Bouchet Honor Society 2023

This weekend I was inducted into the Bouchet Honor Society!

I am honored to be associated with Dr. Bouchet’s legacy and humbled to be joining alongside this amazing group of scholars from the University of Michigan Rackham Graduate School.

UM Bouchet Honor Society 2023:
Gabrielle Elizabeth Bernal (Educational Studies)
Nagash Clark (Engineering Education)
Azya Philomena Croskey (Chemical Biology)
Laura-Ann Jacobs (National Center for Institutional Diversity)
Shana D. Littleton (Clinial Pharmacy)
Saraí Blanco Martinez (Combined Program of Education and Psychology)
Sierra A. Nance (Molecular and Integrative Physiology)
Aaron J. Neal (Psychology)
Adriana Ponce (Sociology)
Michole Washington (Educational Studies)

Click here to learn more about this year’s University of Michigan inductees

Thank you to Dr. Ethriam Brammer, LaTasha Mitchell, and Askari Rushing for all of your work in making this such a wonderful, memorable, joyful, and celebratory experience.

Description:

Named for the first African American doctoral recipient in the United States (Physics, Yale University, 1876), the Edward Alexander Bouchet Graduate Honor Society (Bouchet Society) recognizes outstanding scholarly achievement and promotes diversity and excellence in doctoral education and the professoriate. The Bouchet Society is a network of preeminent scholars who exemplify academic and personal excellence, foster environments of support and serve as examples of scholarship, leadership, character, service, and advocacy for students who have been traditionally underrepresented in the academy. In the spirit of Bouchet’s commitment to these ideals, inductees into the honor society must demonstrate significant achievement in these five areas.

Click here to learn more about the Bouchet Honor Society at the University of Michigan
Click here to learn more about the Bouchet Honor Society Conference at Yale

Society for Research on Child Development (SRCD) 2023

This year I will be attending the Society for Research on Child Development (SRCD) Conference in Salt Lake City.

On Saturday, March 25 I will be co-moderating a session with Dr. Christina Rucinski (EmbraceRace).

Raising a Brave Generation: The Role of Developmental Scientists in Building a Multidisciplinary Field of Children’s Racial Learning

Moderators: Drs. Christina Rucinski (EmbraceRace) and Laura-Ann Jacobs (University of Michigan)

Panelists: Drs. Christia Spears Brown (University of Kentucky), Andrew Grant-Thomas (EmbraceRace), Gabriela Livas Stein (University of North Carolina Greensboro), Deborah Rivas-Drake (University of Michigan), Dawn Witherspoon (Penn State University)

Abstract:

Public interest in fostering children’s racial learning is growing. Efforts from scientists, educators, media, and others to respond to this interest signal that a robust, multisectoral field of children’s racial learning is needed–and already emerging. As developmental scientists shift toward embracing scholar-activist identities, questions about how to catalyze and sustain a large-scale movement promoting children’s healthy racial learning are increasingly relevant. This session will lift up opportunities for developmentalists to help strengthen the field of children’s racial learning. The conversation will be framed by members of the Standing uP Against Racism and Xenophobia (SPARX) project (Drs. Christia Spears Brown, Laura-Ann Jacobs, Gabriela Livas Stein, Debbie Rivas-Drake, and Dawn Witherspoon), alongside practitioners (Drs. Andrew Grant-Thomas and Christina Rucinski) from EmbraceRace, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting caregivers in raising children who are thoughtful, informed, and brave about race.

The discussion will explore expansive conceptualizations of antiracist development and caregiving and will highlight emerging evidence about resources and experiences that may support antiracist practices. SPARX will share insights from interviews with diverse parents across the U.S., how those perspectives map onto the landscape of existing resources, and what still needs to be developed. EmbraceRace will speak to efforts to build supportive communities of practice among caregivers and will introduce the Rapid Response Research Network, a new recruitment tool to support research on antiracist interventions, tools, and strategies. Time will be reserved for attendees to exchange insights around their own motivations and goals for contributing to the movement to promote healthy racial learning.

Click here to learn more about EmbraceRace

American Anthropological Association 2022

This week I traveled to Seattle, WA to present at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting “Unsettling Landscapes.”

My talk was based on a portion of my dissertation and was titled “‘Telling Another Kind of Story’: Autoethnography as Counterstory in Unsettling White Supremacy in Teacher Education.”

ABSTRACT:

Many well-intending teachers perpetuate racism within their schools and classrooms. Teacher education programs have an urgent responsibility to shift teachers’ attentions from their intentions of equity toward the impact that racially uninformed practices have in their classrooms. This study focuses on how a teacher educator of color engages preservice teachers in antiracist learning. The goal of this study is to learn about the internal and external work of antiracist teacher education for the purposes of examining invisible labor of instructors of color, developing instructional strategies to support antiracist teaching and learning, and understanding preservice teachers’ realizations of antiracist pedagogy through their educational practice.

My methodological approach is autoethnography (Behar, 1996; Narayan, 1997; Purcell-Gates, 2011) as critical race counterstorytelling (Solórzano & Yosso , 2002). My investigation into this research question focuses on the challenges teacher educators of color experience in antiracist teaching and learning and how we experience these challenges. This autoethnographic counterstory seeks to humanize the experiences of teacher educators of color, reveal the latent white supremacist belief systems in teacher education programs, show possibility for changing teacher education programs, and invite collaboration for the construction of a new reality for teacher educators of color in teacher education.

What tensions arise for a teacher educator of color doing antiracist teacher education? In this study, preservice teachers positioned teacher educators and scholars of color as unprofessional non-experts. Preservice teachers demonstrated this positioning by delegitimizing and dehumanizing instructors and scholars of color. In contrast, preservice teachers demonstrated legitimizing and humanizing behaviors towards white scholars. Preservice teachers demonstrated delegitimizing and dehumanizing practices by disregarding the teacher educator of color’s pedagogical and disciplinary/content area authority, by refusing to engage with the teacher educator of color’s feedback, and by claiming an absence of guidelines, support, and expectations. Their positioning of people of color as delegitimized and dehumanized instructors and scholars enabled these preservice teachers to resist antiracist learning and perpetuate harmful behaviors aligned with white supremacy in the classroom.

How do teacher educators of color experience challenges to antiracist pedagogy? Teacher educators of color experience harm to their well-being in the forms of fatigue, exhaustion, mental pain, and physical pain as a consequence of enduring ongoing racism and resistance to antiracism from preservice teachers. Understanding how teacher educators of color experience preservice teachers’ resistances to antiracism in the form of delegitimizing and dehumanizing behaviors provides crucial perspectives for examining the invisible labor of teacher educators of color and considers possible supports for teacher educators of color as they engage with the difficult and complex work of challenging systems of oppression. 

The findings from this study call for larger discourse around support for teacher educators of color as they engage in the difficult and complex work of challenging systems of oppression in the preparation of preservice teachers.

NCTE 2021

On Friday, November 19 from 1:15-2:30pm EST via Zoom, I will be presenting on a panel titled “A Different Mirror:” Linguistic Histories of Being Asian/American (in the English classroom).

Proposal Description

For Asian/American students, mother tongues link family, heritage, identities. Yet students must often give up their language in school, perpetuating White supremacy. Drawing on Latin American testimonio, six Asian/American educators will share (auto)ethnographies that explore the confluence of identity and language history, with implications for the classroom.

Thank you to my fellow panelists!

Naitnaphit Limlamai, University of Michigan Ann Arbor
Laura-Ann Jacobs, University of Michigan Ann Arbor
Diana Liu, Teachers College, Columbia University
Grace Player, University of Connecticut
Reshma Ramkellawan-Arteaga, Teaching Matters
Byung-In Seo, Chicago State University

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KAAN 2019

This was my second year attending KAAN (Korean American Adoptee Adoptive Family Network). KAAN is a national organization that supports Korean adoptees. This year’s conference took place in Minneapolis, MN.

This year’s keynote speaker was Nicole Chung who spoke about her experiences as a Korean-American adoptee and her recently published memoir, All You Can Ever Know.

The Korean adoptee community is an amazing place of strength and support, and I am grateful that I have made connections within this group who have helped me and healed me.

AERA 2019 Presentation

I will be presenting a workshop format at 2019 AERA in Toronto with Carolyn Hetrick and Naivedya Parakkal. Our workshop is titled “Moving Theory into Practice: Methodological Considerations Regarding Positionality, Identity, and Research Reflexivity.”

In this session, we will share about our own evolving research, reflect on how critical race methodologies have informed our work, and facilitate discussion around how attendees’ see themselves engaging with identity, positionality, and reflexivity in their own work.

We have created visual tools to support this discussion and engagement. Please contact lxjacobs@umich.edu for more information.

2019 GSRC Keynote Panel

Announcing the 2019 GSCO Graduate Student Research Conference Keynote Panel! Panelists will speak about their work and make connections to the conference theme, Embracing Tensions for Equity: Bridging Research, Policy, and Practice in Education.

Keynote Panelists:
Charles Wilkes, University of Michigan
Dr. Maren Oberman, University of Michigan
Dr. Alistair Bomphray, University of Michigan
Dr. Maisha Winn, University of California, Davis

Moderator:
Ebony Perouse-Harvey

What's Good?: Women of Color and the Academy

Announcing an upcoming panel hosted by Women of Color and the Academy at the GSCO Graduate Student Research Conference.

What’s Good?: A Conversation with Women of Color and the Academy

Friday, March 15
2:45 - 3:45 PM
Room 2346

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Moderators:
Laura-Ann Jacobs
Ebony Perouse-Harvey

Discussant:
Asya Harrison

Panelists:
Ashley Jackson
Christina Morton
Naivedya Parakkal
Christine Quince
Jenny Sawada
Crystal Wise

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Panelists will share some of their own experiences and strategies for persisting within this predominantly white institution for the purpose of supporting, encouraging, and connecting with other panelists and audience members. We hope that intended audience members will take away some sustaining strategies for surviving and thriving as individuals and as a community. Additionally, we hope that this panel creates a space of love, support, and community within the GSCO Graduate Student Research Conference as panelists and audience members share about their experiences and encourage each other in their personal and professional work.

Our intended audience is those who identify as women of color--this includes graduate students of color and faculty members of color. We welcome audience members who do not identify as women of color or persons of color. However, this presentation intends to feature, center, and privilege the voices and experiences of women of color.

This presentation will be divided into two parts. The first part of the discussion will feature panelists responding to questions generated at a WOCATA core member meeting. The second part of the discussion will include a Question and Answer session with audience members. This second portion of the discussion will be less structured and will invite audience members to ask questions and to share about their own experiences.

GSCO/BET Graduate Student Research Conference 2019

Embracing Tensions for Equity

Bridging Research, Policy, & Practice in Education

Friday, March 15, 2019, U-M School of Education

Proposal Applications Due January 22, 2019

As we engage in research, develop policy, and implement practice, we must resolve various tensions in order to create equitable solutions. Negotiating how to apply differing methodologies and navigating our positionalities and obligations to multiple stakeholders are a few of the inherent tensions in our work. Eliding these tensions is problematic—they have consequences for the lived experiences of every stakeholder in education, from students to policymakers.

The debate involving the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), implemented in 2012, provides an example of the type of tensions involved in equity work. The administrative protections provided to Dreamers, children and young adults who entered the United States without documentation, are now in jeopardy under the current presidential administration. Researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners must grapple with tensions related to DACA’s position as an administrative program that can be more readily “rolled back,” as well as its prohibitions against providing undocumented students with federal and state financial aid, which potentially hinders Dreamers’ access to higher education. This is just one example of some of the overlapping tensions that inform the work of researchers, policymakers, and practitioners in that area.

Reimagine your current work: how can you leverage who you are and what you bring to your work in a way that productively and generatively confronts these tensions and promotes diversity, equity, justice and inclusion?

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Click here to learn more about the GSCO Graduate Student Research Conference.

American Educational Research Association 2019

Excited to be attending the American Educational Research Association (AERA) 2019 Annual Meeting in Toronto, Canada!

I will be presenting a workshop with Carolyn Hetrick and Naivedya Parakkal titled "Moving Theory into Practice: Methodological Considerations Regarding Positionality, Identity, and Researcher Reflexivity." We worked hard to coordinate our proposal across three different time zones this past summer.

Abstract:

In this session, three researchers will share their methodological considerations about positionality, identity, and reflexivity. First, the researchers will draw upon a shared framework of critical race methodological literature to establish a common frame for understanding their otherwise disparate scholarship and to orient workshop participants to how the researchers see their work relating to extant reflexivity practices and scholarship. Second, the presenters will each share the methodological processes and theoretical orientations they have used to engage in rigorous (and ongoing) reflexivity and consideration of their positionalities. Third, the presenters will engage participants in small- and whole-group discussion to shed further light on how identities, contexts, conceptual approaches, and other methodological considerations both call for and influence researcher reflexivity and identity-investigation.

Carolyn Hetrick: Through the mirror: Methodological considerations for practicing critical reflexivity as a white researcher working with youth of color

Laura-Ann Jacobs: Twice adopted: A researcher’s investigation of multi-layered identity and reflexive practice

Naivedya Parakkal: Navigating ambiguities and changes in researcher reflexivity and positionality