It's Time to Act: Employing Critical Participatory Action Research to Create Substantively Integrated Schools

The words “all deliberate speed” linger as schools remain highly segregated across lines of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and other intersectional identities, 70 years after Brown v. Board of Education II. Such segregation continues to generate educational debt and harm, begging the question: where do we go from here? This theoretical and empirical inquiry 1) reflects upon the sociohistorical context behind continued school segregation and corresponding inequities, 2) redefines the policy problem from school segregation to a lack of substantive integration, and 3) offers concrete examples of how schools, districts, non-profits, social movements, as well as researchers can work toward a solution. Substantive integration, based on IntegrateNYC's 5Rs of real integration framework, includes the components of racial and intersectional enrollment, restorative/transformative justice, inclusive relationships, equitable resource distribution, representation, and the new addition of civic engagement opportunities. Given this guiding framework, this dissertation then argues for the use of critical participatory action research (CPAR) to engage various interest holders in collective action efforts to ensure that research more effectively translates to community knowledge and social justice transformation. Specifically, the first two chapters provide applied examples of CPAR partnerships addressing components of the substantive integration framework. Finally, the last chapter provides a hypothetical example of what this may look like when implementing all framework components. Overall, this work reimagines how to conceptualize and address some of the root causes of educational inequity.

Work within this dissertation was supported by the Institute of Education Science, U.S. Department of Education through grant R305B200005 to the University of Virginia (UVA).