Curriculum and Social Inquiry Commons^™

Transforming Equity: A Systemic Analysis Of The Equity Model Of Social Justice Education Through The Lens Of Conflict Transformation Theory, Precious J. Golden

University Honors Theses

Current pedagogical theory and practices grounded in social justice aim to rectify systemic barriers to equity, yet despite decades of teaching through a social justice lens, social inequality and cultural division are on the rise.  "Justice," as a noun, has several meanings (Cambridge Dictionary). It can mean "judge", "law," or "fairness," and justice, no matter its meaning or its need, is achieved through methods of conflict resolution and conflict transformation. This inquiry seeks to present conflict transformation as a radical means of achieving transformative social justice, bringing voice to the voiceless and oppressed, and rectifying the contradictions in the current …

Illuminating Two Secondary Schoolteachers’ Praxes On A ‘Terrain Of Freedom:’ Lessons For Teacher Education, Paul Tarc, Nicholas Ng-A-Fook, Tasha Ausman, Catherine James

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

This paper attunes to the stated focus of this special issue—teacher subjectivities on a terrain of freedom—to consider the qualities, possibilities and limits of teachers’ praxes and development upon this ‘terrain.’ In response to the call, we explore three critical questions: 1) Where does the teacher’s freedom lie amidst required protocols and standardization?; 2) Can teachers transcend how they have been conceived and conditioned?; and 3) How can teachers engage in transformative development? Through a "poetics of teaching," inspired by Hansen (2004), we frame teaching as a curricular and pedagogical art form that melds interdisciplinary, intellectual, aesthetic, and …

Acompañamiento And Assessment: Examples Of Community Building Through Assignments In A First-Year Class, Shaianne Tran, Hector Amezola, Dalissa Rodriguez, Morgan Baird, Jennifer Fuentes Luna, Alejandra Vazquez, Fattemah Zia, David Peterson Del Mar

Amplify: A Journal of Writing-as-Activism

This collection of seven diverse assignments written by students from under-represented communities for a first-year inquiry class on immigration, migration, and belonging illustrates how instructors can facilitate a sense of belonging or acompañamiento through course assignments, assessment instruments. Each of the student authors provides a retrospective introduction on how their personal reflection, essay, or research project helped them to make personal connections within or outside of the class. The instructor provides a brief introduction to the concept of acompañamiento and why it is particularly important for New Majority college students.

Reform For "These" Kids: Neoliberal Reform, Theorized Target Populations, And Spatial Injustice, Matthew S. Mccluskey, Madhu Narayanan, Erin Milne

Educational Leadership and Policy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Charter schools were originally envisioned as laboratories of innovation, but we have scant empirical evidence of how charter policies and ideas have spread beyond charter walls into the wider educational landscape. The diffusion of knowledge reflects networks of power, and tracing diffusion can unearth the discursive and power dynamics at play. Using a systematic search of publicly-available documents, this study investigated the geographic diffusion of one Charter Management Organization (CMO)—Uncommon Schools—as a case of charter discursive diffusion. Grounded in Critical Policy Analysis (CPA), we found that artifacts were located disproportionately in higher poverty zip codes housing lower percentages of non-Hispanic …

A Profile Of Freshman Inquiry Students Fall 2025, Rowanna L. Carpenter

University Studies Assessment Research

In order to better understand the students enrolled in Freshman Inquiry (FRINQ) courses and identify areas where they may need support, University Studies (UNST) began collecting and compiling data on these students. This report presents a profile of FRINQ students from Fall 2025. It presents an overview of all students enrolled in FRINQ during Fall 2025 and then summarizes information from the Prior Learning Survey.

Mathematics Education Reform Through Socio-Political Means: A Synthesis, Nadine Ferguson

University Honors Theses

Mathematics education urgently needs reform, as traditional approaches fail to meet the diverse needs of today's student populations. Conventional teaching methods, which often focus on rote memorization and procedural understanding, overlook mathematics being a human activity that is inherently interlinked with culture. This paper explores three key approaches to reforming mathematics education: differentiation, culturally responsive mathematics (CRM), and critical mathematics. Grounded in Rochelle Gutiérrez's definition of equity--which emphasizes nurturing students' mathematical identities and agency--this analysis evaluates how each approach addresses four critical goals: ensuring access for all students to complex mathematics, fostering student confidence, promoting collaboration, and making mathematics relevant …

Critical Conversations On Teaching And Learning Decolonial Narratives: A Duoethnography Of Firekeeper’S Daughter, Erica England, Shain Wright, Dion Crommarty

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

Exploring the role of diverse young adult (YA) literature in fostering social justice awareness, this paper focuses on the YA novel Firekeeper’s Daughter as a tool for understanding decolonization and our own individual privileges and responsibilities as they relate to colonization. Three researchers, each with differing positionalities and worldviews, employ a polyvocal methodology of duoethnography to examine the text's challenges to settler colonialism and its illumination of historical and systemic injustices. Through our dialogic exchange, we aim to contribute to a wider conversation about the potential of literature storytelling, and authentic, vulnerable conversations to inspire transformative change.

Preservice Teachers Learning To Teach In An Anti-Racist/Climate-Justice Program: Challenges And Promises, Richard Sawyer

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

The global climate crisis represents the most urgent problem facing the planet, impacting social, cultural, political, economic, and environmental dimensions of life. Alarmingly, it has impacted communities of color in disproportionate ways (Goddell, 2023; Pellow, 2013). The climate crisis, along with the intertwined context of racism, places a profound responsibility on social justice teacher educators to prioritize addressing these issues in teacher preparation. The intent of the following two case studies is to explore the impact of a project based teacher preparation program focused on cultural and environmental justice on the pedagogical knowledge and practice of teaching interns at the …

Aporias, Transcendence And A Curriculum Of Hospitality, Wanying Wang, Daniel Ness

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

Engaging in dynamic encounters with the other and otherness in education—an issue of creating an aperture that welcomes “a newcomer” either as a new idea or new practice—is important for the field of curriculum studies. Complicating aporias as “various forms of other and otherness,” this paper focuses on the encounters with other and otherness (as our understanding of transcendence or border crossing), in which transcendence (border crossing) becomes possible when a curriculum of hospitality is enacted. While culturally and historically informed, the curriculum of hospitality stresses the simultaneity of (1) ethical attentiveness to the encounters with other and otherness, (2) …

Does Sph Curricula Promote ‘Health Equity’, Reproduce Injustice, Or Both?, Jesse Yarnold

OHSU-PSU School of Public Health Annual Conference

Does SPH Curricula Promote ‘Health Equity’, Reproduce Injustice, or both?

The social justice movements of recent years (preceded by [generations of] insurmountable suffering) have facilitated a collective recognition of the systemic effects of racism and epistemic violence. Despite the ambitious and well-intentioned vision of “health equity” as defined by epidemiologic scholarship - progress is slow and injustices prevail.

Students, scholars, and researchers of ‘Public Health’ are uniquely positioned to imagine and create innovative ways of understanding and addressing the harmful inequities and injustices perpetuated by white settler colonialism. I argue that Academic institutions delivering Public Health education are uniquely positioned …

21st Century Learning Ecosystem Opportunities: Research And Findings With Kathy Harris, Kathy Harris

PDXPLORES Podcast

In this episode of PDXPLORES, Kathy Harris, the Director of the Literacy, Language and Research Group in the Department of Applied Linguistics at Portland State University, discusses 21st Century Learning Ecosystem Opportunities: Research and Findings. 21 CLEO is a research project launched to increase the understanding and of the complexities of learning ecosystems in employer supported training and education initiatives for individuals struggling with the digital literacy skills required to navigate life in the 21st Century.

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'It’S Just Filth:’ Banned Books And The Project Of Queer Erasure, Caitlin O'Loughlin, Taylor Schmidt, Jocelyn Glazier

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

This paper seeks to explore the connection between the banning of queer books, the creation of discourses of controversy, and the erasure of queer knowledges and peoples from schools. Using a queer theory-informed approach to critical discourse analysis, we ask how these proposed bans seek to erase queer peoples, how this impacts teachers, and what teacher preparation programs can do to counter these acts of destruction.

Towards A Healing Curriculum: Addressing Cultural Inclusion For The Indigenous Sadri Community In Bangladesh, Jurana Aziz

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

Bangladesh is a Southeast Asian country where the indigenous people of the northern and southeastern region speak a variety of native languages. But none of their languages is included in the main curriculum for teaching or learning. As a result, these people are often not motivated to send their children to school. The language policy of the country does not include these indigenous languages in the core curriculum. Though the government of Bangladesh has started an initial plan to introduce education in mother tongues of five major indigenous languages in the country, they are not yet implemented. A large number …

Cordel Corrido: What Are The Implications Of Creating A New Narrative Voice For Education?, Marco Ag Cerqueira

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

In this article the author proposes queering the teaching of Brazilian and Mexican popular poetry, cordel and corrido, for students in high school or freshmen in college engaging with a curriculum of the brown bodies and aesthetic currere. The author criticizes the teaching of canonic literature in classrooms usually written by white, straight, and middle-class men, and proposes teaching popular poetry from Latin America as a project to interrupt that canon. Teaching and encouraging students to write poetry is a way to oppose the epistemicide in classrooms, and students of color (African descendants, Native peoples, and with roots in Latin …

(Im)Possibilities, M. Francyne Huckaby

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

No abstract provided.

Reviving Knowledges Through Play And Resistance: The Case Of Navajo Conceptions Of Space, Daniel Ness, Richard D. Sawyer

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

The authors explore a possible cause of epistemicidal predispositions of the dominant Eurocentric curricula. They posit that one way to determine a plausible contributing factor of this increasing devastation is to consider epistemicide through the lens of intellectual development. To do this, the authors examine parallel patterns of behavior in the domains of developmental and cognitive psychology. The authors then discuss an alternative framework to the Western conception of space within formal K-12 education by presenting the Navajo conception of space and play. Throughout the paper, the authors argue that all students—and especially those living in poverty in commercially constructed, …

Two Poem Chimera, M. Francyne Huckaby

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

No abstract provided.

Introduction To Confronting Teacher Preparation Epistemicide: Art, Poetry, And Teacher Resistance, Richard D. Sawyer, Daniel Ness

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

In this special issue, we present different perspectives from a documentary project on curricular epistemicide. We view curriculum epistemicide —the annihilation of curriculum—as an embodied process. It limits ways of knowing, questioning, and envisioning the world, and it constricts multiplicity and erases identity and culture. Authors within this volume responded to two requests: 1) they examined some form of epistemicide; and 2) they did not reinforce current systems of power and inequity. Throughout the issue, poetry and photography weave through theoretical papers and empirical studies. A range of methodologies are considered within the articles.

Death To Curriculum, M. Francyne Huckaby

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

No abstract provided.

Of Course, My Own Teacher Education Impacts Others: The Quest Toward Erasing "Erasure", Thomas S. Poetter

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

The author uses an autobiographical approach in this article to discuss and reflect on his own past, that is of course filled with acts of erasure (by sitting still, living in ignorance, and remaining “neutral,” all acts of erasure that we routinely commit), by revealing a set of turning points in his life and life’s work. One particular recent experience has helped the author to recognize past mistakes, and to continue a significant amount of personal and professional movement that has been ongoing for several decades and has challenged many of his past assumptions about teacher education, public education, and …

Using Currere And Lens-Switching As Critical Inquiry - The Case Study Of Voices Of Baltimore: Life Under Segregation, Morna Mcdermott Mcnulty

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

This paper explores how experiencing the film Voices of Baltimore: Life Under Segregation (Homana, et al., 2017) becomes an avenue for practicing anti-racist critical self- exploration. The author considers how an experience of “lens-switching” in tandem with the process of currere (Pinar, 1978) creates nodes, or intersections, between the two where the narrative framework of the film viewer is interrupted by a different (and disruptive) narrative framework. Lens-switching becomes self-interrogation, through the four phases of currere, providing opportunity for historical dislocation; a process that alters self-perception -- or, “decolonizing the mind” (Baszile, 2015, p. 124) -- and then integrates an …

Confronting Curriculum Epistemicide: A Conversation With Editors Dan Ness & Rick Sawyer, Maika Yeigh, Richard D. Sawyer, Daniel Ness

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

As an entree into the Special Issue "Confronting Curriculum Epistemicide", NWJTE co-editor Maika Yeigh talk with editors Daniel Ness and Richard Sawyer to learn about their inspiration and goals of the Special Issue.

Of Back Stories, Byways & Entangled Aesthetics Of Epistemology: Teaching Art, Poetic Protest And Curricular Alterity In A Time Of Ethicide, Molly Quinn

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

Of Back Stories, Byways & Entangled Aesthetics of Epistemology: Teaching Art, Poetic Protest and Curricular Alterity in a Time of Ethicide engages autobiographical analysis to illumine and offer examples of what art and poetry may offer as forms of nonviolent resistance and protest for teachers and teacher educators in challenging curricular epistemicide and advancing educational ethics and justice.

Reading The Word, Not The World: A Critical Analysis Of Close Reading, Jessica E. Masterson

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

This article critically analyzes a Common Core-aligned English Language Arts curriculum with particular attention paid to the ways in which it constructs docile subjects in and through literate practices. Through a critical reading and content analysis of this textbook--one that the author was required to teach to her eighth grade students--this paper argues that under the guise of “college and career readiness,” the curriculum contained within the textbook represents a neoliberal approach to literary criticism, one whose ideology is evident through the material practices of “close reading” and in the disciplinary methods it employs in teaching students the “correct” way …

Are You A Spare Part, Morna Mcdermott

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

No abstract provided.

Critical Arts-Based Projects For Equitable Emergent Teacher Education Researcher Preparation, Lauren Jaramillo, Marcus North, Christian Valdez, Camea Davis, Luiz Claudio Barcellos

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

This paper captures how four BIPOC student researchers and their Black woman professor used critical arts-based research methods to resist the policies and systems predisposed to BIPOC’s dispossession in academia. The arts utilized for our purpose were: songwriting, art collage, theater, and podcast. We determined these methods to be in tune with our researcher selves, which allowed for a more equitable approach preparing teacher education researchers. This work has implications for teacher educators, graduate research programs, and graduate students.

Disrupting The Hegemonic Practices Way Of Knowing: Moving Toward A Posthuman Perspective, Jordan Gonzalez, Brett Elizabeth Blake

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

No abstract provided.

Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Sings Which Story?: Narrative Production And Race In The Curriculum Of Film Musicals, Joanna Batt, Michael Joseph

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

Film musicals serve as a tool to infuse historical and cultural content into social studies curricula towards greater student engagement—for example, Lin Manuel-Miranda's Hamilton has become a celebrated classroom piece due to its ability to blend history with hip-hop and pop culture. Yet beyond language and content scans, teachers rarely examine or utilize musicals for how their narratives (mis)represent racial communities. This critical film analysis of three film musicals, using the theoretical framework of history production, reveals themes of historical morality, romantic relationship and race, and implicit/explicit racial messaging. Although troubling in their overall contribution to racial projects, film musicals …

Paradox, M. Francyne Huckaby

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

No abstract provided.

Arts Course-Taking And Math Achievement In Us High Schools With Daniel Mackin Freeman, Daniel Mackin Freeman

PDXPLORES Podcast

In this episode of PDXPLORES, Daniel Mackin Freeman, a Ph. D. candidate in the sociology department at Portland State University, discusses the results of a study that asked if fine arts coursework is positively correlated to mathematics achievement in high schools at low, middle, and high socio-economic levels. Freeman and PSU sociology professor, Dara Shifrer recently publish the results of their study, "Arts for Whose Sake? Arts Course-taking and Math Achievement in US High Schools," online in Sociological Perspectives.

Click on the "Download" button to access the audio transcript.