Social justice beliefs and curricular freedom: Factors supporting critical composition pedagogy in a U.S. middle school
Section snippets
Defining urban
Although important for all, critical pedagogy is particularly important for youth in socially stratified countries, such as the United States. Across the United States, high concentrations of people of color live in poverty and the majority of economically disadvantaged students of color and students whose first language is not English attend U.S. urban schools (Milner & Lomotey, 2014). We employ Milner’s (2012) distinctions between urban intensive, urban emergent, and urban characteristic. The
Methods
Although our guiding questions, enumerated in the introduction, start with “what,” we sought to understand how Greta teaches and why she teaches the way she does. We employed a single-case study design (Yin, 2014) that was well-suited for analyzing the inherently complex process of teaching (Cochran-Smith, 2003). Yin (2014) presents a two-fold definition of case study as: 1) an empirical, in-depth inquiry into a complex, social phenomenon within a real-world context where “boundaries between
Findings
In our findings, we first describe Greta's instruction to examine to what extent her practices align with CCP tenets and illustrate what CCP looks like in a middle school. Second, we explore factors that may have enabled or impeded Greta in implementing CCP.
Discussion
Overall, Greta's instructional practices represent all five CCP tenets and demonstrate how CCP can be enacted in a middle school setting. Greta promoted problem-posing by choosing topics focused on social issues with imbalanced power relations, and supported dialogism by inviting students to explore diverse perspectives on various issues, discuss topics with one another in small groups, and engage in whole class discussions. One element we did not frequently observe was extended dialogue among
Implications for teacher education
Teacher educators, classroom teachers, and instructional coaches can contribute to increasing access to critical pedagogy through working with districts and schools to ensure that pacing guides, textbooks, and lesson plans are flexible and support rather than impede CCP. Two resources for developing criticality are Muhammad’s (2018) equity-based standards for literacy learning that integrate skills, knowledge, identity and criticality, and the CCP analytic tool offered in this study (Table 1).
Noble work
Returning to Greta's words, she claims, “Our work as educators could be noble in these present times,” specifying that this work requires re-education in our “thinking about race, class & access.” We believe that Greta is doing this noble work, in large part due to her own knowledge and beliefs about critical education. Yet City Charter has many affordances for CCP that may not be present at other urban, public schools, especially schools serving mostly Black and Brown students who have
Funding
This work was supported by the Spencer Foundation [201700071].
Acknowledgements
We want to express our sincere gratitude to our participants for allowing us access to their classrooms and their willingness to give the gifts of their time and thinking to this project.
References (70)
- et al.
Views from the classroom: Teachers' opinions of statewide testing programs
Theory and Practice
(2003) Pedagogical foundations for social justice education
The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian
(2007)Can education change society?
(2013)The dialogic imagination: Four essays
Theoretical foundations for social justice education
- et al.
Righting technologies: How large-scale assessment canfoster a more equitable education system
Berkeley Review of Education
(2017) - et al.
Reframing for social justice: The influence of critical friendship groups on preservice teachers’ reflective practice
Journal of Teacher Education
(2017) Aiming for authenticity: Successes and struggles of an attempt to increase authenticity in writing
Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy
(2019)- et al.
The art of argument: Research-based essays
(2014)