Universities are increasingly recognising the need to broaden the experience and understanding of their students beyond a single disciplinary approach, to produce graduates more capable of solving the problems of a multidisciplinary world. At the University of Tasmania, a "breadth unit" programme is underway with the dual purpose of…

Using the medical drama Grey's Anatomy as an exemplar, this article discusses findings from a qualitative case study exploring impacts of popular (or pop) culture on Canadian audience members' understanding of social issues, particularly health care policy. Adopting a neo-Gramscian perspective, our fundamental premise is that pop culture operates…

Developing preservice and inservice teachers' sociopolitical consciousness remains an important part of supporting the success of P-12 student experiences. The authors recognize that one way to enhance the sociopolitical consciousness aspect of culturally responsive pedagogy/teaching is through experiential opportunities that support teacher…

The use of critical literacy with children's books that focus on social issues and disrupt the status quo can be a powerful way to create spaces for conversations with students about social justice and empowerment. Teacher candidates in a semester long children's literature course were asked to respond to a range of children's texts that dealt…

In this study, a multiple baseline design across participants was used to evaluate the effects of a social narrative on teaching appropriate social skills to three students with autism. Currently, guidelines for Social Story™, as established by Carol Gray, have become very popular despite minimal scientific evidence to support their efficacy…

This article examines how four urban elementary teachers designed their literacy instruction in ways that sought to sustain students' cultural competence--maintaining their language and cultural practices while also gaining access to more dominant ones--amid expectations to prepare students for high-stakes testing. A large part of their teaching…

There has been an increased demand on educational institutions to provide students with value for money. The sociology course SOCI3035 Caribbean Social Problems with 111 students was transformed to a fully flipped course replacing several face-to-face lectures, tutorials and assessment with online versions as homework. Face to face lecture time…

This piece of work gives account of a classroom research project done in a rural state institution in Colombia whose main purpose was to contextualize the foreign languages teaching and learning in line with the current curriculum regulations stated by the National Ministry of Education. Content-based instruction inside a rural English classroom…

Recent examples of police brutality perpetrated against black bodies have called into question issues of class and race relations in the USA. State forms like schooling reconstitute social and racial inequities and allow the perpetuation of abuses. In this cultural moment, this essay turns to two texts by Roger Simon, "Teaching Against the…

This article examines a 15 year-old master level seminar dedicated to the exploration of local and complex environmental issues marked by scientific or technological uncertainties. Following a pragmatic learning approach, we focus our discussion on a triadic relationship between supervisors, students and various concerned publics. A local flood…

Experiential and active learning exercises can benefit students in sociology courses, particularly, courses in which issues of inequality are central. In this paper, we describe using hunger banquets-an active learning exercise where participants are randomly stratified into three global classes and receive food based upon their class position-to…

For this edition of the "Bank Street Occasional Paper Series," educators were invited to share stories from their practice: times when they utilized children's literature and conversations to address real life; the difficult topics that children experience through the mirror of their own experiences or the windows of their peers,…

The article seeks to contribute to working-class and social justice pedagogy by developing concrete angles on teaching/exploring some of the (a) short fiction, (b) journalistic-photographic work and (c) sociography of poverty by the Danish-born US immigrant, muckraker (http://goo.gl/6WeGtM) and social reformer Jacob A. Riis (1849-1914,…

One in four children in the state of Georgia is food insecure. In the city of Athens, 60 miles northeast of Atlanta, the number approaches one in three. More than 33 percent of residents have significantly limited access to healthy foods, living in areas of the city that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has identified as food deserts.…

The recent emphasis on engineering practices provides an opportunity for K-12 science and mathematics teachers to apply STEM concepts to real-world engineering design challenges (EDCs) for students (Next Generation Science Standards, 2013). We argue that engineering practices are more equitable when they are relatable to students and rooted in…