The field of teacher education has long sought to examine the impact of coursework on teacher practice and student learning. Despite the promise of many forms of educational pedagogy and curricula utilized in teacher education programs, many novice teachers continue to feel unprepared and insecure about their teaching. Pre-service teacher…

To provide equitable access to formal, nonformal and workplace learning, experts urge community, business, education and government partnerships. While membership in unions continues to decline and "opportunities for entry-level workers to become skilled workers is lessening," the partnership described in this article shows that it is…

Within a private university in suburban New York State (NYS), graduate students in an educational leadership principal preparation program were reading the blogs, news reports, and stories about what was happening throughout the world. Within their educational policy course, they were delving deeper into world events, reflecting upon them, and…

In this article, we present a qualitative multi-case study of three beginning elementary teachers working in New York City and describe the distinct ways in which each articulates her responsibility to teach a social justice-oriented education. We employ positioning theory to examine how teachers narrate their relationship to the concept of social…

Neoliberal values and ideology, which have broadly undermined social justice ideals, have been inserted into a range of public spheres both in the U.S.A. and internationally. Public higher education institutions have increasingly acquiesced to neoliberal strategies, which restrict access to public services, commodify the public sphere and…

This article shows the process through which one teacher and a group of eleventh-graders worked to create spaces for democratic education in a hierarchically organized New York City public school that is heralded as a model of success under current reform initiatives. In response to student resistance to a required unit on Tim O'Brien's novel, The…

How might songs, like John Lennon's "Imagine" or Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the wind", offer ways to explore alternative ways of being in the world, to challenge the status quo? How might these songs become springboards for original pieces that capture students' ideas about world issues? In this article, I observe what happens…

This article reveals how St. John's University implemented mission-focused programs to advance its unique Catholic perspective, that of the Vincentian tradition to serve the poor and remedy social inequities. Heeding the 1986 call of Pope John Paul II to Vincentian institutions, all levels of the university from incoming freshmen to the board of…

In this classroom simulation, students travel back in time to 1945, when racism was institutionalized in many states through segregation. Though students cannot literally travel back to the Jim Crow era, teachers can create a situation that brings home the point of injustice and the choices individuals are faced with in such situations. Suddenly,…

This article looks at charter schools from the perspective of distributive justice. It suggests three principles of distributive justice that should be satisfied by schools: the adequacy principle, the equity principle, and the communicative principle. "It also sketches the justice argument for charter schools and uses the three principles to…

The academic performance and engagement of youth from under-represented ethnic groups (African American, Latino, and Indigenous) in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) show statistically large gaps in comparison with their White and Asian peers. Some of these differences can be attributed to the direct impact of economic…

Universities that promote a liberal education through creative, cross-cultural curriculum nurture the goals of democracy and assist students in becoming "citizens of the world." Democratic education for social justice and global consciousness are necessary tools in the peaceful transformation of today's violent conflicts, which now…

Student teachers have difficulty planning lessons that fully integrate social justice with mathematics/science content. This study was a content analysis of 26 poster presentations of mathematics or science lessons incorporating social justice issues made by student teachers (20F, 6M) at a mid-sized college in central New York State. The presented…

An emerging area of law is developing regarding sex/gender identity discrimination, also referred to as transgender discrimination, as distinguished from discrimination based on sexual orientation. A transgendered individual is defined as "a person who has a gender-identity disorder which is a persistent discomfort about one?s assigned sex or…

This essay examines women's commencement addresses presented from 1910 to 1915 at Vassar College. These addresses are significant because they reveal the students' rhetorical education and the "available means" upon which these women drew in developing a public voice. By prompting reflection and the potential for change, the commencement…