UW–Madison’s Francesca López, the Jim and Georgia Thompson Distinguished Professor in Education in the School of Education’s Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis, was recently featured on the Emergency Research in Educational Psychology podcast to discuss new scholarship on race in educational psychology.
López joined Dionne Cross Francis to talk about their co-authored article, “A Humanizing Approach to Race-Focused Research in Educational Psychology,” published in Educational Psychologist. The article was also written with Jessica DeCuir-Gunby and Matthew McCrudden.
In the article, the authors urge educational psychologists conducting race-focused research to rethink their intentions and processes. Rather than focusing solely on avoiding harm, they advocate for a humanizing approach — one that requires reflection and an awareness of racist roots in research methods.
The article serves as the introduction to a special issue of Educational Psychology, “Race-Focused Research in Educational Psychology,” which the authors co-edited. In their conclusion, they summarize the contributions to the special issue and highlight how the articles offer “explicit ways to reframe constructs, research design, and methods to honor and respect the humanity of People of Color.”
The special issue also includes a paper by UW–Madison faculty in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction — Carl Grant, Nicole Louie, Mariana Pacheco, and Leema Berland — titled “Address the Elephant in the Room, Not the Broken Glass on the Floor, or the Ethical Demand to See the Elephant—and See Us.”
To learn more about this research, listen to the podcast episode.