Search results for: Social justice

This article describes the National Exceptional Teaching for Disadvantaged Schools (NETDS). The purpose of the NETDS is to channel high performing teacher education students to disadvantaged schools. This paper is based on the authors' collective, critical self-reflection on designing and implementing NETDS at University of New England over the last three years. The authors use the taxonomy of three different ideological approaches—conservative, liberal and critical—to school reform as a heuristic device for their self-reflection.

This study explored the role that participating in a critical inquiry project (CIP) played on the development of new educators who aspire to teach from a social justice perspective. The study also examined how relationships between the first- and second-year teacher participants shaped their development as social justice educators, learners, and leaders. The findings revealed that members were able to reflect on their journey of developing as social justice educators, seeing where they started and where they were still heading. This ongoing reflection and their own perception of their development kept them committed to the group and to the goal of social justice education (SJE). The findings also showed how members learned to have each other’s backs. A third result was that CIP gave members opportunities to teach SJE to others. Finally, members felt a tremendous sense of accomplishment.

As two teachers/researchers committed to the values of social justice in the classroom, the authors are deeply disturbed by the explicit and implicit ways that their education system, operating through neoliberalism, reproduces the inequalities of larger society. To problematize and deterritorialize dominant neoliberal notions of schooling, education, teaching, and learning in their classrooms, they embarked on a co/autoethnographic self-study of their teaching practice. Findings, or becomings, indicate that the concepts of the rhizome can be practically put to work in the classroom to raise consciousness and inform thinking about resisting the neoliberal status quo.

This article describes development of an educational setting which fosters critical, social justice practices of teachers. Through course readings, museum visits, focus group discussions, and reflections on clinical observation experiences, preservice teachers developed a fictitious educational setting that incorporates critical, social justice practices and privileges the experiences and cultural backgrounds of all K-12 students. The authors developed recommendations for how future educators problematized ideas of courage, race, and diversity in developing the setting.