Students as partners (SaP) is an approach which aims to include students and staff in partnership in a number of settings across higher education. This article is a comparative exploration of SaP in relation to universities in Australia and Japan, through the lens of Matthews' (2017) five propositions for SaP. Published in 2017, the propositions…

In this chapter, I argue that prison education is dangerous. In a context where individual incarcerated people have restricted autonomy, non-incarcerated students, staff, and faculty from colleges and universities can cause real harm by neglecting to consider the vast power differentials between non- or never-incarcerated educators and students in…

This chapter investigates the experiences of doctoral students and supervisors in the doctoral process, focusing on the potential impact of imbalances in the distribution of power. In this respect, there are troublesome manifestations of excessive faculty entitlement that appear to be a source of inequality and injustice. These phenomena call into…

This collaborative autoethnography explores the shifting power dynamics in a youth-adult research partnership within a participatory design research project focused on a youth-led online writing community. The authors, a former high school teacher/now doctoral student researcher and former high school students/current co-researchers, analyze their…

To examine the complex layers of those who are multi-racial/ethnic/cultured, the mixed-identity of the first author -- an art therapy doctoral student -- is first deconstructed, followed by the delineation of systemic and historical contexts. This viewpoint further examines how the therapists' multiple identity[ies] informs and intersects with…

In this chapter, we examine the negative impact of excessive teacher entitlement on school life. We argue that teacher entitlement goes beyond individual traits, intricately linked to sociocultural processes and power dynamics within and outside educational institutions. The focus is on theoretical foundations to understand pedagogical practices…

The year 2020 marked the 25th year since Bonny Norton published her influential "TESOL Quarterly" article, 'Social identity, investment, and language learning' (Norton Peirce, 1995) and the fifth year since we, Darvin and Norton (2015), co-authored 'Identity and a model of investment in applied linguistics' in the "Annual Review of…

In this study, I use "currere" to examine excessive entitlement in my own high school education. By "excessive entitlement," I emphasize teachers' actions and systemic conditions related to an excessive educational mindset justifying (and manifesting) self-infallibility. Teachers displaying excessive entitlement might take for…

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…

This paper draws upon Foucault's problematisation of "governmentality" analysis to explore teacher interviews from Australian secondary schools, where student voice was 'enacted' within a teacher assessment reform strategy. By bringing teacher voices into relation with theory, it illustrates how the current 'sociality of performativity'…

Sociologists of education have shown that schooling tends to favour the most powerful groups and that even well-intentioned researchers can run the risk of perpetuating some of the very power structures we seek to critique. In this paper we explore how a male, Brahmin researcher from Nepal (the highest caste group in Nepalese society) attempted to…

Educators carry self-constructed narratives about who they are as professionals. When they tell and retell versions of these stories to their students (and themselves), these stories become part of the curriculum. This article suggests that with the students, by examining stories "concealed" within educators' "stock" stories,…

Contemporary moves towards social justice education and digital pedagogies require language educators to examine the ways digital learning platforms reinforce economic, social, and cultural inequities, and to explore how to instead offer anti-oppressive pedagogies for diverse online communities. In this Teaching Issues essay, I draw from the…

This article focuses on the dynamics at play in a challenging lesson observed during the LGBTQ unit in a social justice-focused high school course. On the surface, the lesson was a chaotic struggle involving a tense intergenerational clash between the teacher and an outspoken group of students. Young people interrupted and refused the teacher's…

Current gaps in achievement among students from diverse backgrounds and their culturally dominant counterparts imply that theoretical ideas, such as culturally responsive teaching (CRT), that focus on increasing the achievement of diverse populations are sound yet difficult to translate into everyday practice. CRT is intricate and complex and…