The goal of this study was to identify teacher-reported practices related to teaching the 2018 US Midterm Elections and contemporary social and policy issues. In particular, we sought to identify factors that helped explain why teachers were or were not engaging students in the midterm elections and related contemporary issues and what contextual…

Educational outcomes for Black & brown students are the result of well-functioning school systems overwrought with top-down bureaucracy that stifle school-based leaders from generating school-based solutions. The dominant explanation is the growing power and influence of politically-driven school board members cut off from local, national, and…

The past few years have seen a rise in interest in local elected offices, specifically in school board seats. These seats hold unequivocal power over what school districts can do in terms of advancing equity and excellence in education. We explore one facet of what became a playbook of anti-equity efforts in school districts during the COVID-19…

Nearly all living Americans grew up taking democracy for granted. Until recently, many believed--and acted as if--the constitutional system was unbreakable, no matter how recklessly politicians behaved. No longer. Americans watch with growing unease as the political system threatens to go off the rails: costly government shutdowns, stolen Supreme…

The 2016 U.S. Presidential election led to a rise in mental health concerns among marginalized youth. We consider how LGBTQ+ and ally youth responded in Gender-Sexuality Alliances (GSAs). In this secondary analysis, we used survey data to assess for associations between frequency of discussions of the election in GSAs and mental health outcomes.…

Public school board elections have become cultural battlegrounds as groups with opposing views on education, politics, religion, and social and cultural issues vie to shape public education, their communities, and the nation. To date, little research has examined White Christian nationalism as a political force shaping these elections. This paper…

This paper considers the functions and effects of "representation" in politics and education. The voting age for public elections in Japan has been lowered from 20 or older to 18 or older, calling for a shift in the curriculum to the basics of political participation and competence. In this paper, while focusing on the political issues…

This auto ethnographic poetic inquiry is fashioned as a dialogue between Kristin Heavey and Kessey Jemmott, on topics of race and embodiment. Heavey is a white mother of a bi racial daughter in the United States of America; Jemmott is a Black Trinbagonian, living in Canada. These vignettes emerged from a collaborative performance piece, drawing…

In this Q&A, NEJHE Executive Editor John O. Harney asks Mary K. Grant, president of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, about the institute's work connecting postsecondary education to citizenship and upcoming elections.

For many US citizens, the election of Donald Trump was an event that will be etched into our collective psyche. As educational researchers, the challenge is how to prevent it from becoming an Event with a capital E. That almost 63 million US voters, many of whom have attended or graduated from public schools, supported Donald Trump makes the…

This qualitative study reports the experiences of 17 undergraduate first-year students with minoritized identities at an urban university in a battleground state during the 2016 presidential election. Guided by a constructivist theoretical perspective and interpretative thematic data analysis, several key findings emerged that texturize the paths…

Using the ecological systems theory, this study highlights the significant impact the political climate in the United States (i.e., anti-immigrant sentiments and violence) has on undocumented Latinx parents' engagement in their children's education. Drawing from a larger qualitative, interview-based study that explored how undocumented Latinx…

College students in prison are ineligible for state-funded financial aid in most states. This is because state policymakers adopted policies that explicitly ban incarcerated students from receiving aid. How and why did state policymakers do this? This study explores this question through qualitative case studies of two states where incarcerated…

Following the election of Donald Trump, the author, his wife, and colleagues from the Annenberg Institute for Social Reform (AISR) experienced different forms of apprehension: "anxious" apprehension, which can also be a moment of activist birth that sets the stage for a new level of consciousness to be awakened; "critical"…

What the election result highlighted for the author is that we definitely need to create broader senses of coalition among many different peoples, whether they be Native American people at Standing Rock, or the Black Lives Matter Movement or our Dreamers--anyone who has been disenfranchised. These are the folks who we need to start building…