About this session

Saturday, 10:20 AM - 11:50 AM

Anti-racism Knowledge for the Public: Opportunities and Challenges in Research-Practice-Partnerships for Dissemination Geared Toward Action

The panelists will discuss the many ways they engage in research-practice partnerships (RPP) to 1) create research agendas that are grounded in community needs, 2) create products that are accessible to community members, and 3) facilitate an ongoing exchange between academia and the community to ensure applied action research. The panelists will use their specific experiences in RPPs to illuminate broader takeaways for the field.

Initiative 1: EmbraceRace

Christina Rucinski will discuss multiple efforts at EmbraceRace to engage scholarship to support anti-racism action in community-centered programming. EmbraceRace works to create evidence-based tools that provide adults with the knowledge and skills they need to nurture healthy racial attitudes and behaviors in children. Recognizing that different people and audiences learn best in a range of ways, and that different kinds of information are best shared in a variety of formats, EmbraceRace creates free and accessible resources from webinars and action guides to arts programs, toolkits, videos, and a podcast. EmbraceRace works closely with both academics and community members to support a cycle of exchange between research and practice.

Christina Rucinski, Ph.D., is the Senior Research-to-Practice Program Manager at EmbraceRace, where she develops resources to support parents, educators, and other caregivers in promoting healthy learning about race and racism in young children. She is a former early childhood educator, and as a developmental scientist, she has conducted research on children’s social-emotional learning, classroom diversity, and teacher-student relationships across racial lines.


Initiative 2: Building Anti-racist Schools

Blair Cox and Diane Hughes will discuss Building Anti-racist Schools, a public-facing website intended to provide tools that multiple stakeholders can use to move towards building anti-racist, equitable, and inclusive preK-12 school environments. The website features four main pages: School Racial Climate Blogs, School Racial Climate Videos, School Racial Climate Assessment, and Resources. Content on each page was developed collaboratively based on the expertise of parents, students, community advocates, teachers, and scholars.

Dr. Hughes and Blair Cox will also speak about their developing partnership with South Orange/Maplewood Coalition on Race aiming to use research methods to better understand perceptions and needs in a community with an intentional racial and economic integration plan. They will share the ways research and practice come together to inform both research and community goals to create setting-level tools and recommendations for community use.

Diane Hughes is Professor of Applied Psychology and Public Voices Fellow within the Steinhardt School at New York University. Dr. Hughes has written extensively about the role that race and ethnicity play in the lives of black and brown adolescents and their families. Hughes also conducts local and national workshops for parents and community members on having conversations about race with children and has been recognized for her work by numerous organizations including the Society for Research on Adolescence, the Society for Research in Child Development, and the SOM Community Coalition on Race.

Blair Cox (she/her) is a PhD student in the Psychology and Social Intervention program in Applied Psychology at NYU Steinhardt. She is interested in the intersection between racial equity and public education, including, school based interventions to reduce racial disparities in education, school racial climate, and the way white students learn about race. Blair is committed to community-partnered, strengths-based research exploring setting-level interventions in the pursuit of antiracism.


Initiative 3: Stepping uP Against Racism and Xenophobia (SPARX)

Victoria Vezaldenos and Deborah Rivas-Drake will discuss the SPARX project, which provides a hub of ideas, resources, strategies, tips, and tools for caregivers and educators to address racial and immigration topics in supporting youths’ development of anti-racist and anti-xenophobic competencies. Underlying this website and the content curated within it is a research-informed curriculum to help adults engage in critical reflection about interpersonal and systemic racism. The website’s design is also geared toward learners who may engage with anti-racism content at different entry points and who may be on different learning journeys. The presenters will describe the community-informed research and participatory design of the curriculum and website as well as their ongoing partnership with EmbraceRace.

Victoria Vezaldenos is a PhD student in the Combined Program in Education and Psychology at the University of Michigan who has co-developed the SPARX project and curriculum. Her research focuses on identity development among multiracial adolescents.

Deborah Rivas-Drake is the Stephanie J. Rowley Collegiate Professor of Education and Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan. The overarching goal of her work is to illuminate promising practices that disrupt racism and xenophobia and help keep diverse young people on trajectories of positive contribution to their schools and communities. Together with the Contexts of Academic + Socioemotional Adjustment (CASA) Lab (casalab.org), she examines how settings can support adolescents in navigating issues related to race and ethnicity, and how these experiences inform young people’s outcomes. In addition to her academic publications, she has collaboratively developed products for parents, educators, non-profit organizations, youth program developers, and industry. She directs the SPARX Project and led the development of the curriculum and site.


Discussion Questions

Discussion questions will address a variety of relevant topics. Examples of questions that will be posed to all panelists are below, with the name(s) of those who might address each question first. Further, we expect and will encourage audience members to share their experiences in engaging similar efforts to problem-solve together about shared challenges, as appropriate.

What is the role of anti-racism research in promoting anti-racist action? What are some of the limitations of academia that are addressed by community organizations (and vice versa)? (Hughes)

What are the opportunities and challenges of developing resources and tools for parents and educators? (Rucinski, Vezaldenos, Rivas-Drake)

How do you engage community voices and/or partners in your work? What are some key contributions afforded by their engagement? (Vezaldenos, Rivas-Drake, Cox)

What considerations are you making in terms of the audience(s) for your resources and how are these informed by your research-practice partnerships? (Cox, Rucinski)

What advice can you offer to others who are interested in developing similar initiatives? (Hughes)

Many practitioners and policymakers attempt to address racism in the settings in which they work with youth; parents similarly seek information that will help them to have potentially challenging yet critical conversations about race and racism. Barriers to the translation and implementation of extant anti-racism research include the time lag, dissemination format, and disconnect between the research on this topic and what the lay public, practitioners, and policymakers can actually use to inform their actions. Research-practice-partnerships (RPPs) have the potential to importantly address these barriers. In this conversation roundtable, panelists will describe the efforts of EmbraceRace (Christina Rucinski), Building Anti-racist Schools (Blair Cox, Diane Hughes), and Stepping uP Against Racism and Xenophobia (SPARX; Victoria Vezaldenos) to fill the critical need in the field and in society for anti-racism tools and resources that are research-informed yet accessible and how engaging in RPPs makes for more contextually rigorous possibilities. Panelists will discuss the opportunities and challenges of their partnership efforts, especially the considerations they have made in developing their initiatives, their target audiences, and how they engage across research, practice, and policy in the development of anti-racist resources and research geared toward public use. Many practitioners and policymakers attempt to address racism in the settings in which they work with youth; parents similarly seek information that will help them to have potentially challenging yet critical conversations about race and racism. Barriers to the translation and implementation of extant anti-racism research include the time lag, dissemination format, and disconnect between the research on this topic and what the lay public, practitioners, and policymakers can actually use to inform their actions. Research-practice-partnerships (RPPs) have the potential to importantly address these barriers. In this conversation roundtable, panelists will describe the efforts of EmbraceRace (Christina Rucinski), Building Anti-racist Schools (Blair Cox, Diane Hughes), and Stepping uP Against Racism and Xenophobia (SPARX; Victoria Vezaldenos) to fill the critical need in the field and in society for anti-racism tools and resources that are research-informed yet accessible and how engaging in RPPs makes for more contextually rigorous possibilities. Panelists will discuss the opportunities and challenges of their partnership efforts, especially the considerations they have made in developing their initiatives, their target audiences, and how they engage across research, practice, and policy in the development of anti-racist resources and research geared toward public use.

Session moderator
Deborah Rivas-Drake, Ph.D., University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, United States

Panelists
Dr. Christina L. Rucinski, Ph.D., EmbraceRace , United States
Dr. Diane L. Hughes, Ph.D., New York University , United States
Elizabeth Cox, New York University , United States
Victoria Anne Vezaldenos, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor , United States

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