Teacher Activists and Social Movements: How Social Movement Learning Translates into Pedagogical Practice

• In Event: Advocacy, Community, and Transformative Practice in Education

Abstract

Given intensifying attacks on public education, we have much to learn from those who are and have been fighting back. This paper is a case study of how one left-leaning educator collective, NYCoRE, participated in three social movements and connected those movements to education. It addresses the following: What strategies has NYCoRE used when participating in social movements? To what extent did those strategies link social movements to educational practice? Drawing from literature on social movement learning, this study found that educators, as both state and social movement actors, bridged the two by bringing movements into the classroom through curricula and relationships. School administrators served as a key factor that supported or prevented educators from enacting these social movement pedagogies.

Author

• Jennifer Queenan, Graduate Center - CUNY