Alternative education caters and cares for students whose regular schools have failed and excluded them. Fifty years of international research reports that alternative settings are characterised by close and powerful staff–student relationships, a curriculum which is relevant, engaging and meaningful, and the strong sense of agency afforded young people by the opportunity to make decisions. Together, these three practices produce increased life chances for alternative education participants. However, despite these apparent successes, alternative education seems to have had little impact on mainstream schools. This collection of papers addresses the important question – what might regular schools and teachers learn about socially just pedagogies from alternative education practices? In providing answers to this question, authors interrogate the taken-for-granted wisdom about alternative education while also taking account of ongoing policy shifts, differing locations and populations, and persistent and intersecting patterns of raced, classed and gendered inequalities. They draw on a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to interrogate the ways in which alternative schools and alternative education both challenge and legitimate the kinds of schooling most of us expect for our own and other people's children. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Critical Studies in Education.

Parents, young people, community organizers, and educators describe how they are fighting systemic racism in schools by building a new intersectional educational justice movement. Illuminating the struggles and triumphs of the emerging educational justice movement, this anthology tells the stories of how black and brown parents, students, educators, and their allies are fighting back against systemic inequities and the mistreatment of children of color in low-income communities. It offers a social justice alternative to the corporate reform movement that seeks to privatize public education through expanding charter schools and voucher programs. To address the systemic racism in our education system and in the broader society, the contributors argue that what is needed is a movement led by those most affected by injustice--students of color and their parents--that builds alliances across sectors and with other social justice movements addressing immigration, LGBTQ rights, labor rights, and the school-to-prison pipeline. Representing a diverse range of social justice organizations from across the US, including the Chicago Teachers Union and the Genders and Sexualities Alliance Network, the essayists recount their journeys to movement building and offer practical organizing strategies and community-based alternatives to traditional education reform and privatization schemes. Lift Us Up! will outrage, inform, and mobilize parents, educators, and concerned citizens about what is wrong in American schools today and how activists are fighting for and achieving change.

The American scholar and activist Nancy Fraser has written about a wide range of issues in social and political theory, and is well-known for her philosophical perspectives on democratic theory and on feminist theory. Her work on justice and identity politics has been particularly widely cited, and she has also been active in developing a ‘feminism for the 99%’. Although education has not been a direct focus for much of her work, her thinking has been widely disseminated within the critical study of education. This volume illustrates the way in which education researchers have taken up and developed Fraser’s theories in the areas of alternative education, higher education, inclusion and disability, and the effects of neoliberalism upon public (state) education, as they ask how social justice within the education system can be enhanced. These insightful essays cover a range of countries and topics, as the authors work with Fraser’s concepts, to argue for the development of a more equitable education system. The chapters in this book were originally published as articles in Taylor and Francis journals.

The Handbook of Social Justice in Education, a comprehensive and up-to-date review of the field, addresses, from multiple perspectives, education theory, research, and practice in historical and ideological context, with an emphasis on social movements for justice. Each of the nine sections explores a primary theme of social justice and education: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives International Perspectives on Social Justice in Education Race and Ethnicity, Language and Identity: Seeking Social Justice in Education Gender, Sexuality and Social Justice in Education Bodies, Disability and the Fight for Social Justice in Education Youth and Social Justice in Education Globalization: Local and World Issues in Education The Politics of Social Justice Meets Practice: Teacher Education and School Change Classrooms, Pedagogy, and Practicing Justice. Timely and essential, this is a must-have volume for researchers, professionals, and students across the fields of educational foundations, multicultural/diversity education, educational policy, and curriculum and instruction.

Student engagement is fundamental to learning, yet it also constitutes a major and long-standing challenge to educators around the world. This book provides an evidence-based theorisation of features associated with schooling engagement, along with targeted strategies that underpin a continuum of pedagogical, curricular and social support during the years of young adolescent schooling. Anchored by the Young Adolescent Engagement in Learning Model, a multi-layered model which incorporates a continuum of behavioural, emotional and cognitive dimensions of engagement, the authors provide a framework to help support the engagement of young adolescents. Seamlessly integrating theory and practice, this book explores the importance of avoiding educational disengagement, particularly from those who are most vulnerable due to a range of personal factors. This volume will be of interest and value to students and scholars of educational young adolescent engagement and retention, as well as those working with young people.

This book foregrounds the provision of education for young people who have been remanded or sentenced into custody. Both international conventions and national legislation and guidelines in many countries point to the right of children and young people to access education while they are incarcerated. Moreover, education is often seen as an important protective and ‘rehabilitative’ factor. However, the conditions associated with incarceration generate particular challenges for enabling participation in education. Bridging the fields of education and youth justice, this book offers a social justice analysis through the lens of ‘participatory parity’, the book brings together rare interviews with staff and young people in youth justice settings in Australia, secondary data from these sites, a suite of pertinent and frank reports, and international scholarship. Drawing on this rich set of material, the book demonstrates not only the challenges but also the possibilities for education as a conduit for social justice in custodial youth justice. The book will be of immediate relevance to governments and youth justice staff for meaningfully meeting their obligation of enabling children and young people in custody to benefit from education; and of interest to scholars and researchers in education, youth work and criminology.

In this selection of his work from 1991-2008, Zeichner examines the relationships between various aspects of teacher education, teacher development, and their contributions to the achievement of greater justice in schooling and in the broader society.