Urban Poetics: Poetry, Social Justice and Critical Pedagogy in Education

Posing an alternate view to high stakes educational models, the thoughts, opinions and practices of four poetry educators are used to provide critical insights as how to infuse creative outlets in the educational process. In gathering the motivations of these poetry educators, a goal of this project is to encapsulate their philosophies through researcher observation and participation. Engaging such work with social justice at the center creates a particular disposition. It can be subjective in the sense that an understanding of improvement requires an explicit commitment to the improvement of the lives of young people in education through a participatory process.David Stovall is an Assistant Professor of Policy Studies.     

Public Pedagogy and Social Justice in Arts Education

In this article we explore examples of public pedagogical actions and interventions, reading them through a social justice education framework lens. In our discussion we start with definitions of social justice, public pedagogy and case study methodologies. Then, we look at a variety of international examples to highlight the pervasiveness of public pedagogical opportunities in visual culture that include a festival, an individual, a citywide symposium, an online community, a cultural group and a museum exhibition. They are divided into three categories based on social justice principles suggested by Ayers et al. and later interpreted by Dewhurst: (1) Public pedagogy and social justice is rooted in people's experiences: Fiesta del Señor de Choquekillka: Ollantaytambo, Peru and Janet Weight Reed – an artist's public pedagogy utilising social media; (2) Public pedagogy and social justice is a process of reflection and action together: Ideas City Festival and the Vlogbrothers; (3) Public pedagogy and social justice seeks to dismantle systems of inequality to create a more humane society: CULTURUNNERS and sh[OUT]: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex art and culture. It is our hope that in looking more closely at these international examples of public pedagogy and social justice education that the power of such alternative sites of learning is apparent and encourages further interventions and investigations in such spaces of inquiry.     

Affirming Cultures,Communities and Experiences: Teaching for Social Justice in Teacher Education Literacy Courses

In this article we share several activities we use in our teacher education literacy courses that incorporate a social justice lens. For each activity we suggest resources, offer examples we have created and used in our teaching, and share research to support each activity. The activities build on each other, with the intent of increasing preservice teacher knowledge of how to teach for social justice by moving beyond awareness and understanding lived experiences of students to affirming cultures and experiences of all students, creating inclusive and equitable classrooms. By experiencing teaching from this stance in our courses, we hope that our preservice teachers take up and teach from a social justice stance in their future classrooms.     

Setting the Stage for Action: Teaching Social Justice in the Middle School Classroom

Abstract

In an effort to better understand what it means to enact curriculum that helps students conceptualize issues of injustice and racism, this article describes an approach to comply with mandated responsibilities while offering curriculum that promotes an understanding of social justice and equity in the community. Challenges and barriers to implementation of these curricular changes are also described, as well as guidance to those who wish to begin the process of enacting curriculum that pushes students to critically consider power, justice, and fairness within their community.     

Power,Penalty, and Critical Praxis: Employing Intersectionality in Educator Practices to Achieve School Equity

Intersectionality describes the ways interlocking systems of oppression, evidenced in various identity facets (e.g., race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, ability, and language), frame individuals' social worlds. An awareness of intersectionality can ensure PreK–12 school policies and practices meet the needs of a student population diversifying rapidly along multiple lines. We situate intersectionality within examples of common schooling dilemmas and pose suggestions for educators to employ intersectional thinking in their practice.     

我国社会保障制度公平缺失问题及对策

社会保障制度是维护社会公平的一项重要制度。但在现实中,我国的社会保障制度在公平方面存在着缺失,主要表现为城乡之间、群体之间、地区之间的不公平。因此,必须建立城乡统一的社会保障制度和多层次的社会保障体系,实行灵活的社会保障菜单选择制度,逐渐完善社会保障制度,以利于构建和谐社会。     

Developing cohesion and building positive relationships through storytelling in a culturally diverse New Zealand classroom

Educational research highlights the importance of positive teacher student relationships and recommends teachers adopt teaching strategies that are more culturally inclusive, and allow for reciprocal teaching and learning where student prior knowledge is legitimized. Participants in this study experienced such an approach. Through a storytelling process they fostered empathy, compassion, tolerance and respect for difference. This paper introduces four interrelated factors that enhanced participant understanding of themselves, others and cultural perspectives: developing the ways of working, establishing a caring supportive environment, privileging student voice through personal stories, and enhancing participant connectedness and relationship change. These results have potential relevance for teachers and teacher educators who face the challenge of catering for the learning needs of culturally diverse students in their classrooms.     

论社会公正与构建和谐社会

社会公正是社会主义和谐社会的题中之义。当前社会还存在一些不公问题,应完善社会主义分配制度,建立全方位的监督体系,保障社会成员机会平等,以维护和实现社会公正。     

Pedagogy and Diversity: Enrichment and Support for Social Work Instructors Engaged in Social Justice Education

The primary purpose of faculty development is to create and sustain a culture of teaching excellence. For social work faculty, an important part of teaching excellence involves incorporating core social work values such as social justice and diversity across the curriculum and developing pedagogical skills and strategies to teach these issues effectively. In this article, we present a model of a faculty development seminar that offers a facilitated space for instructors to discuss how issues of diversity, social identity, and oppression influence their teaching, the classroom environment, student interactions, and the overall campus climate.     

Social Justice,Character Education,and Sport: A Position Statement

ABSTRACT

In this article, we suggest that character education in sport contexts can promote social justice. After defining key terms, we suggest that rethinking competition and the nature of team relationships is required to build a team culture responsive to concerns for social justice. The character of the team provides a nexus within which to develop individual character, which is elaborated in terms of four types of character: moral, civic, intellectual, and performance character. To promote commitment to social justice, character educators can focus on three elements of moral character: moral reasoning, the circle of moral regard, and moral identity. Within civic character, three themes are elaborated: human dignity, full participation, and accountability. The dimensions of critical thinking, willful ignorance, and prioritizing the marginalized are discussed in relation to intellectual character. Performance character is discussed in relation to an ethic of excellence. Finally, conclusions for character educators are elaborated.     

Tools that come from within: Learning to teach in a cross-cultural adult literacy practicum

We report on a study of preservice teachers who tutored adults learning English in a free evening class while simultaneously taking a course titled Community Literacy. Exploring their participation, we wondered in what ways pedagogy developed within this context. Drawing on a close discourse analysis of preservice teachers’ written work, we found that each preservice teacher constructed pedagogy differently but in ways that drew on students’ funds of knowledge, interests, ways of learning, and political interests. Moreover, through reflections on practice, preservice teachers sedimented their identities as teachers who see diversity as a resource in teaching.     

Becoming Teachers for Social Justice: Raising Critical Consciousness

This article shares processes and practices which foster students’ critical consciousness. Critical consciousness, the core of social justice teaching, is a heightened awareness of the world and the power structures that shape it. Teachers can become forces for equity and change by: challenging students to reflect critically on their beliefs and the sources of these beliefs; using text to guide students to look outwards and discover the perspectives and challenges of others; selecting texts purposefully to heighten student awareness of issues of power and equity; teaching students to read texts critically, listening carefully for the points of view of others often ignored or silenced; creating space for dialogue beyond text; and finally, making the world their classroom, blurring the boundary between schools and communities as students research the world and take steps toward change in ways that recognize and re-value our common humanity. Becoming teachers for social justice entails moving students through intentional processes and practices to foster critical consciousness in the hope of effecting change.     

Navigating the unfamiliar in a quest towards culturally responsive pedagogy in the classroom

This paper examines a New Zealand Pākehā (European) teacher's professional development experience working with Māori (indigenous people of New Zealand), and their protocols and practices. A Māori kaumatua (male leader) experienced in theatre direction, acting, and psychiatric nursing led Māori marginalised youth to disclose their personal stories, wrap them in tikanga (customs) and move forward to create theatre from their experiences. This paper discusses a participant observer process of living on a marae (Māori congregational place), working with Māori, experiencing Māori protocols and practices on a daily basis, and the recommendations for teachers dealing with cultural difference in the classroom.     

Sexual Justice Is Social Justice: An Activity to Expand Social Work Students Understanding of Sexual Rights and Injustices

Social work education could benefit from an explicit educational framework that combines social justice and sexuality: sexual justice. However, there is a paucity of literature in social work discussing this critical issue. This article helps equip social workers to challenge social injustice through a lens of sexuality and builds a conceptual framework by examining sexual justice through pillars of social work: human dignity, community and solidarity, rights and responsibilities, priority for the poor and vulnerable, and peace. An activity providing micro and macro case discussions is presented to help infuse sexual justice into social work programs.     

社会公正与政府责任问题的研究视角及路径分析

社会公正是社会和谐的基石。学术界从不同层面对社会不公正现象进行研究,基本上是由于中国社会的不公正程度在加剧,社会不公正所带来的后果值得高度重视。为此,学者从实施宏观调控以调整收入差距和地区差距、培育合理的社会阶层结构、推行政治民主化等不同角度提出各自的对策。在进一步的研究中需要再建构一个新的社会公正与政府责任的理论模式,对社会公正和政府责任的研究深化、细化和具体化,了解民众对社会公正和政府责任的期望等方面展开。     

Talking Whiteness: Representations of Social Justice in One School

This post-structural discourse analysis examines how whiteness is discursively and materially maintained and reproduced through an anti-bias discourse. It attempts to surface ways in which counter discourses are mediated within a dominant discourse such as whiteness. Understanding one school’s determined efforts to “combat oppression” and the difficulties inherent in this charge may allow for expanded notions of how schools might challenge taken for granted norms on which many visions of reform rest. Finally, taking into consideration the ways in which dominant discourses of normalization may act as a barrier to producing transformational environments for teaching and learning in K-12 schools, may make more evident the need for schools to have mechanisms that challenge normative structures, social practices, as well as create space for counter discourses to be generated.     

审视流动儿童学校的合理性和合法化——基于社会公平的视角

从社会公平的角度对流动儿童学校的合理性和合法化主张进行了反思和批判,认为流动儿童学校在促进社会公平和教育平等的同时却又制造了新的不平等,流动儿童学校的存在类似于美国1954年前实行的种族隔离教育。流动儿童学校更有利于流动儿童发展的观点更是缺乏证据。所以,在当前我国政府主张流动儿童的义务教育要以"公立中小学为主"的政策性背景下,对流动儿童学校的合理性和合法化主张更应持警醒的态度。     

Culturally Responsive Pedagogy in Higher Education: A Collaborative Self-Study

In this article we discuss findings from a collaborative self-study of how seven teacher educators define, enact, and navigate their roles as culturally responsive educators across various programs within a higher education institution. All participants conducted an individual interview with another team member and engaged in prolonged team meetings in order to understand and conceptualize culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP). Findings include the participants' difficulty with defining CRP in higher education; the importance of modeling and building relationships with students when enacting CRP; tensions related to students and institutions; and professional and personal opportunities to continuously evolve. The findings begin to fill in a void for an articulated framework of CRP beyond P-12 classrooms and illustrate the type of support and professional development higher education institutions need to provide for teacher educators to actualize this work.     

Visualizing Social Justice: Using Controversial Images in Social Studies Classrooms

In this article, we promote the use of controversial images to enhance the discussion of social justice issues in schools. Controversial images provide rich opportunities for students to question what is occurring currently in society as well as what has occurred in the past. We provide an example set of activities to be used in teacher education that can help future teachers explore engaging methods for teaching with controversial images, discuss tensions involved with the use of controversial images, and to develop connections between using controversial images and teaching for social justice.     

论我国环境正义问题的社会建构

环境正义问题往往隐蔽在概括性的环境问题之中,经过社会建构被认为是令人担心且必须采取行动加以应付之后,才构成"问题"。我国环境正义问题主要表现为城乡环境正义、区域环境正义、阶层环境正义等方面。这些方面的问题是在我国社会经济长期发展不均衡、公平诉求到了不容忽视的时刻的背景下,通过某些必然又特定的契机建构起来的。