Educational Problems Division Fall/Winter Newsletter 2019 Letter from the Division Chair As we end 2019 in the midst of a contentious Presidential Impeachment hearing, there is much that has happened in the world that brings me great pause. A terror attack on a Mosque in New Zealand, the crashing of a Nairobi-bound Boeing 737, Alabama outlawing a womanÕs right to choose, the treatment of our refugees on the southern border, and another mass shooting not far from my campus in Virginia Beach. In the world of educational problems, we have celebrities caught bribing their kidsÕ way into elite colleges, Betsy DeVos rejecting claims for loan forgiveness to thousands of students defrauded by for-profit colleges, and U.S. students fallingfurther behind in mathematics on the international PISA exam. Yet as SSSPÕs president Heather Dalmage suggests with this yearÕs conference theme, ÒBringing the Hope Back In,Ó what is needed more than ever is a sociological imagination that will transform our world. And despite the uncertainty, chaos and terror we have seen in 2019, we should not forget those moments of hope and celebration. Taiwan became the first Asian country to legalize same-sex marriage. A Stem Cell transplant made a London patientÕs HIV Òundetectable.Ó We saw the first ever image of the black hole. More than a million people stood (and continue to stand) up in protest against Hong KongÕs extradition bill. And environmental activist Greta Thunberg led the international community to take immediate action on climate change. In education, the wave of red shirt activism continued this year across the country as teachers staged walkouts for better pay and resources. Stanford grad students demanded better health benefits. A Rice University study of thousands of students confirmed what many of us already knew; that school arts programs can improve writing, increase empathy and decrease disciplinary infractions. Perhaps unsurprisingly thereÕs a newfound interest in improving civic education to help create more informed voters. And the presidential debate stage brought light to the problems of charter schools and the unbearable cost of higher education. I hope these and other reasons push you to join us in San Francisco from August 7-9, 2020 as we use our sociological imagination to resist, build solidarity, and imagine a future that demands structural change and social justice in the educational system and beyond. Please consider submitting your research to one of our DivisionÕs sponsored events: ÒHope and Radical Transformation in Higher Education,Ó ÒHow Technology is Transforming Education,Ó and ÒEducation, Politics and Policy.Ó Our Division is also co.sponsoring a critical dialogue on ÒOutsider Voices Transforming EducationÓ and six more paper sessions on topics ranging from bullying and disability studies to intersectionality in college classrooms. Our annual graduate student paper award takes place in concert with the January 31, 2020 conference deadline, so tell your graduate student friends to consider submitting a paper to both a division panel and our awards committee. If you have any questions, comments or concerns about the Educational Problems Division, please do not hesitate to reach out to me at lwaldron@cnu.edu. Looking forward to seeing you at all in San Francisco in 2020! My best, Linda M. Waldron, Ph.D. Director of the Center for Education Research and Policy Associate Professor of Sociology Christopher Newport University Welcome to our Newsletter Editor! The Educational Problems Division welcomes Lydia Hou as our new Newsletter Editor. Lydia Hou is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the graduate assistant for UIC Gender & Women's Studies, the research assistant for the UIC Social Justice Research Collaborative, and the former Assistant Editor of Social Problems. Lydia's research explores how international students are included in diversity in Higher Ed. We are so thankful to have her on our division's team! Educational Problems Division SSSP 2020 Sessions Consider submitting a paper to one of our division's sessions. Find the Call for Papers Here! Deadline for submission is January 31, 2020 by midnight. Three Division Sponsored Sessions: Hope and Radical Transformation in Higher Education Organizer: Patricia Morency, pmorency821@gmail.com How Technology is Transforming Education Organizer: Michael Miner, minerm@usf.edu Education, Politics, and Policy Organizer: Fiona Pearson, pearsonaf@ccsu.edu Seven Co-Sponsored Sessions: Outsider Voices Transforming Education Organizer: Katherine Entigar, kentigar@gradcenter.cuny.edu Building Pathways for Social Justice: Investigations into Educational Institutions Co-Organizers: Alison Fisher, alison_fisher@edu.yorku.ca and LaNysha Adams, lanysha@edlinguist.com Education: Futures and Imaginaries in Global Context Organizer: Lydia Hou, lhou3@uic.edu Bullying in Education and Work Organizer: Linda Waldron, lwaldron@cnu.edu Labor and Precarity in Higher Education Co-Organizers: Andrew Baird, andrew.baird@cnu.edu and Taylor Devereaux, tdeverea@knights.ucf.edu Education and Disability Organizer: Dara Shifrer, dshifrer@pdx.edu Representation and Intersectionality in the College Classroom Co-Organizers: Amanda Brockman, amanda.j.brockman@vanderbilt.edu and Asia Ivey, ivey@ucdavis.edu 2020 Graduate Student Paper Competition The Educational Problems Division announces its 2020 Graduate Student Paper Competition. Papers must address a contemporary educational problem and may be empirical or theoretical in nature. Authors must be current graduate students. In addition to single-authored papers, co-authored papers will be considered for this award if coauthors are graduate students but not co-authored with a faculty member or colleague who is not a student. Papers may not have been submitted or accepted for publication (papers that have been presented at a professional meeting or that have been submitted for presentation at a professional meeting are eligible). Papers must not exceed 30 double-spaced pages (excluding notes, references, tables, and figures). All papers must include a 150-200 word abstract and be prepared for anonymous review with the authorÕs name and institutional affiliation appearing only on the title page. The winner will receive a modest cash stipend, student membership in the SSSP, conference registration to the 2020 SSSP annual meeting, and a plaque of recognition at the conference awards ceremony. Authors are required to submit their papers through the annual meeting Call for Papers process as a condition for consideration for the award. Students may only submit to one division. All papers must also be submitted electronically (as an attachment) to the Division Chair, Dr. Linda Waldron at lwaldron@cnu.edu with subject line: SSSP-Edu. Probs. Div. Student Paper Competition. Please include your name, institutional affiliation, and contact information in the body of your email. The paper should be submitted no later than 11:59pm (EST), January 31, 2020. Member Achievements Book Publications Professor Fiona Pearson published Back in School: How Student Parents Are Transforming College and Family (2019, Rutgers University Press, ISBN: 978-1-9788-0187-5) From the Rutgers University Press: Fifty years ago, students who were parents were a rarity in college classrooms, but by the beginning of the twenty-first century, over a quarter of all undergraduate students were parents. In Back in School, A. Fiona Pearson explores how these student parents navigate cultural norms and institutional resources, forging pathways as they journey to become better parents and successful students. Back in School examines how policy makers, professors, college administrators, counselors, and social workers provide or deny access to child care, tutoring, financial aid, or other campus-or community-based resources. Pearson further explores how social norms and governmental and organizational policies influence access to these resources and student parentsÕ experiences on campus and at home. Reviews: ÒRich in history and policy, Back in School is a strong cultural analysis of the ways that student parents understand their own decisions to return to higher education. A compelling read!" --Lisa Nunn, author of Defining Student Success: The Role of School and Culture. "In this thoughtful study of student parents, Pearson shows us the assumptions, organization, and values embedded in contemporary college education --and the costs to all of us." --Barbara Katz Rothman, author of A Bun in the Oven: How the Food and Birth Movements Resist Industrialization Professor Orly ClergŽ published The New Noir: Race, Identity, and Disapora in Black Suburbia (2019, University of California Press, ISBN: 9780520296787) The expansion of the Black American middle class and the unprecedented increase in the number of Black immigrants since the 1960s has transformed the cultural landscape of New York. In The New Noir, Orly Clerge explores the richly complex worlds of an extraordinary generation of Black middle class adults who have migrated from different corners of the African diaspora to suburbia. The Black middle class today consists of diverse groups whose ongoing cultural, political, and material ties to the American South and Global South shape their cultural interactions at work, in their suburban neighborhoods, and at their kitchen tables. Clerge compellingly analyzes the making of a new multinational Black middle class and how they create a spectrum of Black identities that help them carve out places of their own in a changing 21st-century global city. Reviews: "In The New Noir, Orly Clerge skillfully documents the changing meaning of Blackness for todayÕs diasporic Black middle class. Combining ethnography, interviews; and insights from her own life experience she draws a nuanced and insightful portrait that defies stereotypes and lays new theoretical grounds for exploring the intersections of class, ethnicity and race." ÑPhilip Kasinitz, Presidential Professor of Sociology, The Graduate Center, City University of New York ÒStuart Hall meets E. Franklin Frazier in the suburbs of New York. The New Noir is an illuminating and provocative ethnographic monograph that documents the rise of a new, multicultural black middle class. Clerge speaks to the dynamic nature of these spaces, backing up her observations with statistics. Urgent, timely, and well-written Ñ a work of importance.Ó ÑElijah Anderson, Yale University, author of Code of the Street and The Cosmopolitan Canopy Fellowship Award University of Pennsylvania Ph.D. candidate Nora Gross has been awarded the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation Dissertation Fellowship to support research on violence, aggression, and dominance for her dissertation project: "Bullets, Books, and Brotherhood: An Ethnography of High School Life in the Context of Urban American Gun Violence." The fellowship will offer partial funding for the dissertation writing year, 2019-2020. Teaching Resources Most education classes include a discussion of the achievement gap and opportunity gap. These online resources provide great nformation for students to use to examine this issue. Outside of schools (data source: Opportunity Atlas) https://opportunityatlas.org Across school environments (data source: EdBuild) https://edbuild.org/content/dividing-lines/main Inside schools (data source: DoE Office of Civil Rights) https://ocrdata.ed.gov Join Us on Social Media!! We are excited to finally have a solid presence on social media. Please take the time to follow our division on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ssspeducationalproblems/