Drawing on more than forty interviews with teachers, principals, and district leaders, Manya C. Whitaker offers educators guidance for leading a school or district grounded in social justice that centers teachers—not just teaching practices—and that focuses on the belief systems that shape decision-making.

The chapters walk educational leaders through a strategic approach to long-term change: from school planning for family and community engagement, to hiring and onboarding teachers, to sustaining equity through multifaceted professional development and equitable evaluation. Concrete “how-to”s are provided throughout, along with reflection questions to help readers apply the content to their context.

Supported by over 20 years of research, this book offers guidance for enhancing teachers' inclusive instructional practices by using the Dispositions for Culturally Responsive Pedagogy Scale (DCRPS). Developed by the authors, this is the only validated scale that measures the diversity-related beliefs, values, and attitudes that underpin multicultural teaching practices. The DCRPS measures three domains: Dispositions for Community, Dispositions for Social Justice, and Dispositions for Praxis. 

Schooling Multicultural Teachers offers a historical overview of the multicultural education context, followed by practical examples of how the DCRPS can support program evaluation, as well as guide pre-service and in-service teacher development across diverse programs and demographic contexts. Educators are provided with examples of how to interpret DCRPS responses, how to combine the DCRPS with other resources, and how to customize professional development that builds on teachers' dispositional strengths while also addressing community-specific needs.  By offering a resource for program assessment and teacher development, this book is an invaluable text for education administrators, professional development coordinators, and teacher educators.

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Learning from the Inside-Out: Child Development and School Choice is the first book of its kind to marry child development, educational psychology, neuroscience, and pedagogy. This book goes beyond the now banal conversation of differentiating students based upon gender, race, and class. This book is about the cognitive and social needs of students throughout the developmental span and how to identify schools that meet those needs. In essence, this book rejects the one-size-fits-all discourse of education reform in favor of a focus on individualized educational decision-making. Learning from the Inside-Out acknowledges that contrary to the popular saying, good teaching is not good teaching. What one student needs in a teacher, classroom environment or curricula is not necessarily what another student might need despite demographic similarities. After reading this book, parents and teachers will be empowered and informed when making decisions about how best to educate children.

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This book documents the lived experiences of women of color academics who have leveraged their professional positions to challenge the status quo in their scholarship, teaching, service, activism, and leadership. By presenting reflexive work from various vantage points within and outside of the academy, contributors document the cultivation of mentoring relationships, the use of administrative roles to challenge institutional leadership, and more. Through an emphasis on the various ways in which women of color have succeeded in the academy—albeit with setbacks along the way—this volume aims to change the discourse surrounding women of color academics: from a focus on trauma and mere survival to a focus on courage and thriving.

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