This qualitative study examines how elementary students of Color develop and enact an abolitionist praxis as part of a "Freedom Dreaming" literacy unit. The analysis of focus-group interviews elucidates how, after learning about freedom dreaming and the abolition of prisons and police, students positioned historical anti-carceral…

As Philadelphia has a rich history in the fight for LGBTQ+ justice, this article centers on two examples of LGBTQ+ activism that were based in the city: Dewey's Lunch Counter Sit-In and Reminder Day. Predating the Stonewall Uprising in New York City, which is marked as the start of the contemporary LGBTQ+ Pride movement, the Dewey's Lunch Counter…

Research in early childhood and elementary social studies education has illuminated how teachers can use children's literature to explore issues of injustice, elevate hidden histories, and affirm students' identities. Integrating children's literature into social studies instruction not only supports literacy education aims but also promotes…

This article describes how Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) art teacher SJ Hemmerich intentionally addresses social justice topics they see as problematic within Hemmerich's school community, and features artwork created by artists of color and queer artists from different religions, cultures, and backgrounds and with varying abilities…

This article examines the purposeful use of counternarrative to develop an antiracist school identity. Based on a seven-year ethnographic project at an elementary school in the southeast U.S., it illustrates how counternarrative can be employed as strategy to embed Critical Race Theory (CRT) into school equity discourse and, in doing so, help…

Language teaching activism is a political movement for educational transformation where the role of teachers and languages, as a medium of instruction and literacy, are fundamental for equity and social justice. This paper analyzes the reflections from elementary school teachers from Austin (Texas, U.S.) and Oaxaca (Mexico) during a collaborative…

Racism impacts various facets of the lives of people of color (POC) in the United States, spanning across historical and contemporary contexts. Chinese Americans, as an ethnic group historically excluded from entering the United States and denied naturalized citizenship, have endured distinctive and enduring forms of racism that are…

We contribute to the teacher activism literature an understanding of how activist organizations support professionalization processes. We examine how teachers' involvement in a local activist organization counteracts the de-professionalizing reforms of the standards and accountability movement and fosters the professionalization of teaching. Our…

This dissertation tells the story of how an experiment in university-based teacher learning blossomed into a rigorous and deeply meaningful learning experience for teachers and a teacher-centered partnership between a university-based institute and a group of justice-oriented K-12 teachers. This ethnographic study followed a group of California…

This article examines the ways in which teachers and community-based activists collaborated to advance an anti-privatisation agenda within an urban school district. The article emerges from our respective studies of privatisation in Oakland, one a historical study of the advance of neoliberalism and the other a case study (Merriam 2007,…

Children are often denied science education that engages their emotions and multiple identities. This study focused on ways in which embodied arts-based experiences offer opportunities for such engagement in pedagogical efforts associated with justice-centered science. The conceptual framework that informed the study considers the body as a site…

The push toward socially just music education begs the question of whether activist music teaching may foster a new autocracy. In this paper, I consider how Deleuzian lines of flight and the related concepts of nomadism, territorialization, deterritorialization, and reterritorialization trouble or extend activist music education. I further explore…

Pauli Murray was an activist, legal scholar, author, and she was also queer. Her impact on the civil rights and women's rights movements cannot be overstated. The authors present the reader with the potential for elementary teachers to disrupt and "unmute" curricular silencing by shifting focus to Pauli Murray's story and work in the…

This article examines how 8-year-old children in a primary school in England develop new understandings of hardship and survival through the process of digital storytelling. The research presented here is part of a larger global literacy 'Critical Connections Multilingual Digital Storytelling Project' (2012-ongoing) working across 15 countries…

Two-way Bilingual Education (TWBE) programs are currently experiencing gentrification processes that are displacing the original beneficiaries of these programs. These gentrification processes have led to a whitening of bilingual education (Flores and García in Ann Rev Appl Linguist, 37:14-29, 2017) marked by inequities and the dangerous potential…