Before Heritage Middle School began working with the Participate Learning team to connect lessons to real-world issues, the teachers and leadership had established a goal to encourage students to become more empathic about issues in their community. Although a handful of students and teachers who participated in the school's gardening club were…

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…

This paper describes the practices employed by middle school girls in New York City to negotiate their postfeminist school environment and considers the contested notion of girls' agency. Based on an exploratory ethnographic study, the data reveal that girls--to varying degrees of success--enacted a range of practices to gain power over the…

Justice-oriented teaching must address how classroom-based disciplinary learning is shaped by interactions among local practice "and" systems of privilege and oppression. Our work advances current scholarship on high-leverage practices [HLPs] by emphasizing the need for teaching practices that restructure power relations in classrooms…

Although policymakers stress the importance of education in promoting peace, little research examines the ways that schools prepare students affected by conflict to participate in the restoration of peace in their political community. Post-conflict societies experience severe challenges in strengthening political processes and social cohesion.…

Neoliberal market logic positions youth as either commodities produced and marketed by private institutions or consumers for whose business those institutions are competing, a paradigm that narrows pathways for youth participation in civic and political institutions by restricting youth agency to participation in markets. However, youth organizing…

I examine the development of my political clarity and its relation to the exercise of humanistic violence as a K-12 teacher in the United States. Reflecting upon my experiences as a classroom and community educator, I conclude that the mission of forging a new humanity is currently not possible from within the U.S. classroom. Presenting a series…

Although critical to functioning in the workforce, mathematics proficiency is low in the United States compared to other economically-developed countries. Researchers have shown that students begin to demonstrate weaknesses in math skills at the onset of pre-algebraic courses, usually during middle school years. In Alabama, low math scores are…

This book presents essential learning approaches. It introduces educational and training activities, as well as various innovative methods aiming at the development of practical skills, in order to strengthen the continuous process of environmental education, and in particular the education for sustainable development (ESD). In doing so, it…

This book contains a compilation of papers presented at the International Conference on Education and New Developments (END 2017), organized by the World Institute for Advanced Research and Science (W.I.A.R.S.). Education, in our contemporary world, is a right since we are born. Every experience has a formative effect on the constitution of the…