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The purpose of this paper is to explore how 11 social studies teacher educators (SSTEs) incorporated race into their social studies methods courses. It examines the instructional practices of the SSTEs using racial-pedagogical-content-knowledge (RPCK) as an analytical framework.

The paper is a qualitative interview study. The data sources included two 40–90 min semi-structured interviews per participant, methods course syllabi and reading lists, and university documents such as departmental mission statements and program course requirements. Data were analyzed using three cycles of coding: descriptive coding, focused coding and analytic generalizations.

The paper illustrates how the SSTEs incorporated race into their social studies methods courses through developing counter-narrative content knowledge, modeling the application of critical race theory tenets through pedagogical content knowledge, and cultivating a working racial knowledge among pre-service teachers.

This paper extends the literature of the RPCK framework through illustrating many ways each component of RPCK can be applied within a social studies methods course.

Current legislative, policy and cultural efforts to censor and illegalize classroom discussions and curricular representations of LGBTQ+ people reflect longstanding challenges in English education. In an effort to explore what curricular inclusion can (not) accomplish – especially what and how current struggles over inclusion, censorship, illegalization and ultimately representation in English education might (not) contribute to queer and trans liberation – the purpose of this article is to feature the experiences of queer and trans youth as knowers in classroom lessons with LGBTQ+-inclusive curriculum.

Drawing from a yearlong literacy ethnography at a Midwestern high school in which the author explored youth and adults reading, writing and talking about sexual and gender diversity, in this article the author focuses on one literacy learning context at the high school, a co-taught sophomore humanities that combined English language arts and social studies.

Engaging theories of epistemic (in) justice, the findings of this article highlight the experiences of queer and trans youth – especially two queer youth of Color, Camden and Imani – as knowers in the context of an LGBTQ+-inclusive classroom curriculum. The author describes epistemic harms with respect to distortions of credibility and homonormative assimilationist requirements and reflects on alternative possibilities that youth gestured toward through their small resistances.

By centering the experiences of LGBTQ+ youth, this article contributes to research about LGBTQ+-inclusive curriculum in English teaching. Previous research, when empirical rather than conceptual, has tended to focus on the perspectives of teachers.