This article draws from a year-long ethnographic study documenting the use of comics in a school. Focusing on literacy work in a social studies classroom, it documents how comics were welcomed into and challenged classroom spaces. Comics were introduced, read, and engaged with collaboratively. While comics were able to support strategic practices,…

Purpose: This paper aims to describe the work of a group of seventh-grade boys in a middle school superhero storytelling project. In this project, the boys, one of whom identified as Latino and five of whom identified as Black, created a voiceless, faceless, raceless superhero named "Mute." Using a Black feminist theoretical framework,…

Psychological trauma is swiftly becoming one of the most significant public health concerns and obstacles to effective education in the current teaching climate. This paper responds to my experiences as both a secondary English teacher and registered psychologist, examining the potential utility of trauma literature in the English classroom for…

This is an autoethnographic reflection of teaching Aboriginal art as a non-Aboriginal person. Over a period of ten months, a class of grade seven students was led through an inquiry into Aboriginal art including research and the creation of individual and group art pieces. The evolving curriculum was shaped by considerations of respect for…

This study examines the interaction between students' expressions of empathy and the use of STEM integration in the science classroom. Third space theory provides the context from which this classroom ethnographic qualitative study took place, as it provided an environment in which discourse among students' sociocultural perspectives, life…

Health promotion and education researchers and practitioners advocate for more democratic approaches to school-based health education, including participatory teaching methods and the promotion of a broad and positive concept of health and health knowledge, including aspects of the German educational concept of "bildung." Although…

Background and Purpose: Students of Color hold intimate knowledge about institutional racism and White supremacy in schools--expertise that could be leveraged in school leadership. One approach that could mediate efforts to include Students of Color in leadership is youth participatory action research (YPAR), in which students and adult partners…

This article explores an alternative strategy for designing hybrid instructional environments. Rather than bridging home or community funds of knowledge with school learning, I propose designing disruptions to typical school practices to invite students to recruit out-of-school resources meaningful and sensible to them in order to grapple with…

Additional research is needed on ways in which urban youth report their civic engagement. Existing research indicates that federal legislation has resulted in reduced instructional time and resources in social studies and civic education in many states, which has led to a civic education opportunity gap that resonates through many urban…

Purpose: This paper aims to analyze how middle schoolers developed a critical awareness of language while participating in a curricular unit informed by systemic functional linguistics (SFL). This unit was developed to understanding and taking action to protect a local bat population in the context of school reforms shaping teaching and learning…

Critical racial studies of school choice elucidate the worsening effects of school choice policy on racial segregation in diversifying cities around the world. This paper contributes to this scholarship by illuminating how a neoliberal education policy of school choice has created racial divisions in new ways in a settler-colonial city. It focuses…

Girls' studies have made an important contribution to the literature on subjectivity and schooling in neoliberal times; however, girlhood studies within Western contexts remain predominantly urban in focus. This article brings an analysis of place to debates about gendered subjectivity formation by exploring gendered patterns within rural…

An exploration is presented of how urban spaces, polarized by class and ethnicity, structure the basic conditions of emerging local school markets. The authors investigate how the distribution of symbolic capital, or "hot knowledge" of the market, affects schools, the market, and the urban spaces themselves. The study is guided by…

Research on the sociocultural processes of writing and its impact on writing instruction in the middle grades has gained increased attention in educational research. Less attention has been devoted to research on writing with middle grade English learners (ELs) who are mainstreamed into English only classrooms. National assessment data, reports,…

The purpose of this study was to implement group coaching in a school setting and examine the participants' experiences. Participants were all males (age 12-16 years), primarily with a Middle Eastern family background and from a socioeconomically deprived area. A 2-year intervention with regular coaching counselling during school hours was…