NCID-1369
Shantá Robinson
Assistant Professor in the School of Social Service Administration
University of Chicago
Education/Degree:
1 Educational Studies (University of Michigan)
About
Shantá R. Robinson began her professional career as a high school history teacher in Charlotte, NC. She earned her PhD in educational studies at the University of Michigan, where she specialized in the sociology of education, qualitative methodologies, and issues of race, class, and access in secondary schooling. Her research interests include the role of social identity in marginalized students' educational experiences, aspirations, and outcomes; empirical investigations of marginalized student achievement and underachievement; inequities in the distribution of educational resources; and the history, culture, and social organization of K-12 educational institutions. Her most recent work focuses on the educational experiences and occupational aspirations of adolescents experiencing homelessness. Her scholarly work can be read in International Studies in Sociology of Education, The High School Journal, and Review of Research in Education.
Current Work
Robinson's foundational research explored how diminished educational experiences and underachievement of Black and impoverished students were inextricably connected to school organization, leadership, and teacher-student relationships. More recently, Robinson's scholarship has examined the educational experiences and occupational aspirations of homeless youth. In exploring groups of homeless youth based on race and gender, she has found differences in educational experiences (e.g. treatment by teachers), organization opportunities (e.g. resources and workforce training), and occupational aspirations. As a result of multilevel factors, the reproduction of social inequalities has occurred for these homeless youth in urban school settings, social service organizations, and communities. She extends this work into the Chicago landscape, investigating classroom, school-level, and community factors that diminish or extend the life chances and possibilities of the city's most vulnerable youth. She has partnered with Chapin Hall in an effort to transform research, practice, and policy in sustainable, scalable ways that promote equity and positive academic and socioemotional outcomes for traditionally underserved youth. In particular, Robinson led the Cook County qualitative component of Voices of Youth Count, a national policy research initiative designed to collect original data on the scope and scale of young people experiencing homelessness.In addition, Robinson's research brings to the forefront the field's propensity to overlook the extent to which socially-constructed identities are reflected in not only the meanings students bring with them to school, but also in the meanings that are imposed on them by school actors and structures. She reasons that, in the process of doing so, we underestimate the dynamic meanings of these identities, the agency of teachers to transgress them, and the ability of students to break out of them. Based on her teaching experiences and existing and emerging scholarship, Robinson is developing and refining an innovative theory of care, based in a restorative and equity-driven framework.
Research Area Keyword(s)
Black student achievement, educational history, identity and education, K-12 education, youth homelessness