Project 1 (completed): “Re/constructing Race: An Ethnography of Transracial Adoption”
(John Raible, 2002)
Summary: Multi-sited ethnographic study of a broadly defined “community of transracial adoption.” The study focused on one institution that provides post-adoption services, documenting the impact of discourses of race and adoption on the personal and professional identities of two social workers
Project 2 (completed): “Beyond Categories: The Complex Identities of Adolescents”
(John Raible & Sonia Nieto, 2003)
Summary: Case studies featuring the complex identities of two youth, an “out” lesbian high school senior and a multiracial male adoptee in middle school being raised in an “open” adoption that is also a transracial adoption.
Project 3 (completed): “Sharing the Spotlight: The Non-adopted Siblings of Transracial Adoptees”
(John Raible, 2005)
Summary: This study focused on the meaning of race and adoption to non-adopted white adults who grew up in interracial families formed when their parents adopted children of African American or Korean heritage. The study showed how multicultural identity development can be enhanced through long-term relationships of caring with individuals of another race, both within and outside the family.
Project 4 (completed): “Transracialized Selves and the Emergence of Post-white Teacher Identities”
(John Raible & Jason Irizarry, 2007)
Summary: The study drew on doctoral research to explore the influence of relationships of difference on the transracialized identities and lived experience of two white adults. The study documented how anti-racist, “post-white” identities were enacted by two women who had been raised with fostered or adopted siblings of color and who have chosen, as adults, to live and work in multicultural contexts.
Project 5 (in progress): “Teaching Family Diversity in Nebraska Schools”
Summary: The project documents the meaning to a group of professionals of a multicultural education seminar in family diversity (taught by Dr. Raible). The course used the lens of transracial adoption to reflect upon issues of identity, culture, and family diversity. The course addressed the experience of transracial adoption in a variety of families, including lesbian- and gay-headed families. The current study seeks to document the course’s impact on the professional identities of teachers and on the subsequent and potentially controversial pedagogical approaches to issues of family diversity taken in their respective classrooms.
