A Distributed Leadership Perspective for Critical Consciousness in Middle Grades

In middle-grades settings, students are cultivating critical consciousness to apply general knowledge of equity to their local context(s) (Nojan, 2020). As educators work to foster environments that allow middle-grade students to cultivate critical consciousness, expectations have shifted in the area of leading for equity. We have outlined a leadership framework we believe will advance the collective critical consciousness with examples for middle-grade contexts. Our focus is working toward equitable outcomes through one’s sociopolitical development and creating ways to further the collective critical consciousness of the entire school community through a distributed leadership perspective. Through this lens, our hope is to outline how educational leaders may develop their critical consciousness in the context of their priorities as well as work towards a shared sense of critical consciousness and sociopolitical action in the classrooms, schools, districts, and the wider community

Embracing the kaleidoscope: Four teachers\u27 journeys towards sociopolitical development

Taliaferro Baszile (2017) tells us, Education can be revolutionary work. To that end, if education historically has been a means for inculcating students into a hegemonic code of beliefs and values (Gramsci, 1971), it is the educator\u27s duty to concern themselves with developing a critical consciousness (Freire, 1970/1996; Freire, 1973/1998) in order to transform the world through acts of social justice. The focus of this research project was to uncover, from the perspectives of four teachers, how they came to understand their own critical consciousness and sociopolitical development at a middle school in southern New Jersey. By uncovering the ways these four teachers describe their sociopolitical development and enact critical pedagogies in their classrooms, engage in building relationships with students, families, and staff, and commit to improving equity in their school through a collective mural of their individual journeys, we may bring meaning on how best to inform prepare pre- and in-service teacher educators about how to better prepare teachers- and particularly White teachers-to be agents of change, disrupting inequitable educational systems (Zion, Allen, & Jean, 2015)

The Role of Anti-racist Pedagogy and Practices in Professional Development Schools

The recent events of the COVID-19 pandemic, the revision of the National Association for Professional Development Schools’ Nine Essentials to be more explicit in their anti-racism/social justice efforts, and the continued racially motivated attacks on Black and Indigenous People of Color, led to questioning and challenging Professional Development Schools (PDS) work because elements of social justice and equity were not always explicit. Literature supports that PDSs can be a site for helping pre-and in-service teachers develop an anti-racist stance. Embedded professional development, coursework, and field experiences in PDSs that enact culturally relevant, culturally sustaining, and equity-based pedagogies can help teachers breach the disconnect between theory and praxis, understand their own biases, disrupt deficit ways of thinking, and design learning experiences to meet the needs of P-12 learners

Lunch & Learn with Dr. Michael Apple

This is a video recording of the Rowan University Lunch & Learn program held on March 4, 2021. This program was a virtual panel discussion to showcase the newly acquired Michael Apple Collection in the Archives