The purpose of this article is to engage crip theory in a critical analysis of the calls within elementary education for a return to normalcy. I seek to question the ways COVID-19 has reinforced orientations towards normalcy by asking where normalcy went and how the calls for its return reveal the fundamental limits of inclusion within schools.…

Beginning with a storied moment of encounter at an academic conference in which several scholars confidently asserted the need to "humanize those who have been dehumanized", I engage in autobiographical narrative inquiry into my tensions with this seemingly "common sense" pedagogical belief and curricular approach. I do so by…

Curriculum change involves struggles among political actors and interest groups, and those efforts related to sex education have been noted for their particularly vexatious character. When Doug Ford was elected Premier of Ontario, Canada in 2018, he immediately repealed the comprehensive health curriculum of 2015 and attempted to muzzle teachers…

In my second year teaching at the elementary level, two biracial first graders told a Black child that she could not play because her skin was too dark. I found myself, a white female teacher, using the language of the bullying prevention programme to ignore the racialized nature of the incident and ultimately enact a hidden curriculum of white…

The currents of elitism surging through curriculum studies in the United States have long been of chief concern to critical scholars in the field. Elements of this elitism running along racialized, gendered, classed and other such lines elide to marginalize knowledge generated by and about the "other." For this racialized, gendered,…

This paper explores nostalgia as both a limiting cultural force in the lives of school librarians and a practice that can be used to more accurately portray library work. The stereotype of the shushing, lone school librarian, based on restorative nostalgia, is related to a nostalgic oversimplification of the school librarian's historical role.…

In this paper, the authors focus on everyday narrations of the nation as they are taken up by educators "in schools" in the United States, Denmark and Spain. As the primary institutions within which children from im/migrant communities are incorporated into the nation-state, schools are the key sites within which young people learn the…

This essay examines a video poem curriculum for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) students of color at a continuation school in Los Angeles, California. In this close reading of a video poem that draws from a larger research project of a community-based learning curriculum, I have found that for LGBTQ students of color whose…

Citizenship education programs promote political participation by young people. These programs risk misrepresenting politics to students by encouraging them to believe that there are universally accepted principles which govern the definition of citizenship and who is entitled to participate in its various dimensions. The article argues that…

Disparate and contradicting assumptions about culture play a significant role in how the artist is constructed in the public imagination. These assumptions have important implications for how young artists should be educated and for the curriculum of artistic education. In this article, I theorize three conceptions of the role of the artist in…

In this article we draw on queer theoretical and critical literacy perspectives to investigate elementary school teachers' pedagogical approaches to addressing same-sex parenting and non-normative sexuality in the elementary classroom. Through undertaking case study research, we examine two Australian elementary school teachers' reflections on…

This qualitative textual analysis investigates the ideological lenses through which U.S. History content standards for grades 5-12 for Arizona and Washington frame interactions between American Indians and European Americans during U.S. national development. The study's multiperspective critical conceptual framework interrogates the standards not…