Fifteenth Annual AERABrownLecture in Education Research: Disrupting Punitive Practices and Policies: Rac(e)ing Back to Teaching, Teacher Preparation, andBrown

Abstract

Mr. Williams, a student during segregation and educator who began his career in the years following the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, sheds light on why Black students succeeded in all-Black schools as well as challenges faced in advancing racial justice. In his context, according to Mr. Williams, Black students succeeded because of the influence of Black teachers and the discipline that was cultivated among teachers and students. However, discipline was conceptualized and practiced in a developmentally supportive manner for students during segregation while it is practiced as a form of exclusion in schools currently. Milner argues that we should change our language of disciplinary practices to punishment practices to more accurately capture current practices. In addition, Milner introduces curriculum punishment as a tool to describe how students are punished when they are not exposed to potentially transformative, racially just learning opportunities that can result in vicarious trauma. Implications for teacher education are discussed.

Assessing Preservice Teachers’ Cultural Competence With the Cultural Proficiency Continuum Q-Sort

“…Embedded in the vignette is the notion that students who attend schools with the majority of students coming from economically challenged backgrounds cannot gain admittance to an Ivy League university without some form of institutional assistance rather than their personal merit. This notion is part of a larger social phenomenon (e.g., systemic racism and deficit mind-sets and low expectations), which in most cases goes unchecked without any problematization on behalf of the perpetrator (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Milner, 2020).…”

“…However, as of 2014, this transformation had already begun in U.S. public schools (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2016), prompting education researchers to discuss implications. One major implication is the discrepancy between the PreK–12 teacher workforce and the majority-minority student population (Easton-Brooks, 2019; Milner, 2020a; U.S. Department of Education, 2016).…”

Interrogating Structural Racism in STEM Higher Education

“…The far-reaching consequences of structural racism affect most domains of American society, such as healthcare, housing, education, employment, earnings, benefits, credit, media, politics, and criminal justice (e.g., Bailey et al, 2017; Groos et al, 2018; Milner, 2020). Institutional racism in educational settings often goes unnoticed.…”

Disrupting Racism and Whiteness in Researching a Science of Reading

“…Relying on an emerging conceptual framework that I am developing called disruptive movement (Milner, 2008a), I stress the necessity to disrupt (Milner, 2008a(Milner, , 2008b, counter (Milner & Howard, 2013), nuance, and expose (Milner, 2020a(Milner, , 2020b storylines, policies, and practices that center and maintain whiteness, racism, white suprem acy, and hegemony in all forms and at every level (micro, meso, and macro). I argue that the issue in disruption is not so much about people being White as much as it is about how they use their whiteness to maintain hierarchies of injustice (Alvarez & Milner, 2018).…”