In the past several years, we have witnessed unprecedented political, racial, economic, and health-related ruptures in society. The resulting turmoil has had an inevitable and negative impact on students, teachers, the profession of education, and especially marginalized and vulnerable populations. Academics and policymakers have had their say on…

In an era of global climate change, intertwined with social and ecological predation, there is growing recognition of the importance of building socially, environmentally, culturally pluralistic, just and sustainable futures. Yet many of the calls for reform and discourses around sustainability are authored and defined through top-down approaches,…

This paper presents the findings of a research study that sought to understand the perspectives of exemplary Black teachers utilizing emancipatory pedagogies to help Black students navigate systems of white supremacy in a contemporary American social landscape where racism is simultaneously invisible and hypervisible. Using critical race theory,…

In this article, I share ways in which I have used the artworks of contemporary artists to encourage middle school students to reflect on the concepts of identity, diversity, and social justice. Specifically, I focus on the "Comfort Hair" series by Yuni Kim Lang, a Michigan-based Korean American artist, and a piece from the "Giant…

Students from rural backgrounds may face unique challenges with respect to their career-identity development. School counselors are critically positioned to support the career development of these students through a social-justice lens. The following paper proposes a small-group intervention that serves to empower and support middle school…

Students with disabilities are at greater risk for depression, substance use, bullying, and fewer friendships, largely due to negative attitudes and misperceptions from their nondisabled peers. School counselors are particularly important stakeholders in improving the experiences of students with disabilities. This qualitative study uses the…

This study works to answer the question: In what ways are pre-service social studies teachers conceptualizing the difficult knowledge of climate crisis? By analyzing a small group discussion following a pedagogical encounter with climate crisis in a teacher education program, and employing the notion of difficult knowledge, the author theorizes…

This study examines the experiences of 15 Latinx sixth-grade students in Los Angeles who participated in a yearlong journalism-based media literacy program embedded in their social studies classes. Students researched, interviewed, wrote, and published articles on the Internet about social justice themes, like immigration, racism, and LGBTQ…

This paper explores the phenomenon of perilous politics of school leadership for social justice, in order to strengthen social equity for educational development. School leadership for social justice emphasizes that leaders can make efforts to pursue equitable relationships of gender, class, race, culture, etc. Therefore, it stresses the…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to inquire into the effectiveness of authentic writing instruction embedded in a critical service-learning project in a middle school English Language Arts curriculum. Design/methodology/approach: This paper analyzes middle school students' survey responses before and after their participation in a critical…

This case study reveals how a faith-based initiative offering structured teacher training in media literacy. The program is centered in Catholic Social Teaching, encouraging the use of critical media literacy in the classroom to aid the learning of social justice issues. The critical literacy of Paulo Freire serves as theoretical framework to help…

Failure to improve achievement in K-12 science for racially minoritized students and students living in poverty continues to challenge the inclusionary rhetoric of "science for all." Science education researchers, teacher educators, and educators must consider the racialized and classed inequalities that continue to limit students'…

The Wake County Public School System (WCPSS), in the state of North Carolina, has gone through considerable recent effort to revise, support, and assess their seventh-grade social studies curriculum in an effort to serve three goals: comply with the Common Core State Standards (Common Core), comply with the North Carolina Essential Standards…

Conceptualizing educational inequality as equivalent to the "achievement gap" has fueled the expansion of no-excuses charters, which purport to raise test scores and thereby equalize opportunities for low-income students of color. In contrast, I argue that the individual provision of opportunity is inadequate to address the structural…

This article discusses how Christopher Martin, a middle school science teacher in Denver, Colorado, finds success using restorative approaches that focus on empathy rather than punitive zero-tolerance school discipline policies. Upon reflection of his first school's discipline policy, he realized that the school operated out of fear and compliance…