This postcard compares youth resistance across classroom contexts. It draws from a two-year ethnography of the East Oakland Step to College (Step) program, which prepared underserved African-American and Latina/o youth to enroll in four-year universities, while nurturing students' sensibilities to fight for social justice. Students were highly…

This article explores the ways that students in a humanities class talked about, researched, and disrupted homophobia at Jones School, a public combined middle school and high school in a small New England town. It includes strategies that move beyond discussions of right and wrong to a place of critical inquiry and support for the human rights of…

Previous research in the area of resistance has inadequately described opposition to change within-school reform initiatives with a social justice orientation. A lack of attention to, and agreement on, the nature and causes of resistance may explain why so many equity-minded educational reforms fail to be sustained. This article highlights various…

Beyond having value as an assessment tool, engagement with the arts in the K-12 classroom can offer aesthetic experiences that have the potential to transform the way students encounter the world, engaging the imagination in acts of perception that stir them to "wide-awakeness." Advocates for the arts in education call for a variety of…

This manuscript provides a historical and pedagogical framework for American educational and sociopolitical responses after national tragedies (e.g., Pearl Harbor, 9/11). Moreover, this research explores the overt xenophobic and ethnocentric tendencies (exacerbated by media forums) after these events, which triggered resurgence in a sort of…

The purpose of this critical ethnographic study is to provide an account from within a public school of some of the ways that heterosexist discourses and silences are reproduced and challenged. As a classroom teacher and critical ethnographer, I conducted this research with straight-identified high school students as they came to understand,…

For the forty-third time, the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) is sponsoring the publication of these Proceedings. Papers published in this volume were presented online during the annual AECT Convention. Volume 1 contains 37 papers dealing primarily with research and development topics. Papers dealing with the…

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth are at risk for engaging in negative health behaviors and for experiencing at-school victimization. Specific benefits of attending a high school with a gay-straight alliance (GSA), including lower levels of suicidality, have been published; however, it is unclear whether GSAs are related to…

This story captures the tensions that existed when a small charter high school attempted to provide powerful leadership opportunities for students who had few. It details the process and outcome of offering students leadership roles in designing and implementing a student-led discipline committee. In the process, much changed at the school. The…

This case study focuses on issues of freedom of speech and freedom of religion in public schools. It involves a rural, southern high school where a group of students participated in a Day of Silence. The school allowed the students to participate based on the principal's understanding of the students' First Amendment rights. However, the next day,…

When students take action, they create change that extends far beyond the classroom. In this article, the author, who was a former teacher from Crystal City, Texas, remembers the student walkout that helped launch the Latino civil rights movement 40 years ago. The Crystal City student walkout remains a high point in the history of student activism…

Mathematics education aimed at empowering students for economic and democratic participation must address two critical issues: the long-standing function of mathematics as a gatekeeper, and the complicated nature of designing and implementing systematic reform at the school department level. The study reported here examines a curricular redesign…

People should laud the Partnership for 21st Century Skills for highlighting civic literacy. Today, people have a much more robust understanding of what constitutes high-quality democratic education than they have ever had in the past, and this framework represents an opportunity for improving the civic and political literacy of the nation's youth.…

The purpose of this research is to describe how an alternative school leader taught at-risk students and their parents to advocate for students' educational interests and how this affected students' academic and social success. In social justice leadership literature, parents and students are described as passive recipients of a strong social…

How do students from privileged communities respond to educational efforts encouraging them to become justice-oriented citizens? Observational and interview data collected during a semester-long case study of eleven high school students in a social studies class at an elite private school reveal four markedly different interpretations of their…