Tag Archives: Critical Education

Call for Submissions: Teaching for EcoJustice in an Era of Polycrisis

Posted on March 17, 2026 by | Leave a comment

Teaching for EcoJustice in an Era of Polycrisis

A Special Issue for Critical Education

Co-Editors:
Brandon Edwards-Schuth, Augusta University
Maria Helena Saari, University of Oulu

We invite submissions for a special issue devoted to the theme of “Teaching for Multispecies Justice in an Era of Polycrisis.” This special issue seeks scholarship that critically examines the role of education in addressing the interrelated systemic injustices and logics of harm directed toward both human and more-than-human lives. As we face an intensifying polycrisis—characterized by the entanglement of climate catastrophe, capitalism, mass extinction, social inequities, and ongoing legacies of colonialism (Homer-Dixon, & Rockström, 2022; Homer-Dixon et al., 2022)—questions of justice, pedagogy, and educational transformation become urgent imperatives. We welcome contributions that explore how educators, teacher-educators, and scholars are reimagining educational practice to resist dominant cultural assumptions undergirding the polycrisis and to center multispecies flourishing.

Drawing from the fields of EcoJustice Education (Lupinacci et al., 2018; Martusewicz et al., 2021), Multispecies Justice-oriented education (Rautio et al., 2021; Tammi et al., 2023; Saari, 2025), critical ecopedagogies (Edwards-Schuth & Lupinacci, 2021; Lupinacci et al., 2023), Indigenous land based decolonizing pedagogies (Basso, 1996; Tuck et al., 2014), Critical Animal Studies (Corman & Vandrovcová, 2014; Nocella II et al., 2014; Pedersen, 2025), Earth Democracy (Shiva, 2015) and prefigurative politics (Raekstad & Gradin, 2020), and related frameworks, this special issue asks:

  • How has education become a transformative practice that challenges anthropocentrism, human supremacy, and hierarchical ways of being?
  • What pedagogical approaches enable learners to recognize, resist, and reconstitute relationships with the more-than-human world in ways that support social and environmental justice?
  • What can we learn with/from the more-than-human and land to (re)imagine ways of being in the here and now, and who/what counts as teachers/educators?
  • What kinds of learning and praxis occurs beyond formal classrooms that are essential to doing

Social and Environmental Justice?

We are particularly interested in work emerging from educational contexts—including but not limited to teacher education, K-12 classrooms, higher education, and community-based learning—that demonstrates how critical, creative, and arts-based pedagogies can foster multispecies consciousness and scholar-activist engagement with the polycrisis. We seek interdisciplinary contributions from environmental education, educational philosophy, curriculum studies, cultural studies of education, geography, anthropology, Indigenous studies, science and technology studies, and related fields. We especially welcome submissions from diverse contexts and bioregions, activists, and LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC perspectives.

Topics could include:

  • Ecocritical projects in teacher education
  • Teacher learning and professional development around EcoJustice, Ecopedagogy, humane education, and Critical Animal Studies
  • Multispecies Justice-oriented education in formal/non-traditional educational settings
  • Arts-based research around more-than-human relations
  • Indigenous and Decolonizing perspectives in education
  • Community Activism, Prefigurative Politics, and Earth Democracy in practice
  • Short Film and/or book reviews of 800-1200 words (please contact the editors with your ideas and/or for a list of suggested texts)

Abstract Requirements

  • Include author information, title and an abstract of 250 words max
  • Include 3-5 keywords
  • Email ABSTRACT SUBMISSIONS to: bedwardsschuth@augusta.edu by August 15th, 2026

Manuscript Submission Requirements (after abstract acceptance)

  • Manuscripts should be between 3,000 and 6,000 words (including references), APA 7th
  • Include an abstract of 250 words max
  • Include 3-5 keywords
  • All submissions will undergo blind peer-review
  • Submissions due November 15, 2026 (via Critical Education submission portal)

Timeline

  • August 15, 2026 – Abstract proposals due (250 words maximum)
  • September 15, 2026 – Authors will be notified of abstract acceptance by
  • November 15, 2026 – Full manuscript submissions due
  • December 15, 2026 – First round of peer review feedback to authors
  • January 31, 2026 – Revised manuscripts due
  • 2027 – Publication of special issue

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Brandon Edwards-Schuth
Assistant Professor of Educational Research
Augusta University
Email: bedwardsschuth@augusta.edu

Dr. Maria Helena Saari
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
University of Oulu
Finland
Email: maria.saari@oulu.fi

For inquiries about the special issue, please contact: bedwardsschuth@augusta.edu

 

References

Basso, K. H. (1996). Wisdom sits in places: Landscape and language among the Western Apache. University of New Mexico Press.

Corman, L., & Vandrovcová, T. (2014). Radical humility: Toward a more holistic critical animal studies pedagogy. Counterpoints, 448, 135–157.

Edwards-Schuth, B. & Lupinacci, J. (2021) Pedagogies of Diverse Bioregions: An Ecotistical Move from Ego to Eco. Europe Now, 45. https://www.europenowjournal.org/issue-45-november-2021/

Homer-Dixon, T., Renn, O., Rockström, J., Donges, J., & Janzwood, S. (2022). A call for an international research program on the risk of a global polycrisis (Version 2.0). Cascade Institute. https://cascadeinstitute.org/technical-paper/a-call-for-an-international-research-program-on-the-risk-of-a-global-polycrisi

Homer-Dixon, T., & Rockström, J. (2022, November 13). What happens when a cascade of crises occur? The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/13/opinion/coronavirus-ukraine-climate-inflation.html

Lupinacci, J., Edwards-Schuth, B., Happel-Parkins, A., & Turner, R. (2023) Ecocritical pedagogies and curriculum. In P. Davies, E. Clinton, and G. Carolyn (Eds.) International encyclopedia of education, 4th edition, Volume 2 (pp. 202-209). Elsevier. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-818630- 5.08045-3. ISBN: 9780128186305

Lupinacci, J., Happel-Parkins, A., & Turner, R. (2018). Ecocritical scholarship toward social justice and sustainability in teacher education. Issues in Teacher Education, 27(2), 3-16.

Martusewicz, R. A., Edmundson, J., & Lupinacci, J. (2021). EcoJustice education: Toward diverse, democratic, and sustainable communities (3rd ed.). Routledge.

Nocella II, A. J., Sorenson, J., Socha, K., & Matsuoka, A. (2014). Defining critical animal studies: An intersectional social justice approach for liberation. Peter Lang Verlag. https://doi.org/10.3726/978-1-4539-1230-0

Pedersen, H. (2025). Post-anthropocentric pedagogies: purposes, practices, and insights for higher education. Teaching in Higher Education, 30(2), 344–358. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2023.2222087

Raekstad, P., & Gradin, S. (2020). Prefigurative politics: Building tomorrow today. Polity Press.

Rautio, P., Tammi, T., & Hohti, R. (2021). Children after the animal turn. In N. J. Yelland, L. Peters, & N. Fairchild (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of global childhoods (pp. 341–352). SAGE Publications Ltd. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781529757194

Saari, M.H. (2025) A Multispecies Justice Approach to Climate Change Education. in L. Griffin, L. Ropartz, S. Bannister & A. Merrick (Eds.) Climate Change Education Research Collection. International Baccalaureate Organization. Commissioned Report.

Shiva, Vandana. (2015). Earth democracy: Justice, sustainability, and peace. North Atlantic Books.

Tammi, T., Hohti, R., Rautio, P. (2023). From child–animal relations to multispecies assemblages and other-than-human childhoods. Barn, 41(2–3), 140–156. https://doi.org/10.23865/barn.v41.5475

Tuck, E., McKenzie, M., & McCoy, K. (2014). Land education: Indigenous, post-colonial, and decolonizing perspectives on place and environmental education research. Environmental Education Research, 20(1), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2013.877708

Leave a comment

Tagged , , , ,

New issue of Critical Education (vol. 17 no. 1, 2026)

Posted on February 18, 2026 by | 1 comment
This issue of Critical Education includes the first of a two-part special section on Palestinian Liberation in Education: Solidarities and Activism for a Free Palestine, edited by H. Shatara.

In addition, there are articles that analyze LGBTQIA+ censorship debates in a public library; imagine critical pedagogies and ecological humanities from Global South perspectives; examine critical pedagogy in Liberian higher education; explore transformations of beliefs and identities of undergraduate students; present an abolitionist framework for study of police in schools; and an investigation of U.S. public loan forgiveness program.
—————————–
Articles
  • Discursive Placemaking Practices and White Christian Nationalism: Analyzing LGBTQIA+ Censorship Debates in a Southern, Small Town Library — Ryan Schey, Rebekah J. Adams
  • Imagining Critical Pedagogies and Ecological Humanities in the Pluriverse: Nomadic, Decolonial and Life-centered Environmental Education as a South-complex Environmental-desiring Machine — Jorge Garcia-Arias, Helen Moura Pessoa Brandão, Natalia Sánchez Gómez
  • Envisioning Critical Pedagogy in Liberian Higher Education: A Conceptual Framework for Civic and Democratic Engagement — Gabriel M. Kennedy
  • “A Game We All Play”: Identity, Epistemology, and Transformation in Undergraduate Psychology Students — James Y. Yuan, Romin W. Tafarodi

 

  • Research as Copaganda?: An Abolitionist Framework for the Study of Police in Schools — Hannah Baggett, Carey Andrzejewski, LaKendrick Richardson, Brucie Porter
  • The Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program and the Purpose of Higher Education — Saralyn McKinnon-Crowley, Sarah Harris
———————-
Palestinian Liberation in Education: Solidarities and Activism for a Free Palestine
  • Palestinian Liberation in Education: Solidarities and Activism for a Free Palestine — H. Shatara
  • Flowers for Palestine: From Holy City to Holy City — Tiffany O. Harris
  • Do Palestinian Lives Matter in Teacher Education? Centering an Anti-Zionist Commitment in (Early Childhood) Teacher Education — Lilly Padía
  • Educating for Unknowable Futures: The United Nation Relief and Works Agency-led Education for Palestinian Refugees in Jordan — Julie Alstadnes Malme
  • Confronting my Palestinianess in Writing Pedagogies: A Critical View from Lebanon — Amany Al-Sayyed
https://ices.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled/issue/view/182712

1 Comment

Posted in Publishing

Tagged , , , ,

Special Issue Call for Papers — THE GREAT BEYOND: SURPASSING HISTORICAL DAMAGE AND PIVOTING TOWARDS PROTECTING BLACK BOYS

Posted on December 2, 2025 by | Leave a comment

Special Issue Call for Papers — THE GREAT BEYOND: SURPASSING HISTORICAL DAMAGE AND PIVOTING TOWARDS PROTECTING BLACK BOYS

Guest Editors:

John A. Williams III – Texas A&M University
Daniel Thomas III – Texas A&M University
Marcus W. Johnson – Texas A&M University

Despite the resilience and brilliance of Black boys, they continue to face historical and systemic challenges rooted in institutional racism, socioeconomic inequity, and educational disparities (Andrews, 2023; Bryan, 2021; James, 2012; Noguera, 2009). Literature suggests that Black boys are not a monolith and their experiences vary along the lines of various social constructs within the U.S. (e.g., socioeconomics, regional origins, urbanicity, spirituality, etc.) (Dumas & Nelson, 2016; Walker et al., 2022). When discussing the ramifications that continue to linger over Black boys in various environments, there is still an opportunity to redress and critique current and historical elements that bred those conditions that damage Black boys. To look and proceed forward with applicable solutions, Black boys require that researchers, community activists, and policymakers stop glamorizing practices, policies, approaches, and programs that do not unequivocally protect Black boys. The multidimensionality that Black boys possess should be protected, not exploited, championed, not oppressed (Ladson-Billings, 2011; Warren et al., 2022; Wint et al., 2022). In securing a safer environment for Black boys, specifically in the U.S., research is needed that expands the boundaries into territories that question age-old practices and models that, when investigated, have no positive bearing on Black boys – yet they are still alive and well.

This special issue seeks to illuminate pathways to critique long-standing and often ignored structures and practices (e.g., corporal punishment, tracking, high-stakes testing) that still foster damaging outcomes for Black boys, while centering research and policy approaches that actively protect, promote, and empower them for excellence.

The issue aims to move beyond documenting harm towards actionable solutions that restore, reinforce, and celebrate Black boys’ full humanity. The special issue seeks manuscripts that are empirical (quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods) or conceptual and contain contextually rich historical examinations of Black boys in education and society. We seek scholars with a U.S. and international perspective on Black boys and hope to have scholarship from a myriad of individuals (graduate students, junior and senior scholars).

All abstracts should be emailed to John A. Williams III (jwilliams3@tamu.edu) with the subject line “Critical Education Special Issue: Black Boys.” Abstracts due: February 1, 2016.

 Each manuscript will go through a double blind peer review, and all authors invited to submit a manuscript will be required to serve as peer reviewers.

 Should you have any questions, please reach out to John A. Williams III, jwilliams3@tamu.edu.

 References

Andrews, D. C. (2023). Black boys in middle school: Toward first-class citizenship in a first-class society. In Advancing Black Male Student Success from Preschool Through Ph.D. (pp. 45-60). Routledge.

Bryan, N. (2021). Remembering Tamir Rice and other Black boy victims: Imagining Black playcrit literacies inside and outside urban literacy education. Urban Education, 56(5), 744-7710.

Dumas, M. J., & Nelson, J. D. (2016). (Re) Imagining Black boyhood: Toward a critical framework for educational research. Harvard Educational Review, 86(1), 27-47.

James, C. E. (2012). Students “at risk” stereotypes and the schooling of Black boys. Urban Education, 47(2), 464-494.

Ladson Billings, G. (2011). Boyz to men? Teaching to restore Black boys’ childhood. Race ethnicity and education, 14(1), 7-15.

Noguera, P. A. (2009). The trouble with black boys:… And other reflections on race, equity, and the future of public education. John Wiley & Sons.

Walker, L., Goings, R. B., & Henderson, D. X. (2022). Unpacking race-related trauma for Black boys: Implications for school administrators and school resource officers. Journal of Trauma Studies in Education, 1(3), 74-89.

Warren, C. A., Andrews, D. J. C., & Flennaugh, T. K. (2022). Connection, antiblackness, and positive relationships that (re) humanize Black boys’ experience of school. Teachers College Record, 124(1),111-142.

Wint, K. M., Opara, I., Gordon, R., & Brooms, D. R. (2022). Countering educational disparities among Black boys and Black adolescent boys from pre-k to high school: A life course-intersectional perspective. The Urban Review, 54(2), 183-206.

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , ,

New issue of Critical Education, Vol. 16 No. 1 (2025)

Posted on November 18, 2025 by | Leave a comment

Vol. 16 No. 4 (2025)

Articles

Empowering Changemakers:
Activist Pedagogy in a Democratic School 
Crystena Parker-Shandal

The Future of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) in Education 
Keep, Reform, or Dismantle? 
Ardavan Eizadirad, Gerald Walton

Learning Decision-Making and Democratic Participation in Early Primary Education 
A Case Study in Catalonia 
Clara Gallart , Jordi Castellví

Educational Outcomes of Indigenous Students Living in Remote Reserve Communities 
Complex and Multifaceted Indigenous Poverty
Kristen Anderson, Saiqa Azam

Fail Fast: The Discourse of Quality Research Perpetuated by Leadership at The Institute of Education Sciences
Jacob Bennett, Vonna Hemmler

Investigating Education, Class Antagonisms and Solidarity: Toward Critical Humanist Democratic Societies

Critical Humanism and Problems of Change 
Arturo Rodriguez, Kevin R. Magill

The Emergence of Narrative and the Discovery of Humanism
Curriculum and Research Lessons from the Italian Renaissance
Saville Kushner

“More beautiful and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said”: 9/11, BLM, and the creation of an American identity
Joanna Batt, Michael L. Joseph, Anthony L. Brown

Meet-and-Defer
The Rhetorical Unmaking of Graduate Academic Labor at the University of Maryland 
Samuel DiBella

Book & Media Reviews

A Sociopolitical Agenda for TESOL Teacher Education, by Peter I. De Costa and Ozgehan Uştuk (Eds.), Bloomsbury Academic, 2023, 208 pp., $ 108, (ebook), ISBN 9781350262850
Hossein Davari, Saeed Nourzadeh

Leave a comment

Posted in Publishing

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

New issue of Critical Education (vol 16 no 2, Feb. 1 2025)

Posted on January 31, 2025 by | Leave a comment
New issue of Critical Education published today. Critical Education, 16(1), includes a special section on “Neoliberal Capitalism and Public Education” edited by Lana Parker (U of WIndsor).
 

Contesting Concepts, Imagining New Possibilities: David Graeber, Democracy, and Social Studies Curriculum
Peter M Nelson

Applying Critical Race Theory to Enhance the Racial Inclusivity of Teachers in Canada: A Review of the Literature and Facilitative Programming
Lucas Skelton

Critical Making Workshops: Sparking Meta-Discussions for Critical Thinking in Vocational Education
Regina Sipos, Alexander Kutschera, Janina Klose

Neoliberal Capitalism and Public Education
(Lana Parker, Section Editor)

A Window into Public Education: Documenting Neoliberal Capitalism’s Harms, Advocating for Alternatives
Lana Parker

Critical Geography and Teaching Against Neoliberal Racial Capitalism in New York City Elementary Schools
Debbie Sonu, Karen Zaino, Robert J. Helfenbein

The Allure of Professionalism: Teacher Candidate Subjectivity and Resistance in Neoliberal Times
Adam Kaszuba

University Bureaucracies as the Death of Play: The 1968 Strax Affair and the Arts of Discombobulation
Harrison Dressler, Noah Pleshet; Daniel Tubb

“I Need This Person’s Support to Have a Career”: The Material and Emotional Impacts of Neoliberalism on Trans Collegians’ Classroom Experiences at a Public University
Justin Gutzwa, Robert Marx

Leave a comment

Tagged ,

New issue of Critical Education (vol. 15 no. 4, 2024)

Posted on November 2, 2024 by | Leave a comment
‘

New issue of Critical Education just published. Critical Education15(4): https://ices.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled/index

Table of Contents
Designing Curriculum for Critical Consciousness: A White Teacher’s Process
Allarie Coleman

Hope Kitts

Playing Around: Basketball Personhoods as Sites of Dialogue, Education Research, and Epistemic Disobedience
Juan F. Carrillo, Dan Heiman, Noah De Lissovoy

Maiyoua Vang

Lilia Monzo, Elena Marquez

Molly Wiant Cummins

Using Virtual Learning Labs to (Re)Mediate Exclusionary Discipline Practices for Young Children of Color with Disabilities
Saili Kulkarni, Sunyoung Kim, Nicola Holdman

Leave a comment

Posted in Publishing

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Call for Submissions: Heed the Call of the Dreamers! Imagination and the Frontiers of Critical Scholarship

Posted on October 28, 2024 by | Leave a comment

Heed the Call of the Dreamers! Imagination and the Frontiers of Critical Scholarship

Guest Editor
Abraham P. DeLeon
University of Texas at San Antonio

What happens when critical scholarship takes seriously, the potentials imbued within a collective social imagination? What occurs when radical ways of knowing and doing activate the imagination that points to a different kind of past, present, and future? These kinds of questions are what I hope will inspire the papers I am seeking for this special issue in Critical Education. The empiricism that dominates much of academic scholarship, especially within the social sciences and education in particular, casts aside the transformative potentials of the imagination. Concerned too much with measurement, validity, replicability, and fundable projects that reify a particular kind of reality, mainstream scholarship does not engage with an imaginary that animates humanity’s potentials that is radical, creative, imaginative, and weird. The imagination runs through our social body like connective tissue, capillaries of radical potentiality. Our history is imbued with the imaginary, crossing not only fictional works that appear in film or literature for just two examples, but also that have animated a utopian impulse of a radical kind of difference: a different future, a different world, a different way of being with each other.

The imagination cannot be reduced to simply cognition or a neuro-functionality that activates a purely Western, scientific understanding. A radical social imagination can begin from a place of nowhere (Ricoeur, 2024), a non-space that allows a new kind of freedom of form to materialize that exists beyond scientific discourses that try to ensure its capture. Like Sartre’s (1948) work that the imagination has the potentials for negation, freedom, and engagement with nowhere, this special issue wants to explore the limits and potentials for the imagination for a radical and different kind of social imaginary. This space of nowhere becomes a productive frontier for larger questions about the future, the potentials for social action, and the possibilities for new epistemological, ontological, and pedagogical encounters. This special issue is a call for us to begin a new kind of radical project that attempts to break free from the current shackles of this intellectual culture, what Foucault (1998) might have called “inventing a new body”, one that is “volatile” and “diffused” (p. 226-227). We heed the call of the dreamers and allow the imagination to burst furth in new scholarly directions.

Here are some possible provocations to guide a submission, but are just meant to act as creative sparks.

I welcome any submission with a creative and imaginative vision for the past, present, and future.

 What have been past historical examples by a variety of political, creative, or other affinity groups animated by the imagination?

  • What would it mean to embody a rhetoric of the future?
  • How can the avant-garde animate scholarship in new imaginative directions?
  • Do historical or cultural myths possess a generative moment that can inform social theory in fundamentally new ways?
  • What happens when social theory engages with the imagination? What kind of transformations are possible?
  • How can the imagination inform political organizing in fundamentally new ways?
  • What happens with social theory when it embodies the fictional worlds of a social imagination?
  • What become the limits of inquiry when the imagination is activated?
  • What would it mean to decolonize the future? How do indigenous ways of knowing inform our futures?
  • What kind of alternative futures emerge when we utilize an imaginative lens?
  • What are some examples of indigenous or non-Western forms of imagination that are instructive or visionary?
  • What do specific genres of fiction (horror, science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, romance) offer the critical scholarly project?
  • How can fiction and creative writing inform social and critical theories?

The editor is available for any inquiries or questions on ideas about potential manuscripts and encourages conversations around potential ideas. Please email him at abraham.deleon@utsa.edu.

Manuscripts will be due on May 1st, 2025. Please see the guidelines for submissions at Critical Education: https://ices.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled/about/submissions#authorGuidelines

References

Foucault, M. (1998). Aesthetics, method, and epistemology: Essential works of Foucault, 1954-1984, Vol. 2. (R. Hurley and Others, ). The New Press.

Ricœur, P., Taylor, G. H., Sweeney, R. D., Amalric, J.-L., & Crosby, P. F. (2024). Lectures on imagination. The University of Chicago Press.

Sartre, J.-P. (1948). The psychology of imagination. (B. Frechtman, Trans.). Philosophical Library.

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , ,

Critical Education: Call for manuscript reviewers

Posted on September 11, 2024 by | Leave a comment

Critical Education is a looking to expand its pool of manuscript reviewers.

If you are interested in contributing to the broad, multi-disciplinary field of critical education by participating in the peer review process, we encourage you to register with Critical Education as a reviewer.

We define critical education broadly as a field or approach that works theoretically and practically toward social change and addresses social injustices that result from various forms of oppression in globalized capitalist societies and under neoliberal governance.

We are looking for reviewers with expertise from across the broad range of education scholarship including but not limited to various: forms of research (e.g., empirical, theoretical, philosophical), contexts (e.g., early childhood, primary and secondary education, higher education, informal and popular education), conceptual orientations (e.g., critical pedagogy, anarchism, Marxism, critical postmodernism) and subfields (e.g., anti-racism, alternative education, critical and media literacy, disability studies, gender and sexuality, de/colonial and Indigenous education, leadership and policy studies, climate, outdoor, and place-based education, teacher education, solidarity and social movements, disciplinary subjects, etc.).

Critical Education uses a double-blind review process and follows the guidelines and practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics.

How do I sign up as a reviewer for Critical Education?

If you are already a registered user of the journal, sign in and from the drop-down menu below your username (top-right corner) choose View Profile > Role > check Reviewer box and list the key words that describe your areas of expertise. Before closing the profile window be sure to click the Save button on the bottom left of the page.

If you are not yet registered with Critical Education, use the Register link at the top of the journal home page and create an account. When creating your profile be sure to check the Reviewer role box and list the key words that describe your areas of expertise. Don’t forget to click the Save button.

Founded in 2010, Critical Education is an international, diamond open-access (no fees to read or publish), peer-reviewed journal, which publishes articles that critically examine contemporary education contexts and practices. Critical Education is published by the Institute for Critical Education Studies and hosted by The University of British Columbia Library. Critical Education is indexed in a number of scholarly databases including Scopus, EBSCO, DOAJ, and ERIC and is a member of the Free Journal Network. For more about Critical Education see: https://ices.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled/about

Leave a comment

Posted in Publishing

Tagged , ,

CFM Deadlined Extended: Contemporary Educator Movements: Transforming Unions, Schools, and Society in North America

Posted on January 30, 2020 by | Leave a comment

DEADLINE EXTENDED:

Critical Education

Call for Manuscripts: Contemporary Educator Movements: Transforming Unions, Schools, and Society in North America

Special Series Editors:
Lauren Ware Stark, University of Virginia
Rhiannon Maton, State University of New York College at Cortland
Erin Dyke, Oklahoma State University

Call for Manuscripts:

Throughout the past two years, educators have led the most significant U.S. labor uprisings in over a quarter century, organizing alongside parents and community members for such common good demands as affordable health care, equitable school funding, and green space on school campuses (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2019a; Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2019b). These uprisings can be seen as evidence of the growth of a new form of unionism, alternately called social justice or social movement unionism (Fletcher & Gapasin, 2008; Peterson, 1999; Rottmann, 2013; Weiner, 2012). They can also be understood as evidence of contemporary educator movements: collective struggles that have developed throughout the past decade with the goal of transforming educators’ unions, schools, and broader society (Stark, 2019; Stern, Brown, & Hussain, 2016).

These struggles share much in common with other contemporary “movements of movements” (Sen, 2017) in that they develop in networks, utilize new technologies alongside traditional organizing tools, integrate diverse groups and demands, and often organize through horizontal, democratic processes (Juris, 2008; Wolfson, Treré, Gerbaudo, & Funke, 2017). They have been led by rank-and-file educators, who in many cases have organized in solidarity with parents and community members. While some recent scholarship on contemporary educator movements has conceptualized these movements as a unified class struggle (Blanc, 2019), other scholarship has emphasized heterogeneity, intersectionality, knowledge production, learning, and tensions within these movements (Maton, 2018; Stark, 2019).

This Critical Education special series builds on the latter tradition to offer “movement-relevant” scholarship written from within contemporary educator movements (Bevington & Dixon, 2005). Our aim for the series is to offer resources for contemporary educator movement organizers and scholars to:

  • understand the links between contemporary educator labor organizing and earlier struggles,
  • study tensions within this organizing,
  • explore how educator unionists are learning from each other’s work,
  • highlight urban and statewide education labor struggles in the U.S., as well as major struggles in Canada and Mexico, and
  • connect local education labor struggles to broader power structures.

Types of Submissions:

Specifically, we seek to include interviews with organizers, movement art, and empirical studies that engage critical and engaged qualitative methodologies (for example, autoethnographic, ethnographic, oral history, and/or participatory methodologies). We especially encourage submissions with and/or from rank-and-file education organizers.

  • Empirical research (4,000-8,000 words)
  • Interviews or dialogues with organizers (2,000-4,000 words)
  • Creative writing, including poems or short prose essays (<2,000 words; maximum three poems or one essay)
  • Art, including images of banner art and photographs (minimum 300dpi for images in .jpeg file format)

Examples of Possible Topics:

  • The significance of caucuses and/or labor-community organizing within a specific local context,
  • Challenges and possibilities for radical democratic or horizontal decision-making in contemporary educator movements,
  • Possibilities and challenges in transforming teacher unions to more radical entities,
  • Political education with and for rank-and-file educators,
  • Rank-and-file educator organizing to engage issues of race, indigeneity, language, and culture in education,
  • Issues of gender and/or sexuality in contemporary educator movements,
  • In-depth studies of rank-and-file educator-led campaigns and organizing experiences,
  • Tensions and possibilities between contemporary educator movements and specific North American social movements (i.e., climate justice movements, movements for decolonization, queer and trans liberation movements, prison abolition movements),
  • Critical whiteness studies and education labor organizing/movements,
  • Among others.

Timeline:

  • April 1, 2020 – Manuscript submissions due. (Note: Manuscripts will undergo a double blind peer review process. Invitation to submit a manuscript does not ensure publication.)
  • August 1, 2020 – Authors receive reviewer feedback and notification of publication decision (accept, accept with revisions, or reject for this particular series.)
  • September 1, 2020 – Manuscript revisions due.

Submission Instructions:

All submissions must follow the guidelines described here. Submissions should be maximum 8,000 words and use APA format (6th edition). All work must be submitted via the Critical Education submission platform.

Use this link to submit papers: http://ices.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions)

References:

Bevington, D., & Dixon, C. (2005). Movement-relevant theory. Social Movement Studies, 4(3), 185-208.Bureau of Labor Statistics (2019a, February 15). Major Work Stoppages (Annual) News Release. Retrieved from https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/wkstp_02082019.htm

Blanc, E. (2019b). Red State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics. London & New York: Verso Books.

Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2019b, March 07). Eight major work stoppages in educational services in 2018. Retrieved from https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2019/eight-major-work-stoppages-in-educational-services-in-2018.htm

Fletcher, B., & Gapasin, F. (2008). Solidarity divided: The crisis in organized labor and a new path toward social justice. Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Juris, J. (2008). Networking Futures: The Movements Against Corporate Globalisation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Maton, R. (2018.) From Neoliberalism to Structural Racism: Problem Framing in a Teacher Activist Organization. Curriculum Inquiry, 48 (3): 1–23.

Peterson, B. (1999). Survival and justice: Rethinking teacher union strategy. In B. Peterson & M. Charney (Eds.) Transforming teacher unions: Fighting for better schools and social justice (pp. 11-19). Milwaukie, WI: Rethinking Schools.

Rottmann, C. (2013, Fall). Social justice teacher activism. Our Schools / Our Selves, 23 (1), 73-81.

Sen, J. (2017). The movements of movements: Part 1. Oakland, CA: PM Press; New Delhi: Open Word.

Stark, L. (2019). “We’re trying to create a different world”: Educator organizing in social justice caucuses (Doctoral dissertation).

Stern, M., Brown, A. E. & Hussain, K. (2016). Educate. Agitate. Organize: New and Not-So-New Teacher Movements. Workplace, 26, 1-4.

Weiner, L. (2012). The future of our schools: Teachers unions and social justice. Chicago, Illinois: Haymarket Books.

Wolfson, T., Treré, E., Gerbaudo, P., & Funke, P. N. (2017). From Global Justice to Occupy and Podemos: Mapping Three Stages of Contemporary Activism. TripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique, 15(2), 390 – 542.

Leave a comment

Posted in Strikes & Labor

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The New Teachers’ Roundtable: A Case Study of Collective Resistance

Posted on March 3, 2017 by | Leave a comment

New issue of Critical Education launched:

Critical Education
Volume 8, Number 4
March 1, 2017

The New Teachers’ Roundtable: A Case Study of Collective Resistance
Beth Leah Sondel

Abstract
The New Teachers’ Roundtable (NTRT) is a democratically run collective of new teachers who have become critical of neoliberal reform since relocating to New Orleans, with organizations including Teach For America, as a part of the post-Katrina overhaul of public schools. Through interviews and observations, this study examines the ways in which collective members support each other in attempts to navigate experiences they perceive as dehumanizing to themselves, their students, and their students’ communities. By developing relationships amongst themselves and with other stakeholders affected by and resisting privatization, they are able to challenge their own privilege and begin shifting their perspective and pedagogy. This study aims to contribute to our understanding of how teachers who have been affiliated with market-based movements can be galvanized to work in service of movements that are democratic, anti-racist, and accountable to communities.

Keywords
Neoliberalism; Teacher Resistance; Critical Pedagogy; Social Movements

Leave a comment

Tagged , , , , ,