Globally, young people are asking questions about social responsibility. California addresses this in the second draft of its updated mathematics framework, still unreleased as this article goes to press. It defines these questions as authentic, suggesting that classrooms "include, at times . . . contexts students can engage with as a way to…

This research was a descriptive study in which the researcher explored the beginning phases of Ethnic Studies implementation in a Kindergarten through Eighth grade (K-8) school district in Northern California. Using a social justice lens, and through a review of Ethnic Studies, Collective Efficacy, Critical Consciousness, and School Culture…

Drawing upon a long-term partnership between a university and a Title I middle school, we outline relational principles that guided our justiceoriented approach to collaborative research. We conceptualize relational principles as intentional strategies for equitable relationship cultivation and infrastructure development, grounded in the values…

Increasingly, teachers are using consciousness raising pedagogies such as culturally relevant, responsive, sustaining, and social justice pedagogies. However, little attention has been paid to teachers engaging in this work with students of privileged backgrounds (e.g., white, affluent students) and in mathematics. The present study addresses this…

This article documents the design and implementation of a culturally responsive critical media literacies curriculum centered around media representations of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). Students (grades 6-8) were invited to discuss media imagery relating to DAPL and to create memes reflecting their understandings. To situate this work, we…

The practice of temporarily removing students from school as a form of punishment (i.e., suspensions) remains quite common. This study uses longitudinal data from a large, urban school district in California to assess whether the use of suspensions improves school safety in the following school year. Additional analyses by student race and…

The purpose of this study was to better understand how an Islamic school leader's critical spirituality informed and shaped leadership practice. This qualitative case study explored the role of critical spirituality as it relates to social justice, gender justice, and pluralism in a progressive American Islamic school. Data were collected via…

Over the last few decades, there has been an international focus on productive talk in science classrooms, requiring teachers to use more dialogic practices with their students. Studies promoting a dialogic approach propose that students have conversations in small, student-led groups. However, the literature in education and science education…

Using an ecological approach to trauma-informed care and radical healing, this case study explores how one Title I public middle school mathematics classroom offered students opportunities to engage in healing practices through the use of Social Justice Mathematics. Findings indicate that students identified their emotions, engaged in structural…

The rising percentage of nonwhite students in the U.S. public school system accompanied by persistent educational debt and racial inequities presents an opportunity gap for many marginalized students. Scholars suggest that teaching ethnic studies curriculum with critical race pedagogy can help address the opportunity gap. Ethnic Studies centers on…

This qualitative study examined the complexities of mutually engaging across differing positionalities (students and students, students and teacher) while intentionally working in spaces of distress (e.g. push and pull between oppression and liberation). The findings demonstrated the ways in which building a beloved community while situated within…

This study explored the ways in which our classroom community (students and teacher) engaged with humanizing pedagogy in a seventh grade science classroom, toward the full development of our classroom community, and the dismantling of inequitable practices and unjust policies that we recognized in our science classroom, school and/or community…

This study examined Asian American elementary students' experience with victimization. Data were collected from 313 fourth and fifth graders from an ethnically diverse elementary school in southern California. Most participants self-identified as Asian/Asian American and spoke an Asian language at home. Results indicated that Asian American…

One of every two children in the world lives in poverty, with no access to safe water, health services or adequate shelter to the extent that 25,000 children die every day. Thirty-seven million Americans, thirteen million of whom are children, live below the poverty level. Of the developed world, despite our wealth and sophistication, the United…

Few studies have investigated school-based, positive development for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer (LGBQ) youth, despite knowledge of their heightened negative school experiences compared to heterosexual youth (e.g., school victimization). This study examines associations among participation in Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA)--related social…