UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Sarah Shrewsbury-Braxton, assistant professor of education (counselor education), who joined the Penn State College of Education in August, said she is inspired in her research and teaching by professional experiences that exposed her to social justice issues in education. 

“The niche area I found is whiteness and critical white studies,” she said. “Often, we talk about race as something that’s 'other,' that’s separate from white people, when really the culture of whiteness perpetuates inequities and maintains these systems.” 

Critical white studies (CWS) falls under the umbrella of critical race theory and seeks to examine the construction and moral implications of whiteness, in order to reveal and deconstruct its assumed links to white privilege and white supremacy. According to the National Museum of African American History & Culture, "whiteness" and white racialized identity refer to the way that white culture operates as the standard by which all other groups are compared. This area of study views white-dominant culture as a social mechanism that normalizes whiteness and marginalizes people of color. Although CWS emphasizes understanding white identity development and the culture of whiteness, Shrewsbury-Braxton said, its roots are in the writings of prominent scholars of color, particularly Black scholars like W.E.B. DuBois, Anna Julia Cooper and James Baldwin. 

CWS is most often applied to topics in education, especially teacher education, Shrewsbury-Braxton said, since the vast majority of teachers in the U.S. are white women and the majority of K-12 school students are students of color. According to the American School Counselor Association, 74% of its members are white (as opposed to 80% of teachers) and 87% are female (vs. 89% of teachers). Meanwhile, according to the Pew Research Center, white students comprise 47% of students (down from 65% in 1995), while 27% are Hispanic and 15% are Black. 

“Since U.S. schools are designed from a white perspective (i.e. curriculum, testing, behavioral expectations) and the majority of the adults in the building are white, CWS examines how the cultural differences between the adults and the students can lead to negative outcomes for students of color (SOC),” Shrewsbury-Braxton said. 

For example, Shrewsbury-Braxton said, research has shown that SOC often experience teachers with less training, less effectiveness, lower expectations and higher turnover rates. Other studies, she noted, have demonstrated persistent achievement gaps for SOC, which means that there is often a gap between the scores of SOC and of white students on standardized tests. 

One of the most important contributions of CWS to educational research, Shrewsbury-Braxton said, is countering the idea of "deficit thinking," which takes the position that minority students and families are at fault for poor academic performance because: (a) students enter school without the normative cultural knowledge of schools; and (b) parents neither value nor support their child’s education. 

“What we are slowly understanding is that the differences between students are a result of the systemic barriers that students face due to a culture that normalizes whiteness,” she said. 

Practical benefits of Shrewsbury-Braxton’s research, she said, include: 

• Culturally informed school counseling programs that value and incorporate the cultures of all students  

• Training for teachers and school counselors that will counteract deficit thinking and help them to recognize systemic barriers for SOC 

• Improved educational spaces and increased opportunities for SOC (e.g. access to Advanced Placement courses and gifted/talented programs) 

Shrewsbury-Braxton, who received her doctorate in counselor education from the Ohio State University in July, started to develop a vision for social change in education when she became a school counselor in Tennessee. Her first position as a school counselor was in a high-poverty, rural school, where, she said, she "almost functioned like a social worker a lot of times.” When she eventually transferred to another school in one of wealthiest districts in Tennessee, she witnessed drastic differences in both the physical conditions of the buildings, the resources that were available to the students and the sociocultural conditions in the two schools that were just an hour’s drive from each other. 

“It was insane just the differences these students faced,” Shrewsbury-Braxton said. “That really started my interest in social justice issues, especially thinking about educational inequities, which are tied to poverty, which are also inherently tied to race and achievement.” 

As a doctoral student at Ohio State, Shrewsbury-Braxton examined issues of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion, which led to her dissertation, titled “The Impact of the Culture of Whiteness on the Critical Consciousness Development of Counselors in Training." 

“My work really focused on understanding why counselors struggle to get to the action piece of addressing educational inequities and how systems of whiteness keep us from action," she said. “I want to continue to work on issues of whiteness and how it impacts education broadly.” 

Shrewsbury-Braxton, who is teaching a school counseling internship class this fall, said she wants to expand her research in CWS in her new position. 

“I’m really interested in applying that knowledge to counseling and education,” she said. “I want my work to critique and contribute to what we know about that so we can start to deconstruct it.”