Can educational psychology be harnessed to make changes for the greater good?

Abstract

As the American Psychological Association and Division 15 committed to addressing systemic racism after the 2020 summer of racial reckoning, orchestrated political attacks that vilify pedagogical approaches aimed at addressing racial injustice have thwarted schools' efforts across the nation. Against this context, the overarching aim of this article is a call to action for educational psychology to contribute to changes for the greater good. To that end, the article contextualizes the field’s lack of engagement in contemporary schooling controversies before turning to a discussion of the contemporary attacks against anti-racist approaches. A concise historiographical review is provided to illustrate the recurring tensions that have consistently thwarted equitable educational efforts. After discussing how growing scholarship focused on anti-racist research approaches in educational psychology can shape educational psychology’s future with a vision toward an anti-racist social purpose of schooling, recommendations and implications for educational psychology are provided.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Jason Chen and David Morris for their invitation to create a webinar for APA Division 15, which inspired this manuscript. I would also like to extend my deepest gratitude to the editor and external reviewers for their critiques and suggestions to strengthen the manuscript.

Notes

1 Although Division 15’s Racism Statement is centered on anti-racism, harnessing educational psychology for the greater good extends to those marginalized on the basis of religion, disability, gender, and other dimensions of identity because “[a] critical examination of daily human experiences reveals that all social oppressions are inextricably linked (Sefa Dei, 1999, p. 20).

2 Ian Haney López was a student of “the Father of CRT,” Derrick Bell.

3 I. H. López (2005) explains, “Trial by jury rests on the idea of peers judging and being judged by peers. In the context of Texas race politics, however, to put Mexican Americans on juries was tantamount to elevating them to equal status with whites. The idea that "Mexicans" might judge whites deeply violated Texas' racial caste system…. Hernandez would help to topple a key pillar of Jim Crow: the belief that whites should judge all, but be judged by none but themselves” (p. 63).

4 Christopher Rufo is considered the source of the CRT controversy. A Senior Fellow at Manhattan Institute, he has shared the following on social media: “I am quite intentionally redefining what ‘critical race theory’ means in the public mind, expanding it as a catchall for the new racial orthodoxy. People won’t read Derrick Bell, but when their kid is labeled an ‘oppressor’ in first grade, that is now CRT.” For a review, see Wallace-Wells (2021).

5 The Twelfth Annual Report was Mann’s last as the Secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education and reflected “all the themes of his earlier reports into one great credo of public education” (Osgood, 1997, p. 376).

6 In California, the bill to rescind the bilingual education ban was entitled, “California Education for a Global Economy Initiative” (Taylor & Udang, 2016). In Massachusetts, House Bill 4032 (2017) referenced the Seal of Biliteracy for all students.

7 By excluding them from the curriculum except in ways that reify negative views of their racial and/or ethnic group.

8 This body of scholarship includes culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995a, 1995b), equity pedagogy (Banks, 1993), critical bicultural pedagogy (Darder, 2012), culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris, 2012), and many others (see F. López, 2017). It has also been referred to as culturally relevant and responsive education (Kumar et al., 2018).

9 The systematic review included studies that found prejudice and bias were related to lower expectations but did not conceptualize ways to address implicit bias beyond recommending that teachers demonstrate high expectations for all students.