During a time of racial unrest and attention to social justice, Black communities are developing a deeper understanding of prevailing systemic flaws in policing, policies, and education. There are movements within the Black community toward rebuilding systems constructed to subjugate. While much of the existing research focuses on ways to reform…

Scholars have utilized the allegory of Reconstruction to trace threads between the historical and contemporary struggles for freedom. In this article, I highlight the ways that abolition has always been a dual project and remains as such in our present time. It calls for the complete destruction of oppressive structures while simultaneously…

Through conceptual framing of "a vibe" and abolitionist teaching, our study explored the self-determining work of Black and other People of the Global Majority (PGM) who have curated "by us, for us" (BUFU) community spaces of belonging, healing, and liberation. We asked where PGM community members were finding refuge and what…

There is limited understanding of how women of Mexican heritage transform cultural and familial protective factors into strategies to help navigate their education. This study helps bridge the gap between students' cultural wealth and the ways they utilize this protective factor in college. I analyzed the strategies used by seven first-generation…

Critical consciousness refers to the ways in which individuals come to understand and challenge oppressive social forces. Philosopher-educator Paulo Freire argued that critical curiosity--an eagerness to learn more about and develop a deep understanding of issues of social justice--serves as an important catalyst to critical consciousness…

A growing body of research explores theoretical models of teaching for social justice in P-12 classrooms and in teacher education. However, many of these models fail to account for the relationship between teachers' social justice frameworks and their classroom practices. In this article, I use vignettes drawn from a recent study of secondary…

The purpose of this study was to explore students' perceptions of how the curriculum and teaching strategies in a social justice education course prepared them for social action engagement. Past studies using a similar approach to teaching about social justice issues did not include student interviews. Students' perspectives can shed light on how…

Intergroup dialogue is designed to foster commitment to action. This article analyzes papers written by students in 52 intergroup dialogue courses (N = 739) to test a theoretical model of how intergroup dialogue is expected to encourage frequency of acting to educate others and to collaborate with others. The theoretical model posits that dialogue…

This article looks closely at how the process of artmaking linked to social critique unfolds in one community-based educational setting in Latin America. Drawing on nine months of ethnographic fieldwork with a community-based popular education organization in the northern desert of Mexico, the article examines the pedagogical uses of poetry,…

This article draws upon five different empirical studies to examine how critical dialogue can be fostered across educational settings and with diverse populations: middle-school students discussing immigration picture books, a teacher study group exploring texts on homelessness, a teacher education class studying critical literacy, working class…

This article describes efforts to introduce students in a first-year studies course to social justice principles with attention to the initial preparation of students for social activism. After describing the coursework and related activities, we share the findings--from observation and survey sources--associated with the initial social activism…

This study investigates what preservice elementary school teachers assume about children's capacities to learn about equity issues and how teachers might translate teaching for social justice into actual classroom practices. Participants said they did not see the age of their students as a barrier to teaching for social justice, although their…

This case study of a first grade teacher enacting a social action curriculum is based on the understanding that schools can be sites where even young children can work toward the common good. This paper examines the way a first grade teacher (Paula Rogovin) and her students built solidarity with a community member and in turn adopted a new social…

This article provides a rich representation of how in-school practices that recruit students' "out-of-school" literacies, such as hip hop, can be used as critical bridges in students' learning. Hip hop, conceptualized in this article as an "out-of-school" literacy, works as a vehicle for curricular change at Eastview School for Pregnant and…

Examines excerpts from the late James Farmer's presentation to the William Monroe Trotter Institute at the University of Massachusetts. Farmer devoted his life to civil rights activism and social reform. Comments on the most recent Trotter Review, "Diversity, Pedagogy and Higher Education: Lessons and Accomplishments," which includes 17…