After nearly 25 years of democracy, lives of young South Africans are still profoundly shaped by the legacies of apartheid. This paper considers how these differences are produced, maintained and disrupted through an exploration of changing narratives developed by a small group of South African pre-service teachers, with a particular focus on the…

Memory politics are often regarded as the "soft" issues contested in the aftermath of political and social upheaval. Yet critical public debates on memory, justice, impunity and reconciliation in South Africa prompted by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) process suggest otherwise. I offer a partial review of some of the key…

This article witnesses a field trip of a group of English learners and the instructor at a historical site in the United States of America. The purpose of this trip explores a question, "What does 'social justice' look like in the United States?" Drawing from the nepantlerx concept, the author describes a conversation between the…

This article presents an account of how contested spaces: shared places have played out in the South African education context by tracing how the historical, political, social and educational contexts of South Africa created and determined shared places. The article draws on findings from a range of research projects that I conducted over the past…

Public schools in New Orleans are changing our normative understandings of what it means to be a teacher, student, or administrator in our global society. The New Orleans public schools underwent a process of deregulation initiated by the State of Louisiana and the local school board in 2005. The process, truly the first of its kind, was expedited…

This study explores the association between school-level poverty rates and young peoples' perceptions of student empowerment, drawing on survey and administrative data from a large urban district. Participants included 29,318 diverse youth in grades 6-12 from 211 schools. We used multilevel linear regression models to estimate the relationships…

This study identified patterns of classroom and family experiences and developmental outcomes for young children in segregated early education. This study is based on data from a high-quality early education program serving young children from low-income households in 19 schools across the U.S. The sample included 1,521 children during the…

"Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power" is an exhibition of American Black artists from the 1960s through 1980s. Originally developed by the Tate Modern in London, the exhibition travelled to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, in early 2018. When we visited the exhibition, we intended to study how…

Using narrative research as a qualitative methodology, we (two white critical whiteness scholars) tell a story about how a dismantling and rebuilding of whiteness occurred in a fourth-grade classroom across three vignettes. Using a close read of Reverend Thandeka's primer on the ways white children are socialized, we wrestle with what pedagogy…

U.S. public schools are highly segregated by both race and class. Prior research shows that the desegregation of Southern schools in the 1960s and 1970s led to significant benefits for black students, including increased educational attainment and higher earnings. We do not know, however, whether segregation today has the same harmful effects as…

Poetry informed by indigenous knowledge systems, whether written, spoken or heard, offers ideal pathways for healing and transformation. Being "medicine" in the broadest non-clinical sense, it is deeply restorative as activism, as caregiving practice and as balm in the face of relentless assaults on our bodies and beings. This I…

Utilizing critical geography, critical history, and critical educational studies as guideposts, this article examines community organizing and school district partnerships as relevant to improving urban public education reform efforts and schooling practices within the United States. Proceeding in four parts, part one discusses the kinds of…

Through a critical ethnographic approach, this study examines how Latinx youth made sense of race, space, and place at a predominantly white, well-resourced suburban high school outside of Chicago, Illinois. Employing spatial theory and borderland theory, I analyze the experiences of 19 Latinx youth to learn how they understood and navigated the…

As U.S. suburbs become more racially and ethnically diverse, they have the opportunity to make their schools similarly diverse. But integration is not assured, even in districts with significant demographic diversity. Iris Rotberg draws on Montgomery County Public Schools, a suburban Maryland district, to illustrate the opportunities and risks…

As South Africa transitioned from apartheid to democracy, changes in the political landscape, as well as educational agendas and discourse on both a national and international level, shaped successive waves of curriculum reform over a relatively short period of time. Using South Africa as a germane example of how curriculum and pedagogy can…