Dreams No Longer Deferred: New Possibilities for Critically Just Democracy in Educational Leadership and Practice

• In Event: Equity-Focused Leadership Possibilities and Practices

Abstract

Schools are not neutral spaces as they exist within our democratic ecosystem, and fail to keep up with sociocultural demands of our diverse student population. Political movements in education conflate democratic justice with economic productivity/stability, ignoring and perpetuating inequity. In this presentation we uncover inequitable structures and processes, veiled in a veneer of democracy, to reimagine education as critically-just democracy. We explain critically-just democracy by identifying hegemony, neoliberalism, and dispossession in education, and then analyze two case studies of high schools that are riddled by the aforementioned phenomena, but also showing promise for critically-just practices. Actionable critically-just practices are presented as an explicit call to action for transformative work in the 21st century.

Authors

• Lisa Fetman, Florida Southern College

• Linsay DeMartino, Arizona State University