Decolonizing Classroom Management - by Flynn Ross & Larissa Malone (Paperback)

About the Book

Decolonizing Classroom Management: A Critical Examination of the Cultural Assumptions and Norms in Traditional Practices introduces a framework for decolonizing classroom management which entails critically examining the cultural assumptions and norms embedded in our traditional practices

Book Synopsis

Decolonizing Classroom Management: A Critical Examination of the Cultural Assumptions and Norms in Traditional Practices introduces a framework for decolonizing classroom management which entails critically examining the cultural assumptions and norms embedded in our traditional practices. This book helps educators and teacher educators orient toward liberation through questioning assumptive language, challenging popular classroom management models, and offering promising practices to create positive learning environments. The final section of the book provides promising practices that can guide educators who aim to create thriving learning environments.

Review Quotes

"Decolonizing Classroom Management gives teachers tools to take on one of the most difficult challenges in teaching: classroom management. In this collection of highly readable essays, authors deconstruct prevailing systems that are rooted in whiteness and control. Using stories from their own practice, authors show what decolonized classroom management looks and feels like to both students and teachers." --Christine Sleeter, author of Un-Standardizing Curriculum, professor emerita, California State University Monterey Bay

"Decolonizing Classroom Management amplifies the important message that the time has come to take a deep dive into examining existing classroom practices. Each of the essays in this roadmap for classroom reform stand alone, providing compelling arguments for change. Taken together, they create a powerful argument for curricular reform at all levels to ensure all students see themselves reflected in their studies, and provide educators with a culturally responsive framework for their work." --Joshua Chard, MSED, Second and Third Grade Looping Teacher, 2024 Maine Teacher of the Year

"As an educator who supports and advocates for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and Culturally Responsive Classroom Management (CRCM), I expected to feel at home with the contents of Decolonizing Classroom Management. I was wrong. In this bold, yet warm-spirited book, editors Flynn Ross and Larissa Malone and an extremely diverse group of contributors push the envelope of DEI and CRCM and call for decolonization--dismantling the white, middle-class, Eurocentric worldviews and power structures of today's classrooms. I never thought of myself as a "white settler," but the authors have pushed me to consider a colonialist framework without hurling names or attacking. They encourage educators to integrate Western codes of conduct with Indigenous ways of being and to reflect on the cultural assumptions underlying many popular classroom management practices. Decolonizing Classroom Management has provided me with a new lens through which to view the power dynamics of classrooms and the obvious inequities that can result." --Carol Weinstein, professor emerita, Department of Learning and Teaching at Rutgers Graduate School of Education

"This thoughtful volume essentially decolonizes modern-day (de)colonialism, peering beneath the mantle of practices labeled liberatory, yet which can/do ultimately reify and perpetuate oppressive structures and re-normalize whiteness. Uniformly, the authors challenge us to look with new eyes at prevailing, "new and improved" classroom models and methods, so we can begin to see where they fall short, where they harm, where they exclude, and how they can be transformed to truly honor the polyvocal voices, complex and layered identities, latent agency and collective power of young people." --A. Lin Goodwin, Thomas More Brennan professor of education, Lynch School of Education and Human Development, Boston College

About the Author

Flynn Ross, Ed.D. has worked in hundreds of classrooms across the United States as a teacher and teacher educator for over 30 years and she currently serves as Professor and Department Chair of Teacher Education at the University of Southern Maine.

Larissa Malone, Ph.D. research centers on the minoritized experience in schooling and she is currently an associate professor of Social & Cultural Foundations at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.