Teacher action and change is a complex and nuanced phenomenon that has been theorized across diverse literature in terms of identity, agency, and power. Drawing on this literature, this article offers specific articulations of teacher identity as interpretive framework, power as legitimate action, and agency as moral coherence. We posit a model of…

Pre-service teachers often fixate on building their classroom management and lesson planning skills, but the job of teacher educators is to push them beyond the daily rituals and routines to consider deeper relationships of power and control at work in schooling. The arts can be a useful tool for making the covert ways power moves in curriculum…

Over past decades in early childhood education, there has been an emerging critique of developmental discourses. Despite this, the universality of child development theory persists and along with it, expectations of a linear progression via prescribed stages and ages. Developmentalism produces a normal in the classroom that sanctions comparisons,…

Purpose: There is a need for a shift of the pedagogy to student-centeredness in the teaching--learning process of the higher education sector in countries such as Sri Lanka, where the education system is still identified with the dominant "teacher-centeredness" pedagogy. Within this backdrop, this study aims to understand whether a…

Omer's concept of 'New Authority' wants to avoid both the use of power and the harms of a permissive climate. 'New Authority' fosters good relationships with the child and operates in a network of educators with similar values. In the participative action research described in this article, I focus on the question of whether I could include…

Despite a growing body of advocacy for the beneficial effects of music education upon individuals' development and wellbeing, lived experiences in the music classroom are testament to a diversity of both positive and negative musical encounters. For some pupils, classroom music-making is characterized by opportunities, achievements, and…

The racial awakening stemming from the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-Black police brutalities, and unaccounted hate crimes against Asian Americans has captivated the world's attention regarding the insidious realities of white supremacy. Yet many educators' efforts to purposefully and pedagogically work toward building…

The Synod of Catholic Bishop's 1971 document, "Justice in the World," articulates boldly that "action on behalf of justice is a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel." Fifty years old, it is timely to assess this document today especially as religious educators address the many forms of inequality in the world.…

This paper begins by revisiting my earlier critical review of the international scholarship on Japanese schooling (Takayama, 2011). In this work, I critiqued three books on Japanese schooling, by Ryoko Tsuneyoshi (2001), Nancy Sato (2004), and Peter Cave (2007), along with other English-language scholarships on Japanese education. Drawing on a…

The COVID-19 pandemic caused many sectors of America to rethink the way they navigate life. However, adult learners in family literacy programs across the country demonstrated exceptional resiliency. The National Center for Families Learning (NCFL) focused on supporting essential literacies (including digital), social-emotional well-being, and…

College-educated white women across social classes support and uphold racism. Using narrative methods in a secondary analysis, we, as two white women, explored how white non-trans women make meaning of social class using the revised model of multiple dimensions of identity (RMMDI; Abes et al., 2007) as positioned within the context of white…

The DAPP (Difference & Dissonance, Assumptions, Power, and Patterns) Tool is intended to help educators, leaders, teams, schools, districts, education agencies, and other organizations to engage in the type of critical reflection necessary to build critical consciousness, and undertake more equitable and just actions, toward learning,…

Since the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, more organizations have recognized a need to create more inclusive and antiracist environments. While anti-racism continues to be a highly contested value, for some, it has become an en vogue purpose. How do equity-focused school leaders, who are truly committed to constructing more justice-oriented…

This study sought to document the lived experiences of women who teach in rural Iowa secondary schools. It aims to bring light to the ways in which rural women teachers experience power, marginalization, and oppression in their personal and professional lives. Additionally, this project hopes to provide insight for rural school leaders into how…

Dystopias--societies organized around deep inequalities--have existed in the context of Atlantic Canada since colonization. In this article, we seek to center the concept of dystopia as an important sphere of inquiry through participatory visual research with six 2SLGBTQ+ young people (14-17) in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. Using an…