Alternative education programs or schools can be defined in several ways, and individuals may have various perspectives on what alternative programs are expected to be. For some, alternative placements may be seen as a setting for students who experience difficulty within public schools, some may think of an exclusive boarding school, or some…

In conversation with colleagues, it has been repeatedly addressed that the field of education research, whether philosophical, historical, or political, can be wildly depressing. One source of frustration is the subject content. Discussing historical and contemporary injustices in education, such as forced assimilation through residential schools,…

The purpose of this article is to reflect upon how a trauma-informed education is intimately connected with equity and justice. I will briefly describe the impacts of trauma on students, specifically on their sense of safety and belonging, and by extension, their ability to engage and learn. I will then offer suggestions for how we, as educators,…

This article advances an (anti)agenda that would center unknowing as a necessary tool to remake autism. While much of the literature on the social study of ignorance describes its corrosive effects for democracy or how ignorance fuels epistemic injustice, I argue that some harms committed against autistic people have come from well-meaning…

Scholarly accounts of the training of pity in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Emile" focus on how Emile's tutor activates the psychological mechanisms necessary for the feeling of pity in book 4 of the text. This account is inadequate, for it fails to show how Emile acquires the evaluative ability to make the judgment about who deserves pity as…

There are many conceptions of alternative education placement (AP). Some may picture an educational environment designed for students who have behavioral or mental health challenges, while others may imagine a boarding school or even a home-based learning environment. Indeed, a large number of settings in the United States qualify as…

This essay takes up Edward Said's insistence on truth, justice, and tracing continuities of colonial violence to reflect on the university in a time of genocide. We set the stage with an outline of the university complicities; conditions continuous with, and connected to, the ongoing genocide in Gaza. We establish the legal resonance of…

The social work field is a relative latecomer to the digital revolution. To advance the Social Work Grand Challenge "Harnessing Technology for Social Good," the social work field needs a transformative reorientation--towards seeing itself not only as critical adopters of technology but as necessary contributors in interdisciplinary tech…

The complexities of the civil rights movement are rarely presented in elementary social studies. Year after year, students repeat the same decontextualized "I Have a Dream" crafts and assignments, tasks that do little to help students understand the country's history of racism or the racial dynamics of today. Instead of perpetuating the…

Transnational children's texts can bring communities together, forcing us to reflect critically on our past, present, and future, and pushing us to action. In this column, we propose that texts that do this form of activist work are "cuentos combativos" and that all teachers and researchers can leverage "cuentos combativos" for…

This thought piece is written by four dyslexic disability scholars who reject dyslexia as an explanatory account. Instead, we adopt Lexism -- the othering of dyslexics by normative practices and assumptions of literacy. In asserting a political position and our self-identity, we explore our personal ambivalent experiences of diagnosis. The new…

In this supplement to the reprint of "A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures," Mary Kalantzis and Bill Cope revisit the foundational ideas of the New London Group thirty years after the article's publication. They explore how the multiliteracies framework has evolved over time in response to changes in technology, media,…

This book provides an original mentoring/induction framework that spotlights equity in schools. In it, support-accessibility-collaboration-equity (SACE) is presented as a powerful structure for re-imagining mentoring/induction, especially for busy practitioners. Current mentoring models refer to the three pillars of support, accessibility, and…

This article highlights the primal concern of children at home and in school: knowing where safety lies in relationships of fairness. The article includes scenes where five-year-old children experience breaches in fairness and the framework commonly used to restore and maintain it. The work of Vivian Gussin Paley, the renowned early childhood…

Ethical, legal and social implications (ELSIs) in forensic genetics investigations (FGIs) also involve conducting a careful assessment of the potential benefits and responsible use of genetic information. FGIs have become an invaluable tool in solving crimes and identifying individuals in various legal and investigative contexts. Moreover,…