Long regarded as the "great equalizer" across all social identity categories, including race/ethnicity, class, and gender, the education system plays a pronounced role in the curation and dissemination of knowledge on social stratification. In contemporary times, this role is perhaps no more evident than in academia's gatekeeping role in…

In recent years, more and more information has emerged about the high prevalence and impact of childhood trauma. In response to many calls for more work and more resources on how best to support trauma-exposed youth, the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) Social Justice Committee selected this topic as its programmatic focus for…

This presentation was given in late 2020 in response to the ongoing racial justice uprising that had begun in May with the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. As with educators across the nation since that time, teachers, administrators, and other officials in the Independent Schools Association of the Central States felt a…

This invited article is a precursor to the Racial Justice in Literacy Research Report. It is framed around the key concepts of equity, literacy, race, and their intersections in the field of literacy research. The authors make the case that antiracism is the best antidote to a history of unacknowledged racism in the field and in contemporary…

Inquiring into the democratization of creative early educational experiences through the lens of the politics of belonging, this review of research asks: What does research reveal about creative early educational experiences as they pertain to history, race, and justice? Seeking to better understand the racialization of creative early educational…

For decades, marginalized communities have been naming the harms of policing--and the systemic racism that undergirds it--for health and well-being. Only recently have policing practices and racism within policing gained more widespread attention in public health. Building on social justice and emancipatory traditions in health education, we argue…

Minoritized communities throughout the world engage in spaces of educational decision-making to advocate for equity-oriented policies. In this article, we explore such advocacy at the local level in school board meetings in the United States. Specifically, we examine school board meeting rules from meetings featuring the advocacy of mainly Black…

The pandemic made us hold our breath for a return to "normal." But education in "normal" times involves race-based violence and class-based inequality that the pandemic simply made plainer to see. Reviewing the impacts of the pandemic and action for racial justice over the last two years, I show how the dislocation of the…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to challenge the "single story" narrative the authors utilize counterstorytelling as an analytic tool to reveal the paradox of exploring human rights with incarcerated BIPOC teens whose rights within the justice system are frequently ignored. Shared through their writing, drawing and discussions,…

This is the story of how the author came to understand race and racism in America. This story has everything to do with how he came to understand unconscious bias, white nationalism, and the fundamental threat to democracy we face today--and what each of us can do about it. The author shares a framework to help understand key concepts central to…

This article focuses on equitable leadership and its intersection with related yet distinct concepts salient to social justice pertinent to women and minorities in educational leadership. This piece is rooted and framed within the context of the United States of America, and the major concepts include identity, equity, and…

When I look back before 2020, before the murder of Mr. George Floyd in particular, and think about this special issue, "Black Lives Matter in Literacy Research," a question comes to my mind: "Are we, the field of literacy research, sure that we want to include literacy research among the incalculable responses (already in progress)…

This article is an effort to build on academic theories of race and antiracist education. Using a Gramscian theoretical framework that emphasizes perspectives from organic intellectuals, this article puts the academic literature on race and adult education in conversation with the theory generated on race from select U.S. working-class organic…

In this article, we outline some of the vital measurements of racism and anti-blackness as a macro system in education. We contend that principal preparation programs have not explicitly prioritized anti-racist school leadership, while often resisting the possibilities of solidarity or "one mic" of knowledge to increase anti-racist…

We understand the terrors of this historical moment: rising white nationalism and white supremacist violence, xenophobia, homophobia, sharpening economic inequality, homelessness and underemployment, neoliberal assaults on workers and the environment, Islamophobia, attacks on immigrants, kids in cages. While schools are guilty of perpetuating some…