Discourses of social justice are becoming increasingly prevalent in educational spaces, with rising numbers of teachers and teacher education programs expressing their aims to teach towards social justice. Yet, recent scholarship has documented the contested meanings of social justice in contemporary educational contexts. This qualitative case…

Can "on-line" 'place-based learning' be more than a facsimile or ritual? Using a phenomenology of my pandemic practice, I investigate the meaning of 'place-based learning:' entertaining Aristotle's seminal thought on place as a container to venture into contemporary phenomenological inquiries where places and things are not only…

This study explored eight middle school teachers' language about literacy implementation in their disciplinary classrooms. Interview data and supplemental artifact data were gathered from two previous studies focused on disciplinary literacy in middle school settings. This critical discourse analysis examined how teachers' language elucidated…

As part of my work as an educator, I see the need to surface for discussion what might indeed be considered as acts of oppression on the part of peer reviewers when certain aspects of knowing and meaning are misrecognized, obscured, or suppressed. Drawing on observations concerning coercive and oppressive relational and educational practices found…

The most recent iteration of NAEYC's key Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP) texts (the 2020 Position Statement and the fourth edition of the DAP book) reflect a more robust stance on family educator-relationships and attention to issues of equity as reflected in linguistic shifts. This article analyses NAEYC's rhetorical moves between the…

The notions of inclusion and diversity are increasingly used in a wide variety of areas in public debate and policy, as well as in educational curriculum and policy documents in New Zealand and internationally since the UNESCO Salamanca Statement in 1994. What is meant by inclusion and diversity in many of these contexts is often rather unclear,…

Learning Assistants (LAs) are undergraduate peer-tutors who, having successfully passed a particular course, return to assist with teaching that course. Through their work across many STEM courses, LAs have been shown to have positive effects on several student outcomes, but little is known about why LAs' presence in classrooms is positively…

Both pre-service and practicing educators are entering classrooms with limited preparation for the social landscape, affecting a range of professional considerations such as educational equity, culturally responsive teaching, and effective assessment. In an effort to consider greater impact and meaningful development of teachers for social justice…

The Alt-Right are an online racist group where multiple characters from the "intellectual dark web" or White identitarian right come together; trolls, incels, men's rights activists, and ironic gamers intersect with right populist movements, Neo-romantic reactionaries, and Christian nationalists. Not limited to a hidden far-right…

This study aims to provide a general overview of how educational leadership is defined by Arab educators and education specialists in the Arab region, concentrating on the State of Qatar. The study builds on insights from socio-cultural theory and critical discourse analysis, viewing language as a social practice and thus treats leadership as a…

Widening participation in England has been framed around two primary needs; raising attainment and raising aspiration. Whilst aspiration is complex, policy definitions often frame it in narrow economic terms and see access to higher education as primarily about developing a workforce, the underlying logic being that to improve social mobility that…

Youth movements rose in Brazil in the past decade, fighting for equitable access to education alongside plural -- anti-capitalist, anti-racist, and feminist -- struggles. This article examines interactions by which Brazilian youth activists organise, politicise, and define who constitutes a movement. It focuses on a 2019 public hearing to defend…

"Questioning the Language of Improvement and Reform in Education" challenges the language used in education by linking the language of both the public and professional domains with the changing intentions of the governance of education. Exploring various issues, which embody the many manifestations of the manner in which strident,…

This paper revisits the notion of 'legitimate language' [e.g. Bourdieu 1977. "The Economics of Linguistic Exchange." "Social Science Information" 16 (6): 645-668] as it relates to multilingualism in educational contexts. Since Heller [1996. "Legitimate Language in a Multilingual School." "Linguistics and…

This article examines social practices within classroom discourse in two different Finnish religious educational contexts. The article critically observes the construction of certain positions and identities as part of the school discourse and the inclusive vs exclusive practices of language. The research material consists of classroom…