A growing number of school districts are seeking to remedy the high dropout rates and achievement gap experienced by Latino boys through Latino male mentorship programs. Indicative of neoliberal shifts in urban education, these programs often involve public-private partnerships and represent a new ideological blending of Latinx community interests and corporate philanthropic goals. This dissertation asks: How is Latino masculinity framed and constructed in the neoliberal era of urban education? To answer this question, I conducted an ethnographic case study of Latino Male Success (LMS; pseudonym), a Latino male mentorship program run by a non-profit organization servicing 10 middle and high schools in an urban school district in California. Data collection for this study consisted of two years of ethnographic research including 40 interviews, document and curriculum analysis, and over 500 hours of classroom observations.

Three main findings emerged from this study. First, dependence on philanthropy and the need to cater to wealthy donors resulted in a cultural deficit framing of Latino male mentorship in the program’s mission and curriculum. This approach obscured structural racism and centered the boys’ behavior as the primary source of underachievement by implicitly or explicitly positing them as disinterested in school, potentially violent, and in need of cultural change. Second, LMS day-to-day lessons and activities deprioritized a critical race and gender consciousness and cultivated an ideal Latino masculinity characterized by the neoliberal values of meritocratic individualism, benevolent hetero-patriarchy, and smart consumerism. Third, mentors and students also resisted the neoliberal logics that framed LMS. Select mentors taught extra-curricular and politically charged lessons centering racism and collective struggle, while students engaged in small moments of subversion enacted through repudiations of respectability, collective hopes, and loving, queer moments.

By integrating critical and intersectional theories of race, gender, sexuality into my analysis, this research provides a timely addition to the literature on educational empowerment programs for boys and men of color. In contrast to scholarship that prioritizes an analysis of school punishment and pushout, my work reveals the profound impact educational empowerment projects have on influencing Latino male identity and learning experiences. My findings demonstrate the ways problematic racial and gender politics remain prevalent in these programs despite a rhetoric of racial uplift. Through tracing the intersectional racial politics of neoliberalism guiding Latino Male Success, this work sheds new light on the ways educational philanthropic foundations and non-profits shape racial formation in U.S. schools.

Research suggests that a college degree leads to greater civic engagement. However, less is known about the ways that civic engagement while enrolled at an institution of higher education influences college navigation, particularly for self-identified Latinx womxn of color undergraduates. Yet, this body of literature tends to emphasize the cultural and social benefits of the college student. That is, how community engagement is transformative for the individual student, rather than placing a greater focus on the communities they engage with through the service-learning program. Thereby the question guiding this investigation is as follows: How do Latinx womxn of color undergraduates make meaning of community engagement in various forms of both institutionalized and non-institutionalized forms of service learning they participate in, both as experienced and conceptually? To answer this question, I employ a testimonio and pláticas methodology to collect and analyze the collective understanding of intersectional forms of oppression experienced directly in the communities as witnessed by the Latinx womxn. A testimonio methodology allowed me to understand the complex dynamics of how the Latinx womxn straddled between the institution, which I refer to as Western University (WU), their community-engaged service, and their hometown communities and families. Two central theoretical contributions emerged from the data. First, participants conceptualized community engagement based on what I refer to as a praxis of vulnerability. A praxis of vulnerability is how the participants’ community engagement is intimately tied to their families and hometown communities, where home was re-made through the straddling across family/community, college, and their service work. Second, that the participants’ critical understanding of how their emotions of racial and gendered oppression relate to how they embodied and practiced their community-engaged service in higher education. I refer to this as the participants’ critical emotionality of how their service is not just with an intent for producing social justice, but also about the complexities of the vulnerabilities associated with the direct experiences with injustice. Broadly, this research challenges dominant ideals that community engagement in higher education is simply characterized by a partnership between the institution of higher education and the local community, especially when asymmetrical power dynamics are central to this partnership. Specifically, by employing an intersectional lens into the data analysis, this research provides significant contributions to the growing body of literature on emotionality in higher education that seeks to further understand the complexities of racial and gendered forms of oppression.

This audience research study explores how 1990s Black sitcoms such as Martin, A Different

World, Living Single, Moesha, and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air serve as a form of heritage for

Black millennials. To better understand this phenomenon, I conducted semi-structured, in-depth

interviews and focus groups with 26 Black undergraduate students at a large, public, research

university in the western part of the United States. In addition to interviews and focus groups, I

performed textual analyses of sitcom episodes as well as the various popular texts produced in

response to the shows. My analysis reveals how Black millennials sample ideas about race,

gender, and class from 1990s Black sitcoms as well as how they critique the continued

circulation of the texts in Black popular culture. Identifying social mobility as a central theme in

most 1990s Black sitcoms, participants used the shows to help shape their professional, social,

and educational aspirations. Specifically, participants stated that the shows helped them imagine

themselves as college students who would go on to pursue careers with high-earning potential,

while also framing their expectations of the romantic and platonic relationships necessary to

achieve upward mobility. Participants described watching reruns of 1990s Black sitcoms as a

normative part of their childhood and thus imagined most Black millennials as having a

knowledge of and affinity for the shows. For many participants, their 1990s Black sitcom

fandom was understood as a form of familial inheritance as they credited their parents and older

siblings with introducing them to the shows. Participants drew on their affinities for 1990s Black

sitcoms as points of connection between them and other Black students. Despite participants

finding great utility in the sitcoms, they also described vexed relationships with the programs.

This was particularly true related to Martin, which was the most popular sitcom among

participants. Participants attributed their ambivalent relationship with Martin to what they

described as the show’s penchant for affirming and advancing negative stereotypes about Black

women and the show’s troubling depictions of Black heterosexual romantic relationships.

The university is often celebrated as a site for critique where intellectual laborers, protected by academic freedom, may address the pressing social issues of their time and thus contribute to public opinion and to the advancement of knowledge. As the public university increasingly adopts neoliberal practices, however, such as shifting its governing power to private funders and by emphasizing its marketable versus non-marketable benefits to wider society, critical university studies (CUS) argues that academic freedom—the bedrock of the U.S. university system—is under threat. This project contributes to CUS scholarship by examining how academics who are committed to advancing social justice and who actively engage with broad audiences, experience the protection of academic freedom while employed at U.S. public universities. Are faculty members who publicly critique systemic injustice protected by academic freedom? More specifically, using in-depth interviews, I inquire: 1) What are the motivations for, and experiences of scholars when exercising their academic freedom in politically controversial ways? 2) To what extent do economic, racial and gendered politics, as well as faculty members’ institutional status impact public universities’ commitment to academic freedom? I draw on 31 in-depth interviews with publicly-engaged scholars from three Research One public universities who reflect a diverse range of academic ranks and disciplines as well as racial and gender positionalities in order to better understand what it is like for those who consistently take stands on controversial political issues. This project reveals that, in general, academic freedom is a stratified freedom drawn across academic-rank lines, reflecting the racial and gender hierarchies of larger society. This research argues that while the culture of the academy encourages conformity rather than ethical risk-taking, the university is still a space of edifying possibilities. By examining the effectiveness of academic freedom and the commendable dissidence of activist-scholars, this dissertation aims to contribute to higher education accountability efforts that seek to reinforce the academy’s connection to, and responsibility for the public that it is tasked to serve.

This study examines the development and implementation of ninth grade Ethnic Studies curriculum in a California school district. Ethnic Studies offers curricula that reflect the epistemological diversity of the United States population. Despite movements promoting multicultural education, the teaching and learning of Ethnic Studies is a contested arena at the K-12 level. The criminalization of Ethnic Studies in states like Arizona has led to movements to defend the discipline in universities, colleges, and school districts throughout the nation. The research on K-12 Ethnic Studies demonstrates that culturally relevant and community responsive curricula improve student academic achievement through innovative learning environments and effective critical pedagogies. Indeed, Ethnic Studies has been shown to improve educational experiences and outcomes for historically marginalized students, but what are the processes and challenges districts and teachers face when establishing these courses?

Developing a Critical Collective Consciousness through High School Ethnic Studies examines the emergence of high school Ethnic Studies curriculum in a large metropolitan area in California. Through a critical ethnographic approach, I conducted a four-year study of the curricular and political processes used to institutionalize Ethnic Studies in one school district. I analyzed qualitative data drawn from participant observation of teacher professional development, observations in six ninth grade Ethnic Studies classrooms, and interviews with teachers to illuminate the processes of developing and implementing a district-wide course. I document how teachers formed a critical teaching community, mobilized with students to expand Ethnic Studies throughout the district, and worked collaboratively to build Comparative Ethnic Studies curricula. I show that in response to variation in teachers’ knowledge and backgrounds, teachers formed in a district-supported teaching community with the purpose of building Comparative Ethnic Studies curricula and providing praxis-oriented professional development. Ethnic Studies teachers also addressed the problems of differential knowledge and orientation of race, power, and teacher positionality in the context of Ethnic Studies classrooms. Out of these discussions emerged critical race dialogue that led to teachers developing racial literacy and a critical collective consciousness, which, in turn, resulted in a collective identity and shared views on key elements of Ethnic Studies perspectives and approaches.

This dissertation also captures processes of interrogating hegemonic knowledge and counterhegemonic knowledge production within the Ethnic Studies classroom. Teachers rearticulated knowledge to help students understand how power relations operated within their lives and their communities. The opportunity to develop new curricula gave educators the space to grow as intellectuals in their teaching role. Throughout this process, they developed a collective ownership of the curricula and produced knowledge in accessible ways. Students also participated in producing knowledge. In the classroom, Ethnic Studies teachers engage students in the process of history-making, where students placed their familial and community’s stories within a sociopolitical context of American history. This study holds implications for the fields of Education and Ethnic Studies. The findings from this dissertation contribute to the growing research on socially relevant education and innovative approaches to serving historically marginalized students as schools and school districts expand their offerings of K-12 Ethnic Studies.

Partnerships between schools, universities, community organizations and private businesses have become an increasingly popular response to the privatization of resources accompanying market-based education reforms (Rodriguez, 2020; Warren, 2005). Through these partnerships, stakeholders mobilize resources across sectors and scales in an effort to support students, families, communities and schools. Some of these partnerships, such as public-private partnerships between schools and corporate organizations, have been critically examined as emblematic of the neoliberalization of public schooling (Giroux, 2013; Lipman, 2013). Research-practice partnerships (RPPs), “long-term, mutualistic collaborations between practitioners and researchers that are intentionally organized to investigate problems of practice and solutions for improving district outcomes” (Coburn, Penuel, Geil, 2013, p.2), have recently cropped up as a “promising” (Datnow, 2020), “hope-based” (Schneider, 2018) equity-oriented alternative to top-down reforms (Coburn et al., 2013). While these types of partnerships stand to generate important research and knowledge on schools and teaching and learning by involving multiple stakeholders and practitioners as well as youth in the research process, thereby expanding conventional modes of school-community-university collaboration, there is still a paucity of empirical research that supports the construction of RPPs as contributing to equity. Specifically, there is little to no empirical knowledge about how and the extent to which RPPs are intervening in and changing the structural issues they are positioned as redressing. Depending on the scholar and RPP, they are variously constructed as race-conscious or race-neutral. Furthermore, while scholarship has focused on the role of researchers in RPPs, and on the relationships between researchers and practitioners, few studies have focused specifically on what the experiences of teachers reveals about the impact of RRPs. Research-Practice Partnerships, Urban Education Reform and Teacher Positionality: An Examination of Community Change and Youth Empowerment (CCYE), takes up these issues. I examine CCYE, a RPP between a research center housed in a university in California, local civic agencies and business partners, and local urban high schools, that is focused on cultivating civic inclusivity of racially and economically minoritized youth. This dissertation asks: (1) How and to what extent do RPPs intervene in and/or reproduce the systems and structures they seek to redress? a. What do RPP actors’ communicative and discursive practices, such as their use of figurative language and speech interactions, reveal about RPPs’ functions and impacts? (2) What are teachers’ roles in RPPs and how do they make sense of their roles, experiences, and work in RPPs?

To answer these questions, I conducted an ethnographic case study of CCYE. My findings show that teachers’ professional and personal pasts influenced the way teachers made sense of working within a multi-organizational partnership as well as the way that they took up their roles. Teachers made sense of their roles dialogically and drew on social and cultural resources from their past careers and experiences to identify organizational boundaries in the partnership and delineate their organizational position and tasks. My findings also suggest that increasing concerns with the civic empowerment and career and technical education of young people in state (Linked Learning), and federal-level (Career and Technical Education) reforms engendered slippages in the way that teachers made sense of their roles and CCYE’s goals of civic inclusion, referring to themselves as “employers” and “bosses” and their students as “employees” and “workers”. I show that working within these slippages impacted teachers' sense of agency and role in ways that differed across racial lines. White teachers' role negotiation in CCYE involved shifting practices and language to take on employer-like qualities, while the discomforts of role negotiation for Black teachers revealed a fraught relationship to the civil sphere. I trace teachers' differential experiences of discomfort to the underlying logic in current education reform that civic inclusion through school can be achieved through participation in the labor market. Finally, through conversation and discourse analysis, I illuminate the prevailing communicative practices and racializing discourses that CCYE actors drew on to construe and position themselves as social justice actors. By the same token, I also illuminate the ways in which actors disciplined and censored one another through talk and emotional interaction in the interest of maintaining an essential idea of CCYE as a social justice organization. This project makes an important contribution to literature interested in the impact and function of school-community-university partnerships and teachers’ roles and experiences in “alternative” reforms. By drawing on critical theories of race and organizations, in particular racial formation theory and racial organizations, my project responds to urgent calls to critically examine the technologies and relationships that shape RPPs’ impacts. My findings demonstrate that RPPs are embedded in contextual reform histories as well as the histories of the actors that populate them. These histories shape how RPPs respond to structural inequities as well as their capacity to intervene in them. Research-Practice Partnerships, Urban Education Reform and Teacher Positionality: An Examination of Community Change and Youth Empowerment (CCYE), takes up these issues. I examine CCYE, a RPP between a research center housed in a university in California’s Bay Area, local civic agencies and business partners, and local urban high schools that is focused on cultivating civic inclusivity of racially and economically minoritized youth. This dissertation asks: (1) How and to what extent do RPPs intervene in and/or reproduce the systems and structures they seek to redress? a. What do RPP actors’ communicative and discursive practices, such as their use of figurative language and speech interactions, reveal about RPPs’ functions and impacts? (2) What are teachers’ roles in RPPs and how they make sense of their roles, experiences, and work in RPPs?

To answer these questions, I conducted an ethnographic case study of CCYE. My findings show that teachers professional and personal pasts influenced the way teachers made sense of working within a multi-organizational partnership as well as the way that they took up their roles. Teachers made sense of their roles dialogically and drew on social and cultural resources from their past careers and experiences to identify organizational boundaries in the partnership and delineate their organizational position and tasks. My findings also suggest that increasing concerns with the civic empowerment and career and technical education of young people in state (Linked Learning), and federal-level (Career and Technical Education) reforms engendered slippages in the way that teachers made sense of their roles and CCYE’s goals of civic inclusion, referring to themselves as “employers” and “bosses” and their students as “employees” and “workers”. I show that working within these slippages impacted teachers' sense of agency and role in ways that differed across racial lines. White teachers' role negotiation in CCYE involved shifting practices and language to take on employer-like qualities, while the discomforts of role negotiation for Black and non-Black teachers of color revealed a fraught relationship to the civil sphere. I trace teachers' differential experiences of discomfort to the underlying logic in current education reform that civic inclusion through school can be achieved through participation in the labor market. Finally, through conversation and discourse analysis, I illuminate the prevailing communicative practices and racializing discourses that CCYE actors drew on to construe and position themselves as social justice actors. By the same token, I also illuminate the ways in which actors disciplined and censored one another through talk and emotional interaction in the interest of maintaining an essential idea of CCYE as a social justice organization. This project makes an important contribution to literature interested in the impact and function of school-community-university partnerships and teachers’ roles and experiences in “alternative” reforms. By integrating critical theories of race and organizations into my analysis, my project responds to recent, urgent calls to critically examine the technologies and relationships that shape RPPs’ impacts. My findings demonstrate that RPPs are embedded in contextual reform histories as well as the histories of the actors that populate them. These histories shape how RPPs respond to structural inequities as well as their capacity to intervene in them.

As we stand on the cusp of another Supreme Court opinion concerning the use of racial considerations in education from Fisher v. University of Texas, the Court’s final verdict may potentially be another set back for affirmative action policies in education. However, the historical trajectory of the Court’s approach to racial issues in and beyond education suggests a more critical assessment of legal moments such as Fisher is needed. That is, Fisher must be placed within a historical racial narrative carefully orchestrated by the Court. The Court’s racial narrative adjudicates social cleavages on race in areas such as voting rights, employment law, criminal justice, and education. A comprehensive engagement of the Court’s discursive trajectory on race is necessary in order to accurately understand the significance of Fisher in the aftermath of Brown v. Board of Education. Without an engagement of the Court’s previous moments, our understanding of Fisher’s significance becomes limited and trapped within the mainstream colorblind racial narrative that all but dismisses the salience of racial subordination in society. This study will show that by engaging the Court’s long and unfortunate history adjudicating racial issues, white privilege and whiteness has been protected and perpetuated by the Court’s powerful authority. Furthermore, regardless of Fisher’s outcome, an engagement of how the Court has defined, protected, and perpetuated whiteness will fundamentally understand Fisher not only as a defeat or victory for racial considerations in education, but as an instantiation of the continuing problem of race in society. As a result, the persistence of racial subordination in the ‘colorblind’ era is anything but coincidental.