About

Dr. Aixa Marchand is an Assistant Professor in the Developmental Sciences Division of the Department of Educational Psychology and Human Development and Family Studies. She hails from West Covina, CA and Miami, FL. Dr. Marchand earned her PhD in the Combined Program in Education and Psychology with a certificate in African American and Diasporic Studies from the University of Michigan. Her research adopts an interdisciplinary approach to examine the societal, contextual, and cultural factors that influence the academic experiences of students of color, with a particular focus on Black parents' critical consciousness. Specifically, she employs multi-method approaches to investigate the attributions Black parents make regarding educational inequities and how these attributions relate to their engagement with their children's schools. Outside of her academic work, Dr. Marchand enjoys traveling, spending time with family and friends, and exploring new places. A notable personal experience includes meeting former President Barack Obama on the tarmac as he arrived in Fort Lauderdale on Air Force One.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Gender studies
• Psychology
• Criminology
• Developmental psychology
• Law
• Social psychology

Selected publications

• Who Gon' Save Us

  2026-03-26

  book-chapter

  Through collective autoethnographic storytelling, four Black women share their narratives of navigating the racialized and gendered oppressive systematic structures of academia in the format of a collective mixtape. Using the Grown Black Women Voice Framework, they take control of their narratives to discuss how they navigate, fight, and resist within the academy as graduate students and assistant professors. The collective reflection identifies the common themes of labor, resilience, and boundaries of Black women in the academy. Furthermore, the authors use music by Black women to emphasize the narratives and themes. Black women continue to be the beacon of support and guidance for other Black women in academia; however, who will save us as we save each other? This chapter ends with the question “who gon’ save us?” and the desire for liberation.

  PublisherDOI

• “Stop telling people what they need and listen": a case study of how parents and teachers framed a retention policy revision

  International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education · 2026-03-13

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Review for "How Do Preservice Teachers Make Sense of Educational Inequalities? Exploring Critical Consciousness Through Mixed Methods"

  2025-08-14

  peer-review1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• A Primer on MIMIC Models and Critical Quantitative Methods to Increase Their Use

  AERA Open · 2025-09-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  MIMIC (Multiple Indicator and MultIple Causes) models afford powerful claims about measurement—particularly in identifying biased items—and are relatively simple to specify and test. Therefore, we argue that MIMIC models are sorely underutilized and serve important roles in ensuring sound and fair measurement in educational scholarship. When viewed from the perspective of critical quantitative (CritQuant) methodology, MIMICs hold promise in fostering equity-oriented and anti-racist measurement. The MIMIC strategy, employed from a CritQuant perspective, may also reveal how bias in measurement may lead to underestimating the impacts of racism on educational and related outcomes. To increase their use, this primer aims to explain how to specify and evaluate MIMIC models and provides sample code in R (lavaan) and MPlus. The paper concludes by articulating the advantages and disadvantages of MIMICs, from both CritQuant and technical perspectives, to inform educational research.

  PublisherDOI

• When a District Calls for Commitment: Parents and Teachers Responding to Majoritarian Narratives in District Policy

  Equity & Excellence in Education · 2025-01-02

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Black Adolescents’ Critical Reflection Development: Parents’ Racial Socialization and Attributions About Race Achievement Gaps

  UNC Libraries · 2025-08-09

  articleOpen access

  This research explored the development of Black adolescents' (N = 454) critical reflection, conceived as individual (i.e., blaming Black people) and structural (i.e., blaming systemic racism) attributions for race achievement gaps. In this longitudinal study, adolescents and their parents reported their individual and structural attributions for race achievement gaps and parents' racial socialization. Adolescents' structural attributions increased from Grade 10 to Grade 12. Average levels of individual attributions did not change. Adolescents' reports of parental racial socialization and parents' structural attributions when youth were in Grade 10 predicted increases in adolescents' structural attributions. Findings are applied to future research and efforts to increase adolescent critical reflection.

  PublisherDOI

• The role of parents' and adolescents' critical reflection in the development of white youths' commitments to dismantling oppression

  Journal of Research on Adolescence · 2024-12-27 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Given the access that white youth have to privilege and power, it is important to understand how they might develop life goals related to dismantling multiple forms of oppression, which we term critical purpose. Parents may support their children's critical purpose via their own critical reflection (understanding of the root causes of disparities in society), which may be associated with their child's critical reflection. Structural equation models of two waves of data from 351 white youth showed an indirect relationship between parent critical reflection and youth critical purpose through youth critical reflection. Bolstering white parents' critical reflection may be a strategy for supporting the development of white youths' commitments to future social justice action.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Measuring critical parent engagement: the development and validation of the black parent measure of critical consciousness in education

  Research in Human Development · 2024-10-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Exploring Black parents’ critical consciousness in relation to their engagement with their children's schools

  Journal of Social Issues · 2024-05-29 · 10 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Despite consensus that parent involvement is integral to children's educational success, Black parents’ involvement remains largely characterized from a deficits‐based perspective. Using critical race and critical consciousness theories, this study explored parents’ analysis of educational inequities and their school engagement. Using interview data from a sample of Black parents ( n = 20), emergent understandings of parents’ thoughts, motivations, and actions to engage with their child's school were explored. Findings revealed that Black parents held both critical and traditional views, expressed themes of internal and external efficacy in their motivation, and engaged critically and traditionally in their child's education. Results are consonant with literature on Black parents’ engagement and to the nascent understanding of how parents' beliefs about structural racial oppression within schools impacts how they engage in that space.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• US teacher opposition to so-called critical race theory bans

  Teaching and Teacher Education · 2024-08-23 · 13 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Matthew A. Diemer

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  18 shared

• Stephanie J. Rowley

  University of Virginia

  11 shared

• Fernanda L. Cross

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  5 shared

• Rema Reynolds Vassar

  5 shared

• Deborah Rivas‐Drake

  4 shared

• Nkemka Anyiwo

  4 shared

• Sarah E. McKellar

  University of Alabama

  3 shared

• Josefina Bañales

  University of Illinois Chicago

  3 shared

Labs

• Translational Research towards Educational Equity LabPI

Education

• Graduate School, Combined Program in Education and Psychology

  University of Michigan

  2019