Based on research in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, this article argues that the globally popular reform of school-based management suffers from several shortcomings and is a partial, extractive, and technocratic means of engendering parental and community participation. Ultimately, this article demonstrates that it is necessary to move beyond SBM as a…

This paper shares reflections and stories from a collaborative design process between the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab and a global network of community-based educators to develop a creative coding app called OctoStudio, which supports children and families to create and share interactive projects on mobile devices. The app…

A critique of both homogenizing and vertical power runs through the Zapatista social project in Chiapas, Mexico, lending a distinctive character to both Zapatismo's political vision of self-governance and to the educational vision of its community schools. Zapatismo's critical practices may thus offer valuable contributions to antifascist praxis…

This article intervenes in the persistent hierarchy of epistemological worth that produces scientific knowledge as meaningful, and knowledge from arts or humanities as marginal, or illustrative. The specific trans-disciplinary project we discuss brings together environmental social sciences with performance-based Forum Theatre methods to explore…

This paper takes the notion of inclusion as an imperfect and contested project toward educational and social justice, which seeks to address social and historically constructed exclusion. It aims to problematise 'inclusion research' of school and community relationships in Mexico by examining the orientations and implications for inclusion of…

Juvenile incarceration in the United States is declining; however, the rate of female youth incarceration is on the rise. Incarcerated female youth are more likely to have educational disabilities compared with female youth in public schools, as well as higher rates of mental health disorders and less consistent relationships with caregivers…

In this article, we examine fugitivity and fugitive literacies as they are enacted by transfronterizx youth--young people who cross and experience life on both sides of the border between Mexico and the United States. Through a community-based literacy project located on the border between El Paso, Texas, USA, and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico,…

2020 has been marked by disruption on a global scale due to a range of compounding crises including the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Many community arts responses to the pandemic originated from individuals rather than by means of concerted or sustained sectoral responses. This paper uses reflections from Ireland, Australia, and Mexico to discuss…

The COVID-19 pandemic that since January 2020 has been battering different regions, countries, and continents has not only paralysed much of the world's economic activities, but it has also made an impact on the educational work of schools and families, teachers, and communities. In this brief contribution, we will sketch the effects of the…

This article explores the importance of school-level actors in creating educational change. I present an "inside-out" and "counter-hegemonic" policy that built "Tutoría" networks of learning to transform power relationships at school. I explore (1) the origins of "Tutoría" and how it grew into a mandated…

Over the past three years, Jobs for the Future (JFF) has been supporting a community of more than 100 U.S. community colleges (CCs) and over 25 nonprofit organizations (NPOs) worldwide implementing the Google IT Support Professional Certificate training program. During this engagement, JFF has gathered valuable insights about best practices in…

Although more than a million people still speak Nahuatl, this number is rapidly diminishing. Historically, Nahuatl was the dominant language of Coatepec de los Costales, a small village in Guerrero, Mexico. The last 50 years have seen a pronounced shift there from Nahuatl to Spanish. The ultimate cause of language shift is a disruption in…

This report from the field presents a field-based program designed to prepare teachers to serve diverse children and families by emphasizing the "actual" practices that inform family-teacher partnerships. We argue that collaborative relationships across and among families and teachers can result in "mining gems" of knowledge…

This article examines how and under what conditions a new pedagogy can spread at scale using the Learning Community Project (LCP) in Mexico as a case study. Started as a small-scale, grassroots pedagogical change initiative in a handful of public schools, LCP evolved over an 8-year period into a national policy that spread its pedagogy of tutorial…

The paper reflects upon the principles and practice of an alternative educational system operating in rural Mexico in the light of Bourdieu's theory of cultural and social reproduction. Bourdieu's theory seeks to explain processes of reproduction of power relations within schools and society; whereas alternative educational systems seek to expand…