Middle grades teachers and middle grades teacher educators are practicing in a complex sociocultural and sociopolitical moment. As part of the recent critical turn in middle grades education, antiracist teaching and equity pedagogies have gained momentum in the middle grades education literature. Calls to engage in these practices, however, have…

Despite its importance for students' learning, engaging students in dialogic discussions, especially about controversial, justice-oriented topics, can be difficult for U.S. teachers to enact due to current political constraints. In this study, we explore how three middle school teachers engaged their students in curriculum-embedded discussions on…

This article discusses a partnership with two different civic education organizations to study three different student-centered discussion designs. In one study, the authors worked with the Close Up Foundation. Close Up is a non-profit that annually brings 20,000 high school and middle school students from all 50 states and U.S. territories to…

This phenomenological study explores the experiences of critical teacher leaders as they navigated shifting expectations, re-imagined teaching and learning structures, supported students' expanding social and emotional needs, and addressed political interference in their work. The findings demonstrate that critical teacher leaders have not…

In September 1977, all of France's middle schools implemented the so-called "collège unique" reform in the seventh year, i.e. the elimination of tracking (or streaming) and the mixing of all pupils and teachers for the first year of secondary education. This article examines the genesis and implementation of this reform from the point of…

This article reconstructs the historical narrative of the Second World War in Russian middle school textbooks published after the year 2000. The author shows how textbook narratives are linked with official Russian politics of history, which aim to "manage" the memory of the war and contribute toward the standardization of Russian…

The Civic Literacy Project (CLP) was created, by colleagues and me, out of a concern for how future teachers learn to teach in field-based experiences. In this article I describe the CLP curriculum-making experiences of two future teachers, one Somali-American and one white, with a small group of 5th graders who wanted to learn about the Border…

Classroom music teachers in England design their own music curricula for Key Stage 3 (11 - 14 year olds, 6th - 8th Grades). These curricula are designed in a context where policymakers define, regulate and legitimate curriculum formulations. This study traced curriculum development in England, where government has validated a policy driven…

The notion of belonging is an often-referenced but under-theorized concept in studies of school organization. The purpose of this study is to examine the politics of belonging in schools and accompanying implications for how schools are organized and led. This research employs an autophotographic methodology. Student participants took photographs…

Recent studies of caring school leadership have focused on the way that caring leaders support teachers and influence the school environment. Though caring is understood improve educational outcomes, questions about the interpersonal and organizational enactment can lead to significant disagreements--micropolitical contests. Using case study data,…

The case captures leadership challenges related to recent legislation promoting parents' rights and the tensions that emerged from new mandates affecting the school's inclusive culture. The principal finds himself balancing the needs of parents, teachers, and students while staying true to his commitments and ethics. Challenges include growing…

Political polarization in the United States has made many environmental issues strongly partisan, with Democrats largely receptive to environmental messaging and Republicans commonly pitted against it. This phenomenon may have meaningful implications for how environmental education is conducted for people from different sociopolitical contexts. We…

In the United States, the two main political parties, Democrats and Republicans, have become increasingly polarized, including with regard to environmental issues. As part of a national study of environmentally focused single-day field trips for early adolescent youth in 2018, we conducted exploratory research to examine how outcomes differed for…

Research has shown the value of including youth, especially minoritized students, in school- and district-level educational decision-making. However, power dynamics, as related to adultism, along with other inequities, are barriers to youth's political influence. We elucidate these barriers by exploring the possible relationship between…

The so-called "Educational Opportunity Guarantee Act 2016" was adopted and established in the National Diet in December 2016. As is well known, it gained impetus through lobbying from people involved with alternative "free schools," pursuing a stable position within the system, along with the night junior high school movement.…