Public Learning for a Multiracial Democracy: The Research on What We Stand to Lose under Education Gag Orders

• In Event: Refusing Limitation, Protecting Public Education: Researchers and Practitioners Responding Together to K12 DEI Attacks

Abstract

This paper focuses on the Public Learning for a Multiracial Democracy project funded by the William T. Grant Foundation to provide an evidence-based portrait of why learning about race and difference in school is important in a multiracial society and what we stand to lose if censorship and book banning continue.
In Phase One we created four working groups of highly reputable scholars and advocates from different disciplinary backgrounds and more than a dozen universities to systematically review existing research on four areas: 1) Learning Theory and Pedagogy, or how children learn; 2) the Social-Psychological and Sociological Impact of Education, or how education impacts students’ learning about the world; 3) Legal and Political Strategies for Transformation, which examines educators’ and students’ Constitutional rights to teach and learn; and 4) Social Movement Building, which looks at the role of research in fostering new movements. Key takeaways across these four working groups include:

· Interdisciplinary research on how people learn has produced solid evidence of the importance of culture and context in learning. (Ladson-Billings, Dixson, Chapman & Henry, 2025).
· Social/cultural beliefs about communities impact how we organize teaching and learning for children, and “asset-based approaches” in which teachers identify the valuable experiences and cultural knowledge that all students bring to school can be leveraged to help engage learners and support their success (Ladson-Billings, et. al., 2025).
· Meanwhile, research concludes that children and young adults benefit cognitively, socially, and emotionally from learning environments that expose them to viewpoints, experiences, and cultures that are different from their own under the right circumstances (Holmes, Shirley, Freidus & Long, 2025).
· At the same time, when learning experiences are equalized and culturally responsive, diverse K-12 schools and colleges and curriculum foster improved critical thinking skills, greater capacity to consider alternate perspectives, enhanced opportunities for civic learning, and an increased desire to become socially active and civically engaged. (Holmes, et. al., 2025).
· In terms of legal research on students’ and educators’ 1st Amendment rights amid a backlash on teaching about diversity, students’ rights are broader than teachers’ rights. (Black, Alexander & Weishart, 2025).
· Meanwhile, the history of social movements demonstrates that they grow from the coordinated, collective action of large numbers of people who share a vision – a common goal of social, political, and/or economic change they want to see enacted. ([blinded] 2025).
· Social science research has a critical role to play in shaping and inspiring social movements through narrative-building and sense-making to foster shared goals and aspirations ([blinded] 2025).
These evidence-based takeaways underscore the need to mobilize research knowledge drawn from educators’ and students’ lived experiences and outcomes to center bridging and belonging (powell, 2025) across our differences, to refocus public education debates on what is good for children and our multiracial democracy. Thus, we have partnered with a communications firm to reshape the narrative around issues of race and education for dissemination to parents, educators, advocates, and voters.

The next presentation outlines additional research-practitioner partnership needed in an era of attack.

Authors

• Janelle T. Scott, University of California - Berkeley

• Amy Stuart Wells, Bank Street College of Education