Oppressive social systems are structures and institutions within society that systematically and unjustly restrict the rights, opportunities, and overall well-being of certain groups (Bonilla-Silva, 1997; Feagin, 2013). The current program of research aims to investigate how oppressive social systems impact individuals and explore strategies to…

The purpose of this research study was to find tangible group work practices that secondary and higher education educators could employ to increase racial equity and cultivate inclusive environments in their academic institutions. The study originated from a long-lasting pervasive inattention paid to Students of Color in classrooms across America.…

Coloniality permeates across realms and leaves no systemic stone unturned in its path. As such, coloniality manifests in our education system through a variety of practices, policies, and procedures that center Western-European modern rationality and White supremacy. To disrupt and decenter these unilateral paradigms within our schools is to…

The purpose of this qualitative narrative study was to explore how deaf college students tell stories reflecting on acculturation experiences at a four-year university in California. The problem addressed by this study was the lack of knowledge about the acculturation experiences of deaf college students on campuses. The target population was deaf…

In recent years the debate over the role of justice-work in schools has grown increasingly tumultuous. Complicating this question even more is the lack of consensus about what the term justice means. In both educational research and popular culture, multiple conceptualizations of justice circulate simultaneously, sometimes standing in…

African American faculty continuous experience acts of institutional and systemic racism regardless to their social economic status and educational backgrounds. Consequences of cultural racism are that minorities are encouraged to turn their back on their own culture and to become absorbed by the majority culture (Scott, 2007). The researcher…

For decades, researchers have studied the need for students to have educators that reflect their same ethnic backgrounds. Despite the many known benefits of having culturally diverse educators, the field of education has a huge demographic divide between the rapidly growing PreK-12 Latinx student population and its educational leaders. Currently,…

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact Hip-Hop culture can have on white faculty who are committed to interrogating their identity and the constructs of whiteness, as it relates to implementing a sustainable process to interrogate race as a critically self-reflective educator and the development of a culturally sustaining practice in…

Schools, and subsequently teachers, have found themselves at the center of the nation's most recent "culture war." Vitriol over the honest teaching of social studies has been discussed in school board races, state legislatures, national media conversations, and presidential politics. Despite book bans, state laws, political rhetoric,…

Following the social turn in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) in the 1990s (Block, 2003), researchers have increasingly focused on the emic perspective of learners. As a result, identity, subjectivity, and agency have come to the forefront in SLA research. In an effort to afford learners the means to negotiate meaning more freely and to position…

Graduate students are often overlooked as a critical audience when universities strategically communicate scientific research, and few resources are traditionally dedicated to graduate student recruitment. Graduate students additionally possess a myriad of characteristics -- including cultural -- that contribute to their decision to enroll in a…

This qualitative case study explores Ghanaian graduate students' social and cultural experiences in a technology-mediated learning environment at a southwestern university. Whereas most studies predominantly focus holistically on international students' experiences in the US, and researchers give little attention to nationals from sub-Saharan…

The purpose of this critical autoethnographic study was to explore, (a) the role that race played in shaping my responses to demographic changes in the public school district that I served, (b) how I could use this new understanding to improve my practice as an educational leader, and (c) how my research and experience could serve as a model for…

School districts around the country are grappling with the complexities of school leadership in the current climate of accountability and standardization in public education. Some schools have sought alternative models of leadership in an attempt to adopt a more inclusive and democratic standard of decision making. One such model is that of a…

This dissertation is concerned with a move toward community engagement within academia generally, and more specifically the concepts of legitimacy and belonging in engagement practices. My work contributes to a relatively recent shift toward community engagement classifications and designations for institutions of higher education (Saltmarsh and…