Practicing Anti-Racism as Inclusion: Start in Early Childhood!

Abstract

The mission of the Division for Early Childhood (DEC) is to promote policies and advance evidence-based practices that support families and enhance the optimal development of young children (0-8) who have or are at risk for developmental delays and disabilities. DEC is an international membership organization for those who work with or on behalf of young children (0-8) with disabilities and other special needs and their families. The Division for Early Childhood, as individuals and as a system, recognizes we must acknowledge and address the explicit and/or implicit bias that disproportionately impacts the trajectory of children of color and their families. We seek to support and advocate for increasing the diversity of leadership across the early intervention and early childhood special education workforce, intentionally working with families as partners; and actively acknowledging when and how bias impacts our systems, children, and families. We seek to reduce bias to achieve inclusion, equity, and social justice across services and settings.

The Division for Early Childhood (DEC) promotes and advances practices that enhance the optimal development of young children (0–8) who have or are at risk for developmental delays and disabilities. To do this, the organization promotes acknowledging and addressing biases that disproportionately impact the trajectory of children of color and their families. As early care and education practitioners, it is critical that we examine our practice to ensure we are just and equitable as we work to facilitate learning and growth for our youngest learners (birth to age 8). Early care and education has been shown to be important for providing experiences that help young children develop foundational skills necessary for long-term success (Barnett, 2007; Burchinal et al., 2015; Keys et al., 2013; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Early Child Care Research Network, 2006; Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000; Yoshikawa et al., 2013). Early care and education practitioners are tasked with creating an inclusive environment that promotes learning for all children, developing positive relationships with families and children, and providing developmentally appropriate instruction (DEC, 2014; National Association for the Education of Young Children [NAEYC], 2020). It is clear that early care and education practitioners also serve a critical role in whether a child and their family will have positive or negative school experiences.

Unfortunately, experiences in early care and education programs tend to start inequitably, often starting at birth. According to the National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD, 2020), racial inequities plague the educational system, negatively impacting children of color, specifically Black children, at a higher rate. For example, data from the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights (OCR, 2018, 2020) offers alarming statistics from the collection of data on public preschools that have shown clear and consistent racial disparities in the rates of suspension and expulsions. More than 40 years of research indicates that Black children are up to 4 times more likely to be suspended than White children (Bradshaw et al., 2010, Brobbey, 2018; Children’s Defense Fund, 1975; Milner, 2013; Skiba et al., 2011). Similarly, Black children are identified with intellectual and emotional disabilities at twice the rate of White children (Children’s Equity Project, 2020; Grindal et al., 2019; NCLD, 2020; OCR, 2020). When identified with a disability, 33% of Black children are placed in more segregated environments. The continued removal from early care and education programs, along with placements in more segregated and exclusionary settings, (a) deprives children of access to a community of diverse peers, including children without disabilities; (b) increases racial separation; (c) extends special education programming (Children’s Defense Fund, 2020); (d) decreases the sense of belonging in the community; and (e) leads to a higher risk of later academic failure (Children’s Defense Fund, 2020; Grindal et al., 2019; Mahon-Reynolds & Parker, 2016; NCLD, 2020).

These racial disparities begin at birth, and this inequity is especially concerning given high-quality, inclusive, culturally affirming early childhood education has been identified as the gateway to decreasing the opportunity gaps for children across the United States from historically underserved groups. Inclusive learning environments that are well funded and equipped with practitioners knowledgeable in developmentally appropriate practice and culturally relevant pedagogy are not accessible to the children they were designed to serve (OCR, 2014). It is critical as our field strives toward inclusion that it also focuses on these racial disparities that start with our youngest children. The intent of this work is not to exclude other historically underserved groups, but to improve equity for all. Our intentional focus on racial disparity in early care and education programs can promote inclusion within all programs for a much wider range of individuals. This is being referred to as the “curb-cut effect.”

A curb cut is a wedge or ramp cut into an elevated curb to allow smooth passage between the street and a sidewalk. Consider the last time you used a curb cut to make your life easier, perhaps when catching a flight and moving your luggage or when pushing small children in a stroller. How much easier have these curb cuts made it for you to move from the street to the sidewalk? In the 1940s, a group of veterans who were wheelchair-bound in Michigan began a campaign to get curb cuts in their city (Brown, 1999). In the 1990s, the Americans with Disabilities Act made curb cuts a requirement (Brown, 1999). What is significant about this is these curb cuts were designed specifically to increase accessibility for veteran wheelchair users, a relatively small portion of the population and something that may not affect you personally at all. But the benefits experienced by the wider population due to curb cuts is significant.

“It is critical as our field strives toward inclusion that focuses on these racial disparities start with our youngest children.

The individualized attention on people with disabilities led to a more universal design that benefits us all. When utilizing universal design principles to promote inclusion, there should be a focus on ensuring practices are culturally relevant and responsive. When there is a focus on racial equity within early care and education programs, including early intervention and early childhood special education, the focus is not on one group to the exclusion of others, but rather we are promoting inclusion and justice for one group of individuals with the recognition that, like the curb cuts, in the long term this will benefit all the children served. This article aims to (a) share the importance of equitable early learning experiences that affirm all identities and (b) promote an understanding of the practitioner role in recognizing their own bias to eliminate inequitable practice in meeting the needs of young children. This article presents steps to critically examine your own practice and to identify ways in which you can implement more just, equitable practices for all young children.

Problems in Practice

“When utilizing universal design principles to promote inclusion, there should be a focus on ensuring practices are culturally relevant and responsive.

There is a stark contrast between the early care and educational experiences of young Black children and young White children. Societal prejudices and stereotypes, including race, racism, disability, and ableism, are embedded historically in the “interactions, procedures, discourses, and institutions of education” (Annamma et al., 2016, p. 14) disproportionately affecting young Black children. In fact, Black children, as young as 4.5 years old, are often not afforded a childhood of innocence because they are often treated as older (Goff et al., 2014). In 2021, many were horrified watching the news when a police officer used pepper spray as a young Black girl was arrested in New York. As she was being handcuffed, the arresting officer told her to stop acting like a child, and she replied, “I am a child” (Hajela & Whitehurst, 2021). While many may think this is an isolated experience, research shows that violence and criminality are attached to young Black children as young as 5 years old (Devine, 1989; Small et al., 2012; Todd et al., 2016). In fact, the U.S. Department of Education’s OCR Data Collection (2018) showed that Black children were more likely to be arrested at school and more likely to attend a school with a police officer. The early care and education system is not immune to these racial biases and institutional racism. In fact, our biases and race-neutral approach to our practice promote inequitable experiences for young Black children.

Will (short for William) is an inquisitive and energetic 4-year-old boy. He is the only child to his parents, who both work full-time while ensuring his needs are met. He has been enrolled in preschool and is excited about meeting new friends. The teacher, Mrs. O’Neill, has been teaching preschool for almost 20 years. She has broad knowledge of the curriculum and skillfully integrates the curriculum across classroom activities. As you read more about Will throughout this article, consider these questions:

How do you picture him?

Did you think about him in terms of any of his social identities, such as race, ethnicity, or gender?

Did you picture him as Black? White?

What if Will’s name was RaShawn?

Did you imagine his behavior to be developmentally appropriate for a 4-year-old, or did you picture his behavior as especially challenging? Why?

Implicit Bias

Given the rising efforts to ensure all young children have equitable access to high-quality early childhood settings and systems (Children’s Equity Project, 2020; DEC, 2020; NAEYC, 2019), it is essential for early care and education practitioners to examine how their perceptions and implicit biases may impact their teaching and consider how to actively center anti-racist practices. Gilliam and colleagues (2016) defined implicit bias as “the automatic and unconscious stereotypes that drive people to behave and make decisions in certain ways” (p. 3). Implicit bias is inherently embedded in how practitioners interact and engage with young children and their families.

“Implicit bias is inherently embedded in how practitioners interact and engage with young children and their families.

Specifically, implicit bias can have a profound effect on practitioner’s behavior toward and expectations of young children (Beachum & Gullo, 2020). Racial bias influences teachers’ perceptions of behavior as challenging (Zimmerman, 2018). Early care and education practitioners have shown to expect challenging behavior from Black children, boys in particular, even when no such behavior has been demonstrated (Gilliam et al., 2016). The decisions practitioners make regarding young Black children are based on their perceptions of children’s racial identity. For example, the simple name of a child (e.g., RaShawn) has been shown to elicit more punitive disciplinary actions against the child than a student with a “White name” (Fiarman, 2016; Staats, 2016) even when similar behaviors were observed. Black children are seen as more culpable and aggressive than their White counterparts and treated as adults regardless of age. These internalized implicit biases impact the responses practitioners have regarding the behavior(s) of young Black children, in most instances leading to significantly harsher punishments than their White counterparts (Fiarman, 2016; James & Iruka, 2018; NCLD, 2020; Staats, 2016).

Additionally, implicit bias can contribute to relational conflict between practitioners and children (Chin et al., 2020; Mantzicoppolous, 2005) and impact positive racial identity through representations in selected materials and curriculum. Visuals, toys, and dramatic play materials can all perpetuate stereotypes (Beachum & Gullo, 2020; Price et al., 2016). For example, while posters used to decorate the classroom may seem inclusive, children may be represented with exaggerated features not authentically representative of their lived experiences. By contrast, an environment that affirms and celebrates children’s unique identities helps to mitigate the impact of implicit bias (Derman-Sparks et al., 2020; Rausch et al., 2019).

“Young children can see and respond to race very early in their development.

As the new year begins, Ms. O’Neill notices her class roster contains a majority of boys. She is nervous because in her experience boys have high energy and challenging behaviors such as aggression and defiance. Mrs. O’Neill prepares for the school year by developing classroom rules to make sure that she can set expectations early and implement her planned lessons based on the curriculum. She schedules time to meet all children and families prior to the start of the school year. Due to scheduling conflicts, Will’s family is not able to meet with her before the school year starts.

Development of Racial Identity

Implicit biases and institutionalized racism within the early care and education system can perpetuate a myth that some children are too young to learn about race. This impacts when practitioners begin to teach about race and ultimately promote and affirm positive racial identity. Often it is the adult’s discomfort in talking about race and misunderstanding of what children know, see, and understand that contributes to underestimating children’s ability to learn about racial identity. In the United States, adults tend to underestimate the age at which children are able to comprehend race and difference by about 4.5 years and as a result are reluctant to have conversations with young children about race (Sullivan et al., 2020). In addition, many adults are convinced by the myth that young children are born with a race-neutral or “colorblind” ideology and only develop racial biases from being exposed to overtly racist talk or experiences (Allport, 1954). By confronting these ideas with what science tells us about children’s readiness for race conversations, we can begin the process of developing anti-racist classrooms.

Young children can see and respond to race very early in their development. While children are not born with a preference for seeing faces of their own race, they have learned to prefer the familiar by the age of 3 months (Bar-Haim et al., 2006; Kelly et al., 2005). As children age, the general preference for faces begins to narrow to the more familiar (Slater et al., 2010), and the ability to discriminate between faces of other races diminishes with limited exposure to other races. According to a study done by Burns and Sommerville (2014), 15-month-old children preferred to play with someone who distributed treats equally than someone who did so unevenly, confirming that children at this age can make social decisions based on fairness. However, when the race of the child being treated unfairly changed, children were more likely to favor someone of their own race who was being disadvantaged over someone of another race. Children can not only distinguish between races but also use race as a social category to determine who to play with because they have been socialized to the racial preferences of society and are making decisions based on these learned biases.

The societal influence in this bias is evident in the doll studies of the 1940s (Clark & Clark, 1950), where children demonstrated explicit prejudice toward White dolls and against Black dolls even when it is pointed out that the Black doll looks most like themselves. The doll studies have been repeated, both in 1969 (Harba & Grant, 1970) and again during the Obama administration (Byrd et al., 2017), and while they show the shifting self-valuation of Black children over time, these studies still demonstrate that young children see and rank one another based on skin color. This preference, however, is not immutable and, as a matter of fact, will change with intervention. Some practices that demonstrate positive effects include open conversation with peers (Aboud & Doyle, 1996); conversations that counter biased societal influences led by adults (Bigler & Liben, 2006); increased opportunities to interact positively with individuals of other racial groups in person or through books, videos, and images (Cameron et al., 2006; Kenworthy et al., 2005); and direct efforts to notice and name racial differences in experience and injustices (Aboud, 2008; Bigler & Liben, 2006). Anti-racist approaches that take into account the developmental age of the children and that incorporate contact and media exposure approaches have the most promise for creating change with young children (Aboud et al., 2012).

Prescription for Change

To truly celebrate diversity and the unique identities of each child, it is essential for all practitioners to pause and reflect on their own implicit biases and how they may be impacting their relationships with children and families. Similarly, practitioners should reflect on the practices they use within their classrooms to affirm and promote positive identities of all children. This is hard work and may feel uncomfortable, but it’s important to know EVERYONE must do this. No one is immune to implicit bias and its impact on the interactions with the children and families served.

Acknowledging Implicit Bias

To truly make change, practitioners must be willing to acknowledge the harmful impacts of racism and ableism. Early care and education practitioners must be willing to recognize their role in upholding racist and ableist systems that promote inequity. The NAEYC's (2019) Advancing Equity statement provides seven recommendations as a starting point for mitigating implicit bias. The directives in Table 1 can serve as both a starting point to shift practices and a reminder to use as a touchpoint in ongoing reflective teaching.

Table 1

Recommendations for Mitigating Implicit Bias

• Build awareness and understanding of your culture, personal beliefs, values, and biases.
• Recognize the power and benefits of diversity and inclusivity.
• Take responsibility for biased actions, even if unintended, and actively work to repair the harm.
• Acknowledge and seek to understand structural inequities and their impact over time.
• View your commitment to cultural responsiveness as an ongoing process.
• Recognize that the professional knowledge base is changing.

Along with careful, ongoing reflection, practitioners can both critically examine their practices and intentionally engage in anti-racist education. As for teaching practices, it is important to consider how biases may be impacting interactions with children. For example, given the disparities inherent in exclusionary disciplinary practices such as suspension and expulsion, it is important for practitioners to carefully consider their classroom expectations. Reflecting on classroom expectations and considering what message the classroom environment is sending begins the process of critically examining one’s practice. Table 2 provides examples of questions to consider when creating classroom environments and expectations.

Table 2

Classroom Considerations

Classroom environment	Classroom expectations
• Do you use what you learn in the beginning of the year meetings to truly create a community that affirms all children’s identities? • How do you celebrate your unique community of learners? • How do you ensure children see themselves as valued members of the community? • How are your children reflected in the classroom? • What materials are available that celebrate diversity and difference, inclusive of race, disability status, and home language(s) in your setting? • How do visuals in the classroom reflect authentic identities? • Could a stranger walk into the classroom and get a sense of your classroom community?	• Do your expectations reflect a wide range of cultural views of appropriate behavior? Are expectations developmentally appropriate? • Are your expectations inherently ableist, such as expecting children to make eye contact, or require particular skills such as oral communication? • Why do you find some students’ developmentally appropriate behavior challenging?

Classroom environment

Classroom expectations

• Do you use what you learn in the beginning of the year meetings to truly create a community that affirms all children’s identities?
• How do you celebrate your unique community of learners?
• How do you ensure children see themselves as valued members of the community?
• How are your children reflected in the classroom?
• What materials are available that celebrate diversity and difference, inclusive of race, disability status, and home language(s) in your setting?
• How do visuals in the classroom reflect authentic identities?
• Could a stranger walk into the classroom and get a sense of your classroom community?

• Do your expectations reflect a wide range of cultural views of appropriate behavior? Are expectations developmentally appropriate?
• Are your expectations inherently ableist, such as expecting children to make eye contact, or require particular skills such as oral communication?
• Why do you find some students’ developmentally appropriate behavior challenging?

Mrs. O’Neill thinks about her classroom environment and carefully evaluates the classroom materials.

On the surface, expectations may seem fair or equally applied, but it is also important for practitioners to track and monitor their responses to behavior they find challenging. It is also important to understand fairness does not equate to equity. Research shows teachers expect more challenging behavior from certain children, such as Black children and children with disabilities. Implicitly expecting challenging behavior from certain children may result in a different reaction to the same behavior from their peers or seeing behavior that is not clearly delineated, such as “defiance” as challenging in certain children. Any data on discipline need to be disaggregated by child demographic information such as age, race, gender, and disability status. When creating class expectations, consider how to emphasize preventive practices rather than reactive and emphasize teaching social-emotional skills that center on family engagement and are culturally responsive.

Mrs. O’Neill monitors how she responds to the student’s interruptions and the full context of why this behavior is problematic for her.

It may be hard to be reflective about bias and to talk about how our perceptions impact our teaching. Rather than acknowledge and celebrate difference, a dominant narrative regarding race perpetuates the myth of colorblindness, or the idea that all children are viewed the same, that race does not matter, and therefore, a practitioner does not “see” color and treats all children equally. However well intentioned, this ideology of there being no difference and race or any other identity marker not mattering perpetuates systemic racism and ignores lived history and experiences. Failure to recognize and celebrate difference is both harmful and a missed opportunity to promote a positive sense of self-worth and identity.

When the school year begins, Mrs. O’Neill notices Will moves constantly around the classroom inspecting all that is available. She is interrupted frequently in class by Will, who asks a lot of questions. She begins to wonder if he has had prior classroom experiences. When giving directions, she strives to provide more details to avoid the constant question asking. During the first few weeks of the year, Mrs. O’Neill makes several observations of Will. The teacher contacts the parents and shares Will may need additional support to help him in the classroom due to his active energy level. The parents express they felt he had adjusted well to his new school, and he shares daily in detail what he has experienced in school. Wanting to make sure that they explore all concerns and take advantage of any support that can increase Will’s success, the parents consent to have assessments completed for an evaluation. The assessments show that Will is a gifted child. Mrs. O’Neill begins to reflect on why her perceptions were so off base.

Teaching Positive Racial Identity

Similarly, practitioners must not allow discomfort to stop them from teaching children about race to promote a positive sense of self-worth and identity for all young children. While every child develops differently, there are some things that can be seen happening at similar stages of development. Infants with typically developing visual sense are able to see racial differences. They are forming early maps in their minds of “us” and “other.” By exposing them to staff and peers who are of different races, physical abilities, and styles of being, very young children can be supported to maintain a broad definition of “us.” The less children are isolated and segregated, the less “othering” children will engage in as they grow.

Typically developing toddlers are likely to choose play partners who are most like what they have been exposed most to (Bar-Haim et al., 2006; Kelly et al., 2005; Shin et al., 2011). The answer to reducing bias, then, is to expose them to more individuals from diverse backgrounds. This may mean an added effort on the part of a school or center to recruit, employ, and enroll more widely. Inclusion practices in some places reserve spots or give preference to children with disabilities or delays to create classroom diversity. Providing scholarships for families to enroll who might not otherwise be able to access child care in a particular neighborhood is another way centers can work to build diversity of students. Recruiting staff in similar ways can help to diversify the adults in the building as well. This richness of people can help young children broaden their exposure and comfort with diversity. It is important to remember how naturally curious toddlers are and encourage them to notice and name the differences they see.

Three-year-olds tend to understand the world based on what they see rather than on adult logical reasoning. They are notoriously able to understand the world only from their own point of view. Together this means that developmentally, typically developing children at this stage are comparing what they see to their own experience. This is a rudimentary kind of logic that allows for flawed thinking about the world. Children draw conclusions that tell them what is better or worse based on how they experience those things—in life, books, videos, and media. When 3- or 4-year-olds see stereotypical images in cartoons or books or clip art in the classroom, it helps to build their mental models of the world. But more than that, when children at this age do NOT see examples in books, images, or videos of a range of races, disabilities, or ethnicities, it too fuels their developing schema, and they draw mistaken conclusions. For example, in the mind of a 3-year-old, more is better, and less is worse. Therefore, it is likely to this 3-year-old that because there is only one Black child in the classroom and none in the books in that classroom, that this one child is not as good as the children who are in the majority. This is faulty logic, but it is exactly what the 3-year-old brain does. It is through clarifying conversations with adults that children refine their schema and develop more logical reasoning over time.

Confronting this kind of immature logic requires addressing the lack of diversity in images, books, videos, and people that children are surrounded by and helping children to voice their conclusions and redirecting them. When practitioners limit the conversation and prevent children from recognizing and naming the racial differences they see, they also limit the possibility of correcting the mistaken logic. When practitioners encourage and support open discussion about race, they can easily lead children to revise their conclusions. Talk about why there are so few Black children in the school and that it does not mean the White children are better, just that more live in this area and attend this center or school. That is not a difficult or controversial conversation, but it requires practitioners to move past the fear that talking about race will make them appear racist or that talking about race with children will make them racist. In fact, the opposite is true, and by talking about race, practitioners can prevent children from growing firmer in their illogically reasoned conclusions.

Will is a 4-year-old Black child. Typically developing 3- and 4-year-olds, like Will, build their mental constructs on experience and trial and error. A child similar to Will might conclude that White is good and Black is bad and find it difficult to reconcile with what he has been taught to believe about himself at home. Will has been told he is a king and that he can do great things, and yet all of the evidence of his senses tell him that there are more White children, so White is the better thing to be. When Will asks his teacher questions about the children in the books she reads to the class and why none look like him, she deflects and redirects him. When he asks her where the other Kings and Queens are, she misunderstands his question and redirects him. Will is trying to refine his logic, and he is frustrated by his teacher’s unwillingness to talk him through to a more reasoned conclusion. If Mrs. O’Neill was as aware of the racial makeup of the class as she is of the ratio of boys to girls, she might provide some different avenues for helping her class become more anti-racist.

Between the ages of 4 and 5, children typically develop a passion for fairness. Making the most of this stage, teachers can address injustice and encourage children to evaluate equity in situations they see or hear about that involve race. As long as practitioners provide opportunities and provocations for children to initiate conversations about race and then follow the lead of those children with courage, anti-racist practices will naturally occur in classrooms. Table 3 provides some strategies for strategically and intentionally inviting conversations about race in preschool classrooms. The key to the success of strategies like these is to pay close attention and participate in the conversations as matter-of-factly as you might any other discussion that comes up in the classroom. Engage with children in talking about what they observe and what they notice and help them to draw the conclusion that no one is better than anyone else because of the way they look. We are all different, and those differences make us all better.

Table 3

Inviting Conversations About Race

• Incorporate books with characters of different races. It is important to make sure these books are not exclusively “hero books” about historical figures, but also everyday stories of children living everyday lives.
• Provide books about race and differences to spark conversations.
• Add photos of people from different cultures, religions, and parts of the world to centers. For example, not all brides wear white, and not all footballs are round.
• Put a care station in your classroom where students can help one another to put a bandage on an “owie”—but provide bandages in different skin tones to promote and provoke conversation about skin colors.
• Find photos (not clip art) of faces in as wide a range of skin tones as you can and create a chart or collage of actual people with a mirror beside it to provoke exploration and stimulate discussion about racial differences.
• Make sure that skin-tone crayons are not reserved for special projects but are available alongside the rainbow of other crayons.
• When children recognize difference, facilitate conversations rather than dismissing or changing the topic.

Call to Action

Early care and education practitioners must strive toward inclusion of young children. The Division for Early Childhood’s Priority Issues Agenda (2020) identifies six priorities, including (a) achieving high-quality inclusion, (b) acknowledging and addressing bias, (c) responding appropriately to child behavior, (d) creating and maintaining strong family partnerships, (e) adequately equipping a highly effective workforce, and (f) providing high-quality environments, interactions, instruction, and supports. To meet these priorities, practitioners must work together to dismantle the systems, acknowledge and address bias, and make changes to our practices to create fully inclusive and equitable experiences for young children. All children deserve to have authentic opportunities to fully participate in early care and education programs (DEC, 2020). These programs need to be ready to serve all children and to promote positive identities. As such, you are being called to action. It is important to critically reflect on your own biases, experiences, and practices to do the following:

Identify racism you see in the world around you.

Engage in critical conversations about race to ensure you are comfortable engaging young children in conversations about race and identity.

Evaluate your current practice. Ask yourself questions. Are you engaging in anti-racist practice? Or are you complicit in a system designed to inequitably serve young, Black children?

Shed the fears that were raised and the beliefs clung to about child readiness and instead embrace the research that tells what can be done to reduce racial bias in classrooms.

Create a community of practitioners advocating for change within our system to include all young children more effectively.

Continue to learn and expect this to be a journey without an end point—as society evolves and changes, practitioners must continually learn and grow to best serve children in justice and equity.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

LaShorage Shaffer

Megan Vinh

LaShorage Shaffer, University of Michigan-Dearborn College of Education Health & Human Services, Dearborn; Megan Vinh, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Hillsborough; Dorothy Shapland, Metropolitan State University of Denver, Denver; and Courtney O’Grady, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana.

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