Many scholars have documented the critical importance of youth having access to spaces of joy and homeplaces in which they learn to matter. Research has shown that Black LGBTQ+ youth often struggle to locate homeplaces and spaces of joy in K-12 schooling contexts due to societal beliefs flowing from anti-blackness, (hetero)sexism, homophobia,…

Every school counselor must be fully prepared to build homeplace and Black Joy in K-12 education. For white school counselors, this requires an ongoing personal and professional commitment to cultural humility and racial identity development. Affinity groups can be an opportunity for white school counselors to develop cultural humility, racial…

Despite growing discussions of antiracist practices and policies in PK-20 schools, education tends to critique racist structures without providing solutions that bring into the conversation the lived experiences of Black students, families, and communities. While these critiques may be helpful, we suggest these critiques omit practices and…

Over the past 2 decades, scholars in various educational contexts have examined Bandura's theorizing about how self-efficacy develops. Bandura proposed 4 primary informational sources of self-efficacy--enactive experiences, vicarious experiences, social persuasions, and physiological and affective states--each of which can be supported in…

This article builds upon prior work by suggesting how public, K-12 education systems across the United States can address longstanding opportunity gaps in STEM education. More specifically, we bring together the work of critical perspectives in education, STEM pathway research, as well as best practices from teaching and learning scholarship. We…

While there are low percentages of Black males as educators, psychologists, pediatricians, and psychiatrists, Black students are more likely to have a Black male athletic coach. Previous research on the role of Black male coaches has demonstrated that there are several positive outcomes (i.e., academics, social skills, and reducing misbehaviors to…

Arguably, K-12 schools are caught in the crossfire of a political divide in this country. This division is evidenced through examples of parent frustration toward school leaders' attempts (or lack thereof) to address important topics like racism in schools. Although the democratic ideal promotes student exposure to differing viewpoints in order to…

This article disentangles social and emotional learning (SEL) into its 2 constitutive parts--sociality and emotionality through a backward mapping of the School Development Program (SDP) developed by James Comer. This article argues that Comer's school-level intervention is a process model for how to achieve SEL outcomes given its intentionality…

When inequitable situations arise, principals with strong SEL skills have a clear understanding of social emotional learning implementation to support teachers and are prepared to expose implicit bias with difficult conversations that allow teachers to examine personal beliefs and behaviors. In this article, we outline how to support SEL learning…

Schools are adopting social emotional learning (SEL) programs, intending to provide students with intrapersonal and interpersonal skills to better prepare them for life. Transformative SEL is designed to promote the building of relationships between diverse students and educators to build more just schools and society. Because SEL models are…

Although we can be proud of the way that K-12 educators and students battled the COVID-19 online learning storm, the experience may not provide the most representative version of what "online learning" can be. Many teachers, students, and parents were left with a distaste for this experience even though the emergency shift varied…

Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) have recently proliferated among schools. Although MBIs show much promise in alleviating mental distress, their increase in school settings may outpace the evidence base for such implementation. In the present literature review, we define the different types of MBIs implemented in school settings:…

Recently, false accusations of Critical Race Theory (CRT) being taught in elementary and secondary schools have emerged in response to culturally relevant, sustaining, and revitalizing curricula; this pushback makes it difficult for many educators to safely employ culturally relevant literature in their classrooms. This article confronts the…

The ability to write is fundamental for learning and achievement across Grades K-12, performance in the workplace, continuing education, college, personal development, and addressing social justice. The majority of our students, however, are not capable writers. We have a body of evidence-based practices (EBPs) and best practices that can make a…

This study examines the limited use of technology as a potential obstacle to educational progress and development. Grounding our work in social justice issues reflected in the "Pedagogy of the Oppressed," "banking education" was reviewed to articulate this use of technology, including the limited students' engagement,…