School Curriculum in the News: Black Lives Matter and the Continuing Struggle for Culturally Responsive Education

Abstract

This project examines similarities and differences in the ways that major U.S. newspapers (e.g., The New York Times, The Washington Post, etc.) and the more focused ethnic and minority press (e.g., The Baltimore Afro-American, The Milwaukee Courier, etc.) characterize educator’s efforts to adopt more culturally responsive educational practices and curriculum. The analysis utilized two distinct full-text ProQuest news databases, U.S. Major Dailies and Ethnic News Watch, and Boolean search logic to identify a corpus of 72 relevant articles. Within these articles, a process of close reading and coding identified three major frames that cut across articles drawn from both databases: Challenging the Dominant Narrative; Activism and Engaged Citizenship; and Defending American Heritage and Patriotism. Differences in the use of these frames across the two datasets are discussed. These frames are interpreted in light of conflicting views on the nature of the American dream.