Imagining Liberatory Futures: Pivotal Moments in the Making of Justice-Oriented Teachers of Color

• In Event: Teachers of Color Learning, Resisting, and Designing for Equitable Futures

Abstract

We are in a national moment where critical perspectives are being silenced (Hornbeck & Malin, 2023). Justice-oriented educators face growing personal and professional threats—including lawfare, surveillance, and doxxing—for their commitments to equity and transformation. While research has documented how teachers of color use frameworks like culturally relevant pedagogy (Villegas & Irvine, 2010), less is known about how they adopt and sustain these stances under threat. This study explores the development of a justice orientation among 22 teachers of color, focusing on the pivotal moments that shaped their engagement with critical pedagogies amid systemic repression and contradiction.

This work is grounded in social justice pedagogy, informed by critical pedagogy (Freire, 2000), culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995), and dignity-affirming learning (Espinoza and Vossoughi, 2014), which frame education as a tool for developing political clarity and collective transformation (Freire & Macedo, 1993). Justice-centered teaching requires educators to examine and challenge the social, historical, and political contexts that shape schooling and oppression by attending to the intersections of race, class, gender, imperialism, and power.
This qualitative study draws from a nationwide dataset examining the pathways and practices of self-identified justice-oriented K-12 teachers. We integrated survey and interview data and used NVivo for inductive coding, followed by deductive coding informed by theory and frameworks on social justice and critical pedagogy. We focused on excerpts in which educators connected their practices to the local and national political climate, highlighting pivotal moments of 22 teachers of color.
Participants consistently described how their identities and positionalities, as former K–12 students and current educators, shaped their commitments to socially just pedagogy.
Nineteen teachers described pivotal moments in their classrooms; one history teacher recalled joining a student walkout in response to Trump’s first inauguration. Reflecting on the administration’s impacts on their students' families, it solidified their stance of teaching history with anti-racist goals, and ultimately became an ethnic studies teacher.
Fifteen teachers described K-12 experiences as pivotal. An Indigenous elementary teacher spoke of the absence of Native teachers and culturally relevant materials throughout her schooling. This motivated her to be that representation for her students and design social studies curriculum that support both Native and non-Native educators to create more just, relevant learning experiences. While this work might generate particular pushback at this moment, we also note that Indigenous peoples have been navigating erasure in curriculum as fundamental to American schooling (Sabzalian, 2019).
Most participants did not attend teacher preparation programs that centered on culturally relevant or critical pedagogy. Instead, their critical consciousness developed through personal identity work and lived experience. This points to a significant gap in teacher education.
The development of a socially just pedagogy is rooted in deep identity work and critical reflection. Our findings underscore the importance of teacher preparation programs that center identity, positionality, and reflexivity—not only for teachers of color, but for all educators. Amidst of the threats targeting critical education, centering pivotal moments in teachers’ justice journeys “unforgets” the lived histories of teachers of color and offers insight for reimaging justice-centered teacher education and research.

Authors

• Alexis Patterson Williams, University of California - Davis

• Téa Skye Pusey, University of California - Davis

• Christopher Jadallah, University of California - Los Angeles