The purpose of this research was to examine the disconnect between urban school expectations and actual lived realities of marginalized students. Taking into consideration the conversation surrounding the definitions of urban education, and the importance of school connectedness with youth, we chose to focus on the lives of five former high…

Latinxs have a long history of participation in basketball, yet links to education scholarship are for the most part non-existent. In a context of ongoing subtractive policies around curriculum, teaching, toxic immigration policies and other sociopolitical realities, Latinxs have long used "hoops" as a space for identity formation,…

I examine how three elementary-level preservice teachers of Color cultivated their asset-, equity-, and justice-oriented pedagogical learning and identities through multilayered community-engaged tasks. Systemic and structured support from multiple stakeholders played a critical role in helping the preservice teachers of Color to promote and…

This paper uses critical race theory to analyze several case studies focused on the experiences of two restorative justice coordinators (RJCs), both Black women and how they understood and responded to perceived racial injustices in urban schools with white leadership. These schools were attempting to address unequal disciplinary practices toward…

As community schools grow in numbers, this article argues that the model needs to be interrogated in order to address the power imbalances that exist between non-dominant families and schools. This paper draws on a citywide study of parent interviews as well as public documents and interviews with key community school leaders in Baltimore to…

Belonging matters in early childhood. Despite its importance, the majoritarian conceptualization of belonging is seldom problematized. In the US, the politics of belonging draws racialized lines of inclusion and exclusion, (re)inscribing longstanding racialized systems of inequity and injustice. Through critical race and Latina feminist…

This study investigated how newcomer emergent bilinguals made meaning in two 9th-grade biology classrooms. Methods relevant to naturalistic inquiry were used to collect and analyze data. Findings indicate that newcomers bridged aspects of personal experiences with social competencies valued in classrooms through using heritage languages, engaging…

Black teachers experience racialized microaggressions at varying levels in their professional settings. Existing measures of these microaggressions are not context specific. We developed items following a critical quantitative research inquiry approach. Item response theory (IRT) provided validation evidence for the Teacher Experiences of…

Family-school partnerships are considered essential to the success of multiply marginalized children in urban contexts. These partnerships often, however, reinforce middle-class white normativity and subsequent oppression of families outside the dominant culture. Home visiting is one such practice spreading throughout urban centers. Is it possible…

This paper focuses on the evolution of community schools from a grassroots organizing effort to a formal initiative in Philadelphia. The authors implemented a critical participatory action research project to examine the process and impact of the education organizing. We present two narratives to illustrate the potential and limitations of two…

This paper reports an asset-based participatory research study with 18 pre-service teachers and 85 refugee multilingual learners in an after-school program housed in an urban public elementary school. The research illuminates how the refugee multilingual learners (RMLs)' backgrounds, assets, and challenges can be understood and transformed to…

This article draws from a decade-long community-based research partnership oriented toward learning from and supporting immigrant youth and families as they advocate for themselves in the face of educational inequity. In particular, we focus on examining the trajectory and insights of the partnership in light of ongoing educational, health, and…

In this article, we recount our experiences learning from and with Latinx children of immigrants in urban schools. Highlighting how insights gleaned from our respective ethnographic projects have led us to embrace more explicit commitments to participatory engagement, we consider how young people's perspectives can and should fundamentally shift…

Persistent educational inequity for immigrant and refugee students and their families calls for instructional practices centering on access, quality, and social justice. Drawing on two qualitative case studies, this article examines how three U.S. urban school teachers attended to the systemic inequalities and unique challenges confronting…

Immigration policies and deportations have negatively impacted not only undocumented immigrant students and their families, but also their teachers, administrators, counselors, and other community members. Drawing on Freire's (1970) concept of "praxis," and on critical-ecological educational approaches (da Silva Iddings, 2017), we…