This paper reports the struggles of 24 pre-service teachers (PTs) while intentionally integrating anti-racist pedagogy in which they were trained in a secondary teacher education program. PTs participating in this study are from various disciplines (i.e. Science, Math, English and Social Studies). Our findings reveal a multitude of struggles that…

I developed a new global curriculum, Schoobio, in which middle and high school students become citizen scientists and change agents as they engage in transdisciplinary activities culminating in their advocacy for biocultural diversity on their school grounds. The foundation for this place-based learning curriculum is pragmatic constructivism, a…

This qualitative multiple case study assesses two locally designed instructional artifacts created to support teacher enactment of culturally relevant educational (CRE) practices. Attention is paid to artifact's ability to support collective teacher use of CRE and the ways that artifacts acted as proxies for instructional leadership. Findings…

This study is a qualitative case study of middle schools located in a rural public school district in a southern state in the United States that has implemented the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) which explored the roles of education leaders in the implementation of NGSS. Participants included teachers, instructional coaches, and…

Consequential learning is an equity-oriented framework in which students create learning pathways to pursue what matters to themselves and to the communities they care about. In this paper, I seek to identify the moments of consequential learning from a story in which my students and I danced together to express a set of scientific knowledge:…

Promoting active citizenship is seen as invaluable for educational practices in schools particularly in existing social, political, economic, and cultural context of Turkish society. The present study is part of a European Union project that aimed to help students develop knowledge, skills, attitudes and values to actively participate in…

Service learning has been established as a promising method of teaching and learning that engages youth as change agents in their schools and communities. But service learning has not been widely implemented or studied in rural K-12 schools. This study explores the case of a service learning curriculum, the Working Together Project (WTP), in a…

Designed in response to students' requests for a capstone where they could form their own individual partnerships in the communities of their choosing, Effective Change Agent offers a structure for community-based learning that allows for high levels of student choice-making and agency. In this article, the authors describe the course; connect it…

We investigated teacher leadership in 18 middle schools in one district engaged in an initiative to scale up Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR). This mixed-methods analysis found variability in CSR teacher leadership, including the number of hours allotted for release time to support the initiative, the activities teacher leaders enacted, and…

Makerspaces are fertile grounds for students to develop innovative products infused with STEAM principles and cross disciplinary content knowledge; build technological fluency; and support positive developmental growth. Yet, rarely do Makerspaces prioritize these outcomes. Rather, they tend to revolve around the creation of novel objects using…

In this article, the authors discuss how to explore the agency of ordinary citizens using local institutions to combat Jim Crow segregation laws during Freedom Summer. Primary sources from Miami (OH) University website about Freedom Summer and Susan Goldman Rubin's trade book ground the inquiry. Through the series of activities discussed, middle…

This qualitative study investigated the engagement and leadership experiences of 12 Black and Latino male college students at a Hispanic-serving institution. Specifically, we explore how these students understood and made meaning of their experiences as mentors for local middle school and high school males of color. The students articulated three…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to inquire into the effectiveness of authentic writing instruction embedded in a critical service-learning project in a middle school English Language Arts curriculum. Design/methodology/approach: This paper analyzes middle school students' survey responses before and after their participation in a critical…

Youth-led participatory action research (YPAR) has been documented to increase youth's social, emotional, and cognitive outcomes, foster critical thinking and academic success, and encourage civic participation. YPAR allows for young to develop their voices, direct their own learning and act as change agents as they take steps to influence their…

In this essay, our purposes are to inspire particular avenues of future research addressing Transgender students, in middle school in particular, and to inform the professional development of teachers in support of these Transgender youth. In relation to the ways in which research can more authentically represent Transgender identity, we argue for…