This qualitative study examines how elementary students of Color develop and enact an abolitionist praxis as part of a "Freedom Dreaming" literacy unit. The analysis of focus-group interviews elucidates how, after learning about freedom dreaming and the abolition of prisons and police, students positioned historical anti-carceral…

Following a randomized controlled trial that showed effectiveness of an equity-centered positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS) professional development intervention on student discipline in elementary schools, we studied the extent to which the intervention had differential effects on individual teachers' use of exclusionary…

Primary classroom teachers are increasingly moving to the side-line as physical education (PE) is outsourced to external providers. Although there are many critiques of external providers, few studies draw on primary school students' perspectives. This study calls on data from semi-structured focus group interviews with 24 students from four New…

Research in early childhood and elementary social studies education has illuminated how teachers can use children's literature to explore issues of injustice, elevate hidden histories, and affirm students' identities. Integrating children's literature into social studies instruction not only supports literacy education aims but also promotes…

All schools possess a duty of care towards their students. However, this duty of care falls unevenly across schools, with those serving low-income communities often responding to the material and psychological effects of poverty as a priority. This duty of care for such schools was placed into stark relief during the period of COVID-19 school…

Although issues of global justice are increasingly considered an important topic to include in elementary school curricula, little is known about children's perspectives on complex distributive justice issues. This exploratory study investigated children's understanding of a fair economic distribution between the workers involved in international…

Authority is a central issue for teachers and refers to the leadership relationship between teachers and pupils for the purpose of initiating learning. A review of the current state of research shows that the interplay between authority and social inequality has seldom been investigated to date. That is the starting point for the present…

Social justice language education (SJLE) explores the ways in which language classrooms can be transformed to disrupt the existing oppressive policies and practices in schools and the society at large (Ortaçtepe Hart & Martel, 2020; Ortaçtepe Hart, 2023; Ortega, 2021). As an approach within SJLE, dramatizing children's literature can raise the…

Race, poverty, and gender interplay with school discipline, to make schools ancillary to the juvenile justice system (Morris and Perry 2017). Exclusionary discipline contributes to the school-to-prison nexus, a metaphor that illuminates the complex, interconnected relationship between schools and prisons (Okilwa, Khalifa, and Briscoe 2017).…

Early purposes of education in the United States concentrated on preparing young citizens to understand democratic principles in order to participate in their democratic communities. Today elementary instruction has contracted in response to years of high stakes accountability measures. Social studies has not been a focus of federal accountability…

Our research constructed school life histories with 23 'lower-attaining' primary school children in England. Previous research has often failed to focus on the social justice aspects of this group, and no attempt has been made to contextualise children's misrecognition experiences within their full school life history, nor to hear primarily from…

A third-grade educator and university researcher collaborated to develop an after-school virtual book club curriculum for students during the pandemic. Third-grade students were encouraged to explore social justice issues prevalent in their community first by reading relevant children's books, doing research, and collaborating to develop potential…

There is a significant amount of research literature on the importance of identifying and building on students' experiences and ideas for making sense of the natural world, especially when engaging in science practices. Simultaneously, approaches to creating justice-oriented science education promote the need to focus on the diverse sense-making…

There is growing recognition of the need for pupils to have the opportunity to engage with both religious and non-religious worldviews in religious education (RE). This recognition is bound up with issues of social justice and equality, underpinned by a desire to ensure that all young people should have the opportunity 'to understand the…

Background: Transgender children are known to face a wide range of barriers, difficulties and injustices at school. Few studies have focused on the educational experiences of trans pupils who socially transition at or before primary school, with no such studies in the UK. Aims: To learn about the at-school experiences of transgender children who…