An open classroom climate, one where diverse opinions and discussion of social and political issues are welcome, promotes civic development among youth and fosters critical consciousness. Critical consciousness, defined as the capacity to recognize societal inequity along with the motivation and action taken to challenge such inequity and promote…

Principals' beliefs and actions have powerful outcomes in the lives of the students and families they serve. In this article, we offer the portrait of a long-standing principal of a diverse urban school where the student body is 90% Latinx, 65% English learners (ELs), and 87% eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. We explore many key practices…

STEM education has been reliant on axioms and purported facts that for far too long have been delivered in a banking or absorption model that is, arguably, anti-critical. Unsurprisingly, this pedagogical approach to STEM education has failed large segments of students; and, this is especially true of African American males. This study investigated…

Preservice teachers often hold deficit views about the students they will teach and their communities. These limiting beliefs can result in lower expectations of and poor outcomes for the students, and need to be addressed in all areas of teacher education, including mathematics courses. The assignment described in this manuscript provides an…

The purpose of this study was to explore middle school (grade 6-8) students' understanding and interpretation of human rights issues with local and global implications as they engaged in the process of creating a film after reading print and multimedia texts and participating in human rights education activities. As the students explored…

As professors of education in an urban community, we wanted to identify mechanisms that would allow young people in the urban core the opportunity to share their unique voices with the world and for us to better understand their views on social justice and social change. The purpose of this paper is to discuss adolescent student perspectives on…

An open mind--the willingness to consider experiences, beliefs, values, perspectives, etc. that differ from one's own--allows the learner to explore how diverse people across the world think and act. Open-mindedness creates opportunities to rethink assumptions, identify misinformation, and consider alternative ways to make decisions.…

New York mayor Bill de Blasio entered office in January 2014, promising to "take dead aim at the Tale of Two Cities … [and] put an end to economic and social inequalities that threaten to unravel the city we love." The Manhattan Institute's "Poverty and Progress in New York" series tracks the effects of Mayor de Blasio's…

Speak Truth To Power consists of 17 teacher-developed lessons based on the stories of rights advocates from all over the world. The lessons were created for sixth-through 12th-grade students, and have come to New York schools thanks to the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights and the New York State United Teachers union. Speak…

This paper examines gender biases in school textbooks after a decade long effort by the ministry of education (MoE) Pakistan and international organisation (IOs) to eliminate all forms of gender inequality in education. The intention underpinning these initiatives was to nurture a view of gender equality based consciousness through the…

The growing diversity of Ontario's population is increasing pressure on the education system to ensure that all students receive equal opportunities to excel academically and develop personally. Students are more likely to succeed if their own racial, ethnic, and cultural identity is reflected in the classroom. This observation applies no less to…

In a time of increasing plurality in today's public schools, it is essential that students become critically competent citizens by examining current and historical social justice issues. The purpose of this manuscript is to provide the research, theory, and practice for teachers to help students take a critical stance as they read and respond to…

Making the visual arts program meaningful in public education can be a challenge when one considers how little instructional time is devoted to the visual arts. A challenge for art educators is to seek opportunities outside the classroom for real-life inquiry-based projects. This form of systematic inquiry done by teachers for themselves is called…

In 1997, fifteen council meetings were observed and recorded at the Albany Free School and subsequently analyzed. Unbeknownst to the school, the council meetings were found to be very similar to what Lawrence Kohlberg had in mind when he developed his Just Community Model. This article discusses how this council meeting forum compares to…

In 2000, Cook, Murphy, and Hunt published a multilevel study of Chicago inner-city schools in order to evaluate James Comer's School Development Program (SDP). One main finding was that SDP reduced the rate of change and final posttest mean when delinquency was assessed annually between Grades 5 and 8 using a self-report measure of acting out. The…