Niceness, Leadership and Educational Equity

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue explores the role of Niceness among educational leaders. We broadly define leaders to include those in both formal and informal leadership roles in educational settings from preschools to college and graduate programs. Ladson-Billings (1998) acknowledged the connection between Niceness and education when she asked, “Just What Is Critical Race Theory and What’s It Doing in a Nice Field Like Education?,” but her question is only beginning to be answered by educational researchers. They argue that teachers and educational leaders are invested in Niceness, and that Niceness reinforces patterned educational inequities (Castagno 2014; 2019; Goodman 2001; Marshall and Theoharis 2007). Thus, we invite article submissions that explore the way Niceness informs, functions, and structures leaders’ efforts to dismantle systemic oppression and advance educational equity.

Bramen (2017) presents a compelling cultural history of American Niceness and argues that it is a cultural construct with a relative lack of scholarly exploration. She notes that “the nice American is as pervasive as its negative counterpart, but it has been neither studied nor defined as explicitly. This is partly due to the fact that niceness is assumed to be a national default mode, an obvious and superficial gesture not worthy of serious inquiry. Its banality puts it under the radar of cultural analysis. My fundamental claim is that even though it often goes unnamed as a pattern of behavior, niceness pervades the everyday conduct, assumptions, and discourses of and about Americans” (7). Intentionality is important in understanding Niceness. Good intentions have been linked to the perpetuation of inequity in schools (Castagno 2014, Lewis and Diamond 2015), and the role of intentions is not limited to the educational environment. As Bramen (2017) notes, “Niceness implies that Americans are fundamentally well-meaning people defined by an essential goodness. Even acts of aggression are framed as passive, reluctant, and defensive acts to protect oneself against the potential aggression of another. Our point is that American Niceness assumes that Americans are decent and good-natured people with the best of intentions. Even if they do serious damage in the world, American Niceness means that the damage will be more than likely seen as a mistake” (8). Thus, Niceness not only operates at institutional and individual levels, but it is also part of the fabric of educational institutions.

Niceness is a mechanism for sustaining structural arrangements and ideologies of dominance across races, genders, and social classes. Niceness functions not only as a shield to protect individuals from performing the hard work of dismantling inequity, but also as a disciplining agent for those who attempt or even consider disrupting structures and ideologies of dominance. Niceness is both an institutional norm within institutions and an embodied practice among people in those institutions. Niceness is differentially engaged with in local areas, but the overall pattern is the same. In other words, Niceness works at both the individual and institutional levels. Thus, in order to really understand Niceness, we must examine it at both of these levels and their intersection. Importantly, Niceness incurs differentiated costs, benefits, and expectations. Recent scholarship distinguishes between Niceness as embodied by those in more powerful and privileged positions and the demand to act nice among those challenging power (Castagno, 2019). This means that if you identify with more privileged people while disrupting the norms of Niceness, the ways in which you are likely to be perceived will be different than if you identify with more marginalized and underrepresented people.

We welcome submissions employing diverse methodological approaches and theoretical frameworks that help us better understand Niceness among educational leaders. We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Angelina Castagno
Dr. Lauren Contreras
Dr. Cynthia D. Villarreal
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Education Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• educational leadership
• educational equity
• whiteness
• niceness
• anti-racism