Transformative Stance Research Articles

Critical Race Theory and Mixed Methods in Educational Research: A Scoping Review

As educational researchers respond to the current debate around critical race theory (CRT) playing out in legislation across the United States, the debate is challenging mixed methods researchers to imagine new ways of conducting inquiry. In this scoping review, we examine current educational research that uses both a CRT theoretical framework and a mixed methods research (MMR) design to demonstrate the potential that a combined approach must leverage participants’ voices and experiential knowledge to provide more concrete ways in which institutions might challenge dominant ideologies and adopt a more transformative stance. We found that when researchers were able to both purposefully (and indistinguishably) integrate CRT within the MMR design (Hammersley, 2018) and highlight the underlying distinctions between quantitative and qualitative in their methodological choices (Morgan, 2018), they advanced the field by providing richer, more detailed road maps for dismantling systemic inequities. Our findings expose the ways in which well-defined, intentional methodological approaches more fully embrace praxis to foster more equitable outcomes.

Siting Biliteracy in New Mexican Borderlands

ABSTRACT A Participatory Design Research (PDR) conducted with fifteen Chicana dual language bilingual teachers in New Mexico focused on expanding their understandings of their own translanguaging, so as to transform their concept of biliteracy and design their biliteracy instruction as a site for resistance and transformation of bilingual marginalized students. After reviewing how translanguaging shapes understandings of biliteracy, and describing the intervention done with the teachers, one teacher’s emerging transformative stance toward biliteracy is highlighted, as she co-designs a borderland biliteracy unit within her Spanish Language Arts curriculum. The article shows how this teacher’s instructional design impacts the students’ biliterate learning by highlighting the work and writing of one student.

Analyzing Judicial Behavior Through Free Speech Cases

Obscenity is an intriguing subject within free speech jurisprudence due to the subjectivity massively predicated on the notion of ‘decency or morality’ of the judges deciding the case. The vagueness that is replete in this notion provides adequate scope for different models of the judicial behavior to play out in the judgments of the courts. In India, obscenity within Article 19 (2) jurisprudence has experienced several twists and turns, and there are certain moments that the court has broken the earlier path and taken a transformative stance. We argue that there has been a discernible change in Judicial perception in free speech cases that can be delineated in cases decided between 1965-75 and 2010-18. For the purposes of this paper, we will be surveying the cases delivered by the Supreme Court in the area of obscenity laws in the aforementioned two periods to demonstrate this change in judicial behavior.

Academics’ Perceptions on Quality in Higher Education Shaping Key Performance Indicators

Institutions in higher education (HE) continuously strive to develop and deliver impactful educational programs. At the same time, they should continue to fulfill their mission to educate students in basic applied subjects and in parallel respond to the need to equip students with new skills. For this reason, higher education institutions (HEI) perform periodical curricular reviews adhering to internal and external quality assurance systems. The subsequent curricular reforms are of a transformative nature, preparing graduates to tackle the challenges of globalization, unemployment and vanishing professions. For these reforms to lead to sustainable curricula, the integration of quality into educational programs is instrumental. A suggested way of achieving a transformative stance is to provide the context for the application and diffusion of quality metrics in teaching and learning. This research intends to provide a discussion of key performance indicators (KPIs) related to quality. This paper presents the second round of qualitative interviews with higher education administrators and professors as a promising vehicle for advancing towards the formulation of KPIs based on their understanding of the different independent dimensions of the quality construct. These KPIs will provide valuable insights into improving teaching, learning and assessment and will eventually lead to sustainable curricula. Research findings outline the significance of the time invested to design and update a course, indicate that technology-enhanced learning solutions are perceived as key quality drivers, and point out the need to align courses with industry requirements and real-world problems. Additionally, findings indicate that the quality and impact of teaching and learning is promoted by the multi/inter-disciplinary character of a course, the engagement of students in interactive discussions and student research as part of summative assessment. The main contribution of this research is an analytic discussion of perceptions of higher education administrators and professors about quality, leading to a significant enrichment of the relevant literature. A set of innovative generic KPIs which can be used in multidimensional quality assessment in higher education is eventually proposed.

Fostering theory–practice reflection in teaching practicums

ABSTRACTThis article presents a design for supporting theory–practice reflection in teacher practicums. This design is based on three design principles that promote a transformative stance towards the creation of novel pedagogical approaches: mutual transformation of theory and practice, co-design among supervising teachers, university lecturers and student teachers, and participating in the long-term development of pedagogical practices. To evaluate the design, we analyse and compare student teachers’ portfolios across two implementations of the teacher practicum: a thematic practicum based on the proposed design and the conventional class teacher practicum of the University of Helsinki. The results show that the student teachers who participated in the thematic practicum used theory more frequently in their reflections. Moreover, their theory–practice connections were more robust than those made by student teachers who participated in the conventional practicum. On the basis of our results, we make suggestions regarding how to promote theory–practice reflection in teacher education.

Zooming In and Out: Exploring Teacher Competencies in Inclusive Early Childhood Classrooms

ABSTRACTThis study explored issues of social inclusion for young children with disabilities through a systematic reanalysis of six preschool case studies focusing on strategies that teachers used in daily practice. Our analysis process entailed a reexamination of classroom observations and teacher inquiry data, focusing back and forth between the “micro” issues of everyday practice and the “macro” issues of inclusion as social justice. Through this process, the authors articulated a set of six overarching teacher competencies and their connection to “big ideas” about inclusion. The findings speak to a growing need within educational settings to move beyond narrow conceptions of ability and disability to take a transformative stance that supports diversity and community for all learners.

“Back to the future”: toward Luria's holistic cultural science of human brain and mind in a historical study of mental retardation

is dedicated to yetanother interesting topic: the interplaybetween brain research and special educa-tion, its theory and practice.In search of a historical precedentand the cultural prototype of contem-porary acute interest in the interplaybetween neuroscience and special educa-tion we discover an author well knownamong general readers and, likeother pio-neers of brain research, among the neu-roscience academics: the Russian scholarAlexanderLuria(1902–1977). Theneurol-ogist and bestselling author Oliver Sacks,a great admirer of both Luria’s schol-arly and case-based idiographic writings,discussed the secret of Alexander Luria’ssuccess as the unusual combination ofcomplementary “classic” and “romantic”approaches in the latter’s research, prac-tice, and thinking (Cole et al., 2013;Sacks, in press). Yet, such a descriptionremains somewhat incomplete unless oneadds to it yet another utterly importantdimension: Luria’s social activism in hisyouth, the transformative stance of hisresearch, and cultural and holistic under-pinnings of his theory of human biosocialand cultural-historical psychoneurolog-ical development—the theory that helaunched decades ago working hand-in-hand with another luminary and pio-neer of human sciences, Lev Vygotsky(1896–1934), the prominent cultural andMarxistpsychologist.Thesesocialandcul-tural dimensions of Luria’s approach area considerable addition to his holism ofthe kind of a combination of “classicaland romantic science” that does not nec-essarily exceed the natural borders of anorganism as seemingly isolated from his-torically evolving social, cultural, and psy-chological environment (Proctor, 2011).Such a “higher order,” “cultural holism”of Luria’s approach still further empow-ers his theory in its effort to deal with arange of issues and problems of practicaland applied nature, and thus appears tobe of immense interest to contemporaryscholarsand practitioners.In sum, Luria appears highly relevantto the topic of our present discussion ofthe neurological approach to special edu-cation in its search of identity. Little isknown nowadays about Luria’s period oftransformation from cultural psychologistof Vygotskian type to the neuropsychol-ogist as we know him now. Even lessknown is the fact that at certain point inhis early career in 1930s Luria became aprofessional who could be best describedas a neurologically-inclined

Personhood: An activist project of historical becoming through collaborative pursuits of social transformation

The goal of this paper is to contribute to recent scholarship that pursues radical revision of prevalent models of personhood mired in outdated notions of human development and its foundational principles. To achieve this goal, I revisit and expand Vygotsky's project of cultural historical psychology to offer a dialectical framework that encompasses but is not limited to relational ontology. Premised on the notion of collaborative transformative practice as the grounding for human Being and Becoming, 1 1 The interrelated concepts of Being and Becoming are employed in the following sense. Being stands for ontological existence (in the sense of “Being in the world”) whereas Becoming is a type of Being that implies (a) pathways of constant transformations in the states of Being (in contradistinction with the concept of development that combines periods of change with periods of relative stability), wherein (b) transformations pertain to changes in the states of “Being someone,” that is, in the states of Being a certain type of a person vis-à-vis one's social world (in contradistinction with concepts such as change that can refer to states at subpersonal levels of existence), and conveying (c) active nature of this process in the sense that it stands for what the person does or accomplishes through one's own pursuits (in contradistinction with the concept of growth as a process that an individual undergoes or that happens to an individual). Thus, the concept of Becoming conveys the sense of ontological existence as a path of a continuous, ceaseless, and dynamic moment-to-moment transformation in one's standing and relations vis-à-vis the social world carried through one's own active pursuits whereby a person is constantly changed yet without positing any ontological breaks with the previous states of Being. my proposal is that at the core of human nature and development lies an ineluctably activist stance vis-à-vis the world; it is the realization of this stance through answerable deeds composing one unified life project that forms the path to personhood. The ethical dimension appears as foundational to Being and Becoming because it is integral to actions through which we become who we are while changing the world in collaborative pursuits of social transformation. From an activist transformative stance persons are agents not only for whom “things matter” but who themselves matter in history, culture, and society and, moreover, who come into Being as unique individuals through and to the extent that they matter in these processes and make a contribution to them.

Deep in Ethical Waters

Given the commitment expressed by the social work community towards the furtherance of social justice as reflected not only in their ethical codes, but also in their historical legacy and current statements of purpose, the question of how research can contribute to the enhancement of human rights and social change is particularly relevant for the ethical conduct of qualitative social work research. Based on literature from ethics and social work research and the Handbook of Social Research Ethics (Mertens and Ginsberg, forthcoming), the intersection of advocacy and research is examined from a transformative stance, revealing that strict adherence to the codes and/or regulations as defined by governments, professional associations, and ethics boards are fraught with tensions with regard to such issues as informed consent, confidentiality, and beneficence. In order to investigate topics that are controversial (e.g. pedophilia, drug use) and involve participants who may be stigmatized, the researcher's role may need to be reframed as a member of a team, with differential responsibilities assumed by each team member. This article examines potential ethical alternatives in which the researcher can partner with communities for collection, analysis, and interpretation of data.

Elementary Classroom Web Sites: Support for Literacy within and beyond the Classroom

The purpose of this study was to understand how elementary classroom Web sites support children's literacy. From a sociocultural perspective of literacy and a transformative stance toward the integration of literacy and technology, and building on explorations of new literacies, I discuss opportunities provided by the Internet that can support literacy within and beyond classrooms. Using open and axial coding as well as typological analyses, I found 3 basic Web site features and consider how they support common instructional approaches, parental involvement, and notions of the invisible classroom. I conclude with a discussion of how these findings are encouraging and revealing. I offer a variety of suggestions to expand features that are currently available on elementary classroom Web sites.