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Cultural competence (CC) education has become mandatory in the training and licensure of many fields today. Meeting this demand presents quite a challenge as teaching CC is not the same every time, everywhere, every place. With diverse dynamics across higher education settings, the educator is tasked with being able to discern the needs of the classroom, ascertain which best practice is most applicable in any given moment and to decide how best to tailor classroom discussions based on the current socio-political climate, and the various social identities and personally held values and beliefs present.

In this chapter, using a social justice framework, the author will share lessons learned in teaching CC in various subjects, to diverse classes (i.e., different racial/ethnic compositions, a range of socioeconomic status, sexual orientations, gender identities, political leanings, etc.) with a focus on how these dynamics can be leveraged to positively influence the delivery of material. Lessons learned, challenges faced along the way and answers to questions such as, “What do you do when men want to dominate discussions on gender?”; “What do you do when white students want to dominate discussions of race?”; “How do you allow marginalized students space to speak freely without making them feel like they are the token spokesperson for their social group?”; and “How do you attend to the feelings of members of majority groups who feel silenced during discussions of diversity?” will be reviewed.

In this article, the author draws on Janks’ territory beyond reason as well as literature on (critically) reflective writing. The purpose of this paper is to explore how a space for personal, affective writing in the classroom might enable teachers, students and learners to 1) come to terms with gender as a social practice, 2) locate themselves in the relations of power, marginalisation and subversion being explored and 3) negotiate the internal contradictions that come with personal and social transformation. The author presents and unpacks how second-year undergraduate Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.) students at a prominent university in Johannesburg, South Africa, unpacked issues of gender and sexual diversity in a critical literacy course. This paper focuses on students’ completion of a reflective writing task but is situated in a broader study on critical literacy and gender and sexual diversity. The findings suggest the need for sustained critically reflective writing in the classroom and continued research on critical literacy as both a rationalist and affective project. Furthermore, the findings suggest ways in which critically reflective writing was used to create a space where students could place themselves into the content and relations of power being studied and identify and unpack the ways in which discourses of power have informed their own identities over time, with the intent to develop the capacity to position themselves in more socially conscious ways. This study, therefore, illustrates only a fraction of how students might use reflective writing to come to terms with controversial topics, place themselves in the systems of power, explore marginalisation or subversion and negotiate the internal contradictions of transformation. However, the data also suggest that there is potential for this practice to have a greater role in classroom practice, a deeper effect on learners’ understanding of self and society and further research on the impact of critical reflection in the classroom.

In this paper, the author presents and unpacks how second-year undergraduate B.Ed. students at a prominent university in Johannesburg, South Africa, unpacked issues of gender and sexual diversity through reflective writing in a critical literacy course.

The findings suggest the need for sustained critically reflective writing in the classroom and continued research in critical literacy as both a rationalist and affective project. The students who participated in this research revealed the ways in which critically reflective writing might be used to create a space where students place themselves into the content and relations of power being studied, identify and unpack the ways in which discourses of power have informed their own identities over time, and, perhaps, develop the capacity to position themselves in more socially conscious ways.

While the findings reveal the need for continued practice and research in the territories beyond a rationalist critical literacy, they are based on a small data set in a single context.

Findings from the analysis of the data suggest that there is potential for critically reflective writing to have a greater role in classroom practice, a deeper effect on learners’ understanding of self and society and further research on the impact of critically reflective writing in the classroom. Perhaps a sustained practice of critically reflective writing is what is needed, as well as processes of self and peer evaluations that put that writing up for critical analysis.

There is scope for further, long-term research in the role of critically reflective writing, critical literacy classrooms and the territory beyond reason across social issues and educational contexts. Existing resources on critically reflective writing are vital for imagining what this prolonged practice might look like in classrooms (Ryan and Ryan, 2013; Lui, 2015; Pennell, 2019).

The data presented here are limited and illustrate only a fraction of how students might use reflective writing to come to terms with controversial topics, place themselves in the systems of power/marginalisation/subordination/subversion being explored and negotiate the internal contradictions of transformation. However, these data also suggest that there is potential for this practice to have a greater role in classroom practice, a deeper effect on learners’ understanding of self and society and further research on the impact of critical reflexivity in the classroom.

In this study, a teacher-researcher examined his students’ conceptions of Whiteness within U.S. history courses at an ethnically and economically diverse urban high school. Using critical race theory as the lens, this mixed method study found most students could explain the role of race in history. Students of color were more likely to express racism is common in the current day, while White students were more likely to express racism as uncommon. Whites were more likely to express racism as on a dramatic decline or the result of a few individuals. This study highlights the positive impact a race-conscious social studies classroom can have on all students. It also shows the many barriers teachers face in helping White students understand their roles in a system privileging them because of their skin color.

In the 30 years since Giroux (1983) named schools as a site of resistance, little has happened to sustain and embed that practice in schools. The contexts, structures, and policies in schools do not foster opportunities for resistance, and schools of education do not prepare teachers to support students’ critical actions in schools, ensuring the reproduction of inequity and injustice. While this is true for all historically marginalized groups, the specific legacy of discrimination (i.e., threats of deportation) faced by Latinx students and communities in the western United States often serves to silence their voices and efforts at resistance (Darder, Noguera, Fuentes, & Sanchez, 2012). In this chapter, we examine data from a student voice research project, including weekly observations (n = 102) for the school year across three public school classrooms, teacher reflections, and student work. This work is framed by the theory of sociopolitical development, implicating both teachers and students in the process of resistance and liberation. The data we explore captures (1) early conversations between students and teachers about issues of racial and economic injustice, (2) the initial resistance of students to having those conversations, (3) increasing trust between teachers and students supporting engagement with the issues, (4) students’ active resistance toward the issues that impacted them, (5) teachers and students working together to challenge unjust policies – at the school, district, and state level.

This chapter examines the importance of social justice courses from a majority student's perspective and outlines some of the difficulties in offering these courses. It discusses the benefits of social justice courses for both minority and majority students and focuses on the challenges of understanding and acknowledging the impact of the types of privilege and power that majority individuals experience. The concept of intersectionality, the compounding of injustice for individuals who have multiple minority identities, is explored. Finally, a four-phase model is proposed that can be used to describe the journey that majority students experience as they begin to understand the impact of privilege both on a personal and societal level.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a very difficult, yet all important and ongoing research question – how do we best use online collaborative learning modalities (CLM) to supplement conversations in multicultural education courses?

This qualitative study examined emergent themes in asynchronous threaded discussions created by 23 students within a Master's level multicultural education course at a large land‐grant university in the USA.

Engagement in threaded discussions fostered student understanding of a systems perspective of social realities. Power, privilege, and oppression related to race, gender, and economics in the USA were explored through student use of real world, concrete examples – something that does not always occur in face‐to‐face classroom encounters constrained by time and the pacing of curriculum.

Researchers would like to see more empirical research in using technologically mediated, CLM to foster conversations surrounding power, oppression, and privilege in efforts to advance the pedagogies of critical multicultural education.

Using threaded discussions seems to be a promising practice in teaching critical multicultural education content.

This research project provides understanding of how CLM can help establish systems perspectives – perspectives critical to multicultural education.

This paper advances the conversation related to promising practices in multicultural education. Scarce empirical research exists related to critical approaches to multicultural education online.

This chapter provides an overview of Freire's primary approach to how governments control people, why governments dictate what is being taught and why they seek out control over educators. This chapter investigates the similarities Freire found between the most oppressive governments and dictatorships that rules by violence, to how our educational institutions are controlled. The stakes might be entirely different in these scenarios, but he knew the ultimate objective in all these situations was to remove power from the people, give it to a powerful few and ensure the people would never be able to regain control once more. These ideas and suggestions are key moving forward because it provides a baseline to understand how Freire thought about manipulative behaviours, and why tactics used in extremely violent situations can essentially be watered down and used to control people in universities in much the same way.

This essay argues for a a radical interactionist framework using autoethnographic tools as well as critical feminist perspectives. Not all “masculine” systems are necessarily all “evil” and “feminist” systems are not unambiguously good, devoid of context. The vantage point from which I engage Lonnie Athens’ work on radical interactionism is rooted personally and professionally: as a woman of color who was formerly a tenured Associate Professor of English and Humanities turned joint Juris Doctor in Law and Women’s Studies Graduate and Teaching Fellow in Women’s Studies.

An autoethnographic exploration of critical pedagogies, as practiced by law professors, concretely shows that a radical interactionist framework more accurately describes the fluctuating borders of power in the classroom. In addition, feminist critiques against Athens’ work, as evidenced, for example, by Deegan’s critique of the “patriarchal” type of “Chicago pragmatism” practiced by Mead, suffer from similar simplistic binaries as Noddings’ “ethic of care” – which reduces gender to sex, and unconditionally idealizes the “feminine” as “feminist.” Most importantly, this biologically determinist perspective does not take into the account the lived realities of lesbians and women of color, for whom the principle of domination is always, already a part of the worlds into which they are flung.

This chapter closes with an examination of how an acceptance of the radical interactionist principle of domination combined with an intersectional approach, rather than a binary of gender, could yield fruitful results in new areas of application, such as international human rights, and critical race theory and criminal law.

This chapter draws on developmental intergroup theory, parental ethnic-racial socialization literature, anti-bias curricula, and prejudice intervention studies to address the appropriateness of discussing race and racism in early childhood settings. Existing literature about teacher discussions surrounding race and racism is reviewed, best practices are shared, and the need for more research in this area is highlighted. The construct of parental ethnic-racial socialization is mapped onto early childhood anti-bias classroom practices. The chapter also outlines racial ideologies of teachers, specifically anti-bias and colorblind attitudes, and discusses how these ideologies may manifest in classroom practices surrounding race and racism. Colorblind ideology is problematized and dissected to show that colorblind practices may harm children. Young children’s interpretations of race and racism, in light of children’s cognitive developmental level, are discussed. Additionally, findings from racial prejudice intervention studies are applied to teaching. Early literacy practices surrounding race and racism are outlined with practical suggestions for teachers and teacher educators. Moreover, implications of teacher practices surrounding race and racism for children’s development, professional development, and teacher education are discussed.

This chapter expresses the need for an increase or reforestation of Black scholarship and examines the complexity of race in a White privileged institution of higher education. It is written with an understanding of Critical Race Theory's counter-narrative benefits and models the power of voice in the classroom of a Black student and a White teacher and their roles in creating a “safe space for race talk” in the classroom.