Identity exploration is a pivotal component in shaping effective student leadership trainers. This article examines identity exploration in student leadership training, highlighting the role of self-awareness, reflection on positionality, and the intricate interplay of power and privilege within identity development. By delving into the nuances of…

Based on an overview of the existing literature, this paper aims to provide a holistic and coherent conceptualisation and understanding of the complexity of educators' professional learning. First, the way in which professional development, professional learning and everyday learning have been configured in contemporary research is combined with…

Praxis development remains invisible in many discussions of professional learning because professional educators take praxis development for granted as an indissoluble part of education and educational work. This special issue provides new insights into professional learning for praxis development, and about the conditions that enable and…

In this study, a Black scholar in the midst of understanding his neurodivergence and his identity as someone who has been dis/abled reacts to the prodding of white peers by creating a course on decentering whiteness. The scholar then interviews ten of the participants in said class to understand how they came to select such a course and what they…

Higher education institutions have been complicit with the ongoing coloniality project that reinforces and perpetuates inequities, dismisses interests, knowledges, alternative discourses, and world views different from Western European thought (Bell, 2018; Dastile & Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2013; Harms-Smith & Rasool, 2020). Education is rooted in…

In this paper, we place the issue of university activism in the context of constituent and constituted power. By this we mean the ever-present danger that activists' demands will be co-opted and concurrently deactivated. To mitigate this risk, we develop a set of conceptual tools that enables thinking about the activist university in terms of…

This piece uses Alice Walker's In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens as a conceptual framework to highlight the unique ways Girls and Femmes of Color (GFOC) create beauty and life amidst a backdrop of devastating oppression. In doing so, we emphasize the brilliance and beauty of GFOC and their multiliterate practices while also challenging the notion…

Three art education researchers conceptualize ethical considerations in conducting research with Indigenous peoples, people of color, and minoritized groups. Three critical dimensions of ethical research emerged: reflexivity, reciprocity, and racialism. We consider how the demands to be successful in academia are at odds with ethical futures. With…

This paper presents Paulo Freire (1921-1997), on the centenary of his birth in 2021, as a global icon in education, whose actions, reflections and writings, as well as dialogues and talks, occurred against the background of an ever globalising world. To quote Martin Carnoy on a text concerning globalisation, published two years following Freire's…

The purpose of this theoretical paper is to provide a praxis oriented example of a qualitative methodology called portraiture for environmental justice and critical environmental education. The five essential elements for a portraiture study are context, voice, relationship, emergent themes, and aesthetic whole. Context is the frame, thus…

Professional learning is increasingly understood as vital for the development of educators, and for the development of a strong educational system. We argue that the most essential purpose of professional learning is for the development of critical praxis. Critical praxis is related to action that is morally, socially and politically informed.…

This dissertation explores the well-being of public K-12 teachers in the United States who explicitly identify as anti-racist and/or anti-colonial teachers. Well-being has traditionally been conceptualized as attached to single human individuals in most Western academic scholarship. However, drawing on insights from the posthumanisms, community…

'Research is a major aspect and fundamental component of many social struggles and movements for change' [Choudry, A. 2013a. "Activist Research Practice: Exploring Research and Knowledge Production for Social Action." Socialist Studies/Études Socialistes 9 (1): 128 151. doi:10.18740/S4G01K, 128]. For Palestinians, research and knowledge…

The contemporary university privileges speed, precarity, competition, and performativity; it operates through modes of accelerationism, work intensification and productivity; and it is oriented to producing academic subjectivities rooted in self-commodification. Much of this is antithetical to feminist ethics and working practices which focus on…

Participatory approaches are receiving renewed attention in the 'students as partners' (SaP) and 'feedback' discourse communities, respectively. SaP scholars tend to focus on pedagogy (pedagogical partnerships) and curriculum (co-creation). Assessment and feedback, as connective and relational practices that bridge these two domains, receive less…