Author Archives: E Wayne Ross

Call for Submissions: Teachers’ Work in Contentious Political Times — Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor

Deadline for Full-length Submissions: September 30, 2024

Submission Types: Empirical and theoretical papers; interviews; practitioner field reports, or experiential narratives

Review Process: All submissions will be double-blind peer reviewed.

Guest Editors: Denisha Jones (Defending the Early Years), Brianne Kramer (Southern Utah University), Dana Morrison (West Chester University), Erin Dyke (Oklahoma State University), and Lauren Ware Stark (Université de Sherbrooke)

Philosophical Overview/Perspective

While educators have found themselves in a politically contentious profession since the advent of compulsory schooling (Goldstein, 2015), since 2020, they have been caught in a constant onslaught of anti-teacher and anti-education rhetoric, policy, and governance. Guided by the blueprint developed from of decades neoliberal reforms which sought to erode the public good via privatization, standardization, and austerity, Covid-era policy responses imagined new ways to silence, demonize, and discredit educators, attempting to keep them out of critical decision-making as they attended to students’ changing needs during shifting realities (Grooms & Childs, 2021; Hodges et al., 2020). During this time, educators were made to answer for the “crime” of wanting to adhere to scientifically backed safety protocols that would protect the most vulnerable by stemming the spread of the deadly virus. This oftentimes meant keeping school buildings closed until districts could meaningfully uphold CDC protocols (Hoffman et al, 2021; Zhang et al., 2022).

In many locations throughout the U.S., forced reopenings, expiring financial supports, and politicization of Covid-safety measures were the backdrop for conservative-backed parents’ groups taking over school board meetings, picketing outside schools, and harassing school employees at all levels, demanding a return to in-person learning or the ceasing of safety protocols such as mask-wearing, vaccine mandates, and social distancing (Borter et al., 2022; Cunningham, 2023; Nossel, 2022; Williams, 2022). Recognizing the success of these campaigns in several states and against the backdrop of a nation-wide resurgence in teachers’ labor militancy just prior to the pandemic, rightist political networks and organizations like Moms For Liberty (M4L) and Parents Defending Education (PDE) furthered their Koch- and Walton Family-funded agenda to undermine public education. They manufactured a false narrative that teachers were teaching critical race theory (CRT), making spurious claims about socio-emotional learning, and working to ban books that primarily focused on BIPOC and LGBTQ+ characters and issues (Anderson-Nathe, 2020; Asbury & Kim, 2020; Hartney & Finger, 2020; Morgan, 2022). Since 2020, there has been legislation of this kind put forth in nearly every state in the U.S., with many passing laws rooted in these inaccurate and careless claims that censor and punish educators for their work (Collie, 2021; Sachs, 2022). In many places, legislators have also targeted diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, programs, and offices in higher education institutions for dissolution (Cuevas, 2022). Students, staff, and faculty in K12 and higher education have experienced repression for speaking out against censorship and genocide (Hernandez et al., 2024). Yes, the teaching profession was in jeopardy prior to 2020, but now many scholars fear the teaching shortage will continue to worsen.

In the face of reactionary movements and ongoing structural inequalities in education, educators have contributed to a range of struggles to defend public education and counter systems of oppression in schools. These include movements for safety in the Covid-19 pandemic (Maton, 2022; Stark et al., 2024), movements defending the freedom to learn and teach (Giroux, 2024), movements affirming BIPOC (Au, 2021; Curchin et al., 2024; Jones & Hagopian, 2020; Morrison & Porter-Webb, 2019; Ramos & Jani, 2024) and LGBTQIA+ (Shelton et al., 2019) students, and movements for social justice and solidarity unionisms (Charney, Hagopian, & Peterson, 2021; Dyke & Muckian Bates, 2023; Kramer, 2024; Stark, 2023). These movements are both as important and as contested as ever, as educators and the broader public face the threats of rising fascism and, with it, attacks on marginalized communities and those who teach or organize for justice.

Leadership of the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) Teachers’ Work/Teacher Unions SIG is seeking submissions for a special issue of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor. The special issue theme “Teachers’ Work in Contentious Political Times” seeks manuscripts focusing on teachers’ work in P-16 education, teacher unions, or community organizing. In this special issue, we seek empirical and theoretical papers, interviews (with current or retired practitioners, teachers who have left the profession, those in teachers unions, and those in grassroots organizations dedicated to equitable public education) that take a critical approach to the current issues educators are facing.

Critical research seeks to disrupt and expose the status quo and elevate the voices of marginalized and oppressed people through the research process. We are interested in manuscripts that analyze and conceptualize teachers’ work in these current heightened political times. Below are a few suggested topics to include in this volume, but it is by no means exhaustive.

Educator (birth to 25) response to anti-CRT and LGBTQ+ legislation
Educator organizing through unions and caucuses to resist attacks
Grassroots community organizing with educators, parents, students, and activists
Critical policy and discourse analysis
Anti-racist, anti-oppressive, and decolonial approaches to teaching and learning enacted as resistance
Activist research projects
Topics that historicize and contextualize contemporary policy movements and/or organized resistance
Educator narratives of political and curricular censorship and/or resistance to censorship
Critical policy network analyses that makes relations of power shaping educational reform efforts visible and tangible
Youth participatory action research and/or narratives of student-led organizing
Empirical studies or narratives that help us to understand how responses to attacks on public education are impacted by tensions or enactments of solidarity among traditionally certified teachers, alternative or emergency certified teachers, education support professionals (i.e., classroom aides, bus drivers), parents/caregivers, justice-oriented community-based groups, and/or students

Tentative Publication Schedule:

Manuscripts due: September 30, 2024

First-Round Editor Decisions: October 5, 2024

Blinded manuscripts sent to reviewers: October 6, 2024

Manuscript Reviews due: December 5, 2024

Editor decisions sent to authors: January 5, 2025

Manuscript revisions due to editors: February 20, 2025

Final Revisions due to editors: March 10, 2025

Special Issue Targeted Release: April 2025

For details on manuscript submission, please see Workplace Information About Submissions

Additional questions can be directed to Brianne Kramer (briannekramer@suu.edu).

References

Anderson-Nathe, B. (2020). Prop It Up or Let It Fall? K-12 Schooling in and after COVID-19. Child & Youth Services, 41(3), 214–218.

Asbury, K. & Kim, L.E.D. (2020). “‘Lazy, lazy teachers”: Teachers’ perceptions of how their profession is valued by society, policymakers, and the media during COVID-19’, PsyArXiv, 20 July, available at: https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/65k8q.

Borter, G., Ax, J., & J. Tanfani (2022, February 15). School boards get death threats over race, gender, mask policies. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-education-threats/

Charney, M., Hagopian, J., & Peterson, B. (Eds.). (2021). Teacher unions and social justice: Organizing for the schools and communities our students deserve. Rethinking Schools.

Collie, R.J. (2021). ‘COVID-19 and teachers’ somatic burden, stress, and emotional exhaustion: Examining the role of principal leadership and workplace buoyancy’, AERA Open, 7(1), 1–15.

Cuevas, J. (2022). The Authoritarian Threat to Public Education: Attacks on Diversity, Equity, nd Inclusion Undermine Teaching and Learning. Journal of Language and Literacy Education, 18(2), pp. 1-6. DOI:

Cunningham, M.T. (February 2023). Merchants of deception: Parent props and their funders. Network for Public Education. https://networkforpubliceducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Merchants-of-Deception.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2wWJKZSEk1T8to3qoNXxYJe4Ug00Q_nnowZjLc8HKzr4i-LMrPOPp3DzI

Curchin, E., Dahill-Brown, S., & Lavery, L. (2024). Reckoning With the “Other” Pandemic: How Teachers’ Unions Responded to Calls for Racial Justice Amidst COVID-19. Educational Researcher, 0013189X241235634.

Dyke, E., & Muckian-Bates, B. (2023). Rank-and-File Rebels: Theories of Power and Change in the 2018 Education Strikes. WAC Clearinghouse.

Giroux, H. A. (2024). Educators as public intellectuals and the challenge of fascism. Policy Futures in Education, 14782103241226844.

Grooms, A. A., & Childs, J. (2021). “We Need to Do Better by Kids”: Changing Routines in U.S. Schools in Response to COVID-19 School Closures. Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk, 26(2), 135–156.

Hartney, M.T. & Finger, L.K. (2020). “Politics, Markets, and Pandemics: Public Education’s Response to COVID-19”, working paper. Annenberg Institute, Brown University, Providence.

Hernandez, A. O., Petrow-Cohen, C., & Kaleem, J. (2024 April 18). USC students protest the ‘silencing’ of valedictorian with cancellation of speech. The Los Angeles Times, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-04-18/usc-protest-valedictorian-cancelation

Hodges, C., Moore, S., Lockee, B., Trust, T. & Bond, A. (2020, March 27). ‘The difference between emergency remote teaching and online learning.’ EDUCAUSE Review [online]. Available at: https://er.educause.edu/articles/2020/3/the-difference-between-emergency-remote-teaching-and-online-learning (Accessed 11 July 2021)

Kramer, B. (2024). Activists, Advocates, and Agitators: 21st Century Justice-Oriented Organizing. Myers Education Press.

Jones, D. & Hagopian, J. (2020). Black lives matter at school: An uprising for educational justice. Haymarket Books.

Maton, R. (2022). The Chicago Teachers Union as Counterhegemony: Organized Resistance During COVID-19. In Progressive Neoliberalism in Education (pp. 169-183). Routledge.

Morgan, H. (2022). Resisting the movement to ban critical race theory from schools. Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas, 95(1), 35–41.

Morrison, D., & Porter-Webb, E. (2019). Building power through racial justice: Organizing the# BlackLivesMatterAtSchool Week of Action in K-12 and beyond. Berkeley Review of Education, 9(1).

Nossel, S. (2022, September 20). Parents should have a voice in their kids’ education but we have gone too far. Time. https://time.com/6215119/parents-rights-education-gone-too-far/

Sachs, J. (2024, Jan 24). Steep rise in gag orders, many sloppily drafted. Pen America Freedom to Write https://pen.org/steep-rise-gag-orders-many-sloppily-drafted/

Shelton, S. A., Barnes, M. E., & Flint, M. A. (2019). “You stick up for all kids”: (De) Politicizing the enactment of LGBTQ+ teacher ally work. Teaching and Teacher Education, 82, 14-23.

Stark, L. W. (2023). Learning and knowledge-making in contemporary educator movements. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 21(5), 754-769.

Stark, L. W., Tarlau, R., & Maton, R. M. (2024). ‘For Once We’re Asking for MORE Testing’: organisational infrastructure in the safe schools movement during COVID-19. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 1-16.

Williams, P. (2022, October 31). The right-wing mothers fueling the school board wars. The New Yorker.

Zhang, Y., Mayorga, M.E., Ivy, J., Lich, K.H., & Swann, J.L. (2022). Modeling the impact of nonpharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19 transmission in K-12 schools. MDM Policy & Practice, 7(2), 1–15. DOI: 10.1177/23814683221140866

UBC Faculty Response to scholasticide in Palestine

Message from Faculty for Palestine at UBC:

Israel has critically damaged or destroyed every one of Gaza’s 11 universities, over 370 schools, and countless libraries and irreplaceable archives. The destruction has been widely recognized as constituting scholasticide, a term coined by Palestinian scholar Karma Nabulsi to name the systematic destruction of Palestinian pedagogical institutions and murder of Palestinian scholars. Our colleagues in the Palestinian professoriate and their students are not only suffering from the immediacy of genocidal violence today, but also from the extent of the destruction are being denied a future for higher education in Gaza.

All the while, UBC continues to maintain institutional ties with Israeli institutions such as the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv University and Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, which are deeply implicated in military research, development and training of the Israeli state and its armed occupation forces. The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) has, since 2004, called for a boycott of Israeli institutions for these reasons, and for their discrimination against Palestinian students and violations of international law. Moreover, it is critical to consider the ways in which UBC’s study abroad programs in Israel are in direct and clear violation of UBC’s own non-discrimination policies because not all students are able to participate in them.

UBC’s silence and inaction is unacceptable. We urge the administration as a responsible educational institution to acknowledge the scholasticide in Gaza, and take steps to review and end ties with Israeli institutions that support genocide and occupation. Steps must be taken to build fruitful ties with institutions in Palestine that have been severely debilitated in the last few months and many decades of occupation preceding them.

Please find below, a statement crafted by the Palestinian-Canadian Artists and Academics Network (PCAAN), Faculty for Palestine Canada, and Jewish Faculty Network (National), and join the call for these demands at UBC by signing in support.

Joint Statement on Canadian Universities and Palestine

In light of the provisional measures ordered by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Israel in relation to grave breaches of the Genocide Convention, we are writing to you on behalf of Faculty for Palestine Canada, the Jewish Faculty Network and the Palestinian-Canadian Academics and Artists Network to request that your university take urgent action to protect and support educators and the education system in the Gaza Strip.

Over the past four months, we have witnessed Israel’s wholesale destruction of the post-secondary education system in Gaza, which is made up of over 625,000 students and about 23,000 teachers and professors, all of whom have been impacted by the war. As of 24 January 2024, Israel has killed 4,327 students and injured 8,109. Further, Israel has killed 231 teachers and administrators and injured 756. The number of students and educational staff killed in such a short period is unprecedented in the region’s history. Those students and teachers who have not been killed are among the more than 1.7 million people who have been forcibly displaced and who are living in overcrowded and unsanitary shelters or sleeping in the open. Like the rest of the population in Gaza, they are at risk of dying of hunger and disease, with no access to food, potable water, electricity, heating or medicine. While our current focus is on higher education, analyzing the broader picture of the Gaza education system reveals a devastating reality of long-term destruction, amounting to what experts term “scholasticide.” Israel has destroyed higher education infrastructure in Gaza on an unprecedented scale, the impact of which cannot be understood without also considering the massive destruction of elementary and secondary school education and staff. Taken together, this illustrates how a whole generation of students, teachers, and infrastructure is being destroyed.

Israeli forces have killed 94 members of Gaza’s higher education community, including numerous internationally respected scholars, deans, university presidents, and medical professors, who comprised part of the region’s intellectual leadership. These include Professor Sufian Tayeh, president of the NL Islamic University of Gaza, who – having won a prestigious fellowship – undertook research as a visitor at the University of Waterloo in 2021. Other scholars who have been killed by Israel are Professor Muhammad Eid Shabir, a microbiologist and Tayeh’s predecessor at the university for 15 years, Dr Said Al-Zubda, president of the University College of Applied Sciences, and Professor Refaat Alareer, who was co-founder of the ‘We Are Not Numbers’ project and one of Palestine’s most prominent intellectuals in Gaza.

Israel has systematically targeted all of Gaza’s universities. On 17 January, Israel blew up Al-Israa University, the last university left standing in Gaza after it was used as an Israeli military base for 70 days. Footage shared by the BBC shows the university being completely destroyed. This act of wanton destruction follows the repeated targeting by Israel of Gaza’s universities since the start of its military operation: the Islamic University was bombed on 11 October; the University College of Applied Sciences was bombed on 19 October; on 4 November, Israeli forces bombed Al Azhar University, the second largest university in Gaza, and this was followed by the destruction of the North Gaza branch of Al Quds University on 15 November. The medical school in the Islamic University was bombed on 10 December. The Palestine Technical College was also bombed and has been severely damaged. Al-Aqsa University was bombed on February 6th, 2024, destroying two buildings, and civilians sheltering in the university buildings were fired at.

In addition to the destruction of universities, as of mid-December 2023, 378 school buildings had been damaged, which amounts to more than 70% of Gaza’s education infrastructure. Israeli soldiers have filmed some of their acts of destruction, including one video that shows the moment the Israeli army blew up a UN school in Beit Hanoun in December. As a result of the destruction of Gaza’s schools, hundreds of thousands of children who have already been deprived of education for several months will not have a school to return to once Israel’s attacks subside. Moreover, Israeli forces have attacked multiple schools serving as temporary shelters, killing Palestinians who sought refuge in them. For example, in November 2023, Israeli forces attacked the UNRWA- run Al-Fakhoura and Al-Buraq schools, killing at least 50 people and wounding many others, while in December 2023, eyewitnesses attested to the execution of 7 people, including children, in attacks on Shadia Abu Ghazala School.

In addition to Israel’s scholasticide in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army that is illegally occupying the West Bank has been actively dismantling the higher education infrastructure in the territory. Hundreds of checkpoints have crippled freedom of movement for students and faculty members. University campuses, such as Birzeit University have been closed since October 7th. In addition, even before the most recent wave of destruction, the Israeli army has frequently violated the sanctity of university campuses to arrest student leaders, most recently on September 27th at Birzeit University.

Israel’s killing of students and academic staff and its deliberate destruction of educational infrastructure constitute breaches of international humanitarian law, which requires Israel to take all feasible measures to spare civilians and civilian objects. It is self-evident that Israel has failed to comply with these requirements. As the UN Secretary-General noted in late October, ‘we are witnessing…clear violations of international humanitarian law…in Gaza’. Further, as South Africa argued before the ICJ, Israel’s attacks on education and students should be viewed as further evidence that Israel is deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions calculated to bring about their destruction, in contravention of the Genocide Convention. As you know, the ICJ has ruled that South Africa’s case that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza is a plausible one.

In light of all of the above, we request that our university do the following:

Condemn Israel’s destruction of the education system in the Gaza Strip and call for an immediate ceasefire.
Express support for Gaza’s universities, staff and students. Universities Canada condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and expressed support for Canada’s “extensive linkages with Ukraine,” including “institutional partnerships, student exchanges, faculty exchanges and research collaborations.” Additionally, Universities Canada featured all of the individual university statements of solidarity with Ukraine on its website. Failure to do so now, in relation to Gaza, raises serious questions about the consistency of moral standards at Canadian universities.
Review all partnerships, including research cooperation, student exchange and study abroad programs, and funding relations, with Israeli educational and other institutions. End any relation that might be connected to ‘plausibly genocidal acts’ within the terms of the ICJ ruling. This includes, but is not limited to, universities that support the actions of Israeli armed forces and acts of genocidal incitement carried out by members of Israeli institutions, as well as universities that act as training grounds for soldiers.
Publicly condemn discriminatory and recriminatory actions taken by Israeli universities against Palestinians and Israelis who have criticized the war in Gaza. For an example of such conduct, see here.
Commit to setting up placements, fellowships, and scholarships for new students from Palestine, as well as hardship funds for students affected by the war on Enhance provision of placements for existing Palestinian academics and students, including through the Scholars at Risk Program Canada, which has enabled different university departments (for example, see here and here) to support Ukrainian researchers and students affected by the war in Ukraine.
Actively support Palestine’s universities through inter-institutional cooperation, including virtual exchanges, library sharing, and infrastructural support. Support Palestinian students, postdoctoral researchers and scholars fleeing the Israeli war on In response to Russia’s attacks on Ukraine, the Colleges and Institutes Canada (CICan) announced 150 scholarships for Ukrainian students coming to Canada as a result of the invasion; MITACS renewed its MOU with Ukraine and created 600 new internships for Ukrainian students and postdoctoral researchers fleeing the Russian invasion. The EduCan website offered specific information for Ukrainian students coming to Canada, and several universities announced new partnerships with Ukrainian universities (for example, see here and here). These scholarships, partnerships, and exchanges were backed by Canadian Government immigration and student visa initiatives. We expect Canadian Universities, Colleges, and the Government to support their Gazan and Palestinian counterparts in the same way.

Palestinian-Canadian Artists and Academics Network (PCAAN)

Faculty for Palestine Canada

Jewish Faculty Network (National)

Socio-economic and political education in schools and universities

Economy, society and politics: Socio-economic and political education in schools and universities, edited by Christian Fridrich, Udo Hagedorn, Reinhold Hedtke, Philipp Mittnik, Georg Tafner is a new English language edition of a book originally published in 2021, Wirtschaft, gesellschaf und politick: Sozioökonomische und politische bildung in schule und hochschule.

The interconnections of economy, society and politics so obviously determine socio-economic and political structures and problem situations, current ways of thinking and acting as well as the collective perception of solution options that their still low attention in university teaching and school education is surprising. Phenomena such as pandemics, climate change, migration or authoritarianism make the close, complex and contradictory connections between economy, society and politics tangible. Against this background, socioeconomic research, teaching and education are urgently needed.

The volume aims to contribute to this by presenting research contributions on problem complexes such as economy and democracy, perspectivity and multiperspectivity, situation, interest and politics, subject and subjectification, and discipline and curriculum.

The book originated from papers presented at a conference sponsored by the Association for Socio-Economic Education and Research [GSÖBW – Gesellschaft für Sozioökonomische Bildung und Wissenschaft] held at University College of Teacher Education Vienna [Pädagogische Hochschule Wien], Austria, in February 2020.

I was honoured to give one of the keynote talks at the GSÖBW in Vienna and my talk appears as one of the chapters in the new English edition (as well as the German edition).

Petition: Demand That the Nakba Be Added to the B.C. Curriculum

Demand That the Nakba Be Added to the B.C. Curriculum

Join us and sign the petition to get the Nakba in the B.C. curriculum!

With the ongoing genocide in Gaza, colonization of Palestine, and widespread misinformation, it is time that the Ministry of Education add the Nakba to the B.C. elementary and secondary Social Studies curricula.

The Nakba, or “catastrophe,” which took place between 1947 and 1949, was the violent dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians that led to the creation of the state of Israel. Over 700,000 Palestinians were forcefully expelled from their homes, more than 15,000 were massacred, and over 500 of their villages were destroyed. The Nakba is essential context to the history of Palestine and Israel, yet is seldom talked about in the West.

The B.C. Social Studies curricula focus on historical atrocities including the colonization of Turtle Island (North America), the Holocaust, and the Rwandan genocide, but there is no mention whatsoever of the Nakba. To uphold our commitment to social justice, decolonization, and reconciliation, it is imperative that we ensure students do not leave the education system completely ignorant of the history of Palestine and Israel. We cannot have yet another generation grow up believing it’s “too complicated” or “too sensitive.” It is time we teach about the Nakba.

Demand that the Ministry of Education add the Nakba to the curriculum NOW.

Endorsed by:

Teachers 4 Palestine BC

Independent Jewish Voices Vancouver, Victoria, and UBC

Canada Palestine Association-Vancouver

BDS Vancouver-Coast Salish Territories

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network

Labour for Palestine Vancouver & Victoria

Palestinian Youth Movement Vancouver

Parents for Palestine

Freedom From War Coalition

The 11th Education Graduate Students (UBC-EGS) Conference 2024 – Weaving Stories: Creating New Realities for Empowerment & Resilience

The 11th Education Graduate Students (EGS) Conference 2024 – Weaving Stories: Creating New Realities for Empowerment & Resilience

XII International Conference on Critical Education (Ankara, Turkey)

XII International Conference on Critical Education

Ankara University
July 3-6, 2024

REVITALIZING THE WORK OF CRITICAL EDUCATION IN AN AGE OF MULTIDIMENSIONAL CRISIS: COMMUNITY, STRUGGLE AND RESISTANCE

Living in an age of economic, social, political, personal, and ecological crises, educators and school communities face serious physical and mental risks, tensions and other challenges. Under the effect of rising authoritarianism, conservatism, commodification, inequality, pseudoscience, fatalism, war, migration, unemployment, poverty, racism, misogyny, discrimination, displacement, abuse and xenophobia, educators and students feel more andmore insecure, hopeless, powerless, and become isolated from the community. There has been an increase in neoliberal, neo-conservative, andanti-democratic, authoritarian pressures on education, becoming the most significant and current obstacles to development, emancipation and humanization of both educators and students. Curricula have been structured to align with the requirements of the neoliberalism and neo-conservatism diverting from the liberating educational practices. While public education is diminished and discredited with lower funds, unscientific education, private schools are skyrocketing. The ideal of education for public good has been replaced by commodified education. Multiple intertwined crises require a response and community effort that interrupts paralysis, isolation. For these reasons, against all these attacks and the current of isolation, atomization, objectivation, and fragmentation, we would like to convene in the XII.International Conference on Critical Education in Ankara, Turkey, as the space of people where the powers and ideas can be developed, our solidarity and sense of community are refreshed, and we reconstruct new ways of resistance, struggle, and transformation.

We open this call for papers with some comments on our theme and purpose. We welcome all to join our conference which aims to advance and strengthen research, pedagogy, struggle, and critical community. Educators under the stress need this fellowship with new urgency. Critical educators are a foremost ally with democratic communities of struggle facing new attacks on the historic expansions of democracy and its promise. Fresh attempts to rebuild the discredited means of unjust exclusion now intensify at the head waters of the river of historic progress for the oppressed.

We welcome critical educators, progressive thinkers, and students to participate in the XII International Conference on Critical Education, fostering solidarity within community to seek new sources of inspiration, learning experiences, and tools of struggle, in order to build a democratic, scientific,libertarian, egalitarian, public, and secular education.

The International Conference on Critical Education, previously held in Athens (2011, 2012, 2017), Ankara ( 2013), Thessaloniki (2014, 2022), Wroclaw (2015), London (2016, 2018), Naples ( 2019), Valetta, Malta (2023) is a forum for scholars, educators and activists committed to social justice and social emancipation.

This conference, will be hosted by the Ankara University Institute of Educational Sciences with the help of the Faculty of Educational Sciences and its departments. The 12th ICCE will take place at the Cebeci Campus of the University of Ankara.

The Language of the conference will be English and Turkish.

Preview of The Social Studies Curriculum (5th Edition)

The fifth edition of The Social Studies Curriculum: Purposes, Problems, and Possibilities will be published later this year by State University of New York Press.

The Social Studies Curriculum, Fifth Edition updates the definitive overview of the issues teachers face when creating learning experiences for students in social studies. The book connects diverse elements of the social studies curriculum – social issues, history, cultural studies – offering a unique and critical perspective that separates it from other texts. The social studies curriculum is contested terrain both epistemologically and politically and this completely updated book includes new chapters on politics of social studies curriculum, historical perspective, critical historical inquiry, Black education and critical race theory, whiteness and anti-racism, decolonial literacy and decolonizing the curriculum, gender and sexuality, Islamophobia, critical media literacy, evil in social studies, economics education, anarchism, children’s rights and Earth democracy, and citizenship education. Readers are encouraged to reconsider their assumptions and understandings of purposes, nature, and possibilities of the social studies curriculum.

Here’s a preview of the Table of Contents as as well as a a PDF of the book’s preface and introduction:

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction: Curriculum Ideologies, Social Studies Traditions, and the Teacher-Curriculum Encounter
E. Wayne Ross

Part 1: Purposes of the Social Studies Curriculum

1. It is All Indoctrination: Power and the Impossibility of Apolitical Social Studies Curriculum
Wayne Au

2. A Curricular Reading of Historical Perspective, Agency, and Viral Futures in Social Education
Kent den Heyer

3. A Critical Media Literacy Analysis of Social Studies Education
Emil Marmol

Part II: Social Issues and the Social Studies Curriculum

4. Beyond the Nation-State: A Foundational and Black Diasporic Examination of the Politics of Black Educational Curriculum
Christopher Busey & Tianna Dowie-Chin

5. The Politics of Black History in the United States: Black History Mandates and Anti-Critical Race Theory Laws
LaGarrett J. King, Brianne Pitts & Daniel Tulino

6. Does Social Studies Want to be Anti-Racist? Thoughts on Decentering Whiteness in Curriculum
Andrea M. Hawkman

7. Social Studies as a site for Building Decolonial Literacy
Shannon Leddy

8.Settler Social Studies: On Disappointment and Hope for the Future
Sarah Shear & Leilani Sabzalian

9. A Queer Agenda for Gender<>Sexuality and Social Education
Sandra J. Schmidt

10. Responding to Islamophobia in the Classroom
Özlem Sensoy

Part III: The Social Studies Curriculum in Practice

11. Critical Historical Inquiry: Disrupting the Dominant Narrative
Cinthia Salinas & Brooke Blevins

12.Studying Evil in Social Studies
Cathryn van Kessel

13. Does She Even Go Here? Economics and its Place in Social Studies Education
Erin C. Adams

14.An Eco-Anarchic Social Studies: Teaching for Children’s Rights and Earth Democracy
Brandon Edwards-Schuth & John Lupinacci

15.Teaching for Critically Engaged Denizenship: Lessons from Morocco on Teaching for an Empowered Other Civic Status
Jennice McCafferty Wright

16.Dangerous Citizenship
E. Wayne Ross

Part IV: Afterword

17. What is the Future of Social Studies Curriculum?
E. Wayne Ross

Teach Palestine

May 15 at 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm CDT

ABEH launches book: The Gifts of History Teaching