Building Momentum in Student Engagement: Alternative Breaks and Students’ Social Justice and Diversity Orientation

This chapter presents an ethical decision-making for student engagement from a social justice perspective. It discusses what social justice means by presenting some principles gathered from existing related research literature supported by teacher voices that are gathered from written survey. Student engagement and the factors that influence it are discussed highlighting them from a socially and culturally situated perspective. Motivational and sociocultural factors such as funds of knowledge, race, social capital, and cultural capital are presented to demonstrate why mere access is not enough as an ethical and equitable way of engaging student to achieve positive outcomes. Access must be activated by providing students ample opportunities to experience a sense of belonging, teacher trust that they are competent learners, recognition of their identities and interests, and meaningful engagements.

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Student Engagement for Equity and Social Justice: Creating Space for Student Voice

Teaching and Learning ◽

10.26522/tl.v7i2.417 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 7 (2) ◽

Author(s):

Brenda McMahon ◽

Geoff Munns ◽

John Smyth ◽

David Zyngier

Keyword(s):

Social Justice ◽

Student Engagement ◽

Low Income ◽

Student Voice ◽

Learning Processes ◽

Visible Minority ◽

Marginalized Students ◽

Low Income Students ◽

Cognitive Levels ◽

Teaching Learning

This paper describes three student engagement initiatives that have been successfully implemented in Australia and Canada, where social justice educators are struggling with issues resulting from reforms that marginalize visible minority and low-income students. The projects envision student engagement in critical democratic ways. Using different strategies, they are informed by approaches that: respect students, educators and teaching/learning processes; connect on emotional as well as cognitive levels; and shift away from narrow notions of schooling to broader visions of education for marginalized students. Transferable to other locations, these programmes provide insights into what is possible when student engagement is enacted in equitable, socially just, and transformative environments.

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Maintaining a Socially Just Classroom

Research Anthology on Instilling Social Justice in the Classroom ◽

10.4018/978-1-7998-7706-6.ch068 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1195-1210

Author(s):

Jose W. Lalas ◽

Joanna Linda Lalas

Keyword(s):

Social Justice ◽

Student Engagement ◽

Cultural Capital ◽

Ethical Decision Making ◽

Funds Of Knowledge ◽

Research Literature ◽

Sociocultural Factors ◽

Related Research ◽

Situated Perspective ◽

Engaging Student

This chapter presents an ethical decision-making for student engagement from a social justice perspective. It discusses what social justice means by presenting some principles gathered from existing related research literature supported by teacher voices that are gathered from written survey. Student engagement and the factors that influence it are discussed highlighting them from a socially and culturally situated perspective. Motivational and sociocultural factors such as funds of knowledge, race, social capital, and cultural capital are presented to demonstrate why mere access is not enough as an ethical and equitable way of engaging student to achieve positive outcomes. Access must be activated by providing students ample opportunities to experience a sense of belonging, teacher trust that they are competent learners, recognition of their identities and interests, and meaningful engagements.

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Exploring Social Justice Issues Through Diverse Youth Literature

Advances in Early Childhood and K-12 Education - Handbook of Research on Teaching Diverse Youth Literature to Pre-Service Professionals ◽

10.4018/978-1-7998-7375-4.ch024 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 482-499

Author(s):

Susan M. Tyrrell

Keyword(s):

Social Justice ◽

Student Engagement ◽

Gender Roles ◽

Community Activism ◽

Early Literature ◽

Clear Cut ◽

Secondary Classroom ◽

Multiple Cultures ◽

Diverse Youth ◽

Youth Literature

Early youth literature focused almost wholly on didacticism, a sort of social justice of puritanical nature, moralizing youth on the straight and narrow. Today's “straight and narrow,” however, is not as clear cut, and social justice exploration through diverse youth literature is a necessary journey for modern youth. This journey steers students into knowledge about multiple cultures, races, gender roles. The author explores the history and inception of early literature for youth in this chapter, then explores ways in which modern issues may be explored in the secondary classroom through projects which both foster student engagement, as well as bring about potential class and community activism, further promoting social justice to, ideally, erase prejudice, one book at a time. While the author uses a few specific books as examples, many books fit these roles and would be relevant to these types of studies and projects.

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Incorporating Social Justice, Community Partnerships, and Student Engagement in Community Health Nursing Courses

Teaching and Learning in Nursing ◽

10.1016/j.teln.2019.02.006 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 14 (3) ◽

pp. 183-185 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Brenna L. Quinn ◽

Mazen El Ghaziri ◽

Margaret Knight

Keyword(s):

Social Justice ◽

Student Engagement ◽

Community Health ◽

Community Partnerships ◽

Community Health Nursing ◽

Health Nursing ◽

Nursing Courses

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What’s in a Name? Unpacking Students’ Roles in Higher Education through Neoliberal and Social Justice Lenses

Teaching & Learning Inquiry The ISSOTL Journal ◽

10.20343/teachlearninqu.7.2.5 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 7 (2) ◽

pp. 73-89 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Mollie Dollinger ◽

Lucy Mercer-Mapstone

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

Social Justice ◽

Student Engagement ◽

Change Agents ◽

Research Area ◽

Research And Practice ◽

Changing Roles ◽

Higher Education Experiences

There has been an increase in research and practice exploring how students can gain agency to shape higher education experiences. Numerous terms evoking certain metaphors have entered the discussions around engaging students, from students as consumers or producers, to students as creators, partners, or change agents. There is scope within the evolving literature to explore the differentiations between these metaphors and how underlying assumptions ultimately shape our practices and research. We thus unpack the above five metaphors frequently used to redefine students’ roles in higher education. We then engage in a dialogue across differences: highlighting how our own two distinct perspectives on the research area and practice – grounded in neoliberalism and social justice – align, overlap, differ, and provide constraints or affordances for student engagement. We offer a critical and reflective commentary questioning the drivers of students’ changing roles in higher education in the hope of inviting others into generative dialogue toward expanding the evolving field of student engagement.

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Engagement and Attainment: The Longer-Run Effects of Ethnic Studies

10.31219/osf.io/7dyrq ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Sade Bonilla ◽

Thomas Sean Dee ◽

Emily K. Penner

Keyword(s):

High School ◽

Social Justice ◽

Public Schools ◽

Student Engagement ◽

San Francisco ◽

Regression Discontinuity ◽

Ethnic Studies ◽

High School Graduation ◽

Quantitative Evidence ◽

School Graduation

Increased interest in anti-racist education has motivated the rapidly growing but politically contentious adoption of ethnic-studies (ES) courses in U.S. public schools. A long-standing rationale for ES courses is that their emphasis on culturally relevant and critically engaged content (e.g., social justice, anti-racism, stereotypes, contemporary social movements) has potent effects on student engagement and outcomes. However, the quantitative evidence supporting this claim is limited. In this pre- registered, regression-discontinuity study, we examine the longer-run impact of a grade-9 ES course offered in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD). Our key confirmatory finding is that assignment to this course significantly increased the probability of high-school graduation among students near the grade-GPA threshold (i.e., 2.0 GPA in grade 8) used for assigning students to the course. Our exploratory analyses also indicate that this assignment increased measures of engagement throughout high school (e.g., attendance) as well as the probability of postsecondary matriculation.

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