Critical Theories in Education
I was delighted to conduct a seminar and reading group exploring critical social education in September 2024 at with the Education and and Childhood Research Group at University of the West of England. ECRG is lead by Professor Alpesh Maisuria and here is a short “in conversation” between Professor Maisuria and me.
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?
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.
I was delighted to have the opportunity to lead a research seminar with the Education and Childhood Research Group at the University of the West of England in Bristol this week.
The seminar was titled “Critical Social Education: Insurgent Pedagogies & Dangerous Citizenship” and explored how social studies education in the Americas is being used to contribute in significant ways to creating a society where individuals have the power and resources to realize their own potential and free themselves from the obstacles of classism, racism, sexism, and other inequalities often encouraged by schools, the state, and oppressive ideologies.
The seminar also framed the role and nature of social studies education in the Americas, with an emphasis on critical perspectives in the field, drawing on my recently published edited collection, The Social Studies Curriculum: Purposes, Problems, and Possibilities (5th Edition, SUNY Press) as well other critical scholars including contributors to the book Insurgent Social Studies: Scholar-Educators Disrupting Erasure and Marginality (2022, Myers Education Press), edited by Natasha Hakimali Merchant, Sarah B. Shear and Wayne Au.
I also touched on related research on social studies in the Latin American context based on the book Social Studies Education in Latin America: Critical Perspectives from the Global South, which I edited with Sebastián Plá.
The ECRG is led by Alpesh Maisuria, Professor of Education Policy in Critical Education at UWE Bristol, who I thank for the opportunity.
I also want to thank UWE Bristol education Professor Jane Andrews for the chance to participate in their monthly reading group which discussed a recent chapter of mine titled “Society, Democracy, and Economics: Challenges for Social Studies and Citizenship Education in a Neoliberal World”. I enjoyed the lively and diverse discussion.
Critical E
ducation 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
The Logic of Ed-Tech: Three Critical Directions
Michael Mindzak, Rahul Kumar
“Relationship-building” and the Normalization of Police in Schools: The Emergence of School Resource Officer Programs in Canada
Alexandre Da Costa
Student Rent-Strikes: Hope Through Unplanned Critical Pedagogy
Lucy Wenham, Helen Young
“All of this is whitewashed, all of this is colonized: ”Exploring Impacts of Indigenous Young Adult Literature on Teacher Candidates Perceptions of Indigenous Peoples
Joaquin Muñoz
Visible and Invisible Difference: Negotiating Citizenship, Affect, and Resistance
Kerenina K. Dansholm, Joshua K. Dickstein, Heidi D. Stokmo
Review: Education as the Practice of Eco-Social-Cultural Change
Hossein Davari
Critical Education is a peer-reviewed, diamond open-access, international and multidisciplinary journal published by the Institute for Critical Education Studies (ICES). Critical Education is indexed in Scopus, ERIC, EBSCO, DOAJ, ASCI, and a member of the Free Journal Network.
Master of Education: Curriculum, Historical inquiry, & Pedagogy (CHiP)
Issues of equity, diversity, and social justice serve as foundational lenses for interrogating social studies curriculum and pedagogy.
This graduate program delves into key aspects of social studies curricula with connections to historical thinking, historical consciousness, visual culture, anti-oppressive and anti-racism education, gender studies, moral education, and the history and politics of curriculum.
The cohort-based model invites you to work through the program in a collaborative community of practice. Students in this program will construct strong, foundational knowledge about teaching and learning in social studies. Building on that base, you will investigate the ways in which inquiry, inter-culturalism, and 21st century teaching and learning are central to social studies education.
By the end of the 26-month program, students will have a wealth of knowledge to share. During the first semester of the program, incoming students will have a chance to learn from graduating students though a mini conference where they will share what they have learned and consider how it can help other Social Studies teachers in their contexts.
Start Date: July 2025
Length: 2.5 years | Part-Time
Format: Online
Through the program, students will consider theories, principles, and practices in social studies education related to:
Additionally, students will continually reflect on what they are learning and consider how it can help them understand the aims and purposes underlying social studies curricula in their contexts. This knowledge can then be used to inform new practices in their educational contexts.
In November 2022, I had the honour giving the keynote address at the National Meeting of Researchers in History Teaching (XIII Encontro Nacional de Pesquisadores do Ensino de História – XIII-ENPEH) organized by the Brazilian Association of History Teaching (Associação de Ensino de História – ABEH).
Subsequently, the talk — “Desafios e possibilidades para a educação histórica em um mundo neoliberal” / “Challenges and possibilities for historical education in a neoliberal world” — was published as a chapter in the book Os presentes do Ensino de História: (re)construções em novas bases / The gifts of History Teaching: (re)constructions on new bases, edited by Luis Cerri (State University of Ponta Grossa) and Juliana Alves Andrade (Federal University of Pernambuco).
Below is a a link to a video interview that was conducted last month with my Brazilian colleagues including professors Cerri and Andrade and the president of ABEH, Prof. Maria Lima (Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul). The interview covers quite a bit of territory including the politics of history and social studies education and their role in construction of a more democratic society, critical teaching and the dangers it entails, plus organizing and action for educational and social change.
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
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.
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
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