Pushing the Frontiers of Critical and Postpositivist Approaches to Promoting Educational Equity Through Intimate Performance Narratives

• In Event: Roundtable Session 67
  In Roundtable Session: When Experience Is Complex: Competing Stories on the School Landscape

Abstract

Critically informed assessments of diversity training in K-12 schools are often pessimistic, noting the difficulty of changing both school systems riddled with institutional racism and the beliefs and practices of individual educators. Yet pragmatic and post-positivist approaches to educational equity continue to advance concepts, strategies, and “best practices” to improve equity practices in schools. To date, little consensus exists on how or whether it is possible to achieve widespread educational equity in U.S. schools, especially given differing core assumptions represented by these worldviews. The purpose of this presentation is to explore the usefulness of combining critical, post-positivist, and pragmatic approaches to achieving educational equity through the use of dialogically juxtaposed narratives of everyday practicing educators and equity activists.

Author

• Suzanne Miric, University of Minnesota