While scholars have identified that the development of a critical consciousness encourages the social activism of Latinx/a/o, little is known about how critical consciousness shapes the academic identity of these students. The purpose of this LatCrit narrative study was to identify how critical consciousness influences how Latinx/a/o students view…

My study documents the formation and impact of the student-led movement of Black Lives Matter in Higher Education (BLMHE) that is housed within Teachers College Higher and Postsecondary Education Program (HPSE). This group consists of HPSE students and faculty that have come together to analyze the effects of systemic societal forces on members of…

How does the academic discourse of resistance in university classrooms write the identities of resisting students into shape? We answer this question by performing a review of the student resistance literature. Analyzing this literature, we apply methods of critical discourse analysis and identify six identity positions of the resisting student as…

In this paper, we, four students with diverse social locations, explore the development of preservice educators' professional identities as political resisters. Through our experiences in an Ontario college, we found commonality in our emerging need to resist "alarming discourses" (Whitty et al., 2020, p. 8). By dissecting and analyzing…

Purpose: This study aims to analyse the positioning of young people in the face of the challenges posed by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It focuses on the case of Erasmus+ students at a Spanish university and tries to evaluate the importance of each of the SDGs for them. Design/methodology/approach: Based on primary data obtained…

Student activists have been an historic driver of higher education social justice reform. While this form of leadership is central to improving equity outcomes in higher education, scholars and practitioners often view organizational change as a top-down process centering senior administrators, staff, and faculty. Empowering student activists as…

In 2006, Una, the feminist student organization at Saint Louis University (SLU)--a midsized, Midwestern, urban, Jesuit/Catholic university--was denied campus space to perform Eve Ensler's "The Vagina Monologues," an episodic play that portrays women's experiences with their bodies to raise awareness and funds for charitable organizations…

Courses: This unit activity is suited for upper-level college courses on persuasion, intercultural communication, diversity, leadership, social justice, civil discourse, argumentation, debate, and political communication. Objectives: After completing this unit, learners should be able to: improve their capacity to examine arguments; enhance their…

This article offers a theoretically based solution to faculty hesitation to engage in difficult dialogs on a campus in crisis. Using the constructs of Ratcliffe's language of rhetorical listening through the lens of Freire's interactive educational framework from the stance of second-wave whiteness studies, this paper argues that instructors can…

In recent decades, universities have made significant progress toward environmental sustainability and have likewise tightened their budgets and restructured economic models in the name of financial sustainability. However, institutions of higher education have failed to address issues of social sustainability and social injustice, many of which…

Influenced by social identity theory, psychologists have focused primarily on the role of shared identity in leading people to engage in collective action. In this study, we are concerned with the factors that lead individuals who do not share a collective identity to act in solidarity with an outgroup. We explored this question by looking at the…

Background/Context: Legal scholars have cited the Fifth Circuit's ruling in Dixon v. Alabama State Board of Education (1961) as the beginning of a revolution for students' rights that ended the in loco parentis relationship between colleges and their students. But little has been written about the students' activism that led to this seminal case.…

This mixed methods dissertation explores the application of critical media literacy pedagogy in higher education. A review of the scholarly literature found that there are five hypothesized outcomes of a critical media literacy education: student engagement, empowerment, civic engagement, critical awareness of media, and adoption of a social…

There is a large gap in college access and success for undocumented students. This emergent population remains uniquely and precariously situated within campus environments, despite the passage of Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Acts in some states. These inequities have sparked activism for DREAMers associated with the…

This article focuses on an in-depth case study of Freedom University, a counterspace in Georgia to address the ban that prohibited students without legal status from applying to five selective colleges/universities. Based on interviews with eight Freedom University students, the authors demonstrate that Freedom University fulfills most of the…