Presents narratives of scholars of education on how critical mentoring can dismantle institutional –isms to improve the experiences and degree attainment of underrepresented groups in doctoral programs.

This edited volume seeks to interrogate the structures that affect the perceptions, experiences, performance and practices of Black women administrators. The chapters examine the nature and dynamics of the conflict within that space and the ways in which they transcend or confront the intersecting structures of power in academe. A related expectation is for interrogations of the ways in which their institutional contexts and, marginalized status inform their navigational strategies and leadership practices. More specifically, this work explores mentorship as critical praxis; that being, the ways in which Black women’s thinking and practices around mentoring affect their institutional contexts or environment, and, that of other marginalized groups within academe. A discussion of Black women in higher education administration as critically engaged mentors will ultimately diversify thought, approaches, and solutions to larger social and structural challenges embedded within academic climates. Praise for Mentoring as Critically Engaged Praxis: Mentoring as Critically Engaged Praxis: Storying the Lives and Contributions of Black Women Administrators, the authors present insights on the challenges Black women face and how mentoring networks and strategies help them transcend professional and institutional barriers. Each chapter intentionally creates a space to elevate their voices, depicts the reciprocity on how they are transforming and being transformed by their institutional context, and offers hope for improving the status of women leaders. The power of this book is that it is an acknowledgement of Black women being the architect of their lives and is filled with meaningful content that is nuanced and offers a glimpse into how black women leaders continue to lift as they climb. - Gaëtane Jean-Marie, Rowan University Mentoring as Critical Engaged Praxis perfectly captures a process that Black women have been facilitating, practicing and innovating prior to and since their entry into the higher education. Deirdre Cobb-Roberts and Talia R. Esnard have assembled a strong cast of scholars who eloquently speak to the role that Black women administrators play in their daily practice of “Lift as we climb.” Despite the limited number of Black women in senior leadership roles across academe, most, if not all of them must consistently tackle institutional and societal injustices that shape their experiences and influence their capacity to mentor. - Lori Patton Davis, The Ohio State University

Educators, teacher practitioners, and social activists have successfully used critical pedagogy as a tool to help marginalized students develop awareness and seek alternative solutions to their poor educational and socioeconomic situations. However, this theory is often criticized as being mostly dominated by privileged white males, bringing issues of race and gender to the forefront. This volume provides insight on how critical pedagogy can be helpful to scholars and teachers alike in their analysis of racial, gender, linguistic and political problems. It features a wide range of respected scholars who examine the way and the degree to which critical pedagogy can be used to improve education for students of color, women and other marginalized groups.

Laboring Positions aims to disrupt the dominant discourse on academic women’s mothering experiences. Black women’s maternity is assumed, and yet is also silenced within the disembodied, patriarchal, racist, antifamily, and increasingly neoliberal work environment of academia. This volume acknowledges the salience of the institutional challenges facing contemporary caregiving academics; yet it is centrally concerned with expanding the academic mothering conversation by speaking against the private/public spheres approach. Laboring Positions does so by privileging the hybridity between Black women’s mothering experiences and their working lives within and beyond the academy. The collection also intentionally blurs essentialist boundaries of mother and “other”, which dictates and generates alternate border zones of knowledge production concerning Black academic women’s working lives. In doing so, the diverse perspectives captured herein offer us cogent starting points from which to interrogate the interlocking cultural, political, and economic hierarchies of the academy. The editorial goal of Laboring Positions is to offer a polyvocal collection embodying themes that privilege and arouse Black mothering as central in the narratives, research, and models of existence and resistance for Black women’s survival within the academy. The contributors utilize a wide variety of methods and perspectives including Black feminist theory, intersectional feminism, Womanist research ethics, hip-hop feminism, African-centered epistemologies, literary analysis, autoethnography, policy analysis, memoir, qualitative research, survival strategies and frameworks, and situated testimony that are all collectively bound by Black women’s intellectual lives, activist impulses, and experiences of mothering or being mothered. The critical embodied perspectives herein serve as evidence that Black women exist beyond the institutional and ideological boundaries that have attempted to define their journeys. Laboring Positions’ chapters speak to each other and some conversations are louder than others; yet together they offer us a complexly nuanced portrait of the emergent literature on race, gender, mothering, and work.

While critical race theory is a framework employed by activists and scholars within and outside the confines of education, there are limited resources for leadership practitioners that provide insight into critical race theory and the possibilities of implementing a critical race praxis approach to leadership. With a continued top-down approach to educational policy and practice, it is imperative that educational leaders understand how critical race theory and praxis can assist them in utilizing their agency and roles as leaders to identify and challenge institutional and systemic racism and other forms/manifestations of oppression (Stovall, 2004). In the tradition of critical race theory, we are charged with the task of operationalizing theory into practice in the struggle for, and commitment to, social justice. Though educational leaders and leadership programs have been all but absent in this process, given their influence and power, educational leaders need to be engaged in this endeavor. The objective of this edited volume is to draw upon critical race counter-stories and praxis for the purpose of providing leaders in training and practicing K-12 leaders with tangible narratives that demonstrate how racism and its intersectionality with other forms of oppression manifest within K-12 schooling. An additional aim of this book is to provide leaders with a working knowledge of the central tenets of critical race theory and the tools that are required in recognizing how they might be complicit in the reproduction of institutional and systemic racism and other forms of oppression. More precisely, this edited volume intends to draw upon and center the lived experiences and voices of contributors that have experienced racism in K-12 schooling. Through the use of critical race methodology and counter-storytelling (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002), contributors will share and interrogate their experiences while offering current and future educational leaders insight in recognizing how racism functions within institutions and how they can address it. The intended goal of this edited volume is to translate critical race theory into practice while emphasizing the need for educational leaders to develop a critical race praxis and anti-racist approach to leadership.

This authored text critically examines the theory and practice of college internship programs grounded in equity, diversity, inclusion, and access (EDIA) to examine issues such as infrastructure, inclusion, and privilege through "provocative praxis," a form of provocative inquiry that drives the ethics of pedagogy to envision student success both equitably and sustainably. Chapters use real-life, scenario-based examples through a social-justice framework to engage readers and spark multi-directional discussion aimed at removing obstacles to equitable participation in internships for all students. Ultimately, this book offers a holistic understanding of internships that factors in the social, economic, and cultural challenges faced by college students today, and calls for wholescale reform to college campus internship programs.