Critical Theories in Education
Workplace #37 includes the second installment of a series on Teachers’ Work in Contentious Political Times edited by Dana Morrison (West Chester University), Brianne Kramer (Southern Utah University), Lauren Ware Stark (Université de Sherbrooke), Erin Dyke (Oklahoma State University), and Denisha Jones (Defending the Early Years).
Published: 2026-04-13
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:
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:
Abstract Requirements
Manuscript Submission Requirements (after abstract acceptance)
Timeline
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
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
From The Public Education Exchange:
Global Pedagogy and the Question of Palestine: A Dialogue
Linda Herrera
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
Michael A. Peters
Beijing Normal University / University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
DOI: https://doi.org/10.14288/ce.v16i4.187433
Keywords: Palestine in Critical Pedagogy, Paulo Freire, critical pedagogy, popular education, empowerment, grassroots, global citizenship, genocide, Anti-colonial pedagogy
Abstract
Global pedagogy refers to a broad, ethically grounded approach to education that extends beyond national boundaries and emphasizes the collective responsibility to teach and learn about interconnected global crises and historical injustices. The question of Palestine and the ongoing genocide in Gaza serve as the “canary in the coalmine”. Its suppression is not an isolated phenomenon but a diagnostic for a wider authoritarian turn that seeks to foreclose the very possibility of critical, transnational solidarity. In this dialogue, Michel Peters, a philosopher of education, and Linda Herrera, a critical anthropologist of education in the Middle East, engage in a dialogue about how educators can keep critical thought and solidarity alive by partaking in practices that are resilient, resourceful, and relentlessly focused on building counter-publics. These requires embracing a “fugitive” pedagogy, curating and archiving counter-memories, and building transnational literacies of solidarity.
Author Biographies
Linda Herrera, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
Linda Herrera is Professor in the Department of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She has researched, written about, and taught courses on education and power in the MENA region, qualitative research methods (with a focus on critical ethnography and oral history), international development policy, youth and generations, childhood in global context, the social effects of technological change, and critical democracy and citizenship education. Her books include, Education 2.0: Chronicles of Technological and Cultural Change in Egypt (OUP, 2025), Educating Egypt: Civic Values and Ideological Struggles (American University in Cairo Press, 2022), Global Middle East: Into the Twenty-first Century (University of California Press, 2021), Revolution in the Age of Social Media: The Egyptian Popular Insurrection and the Internet (Verso, 2014), Wired Citizenship: Youth Learning and Activism in the Middle East (Routledge, 2014), Being young and Muslim: New Cultural Politics in the Global South and North (Oxford University Press, 2010), and Cultures of Arab Schooling: Critical Ethnographies from Egypt (State University of New York Press, 2006).
Michael A. Peters, Beijing Normal University / University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
Michael A. Peters is Distinguished Professor of Education at Beijing Normal University Faculty of Education PRC, and Emeritus Professor in Educational Policy, Organization, and Leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He is the executive editor of the journal, Educational Philosophy and Theory, and founding editor of five international journals, Policy Futures in Education, E-Learning and Digital Media (SAGE), and Knowledge Cultures (Addleton), The Video Journal of Education and Pedagogy (Springer), Open Review of Education Research (T&F). His interests are in philosophy, education and social policy and he has written over eighty books, including most recently: Wittgenstein and Education: Pedagogical Investigations, (2017) with Jeff Stickney, The Global Financial Crisis and the Restructuring of Education (2015), Paulo Freire: The Global Legacy (2015) both with Tina Besley, Education Philosophy and Politics: Selected Works (2011); Education, Cognitive Capitalism and Digital Labour (2011), with Ergin Bulut; and Neoliberalism and After? Education, Social Policy and the Crisis of Capitalism (2011). He has acted as an advisor to governments and UNESCO on these and related matters in the USA, Scotland, New Zealand, South Africa and the European Union. He was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of NZ in 2010, a Fellow in 2018, and awarded honorary doctorates by State University of New York (SUNY) in 2012 and University of Aalborg in 2015.
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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.
https://ices.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled/announcement/view/182282
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
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
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
Click through to access articles.
Workplace #36 includes the first installment of a series on Teachers’ Work in Contentious Political Times edited by Dana Morrison (West Chester University), Brianne Kramer (Southern Utah University), Lauren Ware Stark (Université de Sherbrooke), Erin Dyke (Oklahoma State University), and Denisha Jones (Defending the Early Years).
Jelena Starcevic (Cornell University) contributes a new article in the Workplace series featuring research from the Global Labour Research Centre Symposium at York University.
Featured articles include studies of: shared governance in academic libraries by Sarah Fitzgerald, Therese Kaufman, and Jaime Taylor (University of Massachusetts Amherst); how activist resistance on campus produces a shared sense of community by Kefaya Diab (University of North Carolina, Charlotte), Andrew Bowman (Independent Scholar), Bruce Kovanen (North Dakota State University), Liz Miller (The Ohio State University), and Jonathan Isaac (University of Washington); the relationship between social-well being and multi-locational work in a Finnish university by Maija Nyman, Satu Uusiautti, and Timo Aarrevaara (University of Lapland).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.14288/workplace.v36i1
Published: 2025-08-05
The article “Towards an Ideal Model of Education for Critical Citizenship. An Analysis of the Spanish Curricular Change in Social Sciences” published in January 2025 in the European Journal of Education is now available under Open Access license.
The article examines the integration of citizenship education in Spain’s new social sciences curriculum, focusing on primary and secondary education. It highlights the importance of fostering critical citizenship, which involves questioning societal norms, challenging injustices, and engaging in transformative social action. The study uses the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) framework to analyze the curriculum, revealing a stronger emphasis on cognitive skills and content knowledge compared to attitudes and engagement.
Key findings include:
The study concludes that while the curriculum incorporates cognitive and content domains effectively, it falls short in promoting critical social action and engagement. Future efforts should focus on aligning curriculum elements and fostering interdisciplinary approaches to empower students as active participants in democracy. Researchers are encouraged to examine the practical implementation of these curricular changes to advance education for social justice.
Navarro Medina, E , Ross, E. W., Pérez-Rodríguez, N., & De Alba Fernandez, N. (2025). Towards an ideal model of education for critical citizenship. An analysis of the Spanish curricular change in social sciences. European Journal of Education, 60(1), e70010. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejed.70010
