Background: In recent years, intermediary organizations have increasingly influenced educational policy. Among other proposals, they have promoted teacher education redesign based on technocratic values and stringent accountability measures. In response to these policy changes and the intensifying crisis in the teaching profession, teacher…

Background/Context: Since 2013, opting out of state standardized tests has become a movement--the grassroots, organized efforts to refuse to take high-stakes state standardized tests. In particular, opt-out rates in the state of New York have been consistently fluctuating around 20%. Purpose/Objective: This study aims to examine the actor…

Background/Context: In the spring of 2015, about 135,000 New Jersey students--almost 20% of the test-eligible children--did not take the state's test. Opposition of this magnitude directly contradicted a central stipulation of the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), which required states to test 95% of their eligible students to…

Context: Systemic oppression is one of the most pressing problems in U.S. society. However, relatively little is known about the process by which college students become committed to social justice agendas. In addition, systematic empirical inquiries that examine how Asian American students, in particular, develop such commitments are difficult to…

Background: Contemporary dominant discourses surrounding (un)documented migration in the United States are commonly divided into two polarized frames--those immigrants who are hard workers seeking a better life, and others who are border-crossing criminals. For teachers in the Southeast, developing an understanding of immigrants becomes critically…

Background: The number of students identified as English learners (ELs) in the U.S. has risen in the last two decades. Approximately 10% of the K-12 student population is identified as ELs. These students are not a monolithic group. They come from diverse ethnic groups, home languages, socioeconomic statuses, backgrounds, and experiences.…

Background: U.S. preschool children from Latinx immigrant and Black communities often experience schooling rooted in compliance and overdiscipline. In these contexts, schools do not recognize the rich lived experiences of Children of Color as suitable for civic learning. This article explores how, when schools value young Children of Color as…

Background: The chapter explores the intersection of multimodal and digital literacies and racial identities of Black Caribbean immigrant youth in the United States (U.S.). Drawing on ethnographic research on the ways in which adolescent students embody their identities online, the chapter details some of the tensions that arise when these…

Context: Writing is an agentive act. Despite drastic improvements over the past few decades in writing instruction and the push for sharing with authentic audiences, the majority of writing students do is still for the teacher. These practices are at odds with those who advocate for classrooms that are culturally relevant, culturally responsive,…

Background/Context: Despite its emphasis on pluralism, empirical research on asset-based pedagogies has typically focused on culturally, linguistically, or racially homogeneous groups of students. The rise of interest in culturally relevant pedagogy in the 1990s coincided with the resegregation of many school districts. As a result, few scholars…

Context: This research contributes to a growing body of scholarship on affirming and accommodating transgender and gender-diverse students in elementary school spaces by exploring how institutional resistance to gender-inclusive practices manifested in a single rural school district. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: The study…

Background/Context: As a major area of civic decision making, public education is a central arena for advocacy groups seeking to influence policy debates. An emerging body of research examines advocates' use of social media. While debates about policy can be thought of as a clash of large ideas contained within frames, cognitive linguists note…

Background: Research that identifies and celebrates the positive attributes of women educational leaders advancing a social justice agenda in traditionally male-dominated, Sub-Saharan African (SSA) societies is sparse. Studying female educational leadership in SSA conceptually brings to the fore issues associated with the intersectionality of…

Background: Black youth are five times more likely, Latinx twice as likely, and Native American youth three times as likely to be incarcerated as their White peers. One of the dire consequences of the prison-industrial complex is that countless youth of color have been disenfranchised and cast out of society. Purpose: The purpose of this study is…

Background/Context: The current educational market nestled in neoliberal and market-based reform efforts has shifted the nature of public education. Community-based educational spaces are also shaped within this context. As such, given the political and educational climate youth workers are situated in, their role as advocates, cultural workers,…