Education researcher studies Black students’ visceral experiences of racism

By Stephanie Koons

Black students in the United States experience anti-Black racism often perpetrated by white people and other racially marginalized groups, according to DeMarcus Jenkins, assistant professor of education (educational leadership) in the Penn State College of Education. To date, much of the research focus has been on how white people enact anti-Black racism, overlooking how other non-Black groups are complicit in anti-Blackness. In a recent study, Jenkins examined how attending a predominately Latinx urban school (PLUS) impacts the ways race, antiBlackness and geography shape the educational experiences of Black students.

Jenkins’s research, published in Equity and Excellence in Education, revealed two major themes: (1) Black students felt a sense of unbelonging, and (2) they perceived their Blackness as unimaginable to nonBlack people. Based on this analysis, he argues that “the (Black) body is a space where researchers can collect information about anti-Blackness and work toward addressing racism in schools.”

“There’s been a good amount of scholarship that has explored racial dynamics in rapidly changing contexts,” said Jenkins. “If you are paying attention to schools in demographically changing contexts, I think we need to be careful not to always collapse Black students within the category of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) or students of color.

“There’s been scholarship that has looked at social/racial relations between Black and brown communities,” he added. “I wanted to draw from that body of scholarship to think about how Black students are experiencing their learning environments.”

Jenkins’ program of research considers the intersections of race, space and policy. His research focuses on the influence of spatial, social and political factors that foster and exacerbate inequalities for Black populations and the approaches that school leaders take to disrupt and transform these dynamics. His interdisciplinary approach to tackling complex and challenging racial equity problems in schools is informed by Black critical theory, critical spatial theory, Black geographies, critical policy studies and justice-oriented leadership frameworks.

“Bringing in different theoretical frameworks helps researchers handle old problems through new perspectives,” said Jenkins. “I hope this work encourages researchers to move outside the field of education and look to neighboring fields to look at new frameworks that are uniquely positioned to help us better understand issues.”

Jenkins began his study by conducting interviews and focus groups with Black students at Pueblo, a large magnet high school in the U.S. Southwest. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Arizona is only 5.4% Black or African American while the Hispanic or Latino category comprises 32.3% of the 7.276 million population. As the Latinx population continues to rise in the state and across the country, Jenkins said, an increasing number of Black students will be attending predominantly Latinx schools. The focus of his research, he said, is “how Black students embody anti-Blackness, how does it manifest toward them and how does that shape how they navigate school?”

In his paper, Jenkins cites prior research on race and education that “demonstrates that Black bodies are marked as undesirable and require exclusion or neglect.” He also draws on scholarship that shows that educators disproportionally discipline Black students via school suspensions or disciplinary referrals.

“There’s this idea in education that Blackness is constructed as something that is outside the realm of humanity, imaginability,” said Jenkins. “Blackness has been conceptualized as something other than human. Black critical theory helps us to explain how Black bodies have been perceived.” Born out of the oversights of critical race theory, Black Critical Theory (BlackCrit) is a theoretical orientation that accounts for the detailed and specific ways Black people live in and experience an anti-Black world.

To conduct his research, Jenkins observed several English classes and identified seven Black students enrolled in the African American literature course at Pueblo. More than half of the participants described their feelings in high school as being “unimaginable.” Several students articulated that they often felt like they did not have a place at the school outside of athletic clubs and extracurricular activities.

During the interviews, students also expressed feelings of anger, anxiety or embarrassment rendered by adults who held authority over particular spaces such as the library and nurse’s office. The students’ perception of space, Jenkins said, was interconnected with feelings of discomfort and unbelonging that “created a visceral experience at the scale of the body.”

Researchers center the experiences of Black women in counseling

Black women who face increased risk of death at the hands of intimate partners struggle to access counseling services, according to researchers at Penn State and the University of Connecticut. Their new research proposes a paradigm shift in intimate partner violence (IPV) counseling that considers how the use of trauma-informed and culturally relevant counseling can help counselors provide more informed services. Their work is rooted in Black feminist thought, a field of knowledge that is focused on the perspectives and experiences of Black women.

“For counselors in training and early career counselors, Black feminist thought provides the tools and the framework to determine how to be most useful and most helpful as a clinician from the standpoint of the person you are working with,” said Javier Casado Pérez, assistant professor of education in the Penn State College of Education.

Latoya Haynes-Thoby, an assistant professor of counselor education at the University of Connecticut, is lead author and Casado Pérez a co-author on a recent paper in the Journal of Couple & Relationship Therapy that fosters insights from the experiences of six Black women who have experienced intimate partner violence. Julia Bryan, professor of education (counselor education) in the Penn State College of Education, is another co-author.

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Education professor analyzes South Korean educational reforms

As a Penn State education researcher with a specific interest in comparative and international education, and a native of South Korea, Soo-yong Byun has extensive knowledge about the South Korean educational system and how it compares to the American model.

Byun, professor of education (educational theory and policy), demography and Asian studies, coauthored a chapter of a recently published book, “International Handbook on Education Development in Asia-Pacific,” which “delves into a spectrum of critical, contemporary topics in Asian and Pacific contexts and socio-cultural perspectives.”

“There are two contrasting views,” Byun said. “How can we provide a balanced view of the Korean educational system by highlighting both the strengths and weaknesses and how the strengths and weaknesses correlate with each other?”

“Between Light and Shadow: The Contrasting Landscape and Contemporary Development of South Korea’s School System” delves into the “bright sides” of the country’s school system and unveils the “flip sides” of the system, corresponding to the system’s strengths. The authors explore longstanding issues such as academic excellence amid inequality, high educational attainment but low academic confidence and well-being, and the coexistence of a well-established school system with an expansive shadow education market — which refers to private supplementary tutoring.

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Bimodal intervention shows promise for intimate partner violence survivors

Black women involved in the legal system disproportionately experience intimate partner violence (IPV) but currently have few options for tailored interventions that consider intersectionality, according to a researcher in the Penn State College of Education.

Brandy Henry, assistant professor of education (rehabilitation and human services), co-authored a study that found that Black women who are survivors of IPV, particularly those with co-occurring substance use disorders and who are also involved in the criminal legal system, could benefit from a culturally sensitive intervention.

“The goal is to tailor an intervention that would address the stresses Black women face that create barriers to accessing services for substance use and interpersonal violence,” Henry said.

In their paper published in Women’s Health Reports, the researchers conducted a subgroup analysis of Black women using data from a randomized controlled trial that evaluated the feasibility and efficacy of two IPV screening and prevention programs for women who use drugs or engage in binge drinking and were under community supervision in New York City.

“It’s already known we need more services, particularly services that address intersectional problems for marginalized communities,” said Henry. “The remaining question was, given that (IPV victims) are disproportionately women of color, are there differential effects of intervention by race? We wanted to know, was the goal of culturally tailoring services effective?”

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