Adopting Hands-Off Approaches to Activism: Examining PSTs’ Experiences Navigating Visibility and Vulnerability as Teacher Activists

Abstract

This case study examines six English Language Arts (ELA) preservice teachers (PSTs) and the ways they recognize injustice and inequity in education, plan for addressing such issues, and engage as teacher-activists toward impacting the issues they recognize. This research was guided by the following two questions: In what ways do ELA PSTs use their own recognition of educational injustice/inequity to foster discussions of methods for addressing such issues? How do PSTs engage in the agentive work of activists to impact those issues? Findings point to the ways in which PSTs adopt hands-off approaches to activism, or what I theorize as passive activism, where they, perhaps unconsciously, shield and distance themselves from the visibility and vulnerability that accompanies activist work. After a discussion of findings, I offer implications for the field and the ways teacher educators can better scaffold PSTs as they work to “do” the work of activists both inside and outside their classrooms.

Keywords

English education English teacher education preservice teacher education secondary teacher education social justice

Introduction

Given the existing political context, including the meritocratic, accountability-based, and neoliberal approaches used to drive and assess teaching and learning (Hadley Dunn, 2016), and the increased contemporary moment of youth activists—including Greta Thunberg, March for Our Lives and the survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, Black Lives Matter, and many others, as well as the mixed messages young people receive as a result of their activist stances (Prothero, 2019), preparing preservice teachers (PSTs) and secondary students who interrogate the educational and larger social systems is vital. Thus, the role of teacher educators is to foster civic engagement and to help PSTs push back against the social and educational issues that affect them and their students (Montaño et al., 2002). That said, it is also vital that our pedagogies acknowledge the inherent risk teachers, especially new teachers, take on when choosing to engage in activist work. Activist pedagogies may include helping PSTs learn to survive in the system as they engage in critical work for meaningful change.

The objective of this qualitative study was to understand the ways PSTs (a) recognize what they believed to be educational inequity/injustice, (b) discuss relevant methods for how they might address (i.e., interrogate and interrupt) such issues, and (c) engage in the collaborative and agentive work of activists.

This work builds on Picower’s (2011) notion of social justice education, requiring teachers to work for transformative and sustainable change inside and outside the classroom. One goal of this study was for PSTs to use their methods classroom as a springboard for stepping out into the world and working to interrupt an issue of educational inequity they believe to be important. The following questions guided this study:

In what ways do ELA PSTs use their own recognition of educational injustice/inequity to foster discussions of methods for addressing such issues?

How do PSTs engage in the agentive work of activists to impact those issues?

In conjunction with these research questions, I also consider the ways participants’ social identities play a role(s) in how they recognize and address issues of educational inequity.

Literature Review

As teacher educators, we must work within the larger goal of education to create democratic citizens and work toward Freire’s (1970) notion that educators must move beyond reflecting on oppression and inequality in the world to take transformative action. In other words, teachers, a predominantly white and female field (e.g., Boser, 2014), must go beyond the “what” to teach and interrogate the “why” and the “how” to teach.

There is certainly no shortage of scholars and discussion around teaching as political and for the need for teachers (including PSTs) to actively engage in equity and justice work (see, for example, Cochran-Smith, 2004; Nieto, 2006). In thinking through this study, I focus instead on the powerful ways activism and civic engagement is meaningfully made part of teacher preparation and literacy instruction. Such a focus allows me to clarify my own understandings, definitions, and uses of “activism” as a term and concept. In addition, this scholarship paints a useful, broad image of the scholars, activists, and work on which I build and aim to contribute. And perhaps more importantly, the research reviewed below creates a lens through which I view the engagement and active-ness of the PSTs in this study and as I subsequently theorize the notion of passive activism.

The scholarship I draw from is not comprehensive but is instead meant to note that I stand on the shoulders of those who paved the way before me and to share examples of the range of scholars studying and documenting the work of youth and student activists. First, to note the existing complexities around activism, I discuss conceptualizing activism and civic engagement and provide the definitions of activism I use in this study. Second, I offer a snapshot of literature on engagement and activism within education, serving as a more focused lens through which I designed, carried out, and reflected on my study. Finally, because my work is with PSTs who are first-time activists, I point to scholars who write about identity development, specifically with regard to activism and teacher education.

Conceptualizing Civic Engagement and Activism

Part of understanding the range of ways PSTs engage in activist approaches to impact inequities in education involves first considering how scholars have conceptualized and positioned civic engagement and activism. Sensoy and DiAngelo (2017), for example, describe critical social justice (CSJ) as recognizing and working actively to change the individual and structural inequality woven into society. In addition, individuals must reflect on their own positioning within such inequitable systems and work actively to interrupt inequities, a goal the PSTs in this study were tasked with. Others describe teachers, students, and community members as dedicated activists. Examining the civic engagement of African immigrant youth, Knight and Watson (2014) investigated the day-to day instances of “civic teaching, learning, and actions” (p. 541) and how those experiences help shape and are shaped by a variety of contexts, such as relationships and identities (Kahne & Sporte, 2008). Such research suggests that our understandings of civic participation are evolving and as such, it is important we continue to interrogate both what constitutes activism and participation and how PSTs grapple with their own evolving understandings of and positionings as agents of change.

Through better understanding the various ways PSTs view themselves as activists and engage in intentional civic action, we can move away from more limited and singular understandings of engagement. As Bennett (2008) suggests, a singular focus on prioritizing civic engagement fails to account for the complexity and possibilities of being engaged civically; such discourse may view those engaged in the more relational constructs of civic action to be falsely viewed as civically disengaged. This tension between engaged and disengaged furthers our knowledge of not just how activism and civic engagement can be conceptualized but also the many ways educational activists are already working to positively influence teaching and learning for all.

In an effort to more fully consider what constitutes activism and to question how and why teacher educators engage PSTs in that work, it is also important to examine how scholars discuss the relationship(s) between activism and society. To consider the roles reflection and perception play in activist stances and actions, Westheimer and Kahne (2004) pose the question, “What kind of citizen do we need to support an effective democratic society?” (p. 239). They describe “good” participatory citizenship as comprised of three modes or visions—personal (acting responsibly in the community), participatory (participating in civic and social affairs), and social justice participatory (calling attention to injustice) citizenship. This framework adds additional complexity to our conceptions of engagement and activism and requires us to continue considering ways to prepare teachers to act at the intersection of these modes. Taken together, the scholarship around conceptualizing civic engagement and activism complicates any static notions of how to understand and/or participate in activist pursuits and pushes the conversation forward on the implications and roles of activism in education.

Before moving on, I pause briefly to offer the definitions of activism used as organizational tools for designing this study. I draw on Campigotto and Barrett’s (2017) definition of activism as “a formal and measurable action that resulted in a change or made a difference” (p. 54), as able to take a variety of forms, and as carrying with it negative connotations. Relatedly, I pull from Blackburn et al.’s (2018) teacher inquiry work, specifically around their finding that teachers’ understandings of activism fluctuated around the tensions that exist in activist work (activism as part of teaching or separate) and even in what counts as activism.

Civic Engagement and Activism in Education

Building on the work of defining and conceptualizing activism and civic engagement, I next turn to the scholarship on activism within educational contexts as a way to frame and consider the preparation of PSTs to recognize and engage in active ways to address inequities. Several scholars share the various and powerful ways activism has been at the heart of education. Kinloch et al. (2020) note encouragement stemming from “the important activist work occurring within schools and communities across this nation and around the world, work that has at its core equity, justice, and social equality” (p. 4). Echoing Love’s (2019) call for abolitionist teaching, Kinloch et al. ground their work in a belief in continuing liberatory and justice work across K-12 and teacher education. To this end, a number of scholars have written about their work with teachers, students, and communities.

For example, writing about their longitudinal investigation, Blackburn et al. (2018) describe ways teachers actively work to advocate for and build spaces that affirm lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) students. The authors discuss ways teachers can “step up,” work both within and without the curriculum and collaborate with families and communities to envision and create equitable school spaces and cultures. Describing “actionist” work, critically unmasking and dismantling inequities, in her research with girls of color, Butler (2016) questions what it means to be an activist. Drawing on interviews with students who identify as undocumented and unafraid, Muñoz (2015) explores the ways these students navigate their immigration status while working as community activists seeking visibility and inclusion for undocumented students and reform to exclusionary immigration policies. The work being done by these scholars and the teachers and students they write about shines a light on the many ways activism is conceptualized and used within education and affords a closer look at activism in literacy education.

Activism and Literacy Education

As this study took place in a secondary ELA teacher preparation program, it is helpful to go beyond a discussion of activism in education at large to discuss its relevancy to literacy education. Providing a snapshot of the literature on activism and literacy education, specifically, offers an important lens for considering the ways these PSTs took up and enacted activist approaches. Writing about literacy education, Patel (2020) argues that recognizing how literacy has been used as a tool of freedom through “defiance and survivance” (p. 13) is necessary for teachers to use literacy instruction for the purposes of justice and equity. As an ELA researcher and as secondary ELA PSTs, Patel’s argument is even more relevant to me and the students I worked with in this study, as they spent a semester interrogating and planning to address inequity. Patel highlights the intimate connection between literacy and humanity and points to the promise of “literacy as revolutionary, as catalytic, as deeply personal, and always political” (pp. 16–17). Posing the question, “Who is a teacher now who is not an activist?” (p. 18), she tasks PSTs with questioning what counts as activism and how they can incorporate activism and liberatory teaching in their classrooms.

Building on Patel’s description of literacy as bound up in activism, Ononuju et al. (2020) focus specifically on PSTs and the ways they reflect on themselves as activists. The authors write about their work with PSTs to foster self-reflection, answering questions such as “What am I willing to do?” and “What am I willing to risk” (p. 46), as a method of personal accountability for privilege and participation in inequitable systems, and they articulate a goal of PSTs recognizing the interconnectedness of the two questions. Further considering the roles of reflection and personal positioning with regard to activism, including the ways PSTs wrestle with the questions the authors pose and how they navigate the vulnerability that accompanies activist risk-taking, allows for a more layered and nuanced examination of how and in what ways PSTs engage in activist work.

Reflecting on the questions posed by Ononuju and colleagues and the contexts in which we are preparing teachers to work, we must be willing to truly consider what it is we are asking PSTs to risk. Teacher educators, especially those invested in preparing PSTs to take up activism within the scope of their work as teachers, must also recognize and acknowledge that new teachers are vulnerable in ways that experienced, tenured teachers may not be. This is especially true, given the realities of teaching and our current climate of accountability, teacher surveillance, and ongoing attempts to remove criticality, power analyses, and equity work from teaching and learning.

This study aims to further contribute to this existing literature by pointing to the ways in which groups of ELA PSTs recognized educational inequity and engaged in activist projects meant to challenge those inequities. My work builds on Knight and Watson’s (2014) description of civic engagement as both shaped by and helping to shape multiple contexts, including PSTs’ identities and the differing contexts of teacher education and K-12 classrooms. I seek to better understand the possibilities and complexity Bennett (2008) noted in how PSTs understand activism and how they position themselves as activists within and across these contexts and to help answer Westheimer and Kahne’s (2004) question of the kinds of citizens we need in an effective democracy.

This work adds to existing calls for and varied activist approaches to equity in education (Blackburn et al., 2018; Kinloch et al., 2020; Love, 2019) and attempts to help answer Butler’s (2016) question of what it means to be an activist, especially within educational contexts. The inquiry at the heart of this paper draws on Patel’s (2020) argument for literacy as revolutionary and a tool for freedom and offers insight into how PSTs reflect on and question who they are and what they are willing to risk in the pursuit of equity (Ononuju et al., 2020). In addition, I theorize the ways these activist approaches constitute what I have termed “passive activism,” noting that initial passivity may serve as a necessary developmental step in the journey to becoming activist teachers. Embracing such passive, developmental steps may be one way new teachers can enter activist work while mitigating the risk that accompanies it.

Theoretical Framework

To create a more nuanced understanding of the ways the PSTs in this study worked to address issues of inequity, I draw from critical literacy. Drawing on critical literacy as a framework for analyzing these PSTs’ activism projects offers insight into how, or if, participants applied lenses of power to their analysis of the world around them.

Critical literacy stems from socio-cultural ways of thinking about reading and positions literacy as community and social capital (Luke, 2000). Via reflection and action, critical literacy shines a light on power relations (Freire, 1970) and invites readers to serve as active participants in the reading and interrogating processes and in the challenging of existing power relationships. In addition, it fosters the use of language to interrogate the world, including power relations as socially constructed (Harste, 2003). Critical literacy involves recognizing and questioning texts in a variety of ways through a lens of power: various possible readings, sources of authority, dominant cultural discourses, etc. (Behrman, 2006). In this study, I hold a broad view of “texts” to include systems (e.g., education), structures (e.g., school-level policies and procedures), and the world around us. As a theory, critical literacy includes practical attitudes and practices (Luke, 2000), closely aligned with Freire’s notion of acting in and on the world, something the participants in this study were tasked with.

I designed this study at the intersection of textual critique, what Morrell (2002) referred to as a form of activism, and critical power analysis as activism. In this way, the PSTs viewed the world around them and the inequities they saw as “texts” and critiqued them by interrogating oppression, inequity, and power imbalances in an effort to use activist approaches to foster positive change. As such, critical literacy offers a useful lens for examining how the PSTs approached inequity analysis and, relatedly, their work as activists. In this work, I build upon existing research in critical literacy by paying particular attention to the ways these ELA PSTs analyze instances of educational inequity and apply that lens in their work to actively address the issues they recognized.

My work also contributes to the scholarship by discussing and theorizing the phenomenon of passive activism enacted by the PSTs in this study. Adding to the existing literature on activism and civic engagement, specifically within education, my findings point to a complicating factor, a moment of difficulty in the often nonlinear path to developing as activists. As such, I theorize a definition of passive activism as adopting inactive (or hands-off) roles (e.g., creating resources for other teachers to implement) toward activist work as a way to remove oneself from the visibility and vulnerability that accompanies public or external activism.

Methodology

Participants, Setting, and Context

This study was conducted in an ELA methods course at a large research university in the Southeast United States. The university itself is a land grant, whose mission includes serving all residents of the state. Greater than 80% of students identify as white, many of these coming from affluent backgrounds. Students within the College of Education and the English Language Arts program parallel university demographics. At the time the study was conducted, the program was 95% white and approximately 88% women. The course itself had an enrollment of 16, 10 of which (eight women and two men) provided consent to participate in the study. Thirteen of the 16 in the course identified as women and 14 as white.

While 10 PSTs agreed to participate in the study, I made the decision to use data from six of these teacher candidates for two main reasons. One student had attendance issues across the semester, and two others did not meet multiple checkpoints. Thus, their experiences and voices were much less frequently captured in the data. A fourth student, due to online work, expressed concerns of anonymity, and while they ultimately decided to remain in the study, because of their concern and in an effort to minimize their anxiety, I also removed their data. Five of the six participants identified as women, and all identified as white. See Table 1 for participant demographics.

Table 1.

Participant Demographics.

Pseudonym	Age	Gender identity	Racial identity
Adrian	23	Woman	White
Charles	21	Man	White
Ellen	21	Woman	White
Michelle	20	Woman	White
Sally	22	Woman	White
Stephanie	21	Woman	White

The ELA methods course is a requirement for all English education students and is the second methods course taken (in a sequence of two). A major component of the course involved students discussing issues of educational inequity and injustice and designing and engaging in their own activism projects.

The activism assignment asked students to engage in a semester-long project where they (a) identify an issue within education they feel is socially unjust/inequitable; (b) define the issue, consider ways in which the issue affects education, and plan an activist response to the issue; (c) implement their activist response; and (d) document their activism. Reflection prompts were also provided throughout the semester. A general semester timeline is provided below, although students often worked in a nonlinear, cyclical, and iterative fashion.

Mid-September: Defining activism and considering possible topics.

Late September: Solidify topics and begin researching the issue and possible approaches.

Early October: Enacting projects and engaging in reflection.

Mid-to-late October: Enacting projects and engaging in reflection.

Early-to-mid November: Continuing project work and reflection, focusing on project documentation.

Early December: Final reflections and presentation of projects.

Classroom readings and discussions were designed to introduce PSTs to the idea of activism and to serve as catalysts for the activist work they were being asked to do. The class focused specific attention on how teachers can advocate for and act to alter a number of issues related to education, both inside and outside the classroom. For example, the PSTs read a variety of articles from a 2017 themed issue of English Journal (“Beyond the Dream”: Black Textual Expressivities between the World and Me) and articles from Picower focusing on teacher activism as happening outside the classroom. In addition, course readings included texts on teaching as political work (e.g., Nieto, 2006), youth participation in society and government (Bessant, 2003), and teacher modeling of activism and active citizenship (Ethridge, 2006). The PSTs also read position statements from the National Council of Teachers of English and English Language Arts Teacher Educators.

Positioning Myself as Researcher and Teacher

Describing myself as both researcher and as instructor of the course and positioning myself within the study offers insight into my course design decisions, my values as a teacher educator and activist, and my own definitions of and ways of understanding activism. As a white, cisgender, heterosexual man, one who was raised and educated in the South, my experiences influence how I view and move through the world. Similarly, as a white man and activist, I am afforded a significant amount of safety and comfort in my activist pursuits. I, for example, experience far fewer hostilities, push back, emotional stressors, and burnout than colleagues, students, and activists of color (Gorski & Erakat, 2019). My own notions of activism also shape my approaches to teaching and to engaging PSTs in activist work—the examples of activism I provide students, the readings I select and discuss in class, and the activism project that served as the focus of this study. Moreover, the ways I understand and define activism and how I understand forms of activism and the activism in which others engage always influences my work as a teacher and as a researcher. In response to my own positionality, I continue to examine teacher and PST activism in all its forms to better understand the myriad ways activists act on and in the world.

Data Collection and Analysis

This study makes use of qualitative inquiry to examine and understand phenomena within the educational context. In addition, a qualitative approach allows for the use of multiple data sources to build rich descriptions (Holloway, 1997) of participant experiences. Participant data from four sources were collected within the context of the course and subsequently analyzed.

First, student artifacts provide glimpses into their in-process work, their reflective thinking, and their end-products. Reflections were due at each of the six required checkpoints, but the PSTs were also given time in class weekly to use reflective writing as a tool for thinking through their projects. A total of 36 reflections were collected and analyzed. At each checkpoint, the PSTs also submitted in-process copies or documentation of any project-related artifacts they were creating. This data source offered insight into Research Question 1, examining how PSTs recognize and discuss ways of addressing social issues, and more fully helped address my second research question about how PSTs engage in activist work.

Second, twice per week for 10 weeks, I kept field notes (Lofland & Lofland, 1984) during class discussions (small and large group). Each field note composed was marked with the appropriate date and noted relevant and interesting comments, questions, and reactions from the PSTs. Composing field notes allowed me to keep an ongoing record of conversations—including the tone and specific features of the discussions—around the activism project. The decision to include field notes was based, in part, on the use of critical literacy as my theoretical framework, and they offered glimpses into the in-the-moment thinking of participants and the ways they did (or did not) openly interrogate or reference power structures impacting the issues of educational inequity they chose. Analysis of field notes served as a window into the PSTs’ thought processes about what constituted educational inequity (Research Question 1) and the ways they sought to have an impact (Research Question 2).

Third, immediately following each bi-weekly class session for the 10 weeks the PSTs worked on their activism projects, I wrote analytic memos (Charmaz, 2000) to summarize a more holistic view of student work time, their interactions and in-class experiences, and the range of discussions (both formal and informal) that took place. A total of 20 analytic memos were recorded and analyzed, allowing me to capture broad views of PSTs’ thinking, reflecting, and acting, yet another way to apply critical literacy as a frame. Moreover, they served as a helpful lens for understanding Research Question 1, how PSTs define and label inequity in education, and Research Question 2, the ways they believe they can actively work to impact those issues.

Fourth, 12 conferences between PSTs and the instructor (two conferences with each of the six participants) were audio recorded, transcribed, and analyzed, addressing both research questions; these data offered focused insight into student–teacher interactions, the ways instructors and PSTs discussed activism, and the language the PSTs used to describe and discuss their experiences, both perceived and actual, designing and implementing activism projects. Student–instructor conferences took place during class meetings with each student approximately once every 2 weeks and lasted between 5 and 20 minutes. These data sources together build off my framework by providing PSTs intentional opportunity to recognize and interrogate existing power systems in education and to position themselves as political beings who strive to positively impact teaching and learning.

To guide my analysis, I used Glaser’s (2011) notion of grounded theory, which allowed me to avoid a priori categories and let the data inform the analysis. Allowing analysis to grow organically from the data was key to understanding the paths PSTs took to their (passive) activist thinking and doing. I also drew from Thomas’s (2006) description of inductive analysis by openly coding and looking for emergent themes and broad trends, which led to a clearer view of passive performances of activism. As an initial stage of coding, I summarized and linked the data to the study purpose and composed memos (Charmaz, 2000) as a way to recognize relevant details and thematic categories, driving my second stage of coding and helping to ensure these themes and details were captured across the coding process. I then employed constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) by revising and recoding themes throughout my analysis. Table 2 provides sample codes, descriptions, and example data excerpts to demonstrate the initial rounds of analyses and what emerged from the data corpus.

Table 2.

Sample Codes With Descriptions.

Code	Description	Example
Personal passion	Noting large goals in and possibilities for the project	“I feel most passionate and most intrigued by issues concerning gender in the classroom.”
Initial ideas and ideology	Project directions/topics and beliefs surrounding taking an activist stance as a teacher	“. . . subject of first meeting was to determine a direction . . . ended up talking about ideology” “. . . wanted to work for something that . . . has the capacity to extend past just this class”
Evolving Projects	Seeing (often misunderstanding) the curriculum as set and unalterable	“. . . decided . . . to create a sort of resource guide for teachers” “. . . help other educators learn about issues surrounding activism”
Limitations	Issues and circumstances impact progress	“. . . got bogged down with the big idea” “. . . started out with grand ideas, no legitimate goals”
Concerns	Recognition of personal experiences and questions around the activist project	“we may have blind spots” “each of us [are] wondering how far we would want our activism to go”
Take-away	Lessons learned and goals/ideas for future activist work	“It is not easy to tell whether or not we were successful . . .” “. . . attempting to subdue what we’re passionate about . . . watered down the issue . . . to the point we were not doing much”

Similarly, Table 3 offers a glimpse into examples of emerging codes, from initial to evolving codes, relationships between codes, and the final code category (Passive Activism) representative of all coded data. To provide transparency in my thinking and to walk readers through my coding process, I offer an example from Table 3 in more detail. In my work to compare and revise codes, it became clear that relationships between initial and evolving codes were emerging. For example, two sets of initial codes, “personal passion” and “initial ideas and ideologies” (which evolved to “initial project topics and goals”) and “evolving projects” and “limitations” (which evolved to “evolving topics and goals”), demonstrate this relational evolution. Across the coding process, I recognized that, while making the transition from participants’ initial ideas to their more focused plans, PSTs were shifting to take more hands-off and passive approaches to their projects. These evolving codes ultimately combined to become “passive activism” as can be seen in my analysis and findings detailed below.

Table 3.

Examples of Emerging Codes.

Initial codes	Evolving codes	Relationships among codes	Final code category
Personal passion Initial ideas and ideology	Initial project topics and goals	In moving from larger initial ideas stemming from their reported passions, interests, and ideological beliefs, to more focused topics and project ideas, PSTs took up more hands-off, less visible, and passive approaches	Passive activism
Evolving projects limitations	Evolving topics and goals
Concerns Take-away	Discomfort and struggles	Across the semester, PSTs articulated a variety of concerns, both in the moment and for consideration as they move forward into their careers. These discussions, representing their discomforts and struggles aligned with their decisions to step back from active and vulnerable stances and projects to establish protective barriers between themselves and the world

Note. PSTs = preservice teachers.

Findings

Data analysis suggests that the PSTs in this study experienced shifts in their thinking and engagement around activism-related experiences. They began the semester by selecting large-scale topics and projects to address. These broad ideas evolved into more passive approaches to activist work—what I term “passive activism” (see Table 4). This passivity served to shield and distance them from the work they initially set out to do. Moreover, the manifestations of passive activism worked to protect them from the vulnerability that accompanies activist stances and actions. In addition, the PSTs shared the discomforts and struggles they experienced throughout the project, which ultimately contributed to their more passive projects.

Table 4.

Activism Project Topics and Passive Approaches.

PST	Activism project topic	Passive approach
Adrian	Developed a resource guide for teachers interested in activism	Assumed implementation by someone else
Charles	Advertised local literacy nonprofit fundraiser	Disconnected from event itself
Ellen	Provided admin. assistance for local nonprofit donating materials and resources to teachers	Connected to and worked behind the scenes of existing organization
Michelle	Planned a book drive for an underfunded school in the area—never implemented	Ended work after planning process
Sally	Created an activism handbook for teachers	Assumed implementation by someone else
Stephanie	Completed paperwork for existing entity collecting donations students and schools	Connected to and worked behind the scenes of existing organization

Note. PSTs = preservice teachers.

While it is outside the scope of this study to deeply analyze the many intersectional ways these PSTs’ social identities contributed to the more passive directions they took their projects, and fully interrogating these positionalities is complex with numerous intersections that deserve to be discussed, it is also dishonest to ignore these connections entirely. As Paris (2019) notes, it is vital we acknowledge the power of identities and name them as part of any critical research. All six PSTs, for example, identify as white, an identity which allows them to distance themselves from work that really matters in ways that POC and other oppressed groups cannot. In addition, five participants identified as women. White women have historically been socially constructed as, and rewarded for being, passive. They also experience specific otherness and oppression in ways white men do not.

With this in mind, I make connections throughout the findings to the ways participants’ social identities worked to insulate, protect, and separate them from the visible, vulnerable, and active work of civic engagement, ultimately contributing to passivity. This subanalysis points to the complexity wrapped up in my finding of “passive activism” and points to the need for additional research.

Initial Project Topics and Goals

Entering this project, the PSTs frequently began by thinking through their own passions and what they would like to accomplish, moves that parallel Sensoy and DiAngelo’s (2017) notion of CSJ. In early discussions, they shared a range of broad plans. Stephanie, for example, told the class, “I do know that I feel most passionately and most intrigued by issues concerning gender in the classroom.” Ellen “initially thought about . . . cyber-bullying and social media in the classroom.” And Sally “really wanted to place emphasis on tangible work that lasts.” These future teachers shared a range of broad topics, including feminism, race, LGBTQ, environmentalism, undocumented students, and trauma, but with time began to narrow their foci around something “very local” and lasting as Stephanie put it. As her ideas began to congeal, she shared that she “wanted to work for something that would still be working or be of some kind of use without us . . .” something with “the capability to extend past just this class.” This goal of developing a project that outlasts them, especially when articulated at the beginning of the project may suggest more about goals of leaving a legacy than of positively impacting communities, stopping short of what scholars (e.g., Butler, 2016; Campigotto & Barrett, 2017) describe as actively doing the work of interruption. In other words, the PSTs’ initial ideas may have been more about them (i.e., as doer) than about other external aims, creating a layer of separation (or passivity) between themselves and the world. This notion of developing a mechanism that continues to run without much additional involvement may also serve as a distancing technique, one where the PSTs felt they could contribute in a way that side-stepped visible engagement. In addition, such distancing techniques also represent a clear privilege, as white PSTs attempting to act on the world from the largely insulated spaces they occupy on a college campus, in being able to disconnect from the work, while simultaneously hoping to be recognized for it.

As students continued to discuss and unpack their initial goals, many of the conversations began to center on audience. After suggesting a plan to create an activism handbook, a sort of how-to for teachers, Sally wrote in her reflection that her

intended audience . . . isn’t the seasoned activist in and outside of the classroom, but more so those who are altogether new to activism, teachers in their first year(s) of teaching, and those who may be hesitant to engage with activist discourse.

Through this statement, Sally positions herself as a teacher and mentor to others. This is especially interesting, given she was new to this herself and had yet to implement her project, facts that may make it easier for PSTs like Sally to question their own voices and agency and to step back from visible work. Sally’s approach represents yet another possible distancing move or form of self-protection. These more passive distancing moves echo the suggestions that context—PSTs as students, not yet teachers, in this case—influences activism and engagement (Knight & Watson, 2014).

Adrian also positions herself and her work as mentoring or apprenticing in nature by stating her goal to “help other educators learn about issues surrounding activism they might encounter in their classrooms and offer them a starting point for support in dealing with these issues.” When combined with Sally’s comments, Adrian’s ideas may say more about her, and her peers’, hesitancy than anything. This hesitancy connects to Johnson’s (2013) description of “white discomfort” where white teachers, even when trying to interrupt dominant scripts may instead re-inscribe dominant values. Hesitating in these ways stops them short of explicitly acknowledging their own discomfort or uncertainty and allows them to shield themselves from vulnerability. Reading this, we might ask: Are these students avoiding doing their own activism work by creating resources for other teachers? And are they engaging in work that answers the reflective questions posed by Patel (2020) and Westheimer and Kahne (2004)—what types of citizens are necessary to support a democracy and who are teachers if they are not activists?

This resource approach to activism in the classroom creates distance, whether intended or not, between the individual and active engagement. It, in essence, takes on a more passive approach to activism and works as a way of deflecting activist responsibility. PSTs like Sally and Adrian may be simply doing what we often ask them to do in teacher education by creating lessons and resources for other more distant classrooms, itself a passive approach to teaching and teacher education. Other PSTs described their initial ideas as too lofty or ultimately out of their control. These tended to encompass large-scale reform ideas like Michelle’s plan to “change the alternative school into something better/more efficient.” This finding serves as a reminder that this work, while critical, can also be overwhelming and may encourage PSTs, especially white PSTs, to distance themselves from the work of activists and take more passive approaches to equity work.

Evolving Topics and Goals

As the PSTs continued their discussions and planning, their initial topics and goals began to slowly evolve, and they shared more concrete visions for their work. Stephanie, for example, explained during a small group discussion that she “wanted to create a sort of resource guide for teachers to reference as they run into hard-to-tackle issues in the classroom.” This more specific idea of creating a guide for teachers was, as she saw it, more practical. Instead, her project would be created behind the scenes and given to other teachers to enact. In similar fashion, Adrian began planning an introductory activism handbook for teachers, one that offers resources for and possible approaches to a variety of issues of concern. Similar to Stephanie’s project, this resource designed for distant classrooms seems to serve as a sort of safety net for the PSTs and allows them to take a step back. Projects such as Stephanie’s and Adrian’s resource creation served as a more passive path to achieve the activist goals they espoused. By creating materials and then handing them off, white PSTs, as Matias (2016) notes, draw on their own privileged identities and backgrounds to ensure separation and distancing between themselves, activism, and the inequities surrounding them.

It should also be noted that there is much value in classroom teaching, and by connection instructional and resource design, as activist in nature. What these PSTs have done is tweak their projects to become design work for classrooms (which aligns with teacher education), rather than getting proximate to and working to address the external issues they discussed. As I theorized above, these PSTs’ approaches to activism represent the phenomenon of passive activism, where they adopt largely hands-off roles and remove the visibility and vulnerability that accompanies activist work. While the projects completed seem to represent more passive approaches to activism, this passivity is also, perhaps, a necessary step in developing as a teacher activist, a notion in need of further exploration. Participants’ more passive approaches also require us to question what counts as activism (Westheimer & Kahne, 2004) and to complicate conceptualizations of activism as dichotomous, as either being engaged or disengaged (Bennett, 2008).

Another PST, Charles, talked about focusing more on the ideology behind his activism, rather than discussing and planning specific directions for his work. This, while useful, served as another way for Charles to distance himself from the tangible work of activism and talk about it in more abstract and theoretical terms. In actuality, he avoids doing the difficult work of planning the approach and then getting proximate to the issue at hand. As PSTs, who can rely on their lack of experience as justification for avoidance of addressing critical issues in and around schools, Charles and his peers may pair their perceived lack of experience and expertise with their privilege as white people to distance themselves from enacting equity work. As white PSTs from middle- to upper-middle-class families who are generally insulated from oppression, being able to disconnect and separate themselves from inequities, in essence, leaves the work for others to do (DiAngelo, 2018).

Other evolving plans demonstrated some PSTs’ critical thinking and abilities to anticipate and even proactively navigate possible bumps in the road. In a whole-class discussion, Sally offered advice to her peers by suggesting they all take the time to really research their topics to fully support their claims and ideas for addressing issues. Charles echoed this point by reminding his classmates to seek out experts as resources prior to moving forward. While outliers largely, these comments suggest the PSTs’ abilities to consider their context (Knight & Watson, 2014) and plan for the complexities of activist work. It is these suggested abilities that help to critique the passive approaches they took.

Discomfort and Struggles

While the PSTs self-reported a variety of benefits, they also shared the discomforts and struggles they experienced. These notations of issues took the form of hedging statements, questions, and frustrations. Any discussion of PST-activism is incomplete without also explicating the challenges, both actual and perceived, that crop up throughout this type of public and critical work. Ultimately, these struggles and experienced discomforts impact PSTs’ beliefs and actions, and in this study, they contribute to the passive nature of PSTs’ activism projects.

One challenge expressed by students was in their thinking about how far to go with their projects. In other words, they worried about overstepping or offending others, connecting to van Tol’s (2017) finding that self-efficacy is a major influencer of PSTs’ engagement as activists. Adrian shared such a concern when writing about her own strong feminist ideology. As a woman and a feminist, Adrian wrestles with how to walk a line between doing what she believes to be right and toning down her approaches to something more palatable for students. She “wondered how much . . . feminism would be appropriate . . . due to the fact that some students might be uncomfortable with this concept due to their own feelings or upbringings.” This echoes how PSTs struggle seeing education and teaching as inherently political (Picower, 2013) and tensions around whether activism should be part of one’s teaching (Blackburn et al., 2018). As white mostly female PSTs, they appear to struggle between what they know to be right and what they worry students, parents, and administration can handle. Here, their whiteness and status as students may serve to absolve themselves of activist responsibilities.

Others, like Michelle, felt they ended up bogged down in grand ideas and felt as though they had no actual means of accomplishing their goals. Michelle’s initial goal was to “overhaul the [local] alternative school” and help create a system she felt valued all students and provided equitable education. Here, Michelle (and others) had a moment of realization—she felt that she simply did not have the time, the resources, or the agency to effect such change. She also shared that she struggled with pushing such an agenda in a system where she may be asked to complete future field placements or may want to apply for a teaching position. In other words, she wished to be seen as a “good teacher” and as “nice” (Bissonnette, 2016), as politically neutral and thus employable, a wish that ultimately works to interrupt not only her plans but also the ways she sees herself as allowed to do “controversial” work. Michelle’s positioning herself as a “good” and “nice” teacher conflicts with Westheimer and Kahne’s (2004) description of “good” participatory citizenship, where participation and action are required. Likewise, her internal struggle with how she could be viewed by others aligns with the broader activist scholarship (e.g., Bernal, 2006; Norwood, 2013) arguing that women activists often experience much more invalidation and ridicule in their work than men. As teacher educators, we must help PSTs navigate manageable projects and concerns over outside perception. We must help them critique the all-too-normal belief that teachers alone cannot—and should not—foster ripples of change (i.e., I’m just one person and I need to come across as a team player). We must also hold white PSTs to understand the roles they play in perpetuating inequality, in allyship, and in interrogating and interrupting whiteness (DiAngelo, 2018).

Sally found herself uncomfortable with the fact that, as she described it, “language is incredibly powerful,” especially with regard to labels. In her initial project, she began curating resources for supporting transgender students, which she hoped to disseminate via social media. In one post, she “originally tagged it as #transgenderstudents” but after one day felt it “Others/singles out transgender students so [she] expanded it to #lgbtqstudents” which she felt “was more inclusive, but also serves as a reminder . . . to support and discuss the full spectrum.” She discussed her discomfort with labels and her decision with classmates and the instructor. Sally’s discomfort and attempt to broaden her topic to be more inclusive, as she viewed it, and less “othering” ended up interrupting her move from understanding inequity to taking intentional action (Butler, 2016; Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2017). By attempting to avoid singling out an issue, she inadvertently lumped transgender students under a broader umbrella, leading to a broadening of her project and a significantly altered focus. Sally, who identifies as a cisgender, heterosexual woman, makes an interesting move here. Her concern over labels and her own hesitancy to name the issue she sets out to impact can be viewed as another distancing move, one that further disconnects her from an original topic of supporting transgender students. Similar to my comment above, teacher educators must scaffold PSTs’ experiences, help them work through language and label concerns, and help them name their issue, and themselves in relation to those issues, and to see utility in activism. By guiding students through the mitigation of the discomfort and concerns that will inevitably accompany meaningful equity work, we can better prepare PSTs to develop activist identities and more clearly see their work as connected to their teaching and lives as community members.

Discussion: The Complexity of Passive Activism

Recognizing how vital it is we prepare PSTs to turn a critical eye to issues impacting their students, their communities, and themselves and to act to effect change (Montaño et al., 2002; Picower, 2011), this study documents how a group of PSTs engaged in activism to impact issues of educational inequity. In the initial stages of their activist planning the six PSTs began with broad ideas connected to their passions. As the semester progressed, their initial topics generally became more concrete but also began to take on more passive approaches. With time, participants noted discomforts and struggles, which also contributed to their passivity. While these PSTs largely engaged in passive activism, passivity can also be read through a developmental lens as a generative first step into civic engagement for those new to activism, and to those potentially vulnerable to associated risks.

Throughout the semester, students were given feedback on their topics, project directions, including any issues they encountered, and ways they might tweak their work to more actively “do” the work of activists. Regardless, the projects took on largely passive approaches. In using the data from this study to theorize around passive activism, it is important to note that I do not read passive activism as an entirely negative concept. Instead I view it through the lens of plurality, helping to trouble the idea in order to better understand it. On one hand, the PSTs often used passive approaches as shields or safety nets, which protected them from what they may view as public scrutiny and being seen as agitators, especially as they look to enter the job market. Simply turning on the news or logging into social media offers a reminder of the ways in which youth activists are publicly criticized and attacked by adults (Prothero, 2019). On the other hand, and connected to the scholarship troubling existing views of activism and engagement as dichotomous (e.g., Bennett, 2008; Blackburn et al., 2018), activism most certainly is not a binary concept, where one either does or does not “do” activism. Instead, activists develop across time and experiences and come to activism at varying places in their development, perhaps beginning with passive approaches.

For PSTs like Charles, engaging in personal work around theory and ideology can be important steps in developing activist identities, stances, and tools. In regard to those PSTs who sought to create a project that would continue beyond their involvement, while a passive and distanced approach, their choices may also suggest a desire to help build something sustainable. Perhaps these PSTs need more experiences and support as they position themselves within activism. Others, like Sally and Adrian, created lesson plans and resources for other teachers and classrooms. This, too, could be an effective way to wade into activism and to begin making connections between one’s own ideology and the instruction they implement in their future classrooms. These choices to create instruction for others are also aligned with much of what we ask PSTs to do in teacher preparation, which suggests the need to rethink how we prepare future teachers. As Leonardo (2004) suggests, “answers are only as deep as the questions that educators and students are able to pose” (p. 16); thus we must consider what we are asking of teacher candidates, what questions we ask them to pose for themselves, such as what kinds of citizens a democracy needs (Westheimer & Kahne, 2004) and what they, as citizens and future teachers, are willing to do and risk (Ononuju et al., 2020), and how we might apprentice them into their work as teacher-activists. Otherwise, we may be inadequately preparing them and then faulting them for what they have not yet learned or experienced. In short, as teacher educators, we must help PSTs engage in Sensoy and DiAngelo’s (2017) notion of CSJ and maintain those efforts and strive to further the powerful activist work, documented by Kinloch et al. (2020) and others, already underway within education.

An important part of reflecting on the findings from this study involves also reflecting on my own identity and positionality and the ways the course, project, and student experiences were shaped by these. Similarly, my own experiences, beliefs, and identity influence how I understand activism, and how I might not understand other—perhaps more passive—forms of activism. As I reflect, I am left with several questions. How might I use the data to revise the course and project, including how I might view the distancing moves the PSTs made and the ways their social identities influenced those moves and then link that information back to the course and the supports students received? How might I embed this work in all courses in the program? And how might I be more aware of my own identity in designing and facilitating such projects? While there is much to consider, one major change I believe would better support them and would better align with the ways many activist actions play out is to have PSTs work collaboratively on group activism projects. This would allow for collective agency and support and would help to mitigate some of the limitations that accompany individual activism projects.

Passivity and Whiteness

Yet another contributing factor is the existing system of whiteness in schools and society. All of the PSTs in this study identified as white and all but one identified as women, percentages not that different from the field of ELA and teaching in general (Boser, 2014). White PSTs need ongoing opportunities to reflect on their own experiences and privileges and to think about the ways who they are influences not only the instructional decisions they make but also how they perceive their students, the communities in which they work, and their responsibilities as agents of change. This is especially true when considering that many PSTs’—largely white, middle class, and identifying as female, like those who participated in this study—have likely not yet had their lives impacted in significant ways by the issues of inequity they set out to address. The distancing moves these PSTs made, in many cases, also parallel the defensive moves DiAngelo (2018) writes about as white fragility, Matias (2016) describes as white emotionality, and Johnson (2013) discusses as white discomfort. Continuing to examine how white PSTs navigate civic engagement and the scaffolds and structures they require to progress is vital for the field.

The Necessity of Activism in the Current Moment

While the passive moves the PSTs in this study made may be necessary first steps toward developing activist identities and doing the critical and public work of activists, it is also necessary to question what it means to enact passivity, in activist work and in teaching and teacher education, in our current and urgent moment. In a time when the global pandemic has shined a brighter light on the existing massive gaps of inequity and access and where thousands engage in peaceful protests against systemic racism and anti-blackness across the country and around the world, the ways in which we prepare teachers to work as active agents of change holds serious consequence.

Conclusion and Implications

Passive projects in which these PSTs engaged may be valuable stepping stones to more active engagement in the future. To help PSTs move beyond passive and toward active approaches to activism, it is important for teacher educators to assist them in making meaningful connections between the work teachers do in the classroom and the equity work they can do outside of school (Picower, 2011, 2013) and the necessity in actively doing this work (Butler, 2016; Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2017). Without providing time and space to engage PSTs in these discussions, we risk promoting teaching that maintains existing inequalities.

The data pointed to categories of findings that can be further explored in an effort to improve teacher preparation and specifically how we help PSTs engage in developing as activists. Positioning teacher activism within one methods course is far from adequate to prepare teachers to meet Freire’s (1970) challenge of a politically engaged education. Ongoing opportunities to collaborate on guided activist projects can help them more thoroughly wrestle with and reflect on the complexities and discomfort that accompany such work. Teacher educators should make teachers-as-activists a central focus of teacher preparation programs, not just individual courses. Centering activism as an important part of their teacher preparation can help PSTs explore the ways activism is shaped by (and in turn shapes) their contexts (Knight & Watson, 2014), interrogate the tensions, negative connotations, and possible manifestations wrapped up in activism (Bennett, 2008; Blackburn et al., 2018; Campigotto & Barrett, 2017). If PSTs fail to see themselves as teachers, stop short of interrogating the ways their own privileges and whiteness influence all they do (DiAngelo, 2018; Matias, 2016) and are ill-prepared to anticipate and navigate the challenges that will necessarily accompany activist work, they may be far less likely to develop as activists and to carry such work into their careers.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Mike P. Cook

Author Biography

Mike P. Cook is an associate professor of English Education at Auburn University, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses within the English Education program. His research interests include multimodal literacy, teacher identity development, and activism in education, including the intersection of the three. His scholarship has appeared in English Teaching: Practice & Critique, Journal of Language and Literacy Education; ALAN Review, and the Journal of College Literacy and Learning, among others.

References

Behrman

E. H.

(2006). Teaching about language, power, and text: A review of classroom practices that support critical literacy. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 49(6), 481–486.

Bennett

W. L.

(2008). Changing citizenship in the digital age. In Bennett

W. L.

(Ed.), Civic life online: Learning how digital media can engage youth (pp. 1–24). MIT Press.

Bernal

(2006). Self-care and self-defense manual for feminist activists. CREA.

Bessant

(2003). Youth participation: A new mode of government. Policy Studies, 24(2–3), 87–100.

Bissonnette

J. D.

(2016). The trouble with niceness: How a preference for pleasantry sabotages culturally responsive teacher preparation. Journal of Language & Literacy Education, 12(2), 9–32.

Blackburn

M. V.

Clark

C. T.

Schey

(2018). Stepping up! Teachers advocating for sexual and gender diversity in schools. Routledge.

Boser

(2014). Teacher diversity revisited. Center for American Progress. www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/report/2014/05/04/88962/teacher-diversity-revisited/

Butler

T. T.

(2016). “Stories behind their hands”: The creative and collective “actionist” work of girls of color. English Teaching: Practice & Critique, 15(3), 313–332.

Campigotto

Barrett

S. E.

(2017). Creating a space for teacher activism in environmental education: Pre-service teachers’ experiences. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 22, 42–57.

10.

Charmaz

(2000). Constructivist and objectivist grounded theory. In Denzin

N. K.

Lincoln

(Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed., pp. 509–535). SAGE.

11.

Cochran-Smith

(2004). Walking the road: Race, diversity, and social justice in teacher education. Teachers College Press.

12.

DiAngelo

(2018). White fragility: Why it’s so hard for white people to talk about racism. Beacon Press.

13.

Ethridge

E. A.

(2006). Teacher modeling of active citizenship via service-learning in teacher education. Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, 14(1), 49–65.

14.

Freire

(1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Continuum.

15.

Glaser

B. G.

(2011). Getting out of the data: Grounded theory conceptualization. Sociology Press.

16.

Glaser

B. G.

Strauss

(1967). Discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Aldine Transaction.

17.

Gorski

P. C.

Erakat

(2019). Racism, whiteness, and burnout in antiracism movements: How white racial justice activists elevate burnout in racial justice activists of color in the United States. Ethnicities, 19(5), 784–808.

18.

Hadley Dunn

. (2016). “It’s dangerous to be a scholar-activist these days”: Becoming a teacher educator amidst the hydra of teacher education. Teacher Education Quarterly, 43(4), 3–29.

19.

Harste

(2003). What do we mean by literacy now? Voices from the Middle, 10(3), 8–12.

20.

Holloway

(1997). Basic concepts for qualitative research. Blackwell Science.

21.

Johnson

(2013). Embodying English: Performing and positioning the White teacher in a high school English class. English Education, 46(1), 5–33.

22.

Kahne

J. E.

Sporte

S. E.

(2008). Developing citizens: The impact of civic learning opportunities on students’ commitment to civic participation. American Educational Research Journal, 45(3), 738–766.

23.

Kinloch

Burkhard

Penn

(Eds.) (2020). Race, justice, and activism in literacy instruction. Teachers College Press.

24.

Knight

M. G.

Watson

V. W. M.

(2014). Toward participatory communal citizenship: Rendering visible the civic teaching, learning, and actions of African immigrant youth and young adults. American Educational Research Journal, 51(3), 539–566.

25.

Leonardo

(2004). Critical social theory and transformative knowledge: The functions of criticism in quality education. Educational Researcher, 33(6), 11–18.

26.

Lofland

L. H.

(1984). Analyzing social settings. Wadsworth.

27.

Love

B. L.

(2019). We want to do more than survive: Abolitionist teaching and the pursuit of educational freedom. Beacon Press.

28.

Luke

(2000). Critical literacy in Australia: A matter of context and standpoint. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 43, 448–461.

29.

Matias

C. E.

(2016). Feeling white: Whiteness, emotionality, and education. Sense.

30.

Montaño

López-Torres

DeLissovoy

Pacheco

Stillman

(2002). Teachers as activists: Teacher development and alternative sites of learning. Equity & Excellence in Education, 35(3), 265–275.

31.

Morrell

(2002). Toward a critical pedagogy of popular culture: Literacy development among urban youth. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 46(1), 72–77.

32.

Muñoz

S. M.

(2015). Identity, social activism, and the pursuit of higher education. Peter Lang.

33.

Nieto

(2006). Teaching as political work: Learning from courageous and caring teachers. Sarah Lawrence College.

34.

Norwood

(2013). Promoting self care and well-being among feminist activists and women’s rights defenders: Reflections from Burma and Palestine. Upaya Zen Center.

35.

Ononuju

I. E.

Best-Green

B. T.

Martinez

D. C.

(2020). Students developing critical language and literacy perspectives. In Kinloch

Burkhard

Penn

(Eds.), Race, justice, and activism in literacy instruction (pp. 35–51). Teachers College Press.

36.

Paris

(2019). Naming beyond the white settler colonial gave in educational research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 32(3), 217–224.

37.

Patel

(2020). Generations of fugitive literacy teacher education and activism. In Kinloch

Burkhard

Penn

(Eds.), Race, justice, and activism in literacy instruction (pp. 13–21). Teachers College Press.

38.

Picower

(2011). Resisting compliance: Learning to teach for social justice in a neoliberal context. Teachers College Record, 113(5), 1105–1134.

39.

Picower

(2013). You can’t change what you don’t see: Developing new teachers’ political understanding of education. Journal of Transformative Education, 11, 170–189.

40.

Prothero

(2019, October 4). Participate, but know your place: Young civic activists get mixed messages. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2019/10/04/participate-but-know-your-place-young-civic.html.

41.

Sensoy

Ö.

DiAngelo

. (2017). Is everyone really equal? An introduction to key concepts in social justice education. Teachers College Press.

42.

Thomas

D. R.

(2006). A general inductive approach for analyzing qualitative evaluation data. American Journal of Evaluation, 27(2), 237–246.

43.

van Tol

. (2017). Student activism: An exploration of pre-service teacher engagement. Australian Universities’ Review, 59(1), 47–57.

44.

Westheimer

Kahne

(2004). What kind of citizen? The politics of educating for democracy. American Educational Research Journal, 41(2), 237–269.