Culturally relevant pedagogy includes three tenets: academic success, cultural competence, and sociopolitical consciousness (Ladson-Billings, 1995). Despite personal interests in social justice, many teachers that pursue aspects of culturally relevant pedagogy fail to challenge students to recognize, critique, and act against societal inequities;…

We explore our experiences with roleplaying games across learning environments, chasing communal questions such as: how can teachers engage with the possibilities of roleplaying in classroom spaces, and how can we leverage such practices to open up spaces for youth to bodily experience texts, express identities, and imagine new worlds? This…

One of the tensions in conducting participatory literacy research with young children is finding the balance between protection and voice. In this paper, we describe how we sought to create participant-centred research techniques within the evolving design of a yearlong action research study with kindergarten students. Through weekly classroom…

Although teachers may agree that it is important to teach all learners equitably, it is challenging to practice social justice oriented pedagogy due to its multiplicity and complexity. This participatory action research attempted to examine student teaching practices that three teacher candidates approached to teach for social justice with young…