In this article, I describe how I made use of Foucault theoretically and methodologically in a study of five specific parrhesiastic scholars. Such scholars challenge hegemony in educational policies and practices, and advocate for educational reform and societal structures that move toward equity instead of marginalization. The article begins by…

This paper offers steps towards overcoming current fragmentation within sociocultural approaches by expansively reconstructing a broad dialectical view on human development and learning (drawing on Vygotsky's project) underwritten by ideology of social justice. The common foundation for sociocultural approaches is developed by dialectically…

Little is known about new teachers who graduate from social justice-oriented teacher education programs (SJOTEPs) and go into urban schools as full-time teachers. How does their training translate into conceptual understandings and classroom practices? Moreover, what types of supports are needed for the attainment of such a lofty goal as social…

Drawing on data from an ethnographic study in an urban district in the state of Utah, this article highlights how liberalism shapes educational policy and practice in particular ways that ultimately reproduce and legitimate the status quo of whiteness. I employ critical race theory to analyze two aspects of liberalism that are especially pervasive…

As teachers are increasingly being asked and expected to teach across cultural differences and work toward social justice in their classrooms, teacher educators must seriously consider how university course work impacts students in their own classrooms. This article present a four-year qualitative case study investigating the meaning-making of two…

Background/Context: This study examines education in the context of neoliberalism and how current educational policies such as high-stakes testing and mandated curriculum create schooling environments hostile to social justice education. Relying on education for liberation literature, teacher education for social justice scholarship, and work on…

This article presents a synthesis of countervailing pressures against leading for social justice as described in the literature. This synthesis focuses on the present-day countervailing pressures that school leaders face as detailed in the literature on leading for social justice. These countervailing pressures include a deficit-thinking status…

"Wish To Live: The Hip-hop Feminism Pedagogy Reader" moves beyond the traditional understanding of the four elements of hip-hop culture--rapping, breakdancing, graffiti art, and deejaying--to articulate how hip-hop feminist scholarship can inform educational practices and spark, transform, encourage, and sustain local and global youth…

Students calling themselves the Las Vegas Activist Crew shut down the city's famed Strip on May 1, 2006, with an immigrant rights protest that was one of the largest demonstrations in Nevada's history. This research analyzes the ways that students engage in activism to improve their own social conditions and those of their communities. The…

The proponents of critical pedagogy criticize the earlier Neo-Marxist theories of education, arguing that they provide only a "language of critique". By introducing the possibility of human agency and resistance, critical pedagogists attempt to develop not only a pedagogy of critique, but also to build a pedagogy of hope. Fundamentally, the aim of…

At the dawn of the 21st century, there has been an increased focus on social justice and educational leadership (Bogotch, Beachum, Blount, Brooks & English, 2008; Marshall & Oliva, 2006; Shoho, Merchang & Lugg, 2005). This paper explores and extends themes in contemporary educational research on leadership preparation in terms of social justice…

This study focuses upon the narratives of women educators ("educadoras") who contributed to radical democratic school reforms in post-authoritarian Brazil. We illustrate through three of the teachers' narratives how their professional identities and actions were shaped partly by their experiences of resisting the military regime and by…

Within a context of global reform agendas that promote economic ideologies in education the discourses surrounding "school failure" have shifted from "individual risk" to "a nation at-risk". Enhancing the quality of schooling through improving educational outcomes and standards for all, and thereby reducing…

My interest in critical leaderful educational practices emanated from my experiences as a researcher in a South African National Department of Education project that piloted the White Paper on "Inclusive Education Policy from 2001-2003" and in 2006 when I worked as a volunteer consultant with Twenty30, an independent, not for profit…

There is scant research literature on the interconnection between spirituality and anti-oppressive pedagogy in the higher-education classroom. In this paper, based on a broader qualitative study that examined spiritually-minded activist scholars in the Canadian university context, I focus on how four such scholars integrate spirituality into their…