Katherine Cumings Mansfield

  • Associate Professor
  • Educational Leadership and Cultural Foundations, UNCG
  • kcmansfi@uncg.edu
  • 364 School of Education Building

A first-generation college graduate, Katherine Mansfield has 25 years’ experience as a teacher and administrator across the preschool to post-secondary pipeline. Mansfield completed her Ph.D. in Educational Policy and Planning at The University of Texas at Austin where she also earned additional graduate credentials in Women’s and Gender Studies. Mansfield’s research spans across elementary, secondary, and higher education (P-16) sectors and centers on the intersection of social identities, politics, policy, and practice. For example, she has studied the disproportionality in school discipline, gifted education, and STEM as it relates to gender, race/ethnicity, class, and other identity complexities in schools. Mansfield has also studied the importance of mentoring women graduate students, especially those studying in historically male-dominated fields such as educational leadership and STEM. Currently, Mansfield primarily focuses on student voice and the importance of including students as educational leaders and policy actors in local, state, national, and global arenas. This work has been featured on National Public Radio and has taken her to 10 countries across 6 continents.

There are 29 included publications by Katherine Cumings Mansfield :

TitleDateViewsBrief Description
The color of giftedness: A policy genealogy implicating educators past, present, and future 2016 1174 This article offers a critical rereading of gifted education in the United States using a genealogical framework as defined by postcolonial theory. Using genealogy is appropriate because it sets the education profession within a family research tradi...
Courageous conversations about race, class, and gender: Voices and lessons from the field 2015 2103 The purpose of this paper is to present a qualitative secondary analysis of two empirical studies that focused on the leadership practices of female practitioners at the secondary level engaging in discourse and practices to disrupt educational inequ...
‘Creating smooth spaces in striated places’: Toward a global theory for examining social justice leadership in schools 2014 1146 This chapter shares an original social justice framework that emerged in conjunction with conducting a 2-year ethnography studying the culture of an urban all-girls’ secondary school. I refer to this new interpretive lens as “Facilitating social just...
A critical policy analysis of Texas’ Closing the Gaps 2015 2016 1008 This critical policy analysis uses critical race theory to provide a counter narrative to the P-16 initiative in Texas known as Closing the Gaps 2015. Findings indicate that while these reforms aim to increase educational access and achievement for p...
Female graduate students (re)define mentoring in educational leadership: Results from a survey 2015 299 Female doctoral students in educational leadership programs receive fewer mentoring opportunities as compared to their male counterparts. This chapter presents descriptive statistical results from a survey examining gender differences in how educatio...
The growth of single-sex schools: Federal policy meets local needs and interests 2013 1003 Changes to Title IX allowing the growth of single-sex schools have garnered media attention promoting the benefits of separating boys and girls. Alternately, civil rights groups such as the ACLU continue to oppose any type of school segregation. With...
High school teachers’ perceptions of restorative discipline practices 2019 1705 Disproportionality in school discipline is a serious and ongoing problem. Some schools are experimenting with alternative models to address persistent inequities. This article features one high school’s adoption of a restorative practices discipline ...
How listening to student voices can inform and strengthen social justice research and practice 2014 491 Purpose: The purpose of this research article is to illustrate the value of including students’ voices in educational leadership and research practices, to more fully understand what students are actually experiencing in transformative learning space...
“I love these girls–I was these girls”: Women leading for social justice in a single-sex public school 2013 1108 The purpose of this article is to share the findings from a 2-year ethnography that examined female practitioners’ experiences in the field. The article describes the intentions, discourses, actions, and repercussions of female administrators and tea...
The importance of safe space and student voice in schools that serve minoritized learners 2015 1109 This article is based on an ethnography conducted over a six year period that used participant observation, photography, focus groups, and interviews to discover and describe the emergent school culture and the lived experiences of female secondary s...
The intellectual landscape of critical policy analysis 2014 3387 What counts as critical policy analysis in education? Over the past 30 years, a tightening of national educational policies can be seen in the USA and across the globe. Over this same period of time, a growing number of educational policy scholars, d...
Just the way things were or malicious intent?: One professor’s attempt to facilitate truth 2007 183 My professor placed a quote on the overhead by Lewis Terman, former Stanford professor, APA president, and vicar of IQ testing and gifted education in America. The passage stressed that Mexicans and Blacks are born morons, not capable of learning, an...
Legislative advocacy for high quality leadership preparation: Perspectives and implications for teaching and learning educational leadership 2008 1068 This article interrogates the value of leadership preparation programs connecting academic and political spheres as endorsed in the 2008 revised ISLLC Standards. Specifically, a number of exemplar teaching and learning practices are shared that led t...
The lived experiences of female educational leadership doctoral students 2010 239 Purpose: There is a meager body of research addressing the role educational leadership preparation programs in colleges and universities play in preparing women leaders. Also educational leadership preparation research has yet to explore ways in whic...
Mentoring educational leadership doctoral students: Using methodological diversification to examine gender and identity intersections 2015 290 An essential component to learning and teaching in educational leadership is mentoring graduate students for successful transition to K-12 and higher education positions. This study integrates quantitative and qualitative datasets to examine doctoral...
Mentoring matters: An exploratory survey of educational leadership doctoral students’ perspectives 2014 549 There is limited research on quantitative differences between men and women’s experiences in doctoral programs. We aim to fill that gap by sharing findings from a web-based exploratory survey of perceived gender differences on quality mentoring in ed...
Negotiating the double mandate: Mapping ethical conflict experienced by practicing educational administrators 2014 271 The purpose of this study was to capture and describe ethical conflict experienced by seasoned educational administrators. Narrative inquiry via electronic survey was conducted with 42 participants with follow-up interviews conducted with a smaller s...
Negotiating race and gender in marginalized work settings 2016 423 Building on earlier research and discourse on women in educational leadership, we conducted a qualitative secondary analysis on conceptual and empirical research. A permeating theme throughout literature was women’s ability to negotiate gender and ra...
The past and future technology in classroom management and school discipline: A systematic review 2020 1927 Schools have marched into the digital age–but have classroom management and school discipline followed suit? Analyzing the content and methodologies of over two decades of empirical research in ERIC, this systematic literature review describes how th...
The potential of restorative practices to ameliorate discipline gaps: The story of one high school’s leadership team 2018 2344 The purpose of this “From the Field” article is to share the tentative results of community-engaged research investigating the impact of Restorative Justice Discipline Practices on persistent discipline gaps in terms of race, gender, and special educ...
Preparing practitioners to conduct educational research and evaluation: What the research says and what our experiences taught us 2016 1061 The purpose of this article is to share the insights gleaned from the literature and our on-the-ground realities teaching practitioners to conduct educational research and evaluation. We focus on four areas we have found most important for teaching p...
Queer theory perspectives on schools as organizations 2019 2349 Queer theory has been deployed as a tool for many purposes and has been quite useful in the field of organizational studies. And while theorists vary in their emphases depending on specific contexts, there are similar ways queer theory is presented i...
Striving toward the promise of P-16 reform: Political, organizational, and leadership challenges 2018 146 This article examines the development and implementation of P-16 education reform in Texas and aims to understand leadership meaning-making at state and local levels. Findings suggest goal attainment and sustainability varied statewide according to h...
A study of Career Pathways policy with implications for educational leaders 2014 151 This explanatory mixed-methods study began with a quantitative survey to investigate counselor beliefs and implementation behaviors related to providing college and career planning services to high school students. Survey results informed the develop...
Truth or Consequences: A feminist critical policy analysis of the STEM crisis 2014 1673 STEM education has received significant attention in the USA and is largely fueled by rhetoric suggesting the USA is losing its global competitive edge and that there is a lack of qualified workers available to fill growing STEM jobs. However, a coun...
Using poetry to reach and teach future educational leaders for social justice 2013 409 The purpose of this paper is to explore the importance of teaching concepts of social justice in educational leadership preparation programs, share teaching strategies from the literature, and provide new examples of graduate student activities and p...
What constitutes sexual harassment and how should administrators handle it? 2017 1103 Gender discrimination and sexual harassment persist on college campuses across the United States. This seems especially obvious at the beginning of the academic year when many freshman women and their parents are welcomed to campus with sexually expl...
What do students have to do with educational leadership?: Making a case for centering student voice 2017 904 The purpose of this article is to illustrate the value of educational leaders intentionally including students in shaping the policies and practices that affect young people’s schooling experiences. First, we share the literature on student voice and...
What’s in a name?: The confluence of confederate symbolism and the disparate experiences of African American students in a Central Virginia high school 2017 1119 In 2015-2016, news stories from Charleston, South Carolina, and the University of Missouri, among others, motivated and inspired many people to organize against assaults on the Black community generally and Black students in particular. Similarly, Bl...