This study presents the perspectives and pedagogical practices of teachers who self-identify as social justice educators. Interviews with these social justice educators, who teach in large, diverse, metropolitan school districts, show that they create equitable spaces for their students. An analysis of the interview data concerning their beliefs…

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…

As people with power in schools, teachers and administrators make instructional decisions that shape opportunities in classrooms for students to learn. Educators' words and actions, especially related to the treatment of students and their ideas, are foundational for creating equitable learning communities in our classrooms and schools. David…

While issues of (in)justice in K12 STEM learning have garnered increasing attention, limited research has attended to learning as "social-spatial transformation." We draw upon a justice-oriented framework of equitably consequential learning to call attention to how learning and engagement in K12 STEM is rooted in the history and…

In spring 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic collided with a national reckoning on racial injustice and ruptured our country's core. The effects of this collision necessitated something other than business as usual in school leadership: it called for the kind of courageous leadership rooted in equity and justice we describe in this paper. In this…

In middle grades education, advisory programs are structured, intentional, and supportive environments that assign 10 to 20 students to an adult advisor (most often a teacher) who serves as a mentor, advocate, and guide throughout their middle school years. Advisory programs promote community and personalized support in middle schools. In addition…

Critical consciousness (CC) is the ability to understand, critique, and act against oppressive social structures and systemic forces. To assist educators in understanding and enacting strategies that foster CC, the authors identified examples of CC in third through fifth grade virtual classes of a 2020 "Children's Defense Fund's" Freedom…

There is a growing emphasis on social justice pedagogy as a predominantly White teacher labor force infiltrates classrooms in urban schools. Using "critical race theory" (CRT)--and the construct of interest convergence--this study examines how White teachers working in an urban school apply and enact teaching for social justice during…

This study aims to reveal the causes and consequences of school principals' favouritism behaviours based on teachers' perceptions, and definitions about favouritism behaviour within schools. A descriptive phenomenological design was applied. Data were gathered via face-to-face interviews conducted with 15 public middle school teachers in Turkey.…

Socially engaged engineering provides for student learning of the design, analysis, and practices of engineering as well as the ways that engineering is situated in sociocultural contexts. This paper provides a conceptual framework regarding socially engaged engineering for K-8 educators, researchers, and curriculum designers. The framework…

Caring for student affect when teaching social justice mathematics (SJM) is important because discussions of social inequities may elicit emotional responses from students. This article extends previous conceptualizations of SJM, which typically encompass dual goals of teaching dominant and critical mathematics, by theorizing a third set of…

This study reports on the feasibility and acceptability of a social justice infused service-learning (S-L) program to promote Black adolescent mental health and educational equity. We convened a community advisory board to help adapt and pilot test, via open trial mixed method design, an evidence-based service-learning program for Black middle…

This paper aims to investigate how and to what extent 'critical' global citizenship is reflected in middle school English textbooks in Korea. Framed within Freire's concept of critical literacy, the study is concerned with analyzing the written texts in two English textbooks, with a focus on the issue of representations. Using critical content…

Early adolescence is a dynamic stage for the development of critical consciousness, yet there are few resources focused on social justice education (SJE) in the middle grades. This article shares the findings from a study that investigated the experiences of three social justice educators as they engaged in SJE with young adolescents (YAs). We…

This research is about bringing social justice art education into classrooms through the medium of video games and exploring the ways in which video game design can be a learning tool that can make contributions to and engage in social justice work. Drawing from a case-study research project with a small group of middle school students, through…