Teaching to Empower: Social Justice Action Projects as Imperatives for Educational Justice

Session Type: Invited Speaker Session

Abstract

Teaching to empower requires a critical focus on the unique challenges and opportunities of teaching in socially unjust educational environments. Effective teaching happens in an environment that engages students and teachers in critical investigation of content, knowledge, and activities. Critical learning environments simultaneously nurture the development of multiple perspectives and challenge the status quo. Establishing a critical learning environment is imperative in an educational system that is plagued with academic and social injustices. Therefore, teaching to empower necessitates those teachers, with the help of students, dismantle injustices through culturally responsive teaching, the development of agency and activism, the growth of multiple perspectives, and the capacity to challenge the status quo.

Sub Unit

• Social Justice Action Committee

Chair

• Quaylan Allen, Chapman University

Participants

• Ayana Allen-Handy, Drexel University

• John A. Williams, Texas A&M University

• Bettie Ray Butler, University of North Carolina - Charlotte

• Alysha Meloche, Villanova University

• Chance W. Lewis, University of North Carolina - Charlotte

Discussant

• Stephen D. Hancock, North Carolina A&T State University