ABSTRACT

Transformative Approaches to Social Justice Education is a book for anyone with an interest in teaching and learning in higher education from a social justice perspective and with a commitment to teaching all students. This text offers a breadth of disciplinary perspectives on how to center difference, power, and systemic oppression in pedagogical practice, arguing that these elements are essential to knowledge formation and to teaching. Transformative Approaches to Social Justice Education is structured as an ongoing conversation among educators who believe that teaching from a social justice perspective is about much more than the type of readings and assignments found on course syllabi.

Drawing on the broadest possible definition of curriculum transformation, the volume demonstrates that social justice education is about both educators’ social locations and about course content. It is also about knowing students and teaching beyond the traditional classroom to meaningfully include local communities, social movements, archives, and colleagues in student and academic affairs. 

Premised on the notion that continuous learning and growth is critical to educators with deep commitments to fostering critical consciousness through their teaching, Transformative Approaches to Social Justice Education offers interdisciplinary and innovative collaborative approaches to curriculum transformation that build on and extend existing scholarship on social justice education. Newly committed and established social justice pedagogues share their experiences taking up the many difficult questions pertaining to what it means for all of us to participate in shaping a more just, shared future.

section 1|62 pages

Archives and Power: Engaging History Collaboratively

chapter 1|19 pages

Student Activism and Institutional Change

3A History of The Difference, Power, and Discrimination Program at Oregon State University

chapter 2|19 pages

Collaborations between Professors and Archivists

Engaging Students with their Local Community History

chapter 3|23 pages

Scripting Change

The Social Justice Tour of Corvallis

section 2|78 pages

Frameworks for Transformative Pedagogies

chapter 5|18 pages

Critical Pedagogy Online

Opportunities and Challenges in Social Justice Education

chapter 7|17 pages

From Here to There

Educating for Wholeness

section 3|64 pages

Destabilizing Dominant Narratives

chapter 8|16 pages

“The Tree of Anger”

143Queer and Trans Studies in the Difference, Power, and Discrimination Program at Oregon State University

chapter 10|15 pages

Talking About Class

section 4|85 pages

Rethinking Approaches to Disciplinary Content