Angelina E Castagno
Biographic Data
| ID | 219393 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Angelina E Castagno |
| GIVEN NAMES | Angelina E |
| FAMILY NAME | Castagno |
| SIGNATURE | CASTAGNO A E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Northern Arizona University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9193-0542 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 155 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Council on Anthropology and Education Presidential Address—Reflections on Praxis, Intentionality, and Relationality in CAE: Educational Anthropologists as (Covert) Systems Change Leaders
Indigenous Students Enacting and Advancing Sovereignty in Higher Education: Relationships, Relevance, Reciprocity, Responsibility, Representation, and Respect Along STEMM Pathways
Indigenous students are the experts of their own experiences, and in this paper, we center the narratives of 17 Indigenous students pursuing STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, medicine) pathways in colleges and universities across the western United States to better understand the affirming and challenging elements that compose their experiences. We narrate their experiences through the 6 Rs framework, which names relationships…
Advancing Understanding of the Complexities of Niceness in Educational Leadership: Unpacking Contexts, Complicity, and the Harms of Niceness
Niceness is deeply woven into the fabric of American educational institutions [...]
Exploring the Role of Indigenous Determinants of Health in the Resilience of Native Nations during Covid-19
American Indians and Alaska Natives (AI/ANs) were disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, experiencing excess hospitalization, mortality, and economic losses compared to the non- Hispanic Whites. This study sought to document the Indigenous determinants of health (IDOH) in AI/AN communities that shaped mental wellbeing for four groups: educators, traditional knowledge holders/practitioners, first responders, and substance abuse reco…
Strengthening STEM Teaching in Rural, Indigenous-Serving Schools through Long-Term, Culturally Responsive Professional Development
This paper describes a particular teacher professional development model offered in schools on and bordering the Navajo Nation in the southwestern United States. The Diné Institute for Navajo Nation Educators (DINÉ) offers professional development across all content areas and grade levels, but here we focus specifically on our work in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) content areas. Our work is situated explicitly within th…
Opening up STEMM pathways among Indigenous people in the U.S: What is the role of cultural, spiritual, and ethical conflicts in Indigenous people's STEMM educational and career decisions
This paper explores how the educational and career paths of Indigenous people in STEMM have been impacted by ethical, cultural, and/or spiritual issues. Based on a survey of over 400 Indigenous students and professionals in STEMM fields, plus over 30 follow up interviews, we find that these issues cause some Indigenous people to leave particular fields altogether, others to avoid certain tasks within their chosen field, and still others to intent…
“It hurts to do work like that”: The nature and frequency of culturally based ethical barriers for Indigenous people in STEMM
This article presents data from a survey of over 400 Indigenous students and professionals in STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, medicine) fields to answer the questions: What are the perceived ethical/cultural/spiritual conflicts Indigenous students and professionals in STEMM face? Is there an association between the cultural characteristics of Indigenous students and professionals and the ethical, cultural, and spiritual conf…
Role of Professional Societies on Increasing Indigenous Peoples’ Participation and Leadership in STEMM
Indigenous people are the most underrepresented racial/ethnic group in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine (STEMM) in the United States. Most prior research suggests this trend is the result broadly of settler colonialism, and more specifically of cultural differences between students and school/university environments; poor academic preparation in K-12 schools; vague constructs of educational or vocational goals; insuffic…
Developing and piloting a tool to assess culturally responsive principles in schools serving Indigenous students
This article presents a tool and discusses the rationale for the authors’ development of a tool designed to assess the alignment of culturally responsive schooling principles within schools serving predominantly U.S. Indigenous students. Schools that serve a majority of Indigenous students are generally located on or bordering Native Nations that are federally recognized as being sovereign Nations with a government-to-government relationship to t…
Liberal Ideologies and Federal School Reform: Following Individualism, Meliorism, and Neutrality Through SIG Policy to Adelante Alternative School
By exploring how liberalism is at work through a federally driven effort to improve academic achievement in schools serving youth of color and those from low-income communities, this article attempts to advance an understanding of the mechanisms that reify structural inequity in urban schools. Based on both a critical analysis of School Improvement Grant (SIG) policy and qualitative data from a school undergoing SIG reform, this article illustrat…
From Professional Development to Native Nation Building: Opening Up Space for Leadership, Relationality, and Self-Determination through the Diné Institute for Navajo Nation Educators
Many of us have multiple stories that would be appropriate to tell given the theme of this Special Issue. I am compelled to tell a story about my work with teachers, teacher leaders, and other allies on the Navajo Nation. The Diné Institute for Navajo Nation Educators (DINÉ) was started by teacher leaders who envisioned a collaborative professional development institute specifically for K12 teachers on the Navajo Nation. In their rural, Indigenou…
Race and Schools
Race and racism have been significant for schools in the United States since their inception, and race and racism continue to hold significance in the ways schools are structured, in school policies and practices, and in opportunities and outcomes in schools. Although race and racism have long mattered in pre‐K‐12 schools, the specific nature of their influence has evolved slightly. What has remained consistent, however, is the systemic and susta…
The Tensions Between Shared Governance and Advancing Educational Equity
Educated in Whiteness: Good Intentions and Diversity in Schools
"Through rich ethnographic accounts of teachers in two demographically different secondary schools in the same urban district, Angelina E. Castagno investigates how whiteness operates in ways that thwart (and sometimes co-opt) even the best intentions and common sense--thus resulting in educational policies and practices that reinforce the status quo and protect whiteness rather than working toward greater equity. Whereas most discussions of the …
Looking into the Hearts of Native Peoples: Nation Building as an Institutional Orientation for Graduate Education
In this article, we suggest that graduate programs in predominantly white institutions can and should be sites of self-education and tribal nation building. In arguing this, we examine how a particular graduate program and the participants of that program engaged tribal nation building, and then we suggest that graduate education writ large must also adopt an institutional orientation of nation building. We connect Guinier's notion of democratic …
Multicultural Education and the Protection of Whiteness
This article explores how teachers in one urban district understand and engage multicultural education in two very different school contexts. My data highlight how teachers’ understandings of multicultural education vacillate between what I call “powerblind sameness” and “colorblind difference.” In the end, I suggest that our everyday engagements with powerblind sameness and colorblind difference protect whiteness, but also that whiteness prevent…
Self‐determination through self‐education: Culturally responsive schooling for Indigenous students in the USA
In this article, we outline culturally responsive schooling (CRS) for Indigenous youth and situate this concept within a larger history of US federal and community‐based efforts to educate Indigenous youth in the USA. We examine what we know from the research literature about the impacts of CRS among US Indigenous youth. In exploring the research, we rely on national datasets of Indigenous youth's achievement on standardized tests, qualitative ap…
Making Sense of Multicultural Education: A Synthesis of the Various Typologies Found in the Literature
This article offers a synthesis of the multiple approaches and definitions of multicultural education offered in the literature. The article suggests that the presence of so many similar typologies only serves to confuse the reader and obscure the meaning of multicultural education. This confusion is problematic, as it leaves educators in a place of uncertainty about effective educational practice
Commonsense understandings of equality and social change: A critical race theory analysis of liberalism at Spruce Middle School
Drawing on data from an ethnographic study in an urban district in the state of Utah, this article highlights how liberalism shapes educational policy and practice in particular ways that ultimately reproduce and legitimate the status quo of whiteness. I employ critical race theory to analyze two aspects of liberalism that are especially pervasive among US educators: first, formal equality, and second, the notion that change is either unneeded or…
Culturally Responsive Schooling for Indigenous Youth: A Review of the Literature
This article reviews the literature on culturally responsive schooling (CRS) for Indigenous youth with an eye toward how we might provide more equitable and culturally responsive education within the current context of standardization and accountability. Although CRS for Indigenous youth has been advocated for over the past 40 years, schools and classrooms are failing to meet the needs of Indigenous students. The authors suggest that although the…
I don't think I'm a racist”: Critical Race Theory, teacher attitudes, and structural racism
This article is an ethnographic examination of teacher attitudes towards race, racism, and White privilege in response to anti‐bias in‐service trainings in two major U.S. urban school districts through the theoretical lens of Critical Race Theory. We employ the analytic tools of Whiteness as property to make sense of the messages teachers perceived and developed about race and racism. Further, we examine what teacher attitudes reveal about the st…
I Don't Want to Hear That: Legitimating Whiteness through Silence in Schools
In this article, I examine the ways in which silences around race contribute to the maintenance and legitimation of Whiteness. Drawing on ethnographic data from two demographically different schools, I highlight patterns of racially coded language, teacher silence, silencing students' race talk, and the conflating of culture with race, equality with equity, and difference with deficit. These silences and acts of silencing create and perpetuate an…
Extending the Bounds of Race and Racism: Indigenous Women and the Persistence of the Black–White Paradigm of Race
I don't think I'm a racist”: Critical Race Theory, teacher attitudes, and structural racism
This article is an ethnographic examination of teacher attitudes towards race, racism, and White privilege in response to anti‐bias in‐service trainings in two major U.S. urban school districts through the theoretical lens of Critical Race Theory. We employ the analytic tools of Whiteness as property to make sense of the messages teachers perceived and developed about race and racism. Further, we examine what teacher attitudes reveal about the st…
I Don't Want to Hear That: Legitimating Whiteness through Silence in Schools
In this article, I examine the ways in which silences around race contribute to the maintenance and legitimation of Whiteness. Drawing on ethnographic data from two demographically different schools, I highlight patterns of racially coded language, teacher silence, silencing students' race talk, and the conflating of culture with race, equality with equity, and difference with deficit. These silences and acts of silencing create and perpetuate an…
Looking into the Hearts of Native Peoples: Nation Building as an Institutional Orientation for Graduate Education
In this article, we suggest that graduate programs in predominantly white institutions can and should be sites of self-education and tribal nation building. In arguing this, we examine how a particular graduate program and the participants of that program engaged tribal nation building, and then we suggest that graduate education writ large must also adopt an institutional orientation of nation building. We connect Guinier's notion of democratic …
Multicultural Education and the Protection of Whiteness
This article explores how teachers in one urban district understand and engage multicultural education in two very different school contexts. My data highlight how teachers’ understandings of multicultural education vacillate between what I call “powerblind sameness” and “colorblind difference.” In the end, I suggest that our everyday engagements with powerblind sameness and colorblind difference protect whiteness, but also that whiteness prevent…
Making Sense of Multicultural Education: A Synthesis of the Various Typologies Found in the Literature
This article offers a synthesis of the multiple approaches and definitions of multicultural education offered in the literature. The article suggests that the presence of so many similar typologies only serves to confuse the reader and obscure the meaning of multicultural education. This confusion is problematic, as it leaves educators in a place of uncertainty about effective educational practice
Commonsense understandings of equality and social change: A critical race theory analysis of liberalism at Spruce Middle School
Drawing on data from an ethnographic study in an urban district in the state of Utah, this article highlights how liberalism shapes educational policy and practice in particular ways that ultimately reproduce and legitimate the status quo of whiteness. I employ critical race theory to analyze two aspects of liberalism that are especially pervasive among US educators: first, formal equality, and second, the notion that change is either unneeded or…
From Professional Development to Native Nation Building: Opening Up Space for Leadership, Relationality, and Self-Determination through the Diné Institute for Navajo Nation Educators
Many of us have multiple stories that would be appropriate to tell given the theme of this Special Issue. I am compelled to tell a story about my work with teachers, teacher leaders, and other allies on the Navajo Nation. The Diné Institute for Navajo Nation Educators (DINÉ) was started by teacher leaders who envisioned a collaborative professional development institute specifically for K12 teachers on the Navajo Nation. In their rural, Indigenou…
Liberal Ideologies and Federal School Reform: Following Individualism, Meliorism, and Neutrality Through SIG Policy to Adelante Alternative School
By exploring how liberalism is at work through a federally driven effort to improve academic achievement in schools serving youth of color and those from low-income communities, this article attempts to advance an understanding of the mechanisms that reify structural inequity in urban schools. Based on both a critical analysis of School Improvement Grant (SIG) policy and qualitative data from a school undergoing SIG reform, this article illustrat…
The Tensions Between Shared Governance and Advancing Educational Equity
Extending the Bounds of Race and Racism: Indigenous Women and the Persistence of the Black–White Paradigm of Race
Culturally Responsive Schooling for Indigenous Youth: A Review of the Literature
This article reviews the literature on culturally responsive schooling (CRS) for Indigenous youth with an eye toward how we might provide more equitable and culturally responsive education within the current context of standardization and accountability. Although CRS for Indigenous youth has been advocated for over the past 40 years, schools and classrooms are failing to meet the needs of Indigenous students. The authors suggest that although the…
I don't think I'm a racist”: Critical Race Theory, teacher attitudes, and structural racism
This article is an ethnographic examination of teacher attitudes towards race, racism, and White privilege in response to anti‐bias in‐service trainings in two major U.S. urban school districts through the theoretical lens of Critical Race Theory. We employ the analytic tools of Whiteness as property to make sense of the messages teachers perceived and developed about race and racism. Further, we examine what teacher attitudes reveal about the st…
I Don't Want to Hear That: Legitimating Whiteness through Silence in Schools
In this article, I examine the ways in which silences around race contribute to the maintenance and legitimation of Whiteness. Drawing on ethnographic data from two demographically different schools, I highlight patterns of racially coded language, teacher silence, silencing students' race talk, and the conflating of culture with race, equality with equity, and difference with deficit. These silences and acts of silencing create and perpetuate an…
Self‐determination through self‐education: Culturally responsive schooling for Indigenous students in the USA
In this article, we outline culturally responsive schooling (CRS) for Indigenous youth and situate this concept within a larger history of US federal and community‐based efforts to educate Indigenous youth in the USA. We examine what we know from the research literature about the impacts of CRS among US Indigenous youth. In exploring the research, we rely on national datasets of Indigenous youth's achievement on standardized tests, qualitative ap…
Making Sense of Multicultural Education: A Synthesis of the Various Typologies Found in the Literature
This article offers a synthesis of the multiple approaches and definitions of multicultural education offered in the literature. The article suggests that the presence of so many similar typologies only serves to confuse the reader and obscure the meaning of multicultural education. This confusion is problematic, as it leaves educators in a place of uncertainty about effective educational practice
Commonsense understandings of equality and social change: A critical race theory analysis of liberalism at Spruce Middle School
Drawing on data from an ethnographic study in an urban district in the state of Utah, this article highlights how liberalism shapes educational policy and practice in particular ways that ultimately reproduce and legitimate the status quo of whiteness. I employ critical race theory to analyze two aspects of liberalism that are especially pervasive among US educators: first, formal equality, and second, the notion that change is either unneeded or…
Multicultural Education and the Protection of Whiteness
This article explores how teachers in one urban district understand and engage multicultural education in two very different school contexts. My data highlight how teachers’ understandings of multicultural education vacillate between what I call “powerblind sameness” and “colorblind difference.” In the end, I suggest that our everyday engagements with powerblind sameness and colorblind difference protect whiteness, but also that whiteness prevent…
Educated in Whiteness: Good Intentions and Diversity in Schools
"Through rich ethnographic accounts of teachers in two demographically different secondary schools in the same urban district, Angelina E. Castagno investigates how whiteness operates in ways that thwart (and sometimes co-opt) even the best intentions and common sense--thus resulting in educational policies and practices that reinforce the status quo and protect whiteness rather than working toward greater equity. Whereas most discussions of the …
Looking into the Hearts of Native Peoples: Nation Building as an Institutional Orientation for Graduate Education
In this article, we suggest that graduate programs in predominantly white institutions can and should be sites of self-education and tribal nation building. In arguing this, we examine how a particular graduate program and the participants of that program engaged tribal nation building, and then we suggest that graduate education writ large must also adopt an institutional orientation of nation building. We connect Guinier's notion of democratic …
The Tensions Between Shared Governance and Advancing Educational Equity
Role of Professional Societies on Increasing Indigenous Peoples’ Participation and Leadership in STEMM
Indigenous people are the most underrepresented racial/ethnic group in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine (STEMM) in the United States. Most prior research suggests this trend is the result broadly of settler colonialism, and more specifically of cultural differences between students and school/university environments; poor academic preparation in K-12 schools; vague constructs of educational or vocational goals; insuffic…
Developing and piloting a tool to assess culturally responsive principles in schools serving Indigenous students
This article presents a tool and discusses the rationale for the authors’ development of a tool designed to assess the alignment of culturally responsive schooling principles within schools serving predominantly U.S. Indigenous students. Schools that serve a majority of Indigenous students are generally located on or bordering Native Nations that are federally recognized as being sovereign Nations with a government-to-government relationship to t…
Liberal Ideologies and Federal School Reform: Following Individualism, Meliorism, and Neutrality Through SIG Policy to Adelante Alternative School
By exploring how liberalism is at work through a federally driven effort to improve academic achievement in schools serving youth of color and those from low-income communities, this article attempts to advance an understanding of the mechanisms that reify structural inequity in urban schools. Based on both a critical analysis of School Improvement Grant (SIG) policy and qualitative data from a school undergoing SIG reform, this article illustrat…
From Professional Development to Native Nation Building: Opening Up Space for Leadership, Relationality, and Self-Determination through the Diné Institute for Navajo Nation Educators
Many of us have multiple stories that would be appropriate to tell given the theme of this Special Issue. I am compelled to tell a story about my work with teachers, teacher leaders, and other allies on the Navajo Nation. The Diné Institute for Navajo Nation Educators (DINÉ) was started by teacher leaders who envisioned a collaborative professional development institute specifically for K12 teachers on the Navajo Nation. In their rural, Indigenou…
Race and Schools
Race and racism have been significant for schools in the United States since their inception, and race and racism continue to hold significance in the ways schools are structured, in school policies and practices, and in opportunities and outcomes in schools. Although race and racism have long mattered in pre‐K‐12 schools, the specific nature of their influence has evolved slightly. What has remained consistent, however, is the systemic and susta…
Strengthening STEM Teaching in Rural, Indigenous-Serving Schools through Long-Term, Culturally Responsive Professional Development
This paper describes a particular teacher professional development model offered in schools on and bordering the Navajo Nation in the southwestern United States. The Diné Institute for Navajo Nation Educators (DINÉ) offers professional development across all content areas and grade levels, but here we focus specifically on our work in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) content areas. Our work is situated explicitly within th…
Opening up STEMM pathways among Indigenous people in the U.S: What is the role of cultural, spiritual, and ethical conflicts in Indigenous people's STEMM educational and career decisions
This paper explores how the educational and career paths of Indigenous people in STEMM have been impacted by ethical, cultural, and/or spiritual issues. Based on a survey of over 400 Indigenous students and professionals in STEMM fields, plus over 30 follow up interviews, we find that these issues cause some Indigenous people to leave particular fields altogether, others to avoid certain tasks within their chosen field, and still others to intent…
“It hurts to do work like that”: The nature and frequency of culturally based ethical barriers for Indigenous people in STEMM
This article presents data from a survey of over 400 Indigenous students and professionals in STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, medicine) fields to answer the questions: What are the perceived ethical/cultural/spiritual conflicts Indigenous students and professionals in STEMM face? Is there an association between the cultural characteristics of Indigenous students and professionals and the ethical, cultural, and spiritual conf…
Advancing Understanding of the Complexities of Niceness in Educational Leadership: Unpacking Contexts, Complicity, and the Harms of Niceness
Niceness is deeply woven into the fabric of American educational institutions [...]
Exploring the Role of Indigenous Determinants of Health in the Resilience of Native Nations during Covid-19
American Indians and Alaska Natives (AI/ANs) were disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, experiencing excess hospitalization, mortality, and economic losses compared to the non- Hispanic Whites. This study sought to document the Indigenous determinants of health (IDOH) in AI/AN communities that shaped mental wellbeing for four groups: educators, traditional knowledge holders/practitioners, first responders, and substance abuse reco…
Council on Anthropology and Education Presidential Address—Reflections on Praxis, Intentionality, and Relationality in CAE: Educational Anthropologists as (Covert) Systems Change Leaders
Indigenous Students Enacting and Advancing Sovereignty in Higher Education: Relationships, Relevance, Reciprocity, Responsibility, Representation, and Respect Along STEMM Pathways
Indigenous students are the experts of their own experiences, and in this paper, we center the narratives of 17 Indigenous students pursuing STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, medicine) pathways in colleges and universities across the western United States to better understand the affirming and challenging elements that compose their experiences. We narrate their experiences through the 6 Rs framework, which names relationships…
Sociology (18 works) · Political science (14 works) · Pedagogy (12 works) · Indigenous (11 works) · Critical Race Theory in Education (10 works) · Law (10 works) · Gender Studies (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Indigenous and Place-Based Education (5 works)