Using Social Justice Vignettes to Prepare Students for Social Action Engagement

One of the learning goals for social justice education courses is to prepare students for social action engagement. Teaching students about issues related to social justice is complex. Prior studies have found a positive relationship between student enrollment in social justice education courses and action-oriented outcomes. While these findings are promising, we as social justice educators need to know more about effective teaching strategies used in social justice education courses that prepare students for social action. In this article, the author describes one method she designed using social justice vignettes to help students recognize social oppression in their daily lives and practice interrupting various “isms” in a safe classroom environment.     

Evaluating Multicultural Education Courses: Promise and Possibilities for Portfolio Assessment

As multicultural education continues to evolve, better assessments are necessary to provide a holistic measure of the effectiveness of multicultural education in the academy. Unfortunately, as multicultural scholars champion the cause for social justice, equity, and access for school children they remain vulnerable to negative promotion and tenure determinations due to misaligned measures of teaching effectiveness in the academy. In this article, a Black female teacher educator at a Predominately White Institution describes how she utilized a Multicultural Education Teaching Portfolio (METP) as a means to inform the measurement of her instructional quality and effectiveness. This discussion provides an overview of current challenges to assessing quality within Multicultural Education courses and provides an outline of possible components of the METP for further consideration.     

A/R/T-Candidates Explore Intersectional Identities Through Art

Teaching diversity and social justice can be difficult when working with teacher candidates (TCs) from primarily homogenous areas, with little to no exposure to pluralistic realities. In multicultural classes, TCs often struggle to understand intersections of race, gender, orientation, socioeconomic levels, religion, ability, and citizenship. In this article, an educational studies professor and four undergraduate students discuss their methodological use of Artist/Researcher/Teacher (a/r/tography) to introduce intersectionality to young students in the classroom. The article discusses a/r/tography as a method in teacher education and provides arts-based examples of how intersectionality can be taught in the PK–12 school system.     

Racial Justice,Hegemony, and Bias Incidents in U.S. Higher Education

Formal administrative protocols for responding to bias incidents are now the norm in higher education. In considering these developments, the author of this article poses critical questions about racial justice work on campus, identifies key features of an under-acknowledged institutional racism, and contributes to discussions about ways that diversity and social justice efforts often reproduce rather than challenge systemic inequities.     

Exposing Privilege and Racism in The Great White North: Tackling Whiteness and Identity Issues in Canadian Education

As social justice–oriented teachers and teacher educators, it can seem as if we are fighting a losing battle against neoliberal education policies designed to disrupt and dismantle our field. In this article we draw upon traditions of critical race theory, counterstorying, and critical hope to examine the complex realities of contemporary teacher education and envision an alternate reality in which our profession develops and thrives. To do so, we first present a series of autoethnographic critical case studies that highlight dilemmas of practice. We then invite readers to examine each case through multiple lenses, as they grapple with the complexities of a visionary path forward. In so doing, we offer tools for critical professional development that articulate, deconstruct, and reimagine social justice–oriented teacher education and activism in this changing landscape. We close with recommendations to increase our collective capacity as social justice teacher educators, placing a central emphasis on the need for community, critical professional development, and hope.     

Hispano‐Arabic studies in the new millennium: the United States and Canada

The decade from 1992 to 2002 saw extensive activity by North American scholars in Hispano‐Arabic studies, both in broad themes related to the 500^th anniversary of 1492 and in such subfields as literature, language/linguistics, religion, history, science/technology, philosophy, and art/architecture. The article provides an overview of scholarly trends and a bibliography of works published during the relevant period.     

The Movement We Make is the Community We Become: On Being an Activist in the Academy

As social justice educators we operate within an academy that often denies the necessity of activism in our work. In this article the author explores, through one person's story, how hierarchies of knowledge and status work within neoliberal paradigms to marginalize scholar–activists and embodied knowledge, and offers possible paths toward scholar-activism.     

Multicultural Education Within the Era of Internalization and Globalization

In this article, the author presents the results of a multistate study examining how teachers, and specifically secondary English Language Arts (ELA) teachers, conceptualize and implement teaching for social justice in standards-based contexts. Additional analysis underscores how this practice both reflects and extends earlier equity-oriented reform movements.     

Tharp's Funnel: A Conceptual Framework for Teaching about Religious Pluralism in Potok's My Name is Asher Lev and Zakiyyah's If I Should Speak

If teachers are to transcend mono-cultural borders and advocate for social justice in liberatory, critical pedagogical practice, then they must understand the relational and causative ethnogenetic layers of experience for students in the global community. Specifically, accommodating religious pluralism is a challenge facing educators today. Immersing themselves and their students in the lives of others through literary narratives provides one immediate and accessible strategy for exploring ethnogenetic experiences and crossing monocultural borders.     

Culturally Relevant Education: Extending the Conversation to Religious Diversity

Culturally relevant education represents a wide collection of pedagogies of opposition to social injustice and holds a commitment to collective empowerment and social justice. By using culturally relevant education as a framework, we make the case to include religious diversity as a part of culturally relevant education intentionally. We believe that by opening the dialogue to include religious diversity, we are working together as educators to promote social justice in schools that benefits all children regardless of their religious backgrounds. We synthesize successful examples of culturally relevant education in connection to religion. Further, we argue for teacher educators to incorporate discussion of religious diversity as part of multicultural and social justice teacher education.     

Linguistic Privilege: Why Educators Should be Concerned

Awareness of privilege and the unearned power that it brings those who have it is a crucial aspect of becoming a multicultural educator. For some time White and male privilege has been a topic of discussion among educators and people concerned about social justice. All aspects of privilege need to be understood and articulated in order to continue our work to provide equitable educational opportunities for all. This article focuses on Standard native English speaker's linguistic privilege and how educators can increases their awareness of it in order to more equitably educate students learning English.     

Evaluating equity: assessing diversity efforts through a social justice lens

ABSTRACT

This paper provides a formative evaluation of The Art Institute of Chicago’s initial efforts to diversify the museum field through the Diversifying Art Museum Leadership Initiative (DAMLI) programme. DAMLI is supported by the Walton Family Foundation and Ford Foundation as part of a movement to diversify the arts & cultural workforce in the United States. In Spring, 2018 the author was contracted to evaluate the museum-wide initiative to systematize and improve the experiences of high school, college, and graduate interns from demographic groups currently underrepresented in museum leadership fields. Through the use of [Fraser, N. (1995). Reframing justice in a globalizing world. New Left Review, 36, 1–19.] social justice framework, this paper will focus on the recruitment, selection, and management of internship experiences of the first four cohorts of undergraduate and graduate-level interns within the programme. The paper begins with an overview of recent diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in the arts & cultural sector – highlighting the systemic issues leading to the need for such initiatives and presenting a typology for organisational responses to the issue. This paper then categorise the type of organisational change sought by The Art Institute of Chicago based on Fraser’s two-dimensional social justice conditions and remedies framework in order to assess whether or not the Art Institute is achieving its goal of attracting, retaining, and empowering a diverse set of students and influencing their decision to pursue a career in the museum field by providing an equitable and inclusive environment during the internship. Finally, the paper concludes with a discussion of the broader implications of this work for arts and cultural organisations interested in diversifying the cultural workforce.     

A Thirteenth-Century Scholar in the Eastern Mediterranean: Sirāj al-Dīn Urmavī, Jurist,Logician, Diplomat

This essay examines the career of the Shafi?ī jurist and logician Sirāj al-Dīn Urmavī (1198–1283), who combined his scholarly and judicial activities with ambassadorial appointments to Frederick II, King of Sicily and Holy Roman Emperor, and the Ilkhan Hülegü. Originally from Azerbaijan, Sirāj al-Dīn spent most of his professional life in Ayyūbid Cairo and, from 1257, in Seljuk Konya, where he spent the final decades of his life as chief qadi. Through a contextualised reading of the extant biographical information for Sirāj al-Dīn, the article draws particular attention to two aspects of his physical and professional trajectory. First, the essay situates Sirāj al-Dīn's career in the context of processes of cultural change in thirteenth-century Anatolia. It seeks to demonstrate both the transfer and adaptation to the Anatolian urban milieu of social–cultural patterns attested for the a?yān in neighbouring predominantly Muslim societies, and the shaping of the social and cultural functions of immigrant scholars to Anatolia by local conditions. Second, the article identifies Sirāj al-Dīn as a prominent participant in an intellectual community engaged in inter-cultural exchange across political and confessional boundaries in the thirteenth-century eastern Mediterranean.     

How children of inter-ethnic couples navigate inter-cultural tensions: A scoping review of qualitative studies

Research into inter-ethnic families predominantly privileges the voices of inter-ethnic couples or parents. In this paper, I extend this discussion by considering the voices of children of inter-ethnic couples, who are also important constituents in the making of inter-ethnic families. This article offers a scoping review to explore, identify, and map the scholarly literature about children of inter-ethnic couples (1995–2022) documenting the experiences of children of inter-ethnic couples in navigating inter-cultural tensions in their everyday lives. From four main scholarly databases (PubMed, PsycINFO, Web of Science, and Scopus), I identified 670 articles which I further screened and assessed. My assessment resulted in 57 articles that focused on the voices of the children. Finally, I worked with 15 qualitative studies that are relevant in addressing my research question: What does the existing research literature report about the experiences of children of inter-ethnic couples in navigating inter-ethnic tensions? My analysis shows that participants navigate points of tensions using various tactics, including cognitive tactics, but also through everyday spatial, relational, and cultural practices. Additionally, I also found that in terms of the scope, most research in this area has been conducted within the context of the countries of the Global North, which provides insight into the need for more research and perspectives from the Global South. I also provide methodological reflections on the search processes and discuss the limitations of this study.     

Teachers Moving Forward on a Cultural Self-Awareness Spectrum: Diverse Children,Museums, and Young Adult Literature

This case study research investigated preservice and in-service teachers’ (N = 23) experiences and understandings as they participated in a multicultural children and young adults’ literature course that incorporates visits to a Holocaust museum. A graduate level course was redesigned within a framework of social justice pedagogy by focusing on critical analysis of multicultural literature, teacher inquiry, as well as a civic engagement project. Findings from this study illuminated how this course design encouraged teachers to move beyond a focus on tolerance and acceptance, and toward a social justice orientation through critical exploration of issues such as racism, oppression, and the ways bias and privilege operate within their own lives, schools, and society.     

Preparing New Teachers for Urban Teaching: Creating a Community Dedicated to Social Justice

Focusing on community as a key element in teacher education, this paper highlights the importance of new teachers embarking on their careers with a vision for social justice. Paying specific attention to the need for effective teachers in America's urban schools, the author stresses purposeful development of this vision for social justice alongside practical skills for classroom instruction in teacher education. The Teacher Education for the Advancement of a Multicultural Society (TEAMS) Program at the University of San Francisco is described to show possibilities for offering new teachers this combination. Professional development, networking, and service-learning are highlighted as foundations of TEAMS designed to help new teachers begin their careers with vision and a sense of community.     

The Media as a Judicial and Police Resource

Abstract

This article examines how media reports of police court trials played an important discursive role in the workings of summary justice and the emergence of the policed society in Scotland in the first half of the nineteenth century. It argues that the dominant messages that trial coverage conveyed were laden with middle-class social and cultural assumptions concerning the accessibility, usefulness and fairness of the courts, and the character and guilt of the accused. Above all, the reports spoke to the intrinsic value of lay magistrates as paternal agents of community conflict resolution and police courts and, more subtly, the police as firm but trustworthy levers of urban discipline.     

From Scholarship Boy to Social Historian: J.F.C. Harrison (1921-2018): An Appreciation

ABSTRACT

John F. C. Harrison, who has recently passed away, was one of the founders of British social and labour History. Along with figures such as E.P. Thompson and Asa Briggs, Harrison put nineteenth-century social history on the scholarly map. He traced the histories of adult education, Owenism and popular millenarianism. Many came to Victorian history through his textbooks about the period. This appreciation traces his life and work, attempting to establish what was distinctive about his work. Harrison eschewed theory but built important bridges between social, labour and intellectual history which give his work an enduring importance.     

Diversity in the Classroom: Implications for School Counselors

U.S. classrooms reflect the diversity of a nation in the midst of transformation. These issues of student diversity force educators and policymakers to explore and more importantly address the needs of a changing population. A key person in the school to help facilitate positive interactions between diverse students, parents, and faculty is the school counselor. Sometimes referred to as change agents, counselors are in the position to affect attitude through changing awareness, providing necessary knowledge and skills, and enhancing opportunities that foster respect for cultural differences. This article discusses the current literature on culture and diversity and the need for classroom cultural congruity. In addition, discourse on school counselors' role in promoting respect for diversity is advocated with a school-based social justice intervention strategy.