This research shows that employing critical thinking (problem-solving and scientific reasoning) skills when learning about climate change helped undergraduate biology students to understand the subject matter better. In this post hoc analysis of pre- and post-test scores from a public Florida undergraduate college, we identified significant…

LGBTQIA+ choruses in the United States play an important role in the development of queer movement culture by providing safe spaces other than bars and clubs, by emotionally supporting queer people through extended political struggles and the AIDS crisis, and by presenting public counternarratives to anti-gay propaganda. Jon Sims, a music teacher…

Background/Context: Opting out of high-stakes standardized tests, a phenomenon so widespread in the United States as to be regarded as a movement, is nevertheless a misunderstood and often maligned force in educational politics. Purpose: This article offers a counter-narrative of opt-out activism--a more thorough and vivid account of what we view…

This paper investigates the impact of the 2016 presidential election on the Opt Out Florida Network (OOFN). Findings indicate that the widespread protests against the Trump presidency after the election highlighted the need to reframe OOFN's message in order to motivate membership to act for democratic schools. We suggest the outcome of OOFN's…

Numerous states have attempted to enact sweeping curricular bans targeting Critical Race Theory (CRT) to prevent educators from teaching content that challenges the white-Eurocentric curriculum of American schooling. In this paper, we build on arguments that curricular bans are not new to education, nor is the resistance enacted by educators to…

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a Florida-based human rights organisation, has significantly improved working conditions for migrant farmworkers on large-scale produce farms in the United States, in part, through its adaptation of applied theatre strategies used in its worker-to-worker popular education programme. The farmworker-devised…

This article explores how moral madness manifests in the Opt Out Florida Network, a group committed to ending high-stakes standardized testing. Using data culled from a critical online ethnography of the movement, we show how parents and teachers in the Opt Out Florida Network experience moral madness as a result of standardization and high-stakes…

David Blacker points to a problematic decline in personal freedoms, including student speech rights: "[A]s the 'educational mission' of schools moves ineluctably even further toward warehousing and surveillance--pre-jail--then remaining intra-institutional speech rights will easily be quashed." Critical of the elastic conception of…

Social media use, activism, and critical digital making are areas where artmaking can serve as both a mode of expression and a civic practice. In light of this context, the authors wonder how art curriculum can both draw on and support this form of civic work. The authors hope to demonstrate in this article that social activism is a highly visible…

This article explores the widespread and growing public backlash against high-stakes standardised testing in the United States, following the parent-led Opt Out movement's quest to dismantle neoliberal educational policy by coaching children to boycott standardised tests. We analyse how our participants, mothers and female teachers in Opt Out…

Socially engaged artwork challenges viewers to ask critical questions about society, to dialogue about issues that affect quality of life, and to question how art is considered. Art educators can provide opportunity to discuss and respond artistically to issues within their communities. One way to approach this is through place-based educational…

This presentation shares findings from a qualitative study investigating the following research questions: (1) What impact did the 2016 election have on Opt Out Florida? and (2) What are the leaders' goals during a Trump presidency? In addition to sharing our findings, we build on critical ethnographic data regarding the Opt Out Florida movement…

A labor force of migrant farmworkers, mostly of Latino origin, largely support the agriculture industry in the US. While migrant labor is essential in the modern food system, food insecurity remains high among migrant farmworkers. Presented are the results from a survey on food insecurity, access, and farm to preschool involving 32 farmworker…

In the past five years there has been an increase in online news stories, all asking a somewhat similar question that can be paraphrased as, "Why are billionaires funding colleges and universities?" On its surface, the question appears harmless: billionaires presumably receive nothing by giving their money to institutions of higher…

Following a shooting at Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, students from that school began to take matters into their own hands, meeting and networking on social media, speaking to the media, participating in vigils, organizing walkouts and demonstrations, establishing coalitions with others who share their outrage and goals, and…