Experiences of (Not) Belonging among Higher Education Students from Nondominant Ethnic Backgrounds

Students from nondominant backgrounds face challenges in educational contexts related to finding support and having a sense of belonging. In this study, we focus primarily on race and ethnicity in shaping experiences of nondominance. Using a theoretical framework based upon critical race theory and sense of belonging, we interviewed ten young adults from nondominant backgrounds about their educational experiences in primary, secondary, and tertiary education in the Netherlands. Findings indicate challenges related to interactions with White peers, low teacher support and expectations, and discontinuities between home and school cultures. Sources of support included peers from nondominant backgrounds, religion and faith communities, and family. Implications suggest that teachers and leaders in educational institutions develop their own, and their dominant students’, understandings of nondominant students’ experiences. Additional arguments for the need to focus on race in the European context and for the affordances of interpretive qualitative inquiry approaches are included.

Bilingualism as a Borderland: Researching Youth’s Practices, Perspectives, and Positioning Between Languages

Seen from a critical intersectional perspective, the experiences of bilinguals are embedded in liminal spaces between language and cultural practices. Yet, rather than leverage these novel and hybrid practices for learning, dominant paradigms in education have historically subtracted nondominant students’ home languages from their communicative resources. To similar effect, current trends in bilingual education promote language separation for equal development of languages severed from each other and from cultural contexts. Such reductive approaches to language education disregard the dynamic and heteroglossic language use documented in bilingual communities. Drawing on in-depth interviews with youth, written reflections, and artifacts of bilingualism, I explore these practices across/between languages by conceptualizing bilingualism as a borderland navigated by Spanish–English bilingual youth. Considering bilingualism as a liminal position foregrounds moments of tension and transition in the language and schooling trajectories of youth as they navigate the anguish and advantage of living in-between. Furthermore, I highlight the methodological implications of framing bilingualism as a borderland to inform research design in language and education fields.

Shadow Capital: The Democratization of College Preparatory Education

In this article, we examine the manifestation and consequences of shadow capital within two public, urban, nonselective, college preparatory–designated high schools serving exclusively nondominant students. Informed by three years of ethnographic data, we argue that the transference of a historically elite college preparatory education from dominant institutions to nondominant schools results in fundamental changes to the dominant capital it is expected to yield. Rather than generating highly valued capital within the field of education, it produces what we call “shadow capital.” As a distinct form of cultural capital, shadow capital outwardly resembles yet contains only traces of dominant cultural capital, thus failing to yield the same kind of exchange value in the postsecondary marketplace. Shadow capital offers explanatory power for the many unmet promises of educational reform and further challenges the often well-intended democratizing forces that paradoxically reinforce inequality in education.

Pursuing Equity: Disproportionality in Special Education and the Reframing of Technical Solutions to Address Systemic Inequities

In the review, we examine what is known about disproportionality with the intention of informing the direction of policy and practice remedies. We outline the definition, contours, and characteristics of disproportionality and examine some of the prevailing explanations as to why the issue persists. We then pivot the review to consider how policy, through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), has sought to address disproportionality in special education and disciplining of students with disabilities. We question why a legally sound civil rights law like IDEA has been unable to abate disproportionality for nearly 40 years. We then turn our attention to review interventions embedded in IDEA that have been recommended to address disproportionality and question why they have not improved outcomes for “nondominant” students in special education. We conclude with some recommendations for disrupting disproportionality.

Equitable leadership on the ground: Converging on high-leverage practices

What would leadership standards look like if developed through a lens and language of equity? We engaged with a group of 40 researchers, practitioners, and community leaders recognized as having expertise on equity in education to address this question. Using a Delphi technique, an approach designed to elicit expert feedback and measure convergence around a question of interest, these leaders participated in three rounds of data gathering. In Rounds One and Two, the 40 participants described and then rated leadership practices they believed to be most likely to mitigate race, class, and other group-based disparities between dominant and nondominant students. In Round Three, 14 of these experts participated in focus group sessions, using the findings from the first two rounds to ultimately converge around 10 high-leverage leadership practices for equity. Findings highlight the importance of leadership centered on countering systemic and structural barriers that maintain disparities, with implications for leadership preparation, policy, and tools to support organizational leadership for equity.