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This chapter will provide examples of how Chicano faculty teach and practice social justice in the U.S. college classroom, where subtle forms of racism operate through White privilege, and influence faculty credibility and authority. From a Latino Critical Theory (LatCrit) perspective, the authors address the question, What are the similarities and differences in classroom experiences of Chicano faculty in Predominately White Institutions (PWI) and Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI)? In addressing this question, the authors will provide examples from their teaching experiences at both PWIs and HSIs, and how a Chicana/o-centered social justice perspective can help to mediate and overcome classroom challenges. The chapter will end with a discussion of how a social justice framework is necessary in college classrooms that are becoming increasingly diverse; and recommendations for how PWIs and HSIs can support Chicana/o faculty in endeavors to institutionalize a social justice framework in the college curriculum.

Purpose – This chapter discusses youth participation in a Social Justice Literacy Workshop (SJLW). Participants were predominantly Black youth residing in an urban community with a rich history and important community resources such as libraries and churches. The SJLW used a variety of print texts, videos, artwork, documents, and other texts to explore the topic of police brutality and other justice-related topics.

Design/Methodology/Approach – This chapter uses the gradual release of responsibility (GRR) model as a lens to revisit the SJLW as designed and implemented by the first author Tiffany Nyachae. Nyachae designed and implemented the SJLW as space to inspire students to engage in critical thinking and analysis of authentic texts, and to use these textual interactions as an impetus for activism in their community. With the help of her co-authors, Nyachae reflects on the SJLW through a GRR lens to describe how students were scaffolded and supported as they moved toward activism.

Findings – Students brought their own understandings of police brutality and awareness of activism to the SJLW. These prior understandings were shaped both by their own lived experiences but also by their awareness of and interaction with social media. During the SJLW, youth read and discussed the novels All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely (2015) and Hush by Jacqueline Woodson (2002). The youth engaged in activities and discussions about how prevalent issues in each novel connected to larger social and political concerns. Students discussed the current events, engaged in reflective writing, read short pieces, and analyzed documents and videos. The SJLW was successful in such a way that all students felt comfortable voicing their opinions, even when opinions differed from their peers. Students demonstrated critical thinking about issues related to justice. All students completed an action plan to address injustice in their community. While applying the GRR to this context and reflecting, first author Nyachae began to consider the other scaffolds for youth that could have been included, particularly one youth, JaQuan, who was skeptical about what his community had done to support him. Nyachae revisits the SJLW to consider how the GRR helped to reveal the need for additional scaffolding that JaQuan or other youth may have needed from leaders in the SJLW. A literature review also revealed that very few literacy practices have brought together the GRR and social justice teaching or learning.

Research Limitations/Implications – This chapter demonstrates that the GRR framework can be effectively applied to a justice-centered teaching and learning context as a reflective tool. Since very little research exists on using the GRR framework with justice-centered teaching, there is a need for additional research in this area as the GRR model offers many affordances for researchers and teachers. There is also a need for literacy researchers to consider elements of justice even when applying the GRR framework to any classroom or out-of-school context with children and youth.

Practical Implications – The GRR can be a useful tool for reflecting the practices of literacy and justice-centered teaching. Just as the GRR can be a useful framework to help teachers think about teaching reading comprehension, it can be an effective tool to help teachers think about supporting students to grow from awareness to activism in justice-centered teaching and learning.

Originality/Value of Paper – This chapter is one of only a handful of published works that brings together a social justice perspective with the GRR.

School principals should see themselves as social justice leaders, who have the ability to allow all students to succeed, regardless of their characteristics and backgrounds. At the same time, school principals are also called upon to demonstrate instructional leadership, which emphasizes the teaching and learning aspects of school principalship. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relations between these two roles of today’s school principals.

To investigate the relations between social justice leadership and instructional leadership, this paper adds the question of the goal of schooling to the mix. After identifying possible goals of schooling, the paper conceptualizes social justice leadership and instructional leadership, respectively, while also examining their relations with schools’ major goals. Possible commonalities and contradictions between social justice leadership and instructional leadership are discussed.

The prevalent expectation that school leaders should give top priority to ongoing improvement of teaching quality and academic outcomes may be seen as reducing school leaders’ involvement in some aspects of social justice leadership, such as nurturing students’ active citizenship.

This paper opens new research avenues. Based on the findings of this paper, the connection between principals’ perceptions regarding the goals of schooling and their leadership behaviors should be explored.

It seems advisable to discuss the interplay between social justice leadership and instructional leadership with prospective and current principals, as well as with other school stakeholders.

Insofar as the relations between social justice leadership and instructional leadership have not been explored so far, this paper narrows a gap in the available knowledge.

This paper aims to reflect on the facilitative factors that contribute to a shift in focus to social innovation for social justice in a higher education institution. The study provides lessons learned that can be takeaways for others interested in shifting their conceptualization of social innovation toward social justice.

Relying on a case study of social innovation at Ryerson University, the paper begins with a brief history and the later development of the Office of Social Innovation. Through a reflection on three key initiatives, the study discusses strategic planning and partnerships, student programming and communications strategy.

The reflection process provides ingredients that have facilitated the intentional grounding of social innovation offerings and practices in social justice values, including creativity, collaboration, adaptability, voice and shifting the spotlight to alternate stories and ways of understanding social innovation. The authors also discuss the role of generative conflict and contradictions.

This study presents a reflective case study from a public research university, which holds a prominent reputation in entrepreneurial incubators and curricular offerings. With candid reflections from faculty and staff central in strategizing the direction of social innovation, the authors present experiences, perspectives and conflicts encountered when challenging the language and application of social innovation. The result is a unique contribution on what it means to ground post-secondary social innovation in social justice, why this shift was necessary and what has come from this work.

Educators who teach for social justice connect what and how they teach in the classroom directly to humanity’s critical problems. Teacher education at the elementary level must center such themes of social justice in order to prepare today’s teachers to lead their students in developing an understanding of how to make the world a better place to live. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This paper presents three case studies of exemplary, pre-service teacher-created lessons that integrate the arts, social studies, and language arts around themes of social justice. Teacher-candidates envisioned, planned and taught effective, engaging, standards-based learning experiences that began with children’s literature and led to artistic expression.

Through lessons like these, teacher-candidates learned to meet arts, social studies, and literacy standards while building the skills and attitudes their students need as “citizens of the world.”

Elementary teacher education programs can help teacher-candidates to prepare for the challenge of teaching for social justice by integrating the arts with core academic areas, including social studies.

This integrated model suitably serves our current, mathematics- and literacy-focused, assessment-saturated school system. Pre-service teachers learn to plan and teach integrated learning activities. They learn practical ways to infuse the arts in both their field experience and future classrooms.

When the arts are central in education, students benefit in numerous important ways, developing critical and creative thinking skills, empathy, self-awareness, and the ability to collaborate with others productively. The arts, essential to humanity since the dawn of civilization, thus serve as a natural focal point for education for social justice.

The innovative methods involved in this study, in which subject areas throughout the elementary teacher education program are integrated in one meaningful, practical, applied lesson on social justice, represent a practical, original, and valuable way to enhance teacher education programs’ focus on social justice.

The purpose of this chapter is to determine whether graduate classes in deep democracy and social justice can actually effect change in educators’ leadership practice.

This chapter draws on a survey of all doctoral students in educational leadership from a major research university who were concurrently school principals. From those willing to engage in follow-up, surveys were conducted of their teachers, and follow-up interviews and observations were conducted with the principals themselves.

We identified six main themes; courses related to deep democracy and social justice brought about deeper understanding of the topics, helped leaders acquire language and “new paradigms,” sometimes caused confusion and a sense of being overwhelmed by the challenges, assisted leaders to engage staff in dialogue, and prompted action related to social justice. Leaders also sometimes experienced a sense of being alone as they engaged in a difficult struggle.

The findings highlighted the need for instructors to walk “alongside” their students as they tried to change their practices, to become critical friends and to offer on-site support.

Findings also highlight the importance of teaching both theory and practical applications together. Further research about the pedagogies that make this possible is needed.

If graduate coursework can impact leaders’ practice, it can effect changes in schools so they become more welcoming and inclusive of all students so that those who come from minoritized or disadvantaged backgrounds may experience greater school success.

Demonstrating a link between graduate coursework and the ability of school leaders to emphasize social justice, equity and deep democracy in their practice is not only original but extremely important.

Jane Addams: Champion of Democracy is a biography incorporating history and social justice. This lesson involves students in grades 5-8 exploring social justice issues related to economic equality, racial equality, gender equality, health equality, peace, and justice. Students trace Jane Addams’s public service activities, in these areas of social justice, while simultaneously examining significant, external historical events and people, between 1860 and 1939, through the lens of Addams’s life. Students create a timeline and engage in ongoing discussions related to Addams’s involvement in these historical events and her connections to people, of this period, who, like Addams, were advocates for social change (e.g. Ida B. Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. Du Bois, Eleanor Roosevelt). Example activities and scoring rubrics are included in the appendix section. Inspired by descriptions of Jane Addams’s extraordinary life, an extension activity introduces students to social justice issues, within their own community, and provides steps to initiate community involvement.

US universities are increasingly addressing issues of equity and social justice through global learning programs with international partners. Growing numbers of universities now prioritize the development and implementation of international programs such as study abroad, and service learning to fulfill components of missions and visions focused on educating global citizens. This chapter discusses how global citizenship goals intersect with social justice education through global learning programs such as study abroad and global service learning. It also describes the conceptual frameworks that inform teaching and learning in this domain and highlights current examples of partnerships and overseas institutions that focus on goals of social justice and developing the global citizen. Finally, this chapter will discuss future challenges for US universities in further developing international partnerships for social justice.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the theoretical concept of socially responsible pedagogy because it applies to teaching information literacy.

At Weber State University, two librarians use a socially responsible pedagogical approach, combining critical information literacy and visual literacy to teach an undergraduate information literacy course.

Initial results suggest that the course design and the authors’ approach to socially responsible pedagogy are largely successful based on students’ application of course material to a signature assignment in the course.

Data are limited because this approach was only used for two semesters. The authors are aware that a socially responsible information literacy classroom needs quality assessment to help make instructional decisions, evaluate teaching strategies and assist with ongoing student learning. Additional semesters of using this instructional approach will allow for reflection and critical inquiry into the theories and teaching strategies that currently inform instruction. Early implications of using this method of instructional design reflect students’ deep understanding of the importance of information literacy because they explore social justice topics.

The practical implications of this research reveal a theoretical framework for teaching critical information literacy, called socially responsible pedagogy. The theory looks at teaching based on the “spirit” of the course, which is the promotion of equality. It also looks at “the art” of designing an information literacy course, incorporating socially responsible pedagogy, culturally responsive teaching and critical information literacy. This study also looks at “the science” of assessment and offers suggestions on how one might go about assessing a socially responsible information literacy class. Moreover, the authors examine how visual literacy helps teach information literacy concepts in the course as students put together a signature assignment that meets both information literacy course objectives and general education outcomes.

This general review of the theoretical concept of socially responsible pedagogy is limited to two semesters of information literacy instruction. In researching these topics, students situate themselves within a diverse worldview and work to promote awareness and advocacy through group presentations.

While librarians are exploring critical librarianship and social justice, many are not using socially responsible pedagogy combined with other social theories and images to help students work through the research process and develop information literacy skills.

Social and emotional learning (SEL) programs have traditionally evaded or been silent on issues of (in)equity and, thus, critiqued for their lack of attention to how social injustices create different outcomes for different groups (The Education Trust, 2020). Furthermore, these efforts have been criticized for placing the burden on individual youth to navigate challenges to SEL without recognizing the influence of systems. Transformative SEL offers an alternative approach that centers the integration of an explicit equity and social justice lens into the conceptualization and implementation of SEL (Jagers, Rivas-Drake, & Williams, 2019). Notwithstanding its usefulness as a conceptual framework, mechanisms for “how” a transformative SEL approach may occur have not been well-specified. We recognize that historically, the curricular materials available to SEL educators often take a conformist approach focused on skill-building, coping, and even resilience absent attention to broader social injustices (Jagers, 2016), further burdening teachers with having to redesign curricula to incorporate their commitments into a culturally responsive, justice-oriented pedagogy. We offer stretching as a conceptual category that aims to capture the ways in which educators adapt SEL frameworks and school policies, student–educator relationships, curricula, and instructional practices in order to critically consider and responsibly address their students' experiences of injustice. We argue that stretching of SEL practice is a critical mechanism for conceptualizing how teachers go beyond traditionally equity–evasive notions of SEL to more proactively engage equity issues in their SEL implementation. We will use examples of teaching practice to illustrate and define what constitutes stretching in SEL instruction.