Janeiro, the author encountered many access issues identified in the current literature: in particular, difficulty in encountering research subjects due to the transitional nature of educational nonprofits and the role of secretaries and administrators as gatekeepers. This article explores two previously undeveloped methodological innovations utilized by the author to overcome these difficulties with regard to access: namely, the use of social media as a participant recruitment tool and the use of an organization's online marketing presence as an alternative data source.
Recognizing that privilege is unearned is essential to dismantling the white saviour complex.
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Papers by Rolf Straubhaar