Contemplative Conversations

​“Authentic” professors are preferred by students, many of whom learn more from them as a result, according to a new study in Communication Education, the journal of the National Communication Association. The authors questioned some 300 college students on their perceptions of professors’ authentic and inauthentic behavior and communication, and found that authentic instructors were perceived as approachable, passionate, attentive, capable and knowledgeable.

Progress by blacks and Hispanics, the takeoff of Asians, the stall of non-English speakers, the persistence of socioeconomic gaps, and the damaging effect of highly segregated schools. 

​Racial and economic inequality are the most pressing social issues of our time. In the last decade, we have seen the catastrophic economic impact of the Great Recession and an ensuing recovery that has bypassed millions of Americans, especially households of color. This period of economic turmoil has been punctuated by civil unrest throughout the country in the wake of a series of high-profile African-American deaths at the hands of police. These senseless and violent events have not only given rise to the Black Lives Matter movement, they have also sharpened the nation’s focus on the inequities and structural barriers facing households of color.

Lead researcher Walter Gilliam knew that to get an accurate measure of implicit bias among preschool teachers, he couldn't be fully transparent with his subjects about what, exactly, he was trying to study.

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Implicit biases are just that — subtle, often subconscious stereotypes that guide our expectations and interactions with people.

Culture is a cumulative body of learned and shared behavior, values, customs, and beliefs common to a particular group or society. In essence, culture makes us who we are.

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In doing project evaluation, it is also important to consider cultural context in which the project operates and be responsive to it. How can an evaluation be culturally responsive? An evaluation is culturally responsive if it fully takes into account the culture of the program that is being evaluated. In other words, the evaluation is based on an examination of impacts through lenses in which the culture of the participants is considered an important factor, thus rejecting the notion that assessments must be objective and culture free, if they are to be unbiased.

Slavery by Another Name is a 90-minute documentary that challenges one of Americans’ most cherished assumptions: the belief that slavery in this country ended with the Emancipation Proclamation. The film tells how even as chattel slavery came to an end in the South in 1865, thousands of African Americans were pulled back into forced labor with shocking force and brutality.

Teacher referrals for special and gifted education testing are subjective and may be swayed by a student’s race, finds research published in the journal Social Science Research.

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​The study found that teachers are more likely to see academic challenges as disabilities when white boys exhibit them than when boys of color exhibit the same difficulties. Conversely, teachers are more likely to perceive behavioral challenges as disabilities among boys of color than when white boys have the same behavioral difficulties.

We are every day and everywhere standing at the crossroads with Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass confronted with the questions of acceptance of enslavement or fighting for freedom, being paralyzed by doubt or motivated by an active determination, submitting to hopeless resignation or defiantly engaging in righteous and relentless resistance. Thus, we of Us declared in the 60’s, “every day is a good day to struggle.” And since then, we have found no reason to retract or retreat and no changes that would justify walking away from the battlefield when the struggle is not yet won.