Armstrong, Denise E. and McMahon, Brenda J. (Eds). (2006). Inclusion in Urban Educational Environments: Addressing Issues of Diversity, Equity, and Social Justice. Reviewed by Angeles Maldonado, Arizona State University

Armstrong, Denise E. and McMahon, Brenda J. (Eds). (2006). Inclusion in Urban Educational Environments: Addressing Issues of Diversity, Equity, and Social Justice. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, Inc. Pp. xvi + 330     ISBN: 1-59311-493-1     Reviewed by Angeles Maldonado Arizona State University March 15, 2007 Jim Ryan, in his chapter in the book under review, “Exclusion in Urban Schools and Communities” describes his experience as a nine-year-old boy, sitting on the sidelines, because of his age and size, watching a football game unfold in front of him. He depicts the feeling of being excluded as “one of the most enduring memories” of his childhood. Without doubt, many of us have experienced some form of exclusion growing up. However, the extent to which certain groups experience it tends to vary across what Ryan describes as “social locations.” For many years, schools have served a key role in reinforcing certain conventions and closed caste systems that include some children while excluding others. The multiple forms of exclusion within schools tend to be based on one’s attributes such as gender, ethnicity, race, class, sexual orientation, and physical characteristics. In essence, one’s access to privilege is predetermined, despite the fact that we acquire these attributes by pure chance. An undocumented immigrant child unable to speak the language of the country, a gay student forced to live in silence and fear, a disabled child excluded from the classroom for being different, a 15 year-old Black boy mistreated and monitored because of his race—these are a few of many examples presented in Denise E. Armstrong and Brenda J. McMahon’s book Inclusion In Urban Educational Environments: Addressing Issues of Diversity, Equity, and Social Justice. The book comprises the contributions of many authors who describe the experiences of students in urban schools who are “regularly excluded from many things in life, forced to stand on the sidelines and watch the game unfold without them” (p. 4). The assumption that school is the one setting where everyone gets an opportunity to learn and be treated as an equal is significantly challenged by this book. Through a series of case studies, we learn that exclusion in educational environments is often the norm rather than the exception. The compilation of writings, on the nature and extent of exclusion in urban schools, is a useful tool for educators seeking to understand the complexities of education and its culture. While contemporary research continues to focus on the deficiencies and gaps in student achievement, focus is seldom directed at the root cause of these educational differences and the ways in which exclusionary practices are ingrained and reinforced. Even when the fundamental causes are revealed, they are often dismissed and discourse on education reform continues to be misdirected. Armstrong and McMahon, however, succeed in presenting the complexities of educational settings and provoking discourse on how society can develop more inclusive places for learning. The range and diversity of topics presented merit further research and our attention. Themes and Contents Inclusion In Urban Educational Environments is a collection of case studies on themes and topics ranging from understanding structural exclusion in school culture, the impact of high expectations on student achievement, the benefits of developing partnerships between schools and communities, expanding our conception of legitimate knowledge, challenging ideologies in understanding special education and disability, gender and its effects on cognitive reading, sexual identities in schools and communities, anti-oppressive pedagogies, schools as sites of resistance, binary gender roles, ethnicity and oppression, silencing of minority youth in school culture, power structures and social control, to exploring inclusion practices and recommendations for change. The editors divided this volume into five parts: Part I: Intersecting Exclusions within School Culture, Part II: Socioeconomic Status and Ability, Part III: Gender and Sexual Identity, Part IV: Race and Ethnicity, and Part V: Toward Inclusion In Schools and Communities. Through the various case studies and mix of topics, the reader gains a deeper understanding of educational environments. The authors reveal the intricate role that they play in the development of children’s identities, self-esteem, gender roles, mental/physical health, and overall outlook on life and their chances for success. Additionally, the reader obtains a sense that schools are not ideal places after all, for they engage in activities, processes, and practices that promote ideologies that foster exclusion of certain groups. Lastly, the concept of urbanity is reflected throughout the book, revealing that the urban city becomes a landscape for addressing issues of justice, as it is seen as a site of resistance, violence, progressiveness, and change. The contributing authors present on a range of topics that, in their eyes, are unaddressed elsewhere, and continue to make schools unsafe and damaging to many students. The chapters, though organized under five themes, could be categorized into three groups: Chapters that reveal a problem or forms of exclusion (chapters 1, 5, 7, 8, 10, 12), Chapters that expose a concept or culture (chapters 2, 6, 9, 11), and Chapters that pose examples of what can be done to promote inclusion in urban education (chapters 3, 4, 13, 14,15) One: Forms of Exclusion The strongest chapters in the book tend to fall under category one, those that reveal a problem. These chapters provided great insight into the nature of exclusion. Though many can imagine or understand that this is something that exists, the case studies provided a human element that enhances the purpose of the book. Chapter 1, for instance, gives background on the various forms of exclusion that take place in classrooms today. Jim Ryan calls for ongoing exploration of the underlying ideologies and reasons that perpetrate this unjust environment that grants access to some and denies access to others. Ryan’s chapter sheds light on the vast forms of oppression that prevail and are legitimized in American classrooms, via policies, one sided curricula, texts, language, and discourse. Ryan presents concepts of cultural capital, social locations, and power relations to explain how we can understand the different experiences people have. This chapter is a good introduction to the rest of the book, presenting issues related to race, diversity, ethnicity, gender, poverty, and physical abilities. In this section one learns about the culture in which schools function, an era of racial profiling, dissent for immigration and population growth, the pressures faced by the gay community, harassment, suicide rates, conservative policies, poverty levels, prevalence of service industry employment, racism in the justice system, labor structures, and how all these factors interrelate to create oppressive educational structures (pp. 3-30). In Chapter 5, “Flipping the Special Education Coin,” author Lindy Zaretsky analyzes “competing conceptions of disability grounded in medical and social theoretical models” and proposes that we transform the way we traditionally conceive of students with disabilities (p. 92). The chapter engages us in appreciating that students are not disabled but rather different. By dropping the pursuit of objectivity and the pretensions of scientific inquiry, the author proposes that we become more accepting of “multiple interpretations and ways of knowing” (p. 97) because the current medical model and research are not creating real ways to address the barriers and challenges faced by individual students. These models tend to focus on the child's deficits in learning rather than the deficits in the curriculum and environment that do not facilitate learning for all students (p. 97). Additionally, Zaretsky illustrates the inequities embedded in school structures and calls for a re-conceptualization of disability as something that “is part of the overall diversity of the school” (p. 104). The author also argues the need for schools to become more welcoming and accepting of parents who desire to have a say over the education of their children. A final point presented is the need to bridge the gap between “scholarly perspectives with actual classroom practices” when engaging in critical dialogue about special education issues (p. 106). Similarly, Chapter 7, “LGBTQ Students in Urban Schools,” Chapter 8, “My Favorite Martian,” and Chapter 10 “Black Boys through the School-Prison Pipeline,” elaborate on how LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer) students and Black boys utilize school grounds as sites for resistance in an attempt to secure equal rights. Still the level of harassment, vilification, and marginalization of these groups is so extreme that many become forced to leave school altogether. For LGBTQ students, their marginalization stems from the pressure to conform to ideologies, practices, and norms posed by their peer and teachers. There is an underlying myth in school structures that all students and people are heterosexual and fit into a particular gender role, male or female. Students who do not fit these molds are thus forced to deny their identities and appropriate a divided personality to fit into school culture. Kevin Alderson’s piece, chapter 8, utilizes a character that becomes invisible via its antennae, from the sitcom “My Favorite Martian,” as a metaphor for what LGBTQ students are forced to do at schools, i.e., become invisible out of fear of the repercussions of being different. Dominique Johnson presents background and historical information about LGBTQ students in Chapter 7. Accordingly, one of the first instances in which gay students utilized schools as a site for activism occurred in 1972 in the Bronx, New York City. There are only “eight states and the District of Columbia that currently have statewide legal protections for students based on sexual orientation” (p. 141). We learn that the numerous cases of harassment, violence, injuries, and suicides warrant our immediate attention. Moreover, Alderson reveals that our expectations of safety are not realized, in particular for LGBTQ students. The author reveals the damaging effect of having a “binary system that genders human traits” and “embraces such old stereotypes of how a male [or a female] is supposed to look, talk, act...” (p. 157). Alderson’s research reports that in the recent random school shootings, every one of the perpetrators had been “continually teased, bullied, and beat up as a though they were gay, barraged with the typical homophobic epithets that we all know too well-until they could take it no longer” (p. 157). R. Patrick Solomon and Howard Palmer, in Chapter 10, present a similar story about school as a place for resistance. The authors describe how the authority structure of schools and the so called “zero tolerance” policies contribute to the criminalization and racial profiling of Black youth, specifically Black males who are perceived as aggressive, violent, and disruptive. Their study, conducted in 1995-96, presents the narratives of Black youth, who have been incarcerated. The narratives reveal that the top-down power structure common in schools eventually leads to “alienation and distancing between students and school authority” (p. 195). Specifically, the misuse of discipline policies, stereotypes, racism, police intervention in schools, and “the reallocation of resources from teaching to security personnel and sophisticated electronic surveillance systems” all serve to force these youth out of schools and set up a "pipeline that leads to incarceration in secure custody institutions" (p.197). After presenting many examples of how Black students have been harassed, unjustly monitored, and suspended, the authors propose utilizing Paulo Freire’s (1996) Pedagogy of the Oppressed approach to addressing these issues of oppression. Finally, Solomon and Palmer conclude that “schools as socializing institutions must be liberating and empowering” (p. 207). Two: Educational Culture In addition to exposing the various forms of exclusion, another thematic element of the book deals with how particular aspects of culture are embedded in educational environments. Examples are found in Chapters 2, 6, 9, and 11, which reveal concepts that serve to reinforce exclusion in education. Amy Barnhill in Chapter 6 for example linked gender in texts to the notion of gender schema and cognitive complexity. Gender schema are defined as “the degree to which individuals organize their self-concepts and behaviors on the basis of their gender” (p. 113) and cognitive complexity relates to “a thinking process” that organizes events and relations from complex to simplistic categorization (p. 114). This study presents how gender elements in texts affect the reading capabilities and thinking levels across genders. Barnhill suggests that gender inequalities are perpetuated through texts, and that higher levels of thinking are promoted when the gender orientation of texts matches the readers’ gender. Additionally, Gunilla Holm and Bill Cobern (in Chapter 9) describe the concept of voice as manifested by urban girls in an all-girl charter school. The authors explore how the school’s supportive environment of high expectations coupled with the teachers’ misunderstanding of the girls’ culture and lives silenced and disempowered them. The interplay of these chapters was significantly random. While Jim Ryan’s chapter (chapter 1) contained holistic and strong assertions, Rene Antrop-Gonzalez’s chapter (chapter 2) leaves the reader disappointed and confused. The authors focus on school culture as reflected in yearbook discourses. The case study is based on an analysis of yearbook writings. Authors Debra Freedman, Rene Antrop Gonzalez, Jennifer L. Snow-Gerono, Anne L. Slonaker, Pey Chewn Duo, and Hsiu-Ping Huang study their own yearbooks and conduct an analysis of what they find. The authors describe how their diverse backgrounds add to the complexity of their understandings of school culture. The study intends to uncover hidden and “unnoticed social discourses that occur in schools” (p. 32). The research, however, seems incredibly flawed as the interpretations of the six yearbooks stretch reality to conform to the already established assumptions of the authors. The interpretations seemed stretched, at times beyond safe limits, to conform to the presuppositions of the authors. Further, the relevance of the chapter could be questioned. As I read, I found myself questioning the direction that the book would take. While the intentions behind the research are significant to understanding school culture, the research or analysis was in danger of lapsing into the simplistic and subjective. An example, for instance, is when the authors analyze what it meant to read a notice found within the yearbook, stating “NOTICE! PLEASE CHECK FOR DAMAGE BEFORE WRITING ON THIS BOOK. THIS ANNUAL CANNOT BE RETURNED IF WRITING APPEARS IN ANY SECTION OF THE ANNUAL” (p. 33). The authors conclude from this notice that they “recognized this as the school’s attempt at instilling its power over” them “as they would only accept books that were not ‘damaged’” (p. 33). Contrary to their interpretation, I found the notice to be a natural attempt to explain to students that if you write on the book you cannot return it, period. I really did not see any hidden meanings in this scenario or that the school was viewing the yearbook or their writing in it as a form of damage, since the purpose of a yearbook is to record one’s memories and write in it. Overall this chapter seemed a bit scattered. Similarly, Robin DiAngelo’s conclusions, in Chapter 11 entitled “I’m Leaving, White Fragility in Racial Dialogues,” appear somewhat flawed and biased. The article explores the concept of "white fragility," as revealed in a study that documented discourses and practices in racial dialogues among future pre-service teachers. They vaguely define “white fragility” as a “lack of racial stamina” (p. 214). Specifically, they explain that when White pre-service teachers first encounter a multicultural education course, they commonly display a sense of resistance, “anger, withdrawal, emotional incapacitation, guilt, argumentation, and cognitive dissonance,” the authors call these reactions “white fragility.” DiAngelo theorizes that in discussing issues of race, there is a fragility or discomfort among White teachers that emerges, and that in order to address issues of racism in schools one cannot ignore "racial location" (p. 235). This chapter, while having the potential to raise important issues of race, developed to be much too extreme in its assertions. The article contains dialogue between a Facilitator of Color, a White Facilitator, and a White Teacher. In one situation, for example, one of the participants in the study walks away from the group following the interplay of words between the facilitators and the participants. The facilitator’s words appear to be leading in nature towards a desired response. In analyzing what took place, the author’s conclusions do not really match up to what occurred. DiAngelo elaborates that White people are hesitant to discuss issues of race, but the way in which they are interrogated rather than talked to, would make anyone uncomfortable (including me, a person of color). The author ends up seeming manipulative in his interpretations of the observations. Overall this study and its findings appear misconstrued and did not offer much hope for transforming institutionalized racism. In Chapter 12, author Lesley Shore is much more successful than DiAngelo in advocating for a stronger antiracist approach to educating and preparing pre-service teachers. Shore utilizes the holocaust and Anne Frank to express the importance of including complete histories in the education of future teachers. Shore explains that her “vision of an inclusive classroom centers on daily practice that questions, upends, and re-conceptualizes ‘received knowledges’ – from home, from church, from culture, from media” (p. 251). The idea of challenging our present knowledge recurs throughout this volume. Three: Forms of Inclusion Another significant aspect of this book is the presentation of alternative solutions or rather forms in which inclusion has been or can be practiced in urban schools. While these policy recommendations are embedded throughout the different articles, they are particularly pronounced in the ones discussed here. The reader learns through Chapters 3, 4, 13, 14, and 15, for instance, about the Pygmalion effect in education or rather how student achievement can be improved through high expectations of students (Chapter 3 by Leigh Kale D’Amico). Readers also learn about the possibilities and benefits that emerge in establishing community partnerships (Chapter 4 by Chatherine Hands), and explore how teacher activists utilize multicultural and antiracist theories in their in their quest for social justice (Chapter 13 by Darren E. Lund). D.E. Lund’s qualitative study of teacher activists in Canada highlights the need to continue progressive multicultural academic research. The book presents the ways in which teachers are enacting practices of inclusion, “From specific lesson plans on historical racism, to incorporating current debates into class discussions, to modifying their daily interactions with students, to shaping specific school activism around particular themes emerging from academic discourse and collaborations with students” (p. 271). Other examples or alternatives are posed by authors Norman Rowen and Kevin Gosine in Chapter 14 and by Brenda McMahon and Denise E. Armstrong in Chapter 15. In particular, Chapter 15, authored by the editors Armstrong and McMahon offer an excellent analysis and roadmap for developing more inclusive spaces for learning. They use Foster’s (1986) and Eisner’s (2002) analogies of schools as artistic endeavors and postulate a need to change our narrow visions of education to a more "polyfocal" and reflective approach “to equity and social justice which encompass[es] issues related to people, program, policies, and procedures” (p. 303). Specifically, they reveal the need to allow the many actors in education to take an active role in transforming and shaping schools into more inclusive settings. It is argued that while urban teachers are doing many right things, the overall systemic tendency to exclude requires much more attention. Schools need to carefully examine policies and procedures and challenge the assumptions that give way to exclusion. The article presents, both short term and long term initiatives such as hiring members of ‘minoritized’ groups and the revision of curriculum. Other examples include reanalyzing the top down structure of authority, e.g., examining who is allowed input in the way schools are ran. The polyfocal approach proposed by the authors requires critical reflection and an understanding that regardless of status, all levels of the school hierarchy must be “meaningfully involved” (p. 308). Additionally, they express a concern about high stakes testing, and how the push for accountability aligns or does not align with the goals and purpose of education. Policies that empower teachers with flexibility rather than handing them a script on how to do things are deemed far more effective. Armstrong and McMahon have compiled a great resource for understanding the complexity of urban education and the ways in which students are marginalized and excluded through structural ideologies, policies, and practices within schools. The easy-to-read format is ideal for exploring conversations and dialogue among researchers, policy makers, community leaders, and practitioners interested in education reform. Its strengths are that it contains the potential to widen perspectives about urban schools and communities by introducing some of the multifaceted dilemmas that affect them while viewing them through a more humanistic and realistic lens. Its limitations are in the organization and scope of the book. While certain chapters illuminate important issues of concern and dig deep into the topics pinpointing specific structural flaws in educational environments, some chapters, though hopeful and optimistic, border on superficiality and brush off important matters such as socioeconomic status by presenting rather simplistic responses to education inequalities. The book provokes the reader to reflect, challenge, and question the claims, assertions, and alternatives proposed by the contributing authors. The effort to try to present it all, however, can leave the reader with more questions than answers. The quality and relevance of some of the case studies and methods devalue the potential of the book. Additionally, the alternative solutions presented are limited and at times present contradictory approaches to conceptualizing the purpose of education. The fifteen chapter volume can lack unity and flow but nevertheless raises significant issues about the oppressive nature of school structures; and because of this I highly recommend it. Finally, Armstrong and McMahon’s book is an excellent resource for exploring the intricacies of education, and the many forms of exclusion in urban classrooms today. Specifically, their authors vividly portray the pressing and devaluating agony experienced by students who are forced to “stand on the sidelines” and “watch the game unfold without them” (p. 4). About the Reviewer Angeles Maldonado is a PhD student in the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies program at Arizona State University. Her research areas of interests include the effects of immigration policy on education, language policy and identity issues, critical pedagogy, and comparative education.