Purpose: This study aims to examine how critical love theory is operationalized in K-12 classrooms to support Black children. The authors use BlackCrit and a conceptual framework of critical love to describe the strategies educators used as pro-Black pedagogies of resistance. Design/methodology/approach: The authors conducted a thematic analysis…

This article examines the complex process of teachers' care for students in contexts of inclusive refugee education in Jordan, where Syrian refugees and Jordanian students study together. I illustrate that while teachers' caring practices represent efforts to support refugee students, they are limited by teachers' inability to see the social,…

This article critically examines the prevalent belief within music education that "music is for all," highlighting the incongruence between educators' intentions and students' lived experiences. Drawing on personal positionality and scholarly orientation, the author explores how music teachers may unintentionally disaffirm students'…

This article offers perspectives on disrupting the typical elementary school "canon" through providing considerations and pedagogical orientations for including hip-hop. Three issues of critical importance in elementary music education are addressed: decentering Whiteness in elementary music, understanding hip-hop in relation to…

Social justice leadership that attends not only to equity of access and opportunity for marginalized students, but also to critical consciousness for all students has been largely ignored in empirical research in high-performing, high socioeconomic suburban elementary schools. To address this research gap, this qualitative study utilized a…

Teacher education is an entry point for education reform where candidates can learn how school can become a site for reinforcing norms that harm minoritized students, and also as a place of possibility, where ideologies are expanded to embrace possibility and exploration. This project investigates the use of critical, queer, and anti-oppressive…

Speaking to the political and social upheaval of our present moment, and drawing on discourses of democratic education, we argue that the U.S.'s racial reckoning propelled by recent events constitutes a sort of "founding" for our democracy and that this founding has important implications for reconfiguring citizenship within institutions…

This qualitative study examines teacher educators' articulations about their beliefs and motivations for preparing the next generation of teachers. The study also explores how teacher educators conceptualise their roles as the teachers of prospective teachers. Employing case study design, the participants included 10 teacher educators who serve at…

Few studies have attended to the specific influence of neoliberalism on education for social justice, despite the complex ways in which the competing discourses of neoliberalism and social justice work side by side in local educational settings. This article reports data derived from interviews with 28 educators committed to social justice…

In this essay, Harper B. Keenan draws on his own experience as a white queer and trans educator to consider the meaning of a critical trans pedagogy. Amid dissonant narratives of equal rights and subjection, he explores how his classroom teaching is shaped by his own experience of gender conditioning as well as by the contemporary political…

The authors present a qualitative study which investigates the intersections between English Language Learner (ELL) status, disability, and special education in a mid-sized urban school district in Upstate New York. They explore how teachers conceptualize and implement New York State Education Department policies which affect the inclusive…

Both in concept and in practice, policy has permeated the deepest recesses of civil society and has had particular impact on the lives of those who are actively connected to the educational process. For music teachers in particular, policy can evoke images of a forbidden environment beyond one's day-to-day duties and responsibilities. Nothing,…

How might teachers of elementary mathematics pursue antiracism through everyday practices such as leading whole-class discussions? This paper reports on an exploratory study of one White woman teacher's efforts to challenge manifestations of structural racism in classroom interactions with students who are predominantly Black. The results include…

This article recounts an autoethnographic study of a White elementary school principal's efforts to confront White supremacy in punitive discipline. This principal applied transformative leadership precepts and antiracist pedagogy to conduct a school turnaround effort. The district had committed to neoliberal reform and neoliberal mandates in…

Intersectionality describes the ways interlocking systems of oppression, evidenced in various identity facets (e.g., race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, ability, and language), frame individuals' social worlds. An awareness of intersectionality can ensure PreK-12 school policies and practices meet the needs of a student population…