Background/Context: Almost 100 years ago, John Dewey advocated for a democratic U.S. educational system, one that echoed the tenets of the U.S. Constitution and achieved an ethical ideal by inviting participation of all students. Yet the U.S. educational system continues to stop short of this goal insofar as students of Color--especially those in…

Background: This study took place within a policy context in which the state of Ohio, echoing moves across the country, adopted a set of K-12 Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) standards based in the work of the Collaborative for Academic and Social Emotional Learning (CASEL) and its core competencies: self-awareness, self-management, social…

Background: Research on children's play asserts that children's identities are performed and (re)formed in peer groups where they try out identities and make sense of their social worlds. Yet there are kinds of play (e.g., violence, gore, sexuality, and consumer culture) that are often hidden and taken underground, deemed inappropriate for public…

Background: This paper is part of the special issue "Reimagining Research and Practice at the Crossroads of Philosophy, Teaching, and Teacher Education." Early childhood initiatives have joined a nexus of educational reforms characterized by increased accountability and a focus on measurement as a marker of student and teacher learning,…

Background/Context: Jean Anyon's work provides a powerful intervention in the study of education with her attention to political economy and the social contexts of education. Mainstream neoliberal charter reform arguments often counter Anyon's work by suggesting a "no excuse" ideology, which often ignores structural realities facing…

As the largest international student group in U.S. higher education, Chinese international students have been made particularly vulnerable due to the resurgence of anti-Asian racism and U.S.-China geopolitical tensions. There is therefore a pressing need to make sense of Chinese international students' perspectives and experiences around U.S.…

Background/Context: The introduction of a racial equity policy provided an opportunity for one school district to examine its systems. The policy addressed structural inequity, as well as cultural literacy issues, internal personal biases, and other power dynamic differences in a historically impacted city. Researchers from a local…

Background: Undergirding the dominant research focus on gender representation in textbooks is the assumption that making texts progressive in their construction of gender is a panacea for equality in the classroom. As this study demonstrates, however, textbooks containing traditional representations of gender can be used to challenge biases, while…

Background: Part of a special issue on the high-stakes testing opt-out movement, this article focuses its analysis on the movement within New York State, and examines white privilege and power within one specific organization, the NYS Allies for Public Education (NYSAPE). Specifically, I examine how the public-facing work of NYSAPE addressed (or…

Context: Geographies of exclusion (e.g., segregated special education classrooms, school district zoning) are constituted through intersecting oppressive ideologies (e.g., ableism, racism, classism) that co-naturalize notions of "normalcy" and deviance and yield harmful consequences for disabled children of Color. Geographies of…

Background/Context: After decades of restrictive U.S. language policies geared toward English-only education, recent years have seen a proliferation of dual-language programs, Seal of Biliteracy awards, and bilingual education programming more broadly. The demand for such programming ostensibly suggests growing consensus around the benefits of…

Background/Context: Research has documented the benefits of family and parental involvement in children's schooling, both developmentally and across domains. Classroom teachers play pivotal roles in establishing and maintaining home--school partnerships because of their sustained contact with children. Despite this, few studies have examined…

Background/Context: The onset of the COVID-19 disrupted schools' conventional architecture, making its once invisible infrastructure hyper-visible. Given the opportunity to reconfigure pervasive educational injustice amid school closures, the frenzy of a pandemic permitted the undercurrents of power to go unquestioned as educators contemplated how…

Background/Context: Recent movements to "opt out" of state assessments have brought together a broad and diverse group of activists. While many activists foreground concerns of equity and justice, opting out has been concentrated in affluent suburban communities (Pizmony-Levy & Green Saraisky, 2016). These differences highlight…

Background/Context: This article emerges from several scholarly traditions, chief among them feminist and critical ethnography; school-prison nexus; and critical feminist and race theories. Focus of Study: The larger study that informs this article was an 18-month ethnographic inquiry into youth prison schooling in one state. This study explored…