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The categorization of different manifestations of teacher activist behaviour is the central focus of this paper. Evidence for the analysis is obtained from interviews with teacher activists and from an extensive period of participant‐observation within an Australian teachers' organization. A matrix of nine categories of activism is described in which teacher unionists are classified according to the strength of their identification with the union (“Us”) or the union leadership's internal and external opponents (“Them”) during a period of intense political and industrial conflict. Some of the personal and attitudinal characteristics of the groups of activist teachers so described are discussed in general terms. The study presents a more complex picture of teacher activism than is implied by the more usual classifications of “left”, “right” and “moderate”. The conclusions drawn might also provide material for more extensive research, perhaps of an empirical nature, into teacher involvement in various forms of political and industrial activism.

Engaging in activism and sustaining the self at a research university with a diverse student body is no simple task. From marching at Edmund Pettus Bridge as part of engaging in the Bridge Jubilee to the New Mexico Latino Education Task Force, Rick has invested much in activism as a scholar, even as such activities go unrecognized and unrewarded in the academy. In this chapter, Rick discusses his long career standing up for families and children in New Mexico and the origins of that work. He presents the roots of his activism in his life as a white Jewish male in a progressive family that demanded thoughtfulness and action. Starting at 14 years old with involvement with the movement to protect Soviet Jewish refugees to gaining conscientious objector status during the Vietnam War, Rick soon found that education and activism are not often overlapping spheres, but in his work with young children and eventually teachers, students, and families, he found ways to make sure they did.

The author describes the continuous development of federal education policy from the Bush Administration’s No Child Left Behind Act through the Obama Administration’s Race to the Top state competition, noting critical similarities and results. Scholars of education and society agree that socioeconomic status of a school’s population is the most reliable indicator of a school’s success. Ravitch (2013) has emphasized the correlation of both racial isolation and poverty of communities with the standardized test scores of the communities’ students.

The author explores the main components of the Race to the Top competition, including its emphasis on measuring both student and teacher success at least partially in the form of standardized test scores, alongside the similarly standardized test-centric No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

Through a critical comparison of the two administrations’ policies, the author demonstrates that federal education policy since 2001 has supported an increasingly powerful “educational reform” movement whose actions have been harmful to American public schools. Existing research in education overwhelmingly rejects the actions represented by federal education policy.

Both major American political parties have enthusiastically embraced an increasingly powerful “educational reform” movement whose actions have been harmful to American public schools. Teachers, scholars of education, students, parents, and other stakeholders must continue to demonstrate in the public sphere their dissatisfaction with standardized test-centric policies; school closings euphemistically titled “turnarounds”; and other hallmarks of the “educational reformers.”

The purpose of this paper is to shed some light on the paradoxes of mainstream French anti- racism regarding Islamophobia. The authors focus on the driving role played by French republican values in the recurring inability of anti-racist activism, and anti-islamophobia in particular, to act upon the structural character of racism in France.

The authors’ analysis draws on a longitudinal and qualitative investigation of the “Sud-Education 93” controversy (SE93). The authors use the analytical framework provided by controversy studies in order to focus on the aftermath, in the public sphere, of the organisation by a French labour union of a minority-only workshop designed to provide teachers with a space for expression and purposeful guidance, in order to face Islamophobia and racism issues within French public schools. The authors collected an exhaustive set of data about the comments, criticisms and debates that emerged in the public sphere as a reaction to the workshop. The authors drew on situational analysis methodology, providing controversy analysts with several power-mapping techniques, in order to conduct a discursive analysis of the statements and claims made by the protagonists of the controversy.

First, the authors’ insights point out that French Islamophobia relies on the myth of the universal republican citizen that acts as a context-specific form of colour-blindism. Second, the authors shed light on the discursive and relational mechanisms that characterise the denial of Islamophobia undertaken by political actors who use “reverse racism” arguments as a form of backlash, i.e. a strategy of “fragility” (DiAngelo, 2018) consisting in maintaining artificially a never-ending controversy over Islamophobia. Finally, the authors discuss the role played by these strategies of fragility in the recurring rejection of anti-islamophobia activism in France and the limitations and prospects they embody for future forms of anti-racist strategies.

The Latourian perspective adopted in the paper focuses on the implications of the controversy over Islamophobia within the public sphere. The authors’ fieldwork suggests, however, that the internal dynamics of minority-only organisations embodies sites and répertoires of micro-contestation capable of bypassing on the short run, and perhaps overthrowing, the power of French hypocrisy about anti-racism and the backlash processes the authors observed in the public sphere.

The authors’ contribution lies in the in-depth analysis of “reverse racism” rhetorics as a strategy of fragility and its implications in terms of colour-blindism and backlash.

The purpose of this study was to examine major issues and perspectives emanating from teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic and proffer ways to reimagine P-12 (Pre-Kindergarten to 12th grade) education to achieve equity. The research question was “What major issues/challenges arose from COVID-19 pandemic teaching, and in what ways if any can these be ameliorated?” Tierney's concept of global meaning making provided a framework for the study in addition to critical digital pedagogy. Data for the study were collected from eight P-12 teachers drawn from both urban and rural school districts in the United States. Data sources were two questionnaires administered to teachers at the beginning and end of the study as well as teachers' reflective entries. Data analysis was done using thematic analysis. The major findings indicate that poverty and digital divide were the biggest challenges that impacted teaching and learning among the urban and rural students. Another major issue was teacher and student technology proficiency. In addition, there was a low level of student engagement which was caused by family dynamics, lack of accountability, and lack of self-regulation skills. Social emotional learning received great attention because students faced anxiety and stress. Findings from this study suggest the need to create equitable learning opportunities through equitable distribution of resources to disadvantaged students. Second, there is need to train teachers and students to effectively use digital tools for teaching and learning. We need to emphasize caring relationships and reconceptualize learning spaces.

This paper aims to share findings from an interview study with literacy educators who are working together to imagine and build a transformative, humanizing and expansive education.

Appreciative inquiry is a design and process that seeks ways to discover the potential of educators while also affirming what exists and using these insights to strengthen collective efforts (Cooperrider and Srivastva, 1987).

The educators’ narratives of solidarity provide us a window to see the collaborative transformative practices that create networks for educational justice. A model of expansive learning and solidarity is introduced.

While the focus in this paper has been on one social justice network, the author’s intention has been to describe and interpret the broader processes of expansive learning, collaborative transformative practices and narratives of solidarity.

This study offers a unique, contextualized perspective of educators working together to create social justice literacies and the kinds of learning communities that are necessary to do so.

Identifying the conditions necessary to build and sustain a network of social justice educators can promote the expansion of such networks.

Few studies have focused on literacy educators' narratives of solidarity and the thematic contours of solidarity in educational contexts. Further, this paper links the concepts of agency and solidarity.

Classist perspectives embedded in our meritocratic society permeate early childhood education. Curricula, instructional practices, and classroom interactions have the potential to send messages to children about who and what is valued by society; frequently influenced by the characteristics and abilities of a middle-class child. In order to best serve the needs and abilities of children from any social class, early childhood educators should be well versed in social-class sensitive pedagogy, a pedagogy that helps teachers to be inclusive of social class diversity in their classrooms. This chapter argues that aspects of Montessori theory, such as the four planes of development and the prepared adult, complement social-class sensitive pedagogy in ways that all early childhood educators may apply to their own teaching.

Commencing with publications in the 1970s, the purpose of this paper is to review the historical writing about Australian and New Zealand teachers over the past 50 years.

The paper incorporates men and women who led and taught in domestic spaces, per-school, primary, secondary and higher education. It is structured around publications in the ANZHES Journal and History of Education Review, and includes research published in other forums as appropriate. The literature review is selective rather than comprehensive.

Since the 1980s, the history of New Zealand and Australian teachers has mostly focussed on women educators in an increasing array of contexts, and incorporated various theoretical perspectives over time.

The paper highlights key themes and identifies potential directions for research into Australian and New Zealand teachers.

The purpose of this paper is to empower teachers to engage in a process of curricular transformation to integrate a social justice framework, even if it means starting with small steps.

The authors present a set of guiding principles on which social studies teachers can draw to transform their curriculum to embody a social justice framework within and across units of historical inquiry. The principles are anchored in an example historical unit, the Chicago Haymarket Affair of 1886, and an analogous contemporary sub-unit, The Exonerated Five (formerly The Central Park Five incident of 1989).

The guiding principles represent an accessible approach educators can flexibly apply to their process of curricular transformation. The authors provide a balanced approach of emphasizing the need for educators to restructure social studies curriculum with the feasibility of this process at larger or smaller scales according to educators' readiness for change.

The authors outline a process to empower teachers to change the status quo of their social studies teaching, at a scale determined by the teacher. The authors provide a practical, concrete set of guiding principles for educators to make changes that represent social justice integration aligned with existing social studies curriculum and standards. The authors encourage teachers to reflect on their readiness for and progress toward transforming their curriculum to integrate a social justice framework.

While it is generally well known that nonviolent collective action was widely deployed in the US southern civil rights movement, there is still much that we do not know about how that came to be. Drawing on primary data that consist of detailed semistructured interviews with members of the Nashville nonviolent movement during the late 1950s and 1960s, we contribute unique insights about how the nonviolent repertoire was diffused into one movement current that became integral to moving the wider southern movement. Innovating with the concept of serially linked movement schools – locations where the deeply intense work took place, the didactic and dialogical labor of analyzing, experimenting, creatively translating, and resocializing human agents in preparation for dangerous performance – we follow the biographical paths of carriers of the nonviolent Gandhian repertoire as it was learned, debated, transformed, and carried from India to the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) and Howard University to Nashville (TN) and then into multiple movement campaigns across the South. Members of the Nashville movement core cadre – products of the Nashville movement workshop schools – were especially important because they served as bridging leaders by serially linking schools and collective action campaigns. In this way, they played critical roles in bridging structural holes (places where the movement had yet to be successfully established) and were central to diffusing the movement throughout the South. Our theoretical and empirical approach contributes to the development of the dialogical perspective on movement diffusion generally and to knowledge about how the nonviolent repertoire became integral to the US civil rights movement in particular.