Critical Race Theory Imperative for BIPOC Student Wellbeing in International Education

by DA Global | Apr 29, 2025 | Global Impact Exchange, Spring 2022

Authors:

• Neal McKinney, Doctoral Student, The Ohio State University

U.S. Black, Indigenous, and Persons of Color (BIPOC) will not soon forget the effects of the double pandemics of 2020 and 2021 for some time. The pandemic of Covid-19 has exposed severe racial inequity in healthcare such that recent CDC data for BIPOC infection, hospital, and death rates from COVID average 1.35, 2.5, and 1.9 times that of white, non-Hispanic persons (CDC, 2021). Beyond Covid-19, BIPOC have also survived the pandemic of highly publicized racialized trauma including but not limited to: the murders George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and the six Asian women in Atlanta, as well as the overt displays of white nationalism under the Trump administration and policies that decimated immigration and civil rights protections. The collective impact of racialized trauma such as these concurrent pandemics produces both physical and psychological stress known as racial battle fatigue (Smith et al., 2007).

Thus, as the field of international education navigates a new normal for U.S. education abroad in 2021 and beyond, the toll of these realities on BIPOC student mental health because of racial battle fatigue must be a part of the overall strategic vision for health and safety best practices. As a first step, international educators must familiarize themselves with research that centers race and racism in order to understand why strategies to support BIPOC students who likely experience racial battle fatigue are necessary and differ from traditional catch-all mental health strategies. This article constructs the foundation for international educators to reimagine and re-prioritize BIPOC students’ wellbeing by introducing critical race theory (CRT) to describe how race and racism shape BIPOC student experiences. This article closes with implications for practice by pointing to research on BIPOC self-care informed by CRT.

Despite a contemporary flash point among global conservative political circles, CRT’s historical purpose is to serve as a critical lens to understand race and racism’s influence within the United States’ history in order to shed light on how race is used to continue inequity between white people and people of color (specifically Black people). CRT’s origins in 1970’s critical legal studies and radical feminism emerged with the intention to interrogate and transform the power dynamics between race and racism within facets of law, policy, and property rights. (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995). Delgado and Stefancic (2001) theorize CRT’s interrogation of race and racism as a critique of color-blindness and legal neutrality of racial civil rights through four specific tenets: 1) racism is ordinary and commonplace, 2) racism provides systemic physical and material benefits to white people, 3) race is not biological and was formed as a social construct, therefore it is subjective and capable of changing its form when convenient, and 4) the uniqueness of voice from people of color serves as a space of resistance against master narratives of race and racism.

Patton (2016) expanded CRT’s usage in higher education to identify three propositions for understanding race and racism in higher education: 1) higher education is rooted in racism/white supremacy, 2) higher education utilized whiteness as property rights to maintain power/oppression over all aspects of the institution (curriculum, property accumulation, hiring practices and policies), and 3) higher education serves as a vessel for promoting knowledge construction/production rooted in racism/white supremacy. Thus, it is important to acknowledge racism’s influence on higher education as an institutional system as largely uncontested and invisible in much of existing higher education literature (particularly in international education). So, in order to disrupt and dismantle its influence on practitioners, it has to be named and studied (Patton, 2016).

The effects of racialized trauma onset by the dual pandemics have yet to be fully studied, particularly their effects on BIPOC students; however, existing studies have used CRT to examine how racism impacts BIPOC student college experiences. Black students reported experiencing microaggressions inside and outside the classroom (Smith, 2007; Solórzano et al., 2000), undocumented Chicana students reported experiencing racialized nativism (Peréz Huber, 2010), and the perpetual invisibility of Filipino students racial identity among Asian American college students (Buenavista et al., 2009) are just a few examples of how racism shows up in the every day experience of BIPOC students. All of these experiences contribute to the detrimental toll of racial battle fatigue, which Smith (2007) describes as a physiological manifestation of “frustration, shock, anger, disappointment, resentment, anxiety, helplessness, hopelessness, and fear” (p. 551).

Therefore, as the field of international education moves forward in its response to the world changing with the Covid-19 pandemic, it is critical that the field find ways to disrupt the realities of racism that challenge BIPOC students’ mental health and wellbeing. One such strategy, informed by CRT, is by naming and validating the existence of racism occurring presently, and having occured in the past, and how this has a specific impact on BIPOC students. Certainly, it is pivotal for U.S. higher education to do this work, yet it is equally important to extend this work to the field of international education. Fortunately, it appears that various education abroad organizations are turning the tide to address racial justice more publicly in their future strategic planning. However, all such efforts can only support BIPOC student wellness by centering the voices of BIPOC students. In closing, CRT instructively offers two possibilities that can honor this charge.

First, international education as a field must be willing to serve as a space that actively challenges dominant ideologies that continue to perpetuate racism. This is adapted from Patton (2016) who acknowledges the burden of such a task for higher education as a whole, but reminds educators that today’s students become tomorrow’s, “lawyers, doctors, judges, teachers, professors, scientists, business owners, leaders, and citizens in this country” (p. 335). All students participating in education abroad learn from what the field teaches, as such, revising any and all policies, practices, and paradigms to incorporate a racial justice lens will ensure that all who engage in international education understand their responsibility in this work such that BIPOC students can feel safe and centered. Such action is possible when international educators simultaneously interrogate and disrupt non-BIPOC students as well as their own monolithic constructs of racial identity that show up globally. BIPOC students have an individualized relationship with racism, which is shaped by their unique stories. These stories must be heard and shared. Delgado and Stefancic (2001) term this concept as engaging anti-essentialism and counterstory-telling, which points to the disrupting of dominant norms generalizing BIPOC individuals into harmful stereotypes (anti-essentialism), and instead amplifying BIPOC students telling of their own stories. International education has the resources to achieve these outcomes for racial justice, and it will be up to international educators to shift into action during this time of unprecedented change to prioritize wellbeing for all BIPOC students.

References

Center for Disease Control and Prevention (2021, November, 22). Hospitalization and death by race/ethnicity. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investigations-discovery/hospitalization-death-by-race-ethnicity.html

Buenavista, T. L., Jayakumar, U. M., & Misa-Escalante, K. (2009). Contextualizing Asian American education through critical race theory: An example of US Pilipino college student experiences. Special Issue: Conducting Research on Asian Americans in Higher Education 2009(142), 69-81. https://doi.org/10.1002/ir.297

Delgado, R., & Stefancic, J. (2001). Critical race theory: An introduction. New York University Press. https://nyupress.org/9781479802760/critical-race-theory-third-edition/

Ladson-Billings, G. & Tate, W.F. (1995). Toward a critical race theory of education. Teacher College Record, 97(1), 47-68. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ519126

Patton, L. D. (2016). Disrupting postsecondary prose: Toward a critical race theory of higher education. Urban Education, 51(3), 315-342. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085915602542

Pérez Huber, L. (2010). Using Latina/o Critical Race Theory (LatCrit) and racist nativism to explore intersectionality in the educational experiences of undocumented Chicana college students. Educational Foundations, 24, 77-96. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ885982.pdf

Solórzano, D., Ceja, M., & Yosso, T. (2000). Critical race theory, racial microaggressions, and campus racial climate: The experiences of African American college students. The Journal of Negro Education, 69(1/2), 60-73. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2696265

Smith, W. A., Allen, W. R., & Darnley, L.L. (2007). “Assume the position…you fit the description”: Psychosocial experiences and racial battle fatigue among African American male college students. American Behavioral Scientist, 51(4), 551-578. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764207307742

Reframing International Health Insurance as Essential to Student Healthcare Access and Equity

by DA Global | Apr 29, 2025 | Global Impact Exchange, Spring 2022

Authors:

• Jessica Driemeier, Associate Director of Study Abroad, University of Miami
• Nina Castro, Assistant Director of Study Abroad, University of Miami

The COVID-19 pandemic has had far-reaching and pervasive effects within the field of international education; it has highlighted the supranational linkages in our collective health and well-being, reinforced the paramount importance of health and safety travel plans and contingencies, and revealed more clearly who the US healthcare system works well for and who it does not. They say “never waste a good crisis”; COVID-19 has given us the time to stop, reflect on what we do, how we do it, and how we can do it better. At the University of Miami, this reflection led to our proposal to mandate a specific international health insurance policy for all students traveling internationally. Our goal is to provide a comprehensive insurance policy to all study abroad students that is partially subsidized or fully paid by the university.

UM’s benchmarking of 25 peer institutions revealed that the majority (80%) have a mandatory international health insurance policy for study abroad students. The remaining 20% offered students the option to purchase international health insurance from a preferred provider. These results are in line with a 2019 University Risk Management & Insurance Association report, which found that 100% of institutions surveyed, provide medical and emergency coverage for their travelers.

In addition to benchmarking, recommendations from the field’s major organizations were incorporated into our proposal. NAFSA best practices recommend that institutions “obtain and maintain appropriate health and travel insurance coverage … during the program” (NAFSA, n.d.). The Forum on Education Abroad reiterates that organizations “maintain[s] appropriate kinds of insurance at recommended levels, operate[s] in compliance with local laws, and follow[s] best practices in reporting on critical incidents” (Forum on Education Abroad, n.d.).

Initially, we conceived the insurance proposal as simply a health and safety compliance measure. But the more we learned about various inclusions and costs, we realized how providing a comprehensive, inclusive insurance policy could be a tool to overcoming barriers that discourage students from pursuing international experiences. Most diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives target specific underrepresented groups; adopting a comprehensive and inclusive insurance policy can effect change and positively impact multiple underrepresented populations. We wanted to share this realization with the international education community to encourage others to also reframe how to approach, develop, and enact DEI efforts.

Increasing accessibility to international opportunities for a diverse student population is a key component of the University of Miami study abroad office’s strategic plan. We believe that a comprehensive international health insurance policy makes it possible for a wider group of students to travel internationally.

Without a subsidized, comprehensive insurance policy provided by the university, students are left with their existing coverage or the best international travel health insurance coverage they can afford. This results in students of higher socioeconomic status (SES) obtaining excellent coverage and care while lower SES students are left afraid to visit a doctor or clinic to avoid a high deductible or large bill. A university-provided and mandated insurance policy can erase this divide, while reducing or eliminating upfront costs to students. Equity of health insurance coverage while abroad ensures that all cases are handled following the same procedure. While there will still be variation in the care received depending on where students are in the world, equity of coverage guarantees similar handling of advising and claim processing as well as identical provision of information and resources.

Furthermore, an inclusive international health insurance policy will help address some of the barriers for students with disabilities. Students with disabilities can succeed in study abroad programs with ongoing support from the home university, the international health insurance provider, and our international partners. With attitudes and laws surrounding physical mobility, mental illness, and many chronic conditions varying depending on study abroad destination it is essential that we have an insurance partner that has an understanding of the support services available in the student’s host country.

Nationwide trends show that more students with anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues are studying abroad. Students who are already aware of mental health conditions and comfortable managing their symptoms may require on-going mental health care as part of their treatment. Moreover, international travel may necessitate extraordinary care beyond their normal treatment protocols due to new and unfamiliar environments. Students who have conditions which have not yet presented could experience this for the first time while abroad without their normal support systems available to them. Institutions can ensure equitable mental health coverage and support for all students going abroad by including this in the group policy. Additionally, it is important to ensure that injuries resulting from alcohol or drug use are covered under the provided policy. Ideally, the coverage should extend to students experiencing substance/alcohol abuse or dependency.

Students covered under the same international health insurance coverage will have the support of on-campus offices along with an experienced healthcare provider abroad allowing students to get customized support and recommendations for their specific health needs. We are hopeful that the implementation of a university-provided and mandated comprehensive insurance policy will open the doors for more underrepresented students to seek out study abroad opportunities without concerns of healthcare costs or coverage. Reframing international health insurance as a tool for DEI access and equity rather than a health and safety compliance measure may assist fellow international education professionals with advocating for an inclusive, comprehensive, and funded policy at their institutions.

References

NAFSA (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.nafsa.org/

Forum on Education Abroad (n.d.). Retrieved from https://forumea.org/

Dueling Pandemics: Global Learning at the Crossroads of Racism and Public Health

by DA Global | Apr 29, 2025 | Global Impact Exchange, Spring 2022

Authors:

• Tara Kermiet, East Carolina University
• Dennis McCunney, East Carolina University

At the beginning of the 2019-2020 semester, a collection of leaders from around our university gathered to try to be proactive about the coming election year. Faculty leaders, student affairs practitioners, student activists, and community partners envisioned how our institution might prepare for the coming year, knowing that – if the political heat was to continue at the same intensity level – it would be particularly divisive with more vitriol that we had previously experienced. A coalition emerged from this planning session dedicated to confronting instances of extremism on campus and incorporating anti-racism outcomes into our work. In light of this experience and in a spirit of retrospect, we engaged in a focused case study regarding our university’s efforts to incorporate some of these anti-racism and anti-extremism learning outcomes under the broader umbrella of our global education efforts.

Moving into the academic year, we had done some preliminary work in promoting AAC&U’s standing definition of global learning as an important foundation. That definition understands global learning as “a critical analysis of and an engagement with complex, interdependent global systems and legacies (such as natural, physical, social, cultural, economic, and political), and their implications for people’s lives and the earth’s sustainability” (Whitehead, 2016). Further, that definition gives some clear direction regarding student learning outcomes. Through global experiences, students should “become informed, open-minded, and responsible people who are attentive to diversity across the spectrum of differences, seek to understand how their actions affect both local and global communities, and address the world’s most pressing and enduring issues collaboratively and equitably” (Hovland, 2014). These specific learning goals of becoming informed and attentive to diversity, while also being aware of local and global impacts of their actions, prompted campus discussions about the need to support student voices of dissent.

Over the past few years, senior leaders on campus – particularly within student affairs – noticed the need to address tensions among student groups, and also allow for students to protest and raise their voices in a safe atmosphere (O’Brien, 2018). To encourage conversation and build relationships with student leaders, and to also show the campus at large that productive, civil dialogue was expected and taking place, we gathered program leaders – both students and staff – to form a thematic initiative to inspire and build upon the notion of campus unity, ultimately titled “ECUnited.” This would set the stage for other programs to fall under this umbrella, ones that would center around similar learning objectives and move the work forward.

Within this thematic effort emerged some specific programs and opportunities to focus the conversation on set topics. An important initiative over the previous few years had focused on building coalitions and promoting civility. Offered as a type of regional summit, our university’s Civility Summit was a program that started as a response to the racially motivated murder and subsequent unrest in Ferguson, Missouri (Michael Brown) and Baltimore, Maryland (Freddie Gray). Again, as an effort at promoting some type of reconciliation in the midst of this collective trauma, and engaging in proactive discussions, this summit served as an attempt to create space for dialogue and community action. Now in its seventh year, this summit has a history of raising challenging questions for the campus community.

At the same time, one silver lining through the pandemic was the way in which the unique situation allowed for doors to be opened more seamlessly, particularly with our international partners. Our institution had begun to cultivate some impactful relationships with NGO partners through Amizade, a fair trade learning nonprofit based in Pittsburgh. We had also maintained connections with Stranmillis University’s nonviolence and peacebuilding program located in Belfast. Combining our desire to keep these relationships strong while recognizing that in-person opportunities were limited, we developed a university-wide program to address the growing divisiveness we witnessed in light of the January 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol attacks. While these effects were not experienced on a wide scale on our campus, we wanted to be sure to continue to lay the groundwork and focus the conversation for the coming years. During the program, global partners led powerful conversations with campus community members, sharing their perspectives on growing violence and extremism in our national context as well as strategies for promoting and strengthening democratic values within this climate.

These efforts at promoting global learning did not only find a home within specific programs and in response to political divisiveness. Our work of integrating global learning outcomes into our departmental efforts within student affairs – and in partnership with faculty colleagues – also had been building through our use of the Global Engagement Survey (GES) as an important assessment program (Hartman et al., 2015). Focused on global citizenship, cultural humility, and critical reflection, our use of this tool was part of a twofold strategy. First, because many of our leadership education and community-engaged learning programs overlapped, we needed a tool that would help us assess student learning across a wide diversity of types of programs. The GES served this need well, and also allowed for longitudinal assessment of student learning over several years. Second, while conversations about ethical global engagement happened sporadically at our institution, there had never been a systematic emphasis on this type of approach to global learning. Yet, the guiding definition from AAC&U as well as a recent faculty development workshop on global service-learning pedagogy provided just such an opportunity, serving as the impetus for us to focus energy on global learning as a unifying approach (Hartman & Kiely, 2014).

At the same time, our institution participated in leadership opportunities offered through the The Community-Based Global Learning Collaborative – a network of educational institutions and community organizations that advances ethical, critical, and aspirationally de-colonial community-based learning and research for more just, inclusive, and sustainable communities. This participation allowed us to further institutionalize our global learning work by being an active part of this wider community of practice. Further, we could compare and contrast our student outcome data with other partner institutions to look for new opportunities to improve our approach.

Through all of these efforts – programmatic and through strategic planning and assessment – our global learning approach has been contextualized and responsive. Rather than launching a top-down programmatic effort, we have learned from student leaders sharing their voices, and subsequently built our work around their efforts to shape campus culture. For the future, our goal is to continue to encourage students to reflect on these experiences and connect their local experiences with respect to diversity, equity and inclusion to more global concerns.

References

Hartman, E., & Kiely, R. (2014). Pushing boundaries: Introduction to the Global Service-Learning Special Section. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 21(1), 55-63.

Hartman, E., Lough, B. J., Toms, C., & Reynolds, N. (2015). Assessing intercultural capacities, civic engagement, and critical thinking: The global engagement survey. Going glocal in higher education: The theory, teaching and measurement of global citizenship, 127.

Hovland, K. (2014). Global learning: Defining, designing, demonstrating. American Association of Colleges and Universities.

O’Brien, J.J. (2018). Exploring intersections among the ACPA/NASPA professional competencies. Journal of College Student Development, 59(3), 274-290.

Whitehead, D.M. (2016). Essential global learning. Association of American Colleges and Universities.

Supporting Diverse Students to Achieve Mental Wellness Abroad

by DA Global | Apr 29, 2025 | Global Impact Exchange, Spring 2022

Authors:

• Jessica Driemeier, Associate Director of Study Abroad, University of Miami
• Nina Castro, Assistant Director of Study Abroad, University of Miami

Sam¹ was a talented student painter selected to participate in the cohorted study abroad program her school’s art department runs every summer in Ireland. Sam, an international student, identified as a queer student of color. She was enthusiastic about participating! The first four weeks her class would do an intensive residency program at a local art institute, and a professor from her home institution would then teach the second half of the program. But Sam never got to take her favorite professor’s class, nor did she complete the residency. By week two, she stopped showing up to class, was unresponsive to any outreach and ultimately had to withdraw from the program and return to her home in Singapore.

During the weeks that followed, we learned from Sam that she had struggled to face three compounding issues: a recent diagnosis of clinical depression; a disconnection with her overwhelmingly white, cis-gender female peer students; and lack of support and recognition of her mental health condition at home, due to cultural differences². To make matters worse, her mental health provider had suggested that her study abroad program would provide a helpful perspective³. While Sam’s most pressing issues were related to mental health, she also struggled with mental resilience as she dealt with problematic group dynamics and academic expectations from the local art institute that she found overwhelming.

Education abroad professionals often address mental wellness holistically in pre-departure (and re-entry) orientations, yet, diverse students, particularly students of color (SOC) could benefit from an approach that differentiates between mental resilience and mental health. Simply put, we understand “mental resilience” as the student’s capacity to deal with the challenges of daily life, which in an abroad context may be the student’s ability to navigate cultural differences, or to deal with homesickness or group dynamics. “Mental health” encompasses those conditions that warrant a mental health professional’s attention, and “mental wellness” functions as an umbrella term for both.

As an international SOC who identified as queer, Sam may have already possessed specific forms of capital to help her navigate challenging situations abroad. Grounded in debates and insights from Critical Race Theory, Tara Yosso (2005) introduces the concept of community cultural wealth, which explicitly recognizes the strengths SOC bring to their educational experiences⁴. Yosso proposes that communities of color nurture cultural wealth through at least six forms of capital (p. 77-81); the skills associated with ‘navigational capital’ in particular equip students to confront challenges commonly encountered abroad, such as deciphering a foreign educational system. However, as Hartman et al. (2020) note, “these are fluid forms of capital, which interact and build on one another” (p. 40). Navigational capital refers to the SOC’s skills to maneuver social institutions and structures of inequality permeated by racism (p. 80), thus highlighting the resilience that “has been recognized as ‘a set of inner resources, social competencies and cultural strategies’” (Yosso, 2005, p.80). International educators can help empower their SOC by creating opportunities for their students to recognize and intentionally tap into these strengths as they adjust to their host cultures.

One strategy is to facilitate venues to help create more awareness within the campus SOC community of the strengths, knowledge, and networks that often go unrecognized. In a recent study focused on first-generation Latinx college students, Wick et al. (2019) found that “familial and linguistic capital were critical to student success. Drawing out these strengths throughout the pre-departure process can also re-center the experiences of marginalized students as vital skills for success in international settings” (p. 80). Prompting students to explore the strategies they possess for managing uncomfortable experiences, as often occurs abroad, surely will highlight to SOC the strength their experiences as part of marginalized communities bring to the cross-cultural environment. To the SOC who may have never left their home state, the message that not only do they not go into the study abroad experience with a deficit (which may be a concern if they attend school with well-traveled peers), but that they actually possess some of the critical cultural navigational skills that will help make their experience abroad successful, might empower them and boost their confidence.

While helping SOC to realize the cultural capital that they bring to the study abroad experience, international educators must also be mindful of the challenges that SOC may face in accessing resources to address mental health issues. To begin, cultural appreciation of mental health conditions particularly within Asian and African cultures may not be as widely accepted, potentially impeding a SOC’s ability or willingness to seek care (Krendl & Pescosolido, 2020; St. Louis & Roberts, 2013). Furthermore, recent studies highlight a reluctance of SOC to disclose or seek help for mental health conditions. Reasons include real or perceived discrimination, as well as limited financial means (Eisenberg et al., 2018).

An appreciation for this dichotomy can help international educators to better support the mental health needs of diverse SOC in their experiences abroad. While we did not find research specifically linking mental resilience in SOC to gains in mental health, studies tying resilience to positive mental health suggest that this could be an insightful topic of additional study⁵. A silver lining of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the focus on mental wellness, and international educators can capitalize on this attention by emphasizing the importance of preparing for self-care and wellness for everyone⁶. This approach can help to deconstruct the stigma that surrounds mental health for some students.

To effectively support diverse SOC, education abroad professionals must expand their campus network and partner with student affairs colleagues in areas such as equality, diversity and inclusion, non-traditional and/or first-generation student support, and LGBTQ+ centers. They should also work closely with counseling professionals to identify and expand the resources available for SOC and understand how and when to connect SOC to trained professionals. Finally, given the reluctance of some SOC to disclose their mental health needs, education abroad professionals should highlight some of the challenges inherent in study abroad, encourage students to explore how they will adapt in the abroad environment and to disclose their needs for further support as early as possible in the pre-departure phase.

As compassionate international educators committed to successful education abroad experiences for our SOC, we must take steps to positively impact their mental health support. While research indicates certain challenges for SOC in accessing support, the community cultural wealth model shifts into focus the strengths, knowledge, and values of SOC, substantiating their mental resilience as they confront challenges, at home and abroad. The need for diagnosis and support of serious mental health conditions remains a critical concern, but helping SOC to see self-care and wellness activities as relevant while recognizing the mental strength they bring to education abroad are key components to addressing the needs of SOC.

In looking back on our experience with Sam, we can’t help but wonder if we had been more aware of the research and utilized some of these approaches as she prepared to study abroad, perhaps her time in Ireland would have been the positive life-changing experience she expected when she first walked into the Education Abroad office. Efforts to customize the approach to the mental health needs of diverse SOC may make all the difference in the world.

1. The student’s name and some details have been changed for privacy reasons. ↩︎
2. Her family in Singapore did not acknowledge her mental health condition, and dismissed related physical problems (narcolepsy) as laziness. For recent research on the challenges of stigma in mental health globally see Krendle and Pescosolido (2020). ↩︎
3. John Lucas (2009) notes: “Because not all mental health professionals have familiarity with addressing issues regarding culture shock or living abroad, a student in treatment may receive counseling that underestimates the additional stress that could complicate his or her study abroad experience” (p. 191). ↩︎
4. Tara Yosso (2005): “I define CRT in education as a theoretical and analytical framework that challenges the ways race and racism impact educational structures, practices, and discourses” (p. 74). Construed as such, CRT explicitly “begins with the perspective that Communities of Color are places with multiple strengths” (p. 82). ↩︎
5. Helling, J. and Chandler, G.E. (2021) write about the psychological health benefits of programs designed specifically for Black students, with a specific focus on resilience theory, mirroring, and cultural resonance. ↩︎
6. See for example Beheshti, N. (2021). ↩︎

References

Beheshti, N. (2021, May 27). Mental health awareness month continues: A silver lining of the pandemic. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/nazbeheshti/2021/05/27/mental-health-awareness-month-continues-a-silver-lining-of-the-pandemic/?sh=4f5c6bce18cf.

Capobianco, S. L. (2020). Examining international education research and practice through a queer theory lens. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 32(1), 12-32.

Hartman, E., Pillard Reynolds, N., Ferrarini, C., Messmore, N., Evans, S., Al-Ebrahim, B., & Brown, J. M. (2020). Coloniality-decoloniality and critical global citizenship: Identity, belonging, and education abroad. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 32(1), 33-59.

Helling, J., & Chandler, G.E. (2021). Meeting the psychological health and growth needs of Black college students: Culture, resonance and resilience. Journal of College Student Psychotherapy, 35(2), 152-180.

Krendl, A. C., & Pescosolido, B. A. (2020). Countries and cultural differences in the stigma of mental illness: The East-West divide. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 51(2), 149-167.

Lucas, J. (2009). Over-stressed, overwhelmed, and over here: Resident directors and the challenges of student mental health abroad. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 18(1), 187-216.

Perkins, C. (2020). Rewriting the narrative: An anti-deficit perspective on study abroad participation. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 32(1), 148-165.

St. Louis, K.O, & Roberts, P.M. (2013). Public attitudes toward mental health illness in Africa and North. African Journal of Psychiatry. 16(2), 123-133.

Wick, D., Willis, T. Y., Rivera, J., Lueker, E., & Hernandez, M. (2019). Assets-based learning abroad: First-generation Latinx college students leveraging and increasing community cultural wealth in Costa Rica. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 31(2), 63-85.

Yosso, T. J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. Race Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), 69-91.