In this special edition, we call attention to the role of Critical Multicultural Citizenship Education (CMCE) in schools, societies and global contexts. The fundamental goal of CMCE is to increase not only the students’ awareness of, and participation in, the political aspects of democracy, but also students’ abilities to create and live in an ethnically diverse and just community. Global migration and increasing diversity within nations are challenging conceptions of citizenship all over the world. The percentage of ethnic minorities in nation- states throughout the world has increased significantly within the past 30 years. The United States Census, for example, projects that 50% of the population will consist of culturally, linguistically, racially, ethnic, and religiously diverse groups by 2050. With an increase growth of diversity within national borders, issues concerning educational equity, equality, and civic engagement have not always been well attended to in educational and societal contexts. Growing ethnic diversity in schools/ society has not automatically led to a dismantling of persistent educational barriers or structural inequalities. In the past decade, culturally, ethnically, and linguistically diverse populations have faced barriers impacting their rights as citizens in the United States and international contexts. Citizenship, and the rights that are associated with being a citizen, are re-framed when culturally, ethnically, and linguistically students seek equality. In 2020, many urban cities in the United States witnessed Latino/Black youth demonstrate peacefully guided by social justice and their civic responsibilities. Similarly, in international contexts students have demonstrated civil disobedience by expressing concerns about their rights as citizens and the disempowerment of communities. We emphatically believe that students in K-12 settings must begin to understand their rights as citizens and also advocate for the rights of others in order for communities in the U.S. and international contexts to achieve democracy.

This book offers nuanced analyses of the narratives, spaces, and forms of citizenship education prior to and during the aftermath of the January 2011 Egyptian Revolution. To explore the dynamics shaping citizenship education during this significant socio-political transition, this edited volume brings together established and emerging researchers from multiple disciplines, perspectives, and geographic locations. By highlighting the impacts of recent transitions on perceptions of citizenship and citizenship education in Egypt, this volume demonstrates that the critical developments in Egypt’s schools, universities, and other non-formal and informal spaces of education, have not been isolated from local, national, and global debates around meanings of citizenship.

The field of elementary social studies is a specific space that has historically been granted unequal value in the larger arena of social studies education and research. This reader stands out as a collection of approaches aimed specifically at teaching controversial issues in elementary social studies. This reader challenges social studies education (i.e., classrooms, teacher education programs, and research) to engage controversial issues--those topics that are politically, religiously, or are otherwise ideologically charged and make people, especially teachers, uncomfortable--in profound ways at the elementary level. This reader, meant for elementary educators, preservice teachers, and social studies teacher educators, offers an innovative vision from a new generation of social studies teacher educators and researchers fighting against the forces of neoliberalism and the marginalization of our field. The reader is organized into three sections: 1) pushing the boundaries of how the field talks about elementary social studies, 2) elementary social studies teacher education, and 3) elementary social studies teaching and learning. Individual chapters either A) conceptually unpack a specific controversial issue (e.g. Islamophobia, Indian Boarding Schools, LGBT issues in schools) and how that issue should be/is incorporated in an elementary social studies methods courses and classrooms or B) present research on elementary preservice teachers or how elementary teachers and students engage controversial issues. This reader unpacks specific controversial issues for elementary social studies for readers to gain critical content knowledge, teaching tips, lesson ideas, and recommended resources. Endorsement: (Re)Imagining Elementary Social Studies is a timely and powerful collection that offers the best of what social studies education could and should be. Grounded in a politics of social justice, this book should be used in all elementary social studies methods courses and schools in order to develop the kinds of teachers the world needs today. -- Wayne Au, Professor, University of Washington Bothell, Editor, Rethinking Schools

Food is a contentious and emotive issue, subject to critiques from multiple perspectives. Alternative food movements – including the different articulations of local, food miles, seasonality, food justice, food knowledge and food sovereignty – consistently invoke themes around autonomy, sufficiency, cooperation, mutual aid, freedom, and responsibility. In this stimulating and provocative book the authors link these issues to utopias and intentional communities. Using a food utopias framework presented in the introduction, they examine food stories in three interrelated and complementary ways: utopias as critique of existing systems; utopias as engagement with experimentation of the novel, the forgotten, and the hopeful in the future of the food system; and utopias as process that recognizes the time and difficulty inherent in changing the status quo. The chapters address theoretical aspects of food utopias and also present case studies from a range of contexts and regions, including Argentina, Italy, Switzerland and USA. These focus on key issues in contemporary food studies including equity, locality, the sacred, citizenship, community and food sovereignty. Food utopias offers ways forward to imagine a creative and convivial food system.

This edited collection takes up the unfinished project of resisting the de-democratisation of education and growing levels of social and educational inequality. Contributions to this book provide a range of approaches to educational theory, policy and practice that offer critically democratic alternatives.

Civic life today is mediated. Communities small and large are now using connective platforms to share information, engage in local issues, facilitate vibrant debate, and advocate for social causes. In this timely book, Paul Mihailidis explores the texture of daily engagement in civic life, and the resources—human, technological, and practical—that citizens employ when engaging in civic actions for positive social impact. In addition to examining the daily civic actions that are embedded in media and digital literacies and human connectedness, Mihailidis outlines a model for empowering young citizens to use media to meaningfully engage in daily life.

Contemporary education research, policy and practice are complex and challenging. The political struggle over what constitutes curriculum and pedagogy is framed by quasi-markets and technocratic models of education. This has had a significant effect on larger issues of policy. But it has also had profound effects inside educational sites in terms of the economics and politics of what is and is not considered 'legitimate' knowledge, over what should be taught, how it should be taught, and by whom. Re-imagining Education for Democracy takes up the unfinished project of resisting the de-democratisation of education and growing levels of social and educational inequality. Where are the spaces for change and articulating hopeful alternatives? How might we imagine and produce different futures? What are the opportunities for affirmative interference, and how could we produce a more sustainable re-imagining and re-doing of the critical project of education? The work is framed within two complementary sections: the first addresses some key policy, political and philosophical concerns of contemporary educational contexts, while the second provides a series of empirical case studies and other local–global narratives of resisting and reframing dominant discourses in education around the world. The chapters provide a range of empirical, methodological and conceptual focuses, from different educational communities and international contexts, engaging with the proposition of re-imagining education for democracy in multiple and diverse ways. This book will be essential reading for researchers and students of education research, policy and practice.