PRODUCTS

Social studies education over its hundred-year history has often focused on predominantly white and male narratives. This has not only been detrimental to the increasingly diverse population of the U.S., but it has also meant that social studies as a field of scholarship has systematically excluded and marginalized the voices, teaching, and research of women, scholars of color, queer scholars, and scholars whose politics challenge the dominant traditions of history, geography, economics, and civics education.

Insurgent Social Studies intervenes in the field of social studies education by highlighting those whose work has often been deemed “too radical.” Insurgent Social Studies is essential reading to all researchers and practitioners in social studies, and is perfect as an adopted text in the social studies curriculum at Colleges of Education.

At a time when many individuals and institutions are reexamining their histories to better understand their tangled roots of racism and oppression, Reckoning: Kalamazoo College Uncovers Its Racial and Colonial Past tells the story of how American ideas about colonialism and race shaped Kalamazoo College, a progressive liberal arts institution in the Midwest. Beginning with its founding in 1833 during the era of Indian Removal, the book follows the development of the college through the Civil War, the long period of racial entrenchment that followed Reconstruction, minstrel shows performed on campus in the 1950s during the rise of the Civil Rights movement, Black student activism in the wake of Martin Luther King’s assassination, the quest for multiculturalism in the 1990s, and the recent activism of a changing student body. This close look at the colonial and racial history of one institution reveals academia’s investment in White supremacy and the permutations and contradictions of race and racism in higher education. Though the details are unique to Kalamazoo, other predominantly White colleges and universities would have similar historical trajectories, for in the end our institutional histories reflect the history of the United States. By examining the ways in which a progressive, midwestern college has absorbed, resisted, and perpetuated American systems of colonialism and racism, the book challenges higher education to use this moment to make the deep, structural changes necessary to eliminate disparities in experiences and outcomes among students of color and their White peers. Reckoning is a volume that can be used in a variety of courses that deal with topics such as History of Education, Social Justice in Higher Education, and more.

Perfect for courses such as: Pursuing Diversity, Inclusion, Justice, and Equity │ Education and Cultural Studies │ Exploring Whiteness │ Inquiry in Postsecondary Education │ Proseminar in Adult and Higher Education │ Education and Social Struggle in the U.S., WWII – Present │ Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Student Affairs │Diversity and Inclusion in Higher Education │ History of American Education │ Diversity in Higher Education

A 2022 SPE Outstanding Book Honorable Mention

Improvement Science: Promoting Equity in Schools is intended for classroom teachers, school leaders, and district leaders charged with leading improvement efforts in schools. From questions such as “how do I develop a love of reading in my classroom?” to “how can I better manage student behavior during independent learning time?” to “what should we do to make sure kids of all races read at grade level by 3rd grade” to “how could we include families of all backgrounds as partners in learning” or “how do we increase our graduation rate among underserved students," this book shares real-life examples from those who are currently leading equity-focused improvement in our classrooms and schools. If you are curious about how Improvement Science has been used, or how others have succeeded—or failed—at equity-focused improvement efforts in our classrooms and in our schools, or if you’re wondering how to spur discussions in school districts, universities, and communities about leading equity-focused improvement, this book is for you. Teachers, students, family members, community members, principals and superintendents will be inspired to embrace Improvement Science as a method to improve equity in their schools.

The book helps people new to Improvement Science to understand the basic steps to implement the process. If you’re a beginner, it provides some basic steps and a resource (https://www.carnegiefoundation.org/our-ideas/six-core-principles-improvement/) to help you understand the process better; for those with some experience, the book will be an excellent refresher and tool with functional suggestions to take your practice further.

1.       Form a Team.

2.       Examine Data.

3.       Ask Why.

4.       Read Research.

5.       Get Perspective of Those Closest to the Problem.

6.       Plan the Change.

Connecting cultures to educational settings is an essential component of critical pedagogy. This book addresses many of the key issues and challenges in decolonizing the African school curriculum. It highlights important philosophical arguments on the challenges and possibilities of achieving these goals in a meaningful manner. Topics covered in the book include:

• operationalizing the key terms of “inclusion” and “curriculum”
• strategies for Africanizing the school curriculum, and
• the implications of local knowledge for schooling reform

• how do we frame an inclusive anti-colonial African future and what is the nature of the work required to collectively arrive at that future?
• what education are learners of today going to receive and how will they apply it to their schooling and work lives?
• how do we re-fashion our work as African educators and learners to create more relevant understandings of what it means to be human?
• how do we challenge colonizing and imperializing relations of the academy? What are the possibilities and limits of counter-visions of education?
• how do we make school curricula inclusive through teaching, research and graduate training in questions of Indigeneity and multi-centric ways of knowing?

There are novels that portray cities as magical places, others as stifling, imposing environments, and others still as a gritty but beautiful, living landscape. Cities can be the center of culture, business, the arts, and are the meeting places for diversities of all kinds. Examining Images of Urban Life gathers contributions from scholars, educators, and young adult authors, like Benjamin Alire Saenz and e.E. Charlton-Trujillo, who consider how living in a city affects character identity and growth, and the ways authors world-build the urban setting. The collection discusses what the urban landscape means, and dispels the media-driven, anecdotally propagated preconceptions about city living.

Urban life is varied and rich, just as its literature is. The collection revolves around a reconsideration of what the city represents, to its readers and to its inhabitants, and serves as a resource in urban settings, wherein teachers can select books that mirror and advocate for the students sitting in their classes.

Perfect for courses such as: Young Adult Literature | Children’s Literature | Elementary Literacy | Reading and Literacy | Methods of Teaching | Public Purposes of Education | Educational or Historical Foundations of Education | Urban Studies | Media and Library Sciences

The chapters in this volume collect together perspectives on Indigenous epistemologies. These Indigenous ways of knowing pay particular attention to the relational aspects of language, culture, and place. They are not identified as specific themes, but as integrated parts of a philosophy, for Indigenous epistemologies think within a relational framework, so that all aspects are best understood from this perspective. Indigenous ways of knowing have resisted colonization and oppression, and as such, Indigenous research perspectives exemplify a commitment to social justice, one that recovers knowledges that have been silenced or subjugated. When such knowledge is shared, we can see how to challenge oppressive regimes. We can see how to seek truth in a relational way that’s attendant to being together. Indigenous Research takes up issues of social justice in a way that is informed by Indigenous epistemologies, an important practice in contemporary research, particularly qualitative inquiry.

This volume on arts-based research explores the transformative power of arts for qualitative inquiry and beyond. The chapters address multiple approaches from within arts-based research and suggest that art can be mobilized to reorient the political, especially when we find the political aim straying from its proper target of truth and justice. Artistic representation is never an end in itself, for the goal is to change the way we think about people and their lives. Arts-based research makes the world visible in new and different ways, in ways ordinary scholarly writing does not allow. The Arts develops a utopian idea of belonging, illustrating how moments of history, biography, culture, politics and lived experience come together in the aesthetic. Ultimately, the content of the book examines how artistic insights resonate in arts-based research, something that not only gives us criteria for assessing the quality of ethical engagement in arts-based research practice, but also provides a conceptual framework for living more just lives through art.

Using details from California’s unique, diverse social and political history makes the potentially dry foundations course into a very personal and dynamic topic for students to wrap their minds around. 

The book is a critical analysis of the evolution of educational policies that frame teachers’ and students’ roles and responsibilities in the historical and contemporary context of public education and thoroughly covers topics such as school segregation; the political structure of the state; bilingual education, school funding, NCLB, school choice, how policies arise and how they are legislated.

A 2020 SPE Outstanding Book Award Winner
A 2019 AESA Critics' Choice Award Winner

Womanish Black Girls/Women Resisting Contradictions of Silence and Voice is a collection of essays written by varied black women who fill spaces within the academy, public schools, civic organizations, and religious institutions. These writings are critically reflective and illuminate autobiographical storied-lives. A major theme is the notion of womanish black girls/women resisting the familial and communal expectations of being seen, rather than heard. Consequently, these memories and lived stories name contradictions between “being told what to do or say” and “knowing and deciding for herself.” Additional themes include womanism and feminism, male patriarchy, violence, cultural norms, positionality, spirituality, representation, survival, and schooling. While the aforementioned can revive painful images and feelings, the essays offer hope, joy, redemption, and the re-imagining of new ways of being in individual and communal spaces. An expectation is that middle school black girls, high school black girls, college/university black girls, and community black women will view this work as seedlings for understanding resistance, claiming voice, and healing.

Perfect for courses in: Adolescent Development, American Studies, Black Studies, Educational Anthropology, Latino Studies, Multicultural Education, Social Foundations of Education, Sociology and Women's Studies.

The history of presidential politics reached a new and significant milestone with the election of Barack Obama in 2008. It sparked great hope in America for greater racial equity and social justice. A Paradise to Regain: Post-Obama Insights from Women Educators of the Black Diaspora seeks to avert the likelihood of erasure of President Obama’s legacy of hope and possibility that every child, regardless of race, faith, and gender affiliation, can dream big and live to see his/her dream turn into reality. As women educators of color, we all agree that the socio-political climate prevailing in the United States of America, since the aftermath of the 2016 election, requires unprecedented agency. The book provides space for Black women educators–African Americans, Naturalized Black Americans, and Foreign-born Blacks from Africa, the Caribbean Islands and South America (e.g., Guyana)–to have a candid conversation with their young children—sons and daughters, nephews and nieces—about the roadblocks they are likely to face as minority youth of color in their pursuit of greatness and the reminder that they have a role model in President Obama to look up to in moments of extreme frustration and exasperation. Voices of engaged educators of color are indispensable to make sure that children understand that that despite a 360-degree turn from eight consecutive years of a reassuring message that “change had come,” that paradise had been gained, into the threatening message of “making America white again,” we count on them to regain the paradise.

Perfect for courses such as: Racism and Education Inequality in the Lives of African-American Youth, Introduction to the African Diaspora, Equity and Diversity in Schools, Place, Language, Power and Knowledge, Global and Multicultural Education in the Secondary School, Issues in Urban Education, Culture Power and Education, Social Class Education and Pedagogy, Language, Culture, and Education, The Politics of Literacy and Race in Schools, Race and Racism in Education and Society, Race, Ethnicity and Linguistic Diversity in Classrooms and Communities, and Education and Society.

Some students enter classrooms with an “I dare you try to teach me” look on their faces, and others bounce into class excited to learn and anxious to please the teacher. We know we can’t automatically blame teachers or schools when students don’t want to learn. But we also know that sometimes teachers and schools don’t always set students up for success, and they don’t always help them love what they’re learning.

Why Kids Love (and Hate) School: Reflections on Practice investigates some of the school and classroom practices that help students love school—and some that send students in the opposite direction. Intended for classroom teachers, teacher education students, and school administrators, chapters in the book investigate a variety of topics: how schools can build effective school cultures, the “struggle” students encounter in learning, practices of other countries that help students love school, testing practices that cause students to hate school—and much more.  

Perfect for courses in: Introduction to Education, General Methods, Management/Assessment, Educational Research, Educational Administration/Leadership, Teacher Leadership, Curriculum Theory, Curriculum Development.

2019 SPE Outstanding Book Award Honorable Mention

To be able to promote effective anti-colonial and decolonial education, it is imperative that educators employ indigenous epistemologies that seek to threaten, replace and reimagine colonial thinking and practice. Indigeneity and Decolonial Resistance hopes to contribute to the search for a more radical decolonial education and practice that allows for the coexistence of, and conversation among, “multiple-epistemes.” The book approaches the topics from three perspectives:
• the thought that our epistemological frameworks must consider the body of the knowledge producer, place, history, politics and contexts within which knowledge is produced,
• that the anti-colonial is intimately connected to decolonization, and by extension, decolonization cannot happen solely through Western science scholarship, and
• that the complex problems and challenges facing the world today defy universalist solutions, but can still be remedied.

Indigeneity and Decolonial Resistance is an excellent text for use in a variety of upper-division undergraduate and graduate classrooms. It is also a valuable addition to the libraries of writers and researchers interested in indigenous studies and decolonialism.

Perfect for courses such as: Anti-Colonial Thought, Indigenous Knowledges, and Decolonization, Education, Social Development, and Social Justice Research in Education, Race, Indigeneity, and the Colonial Politics of Recognition, Marginality and the Politics of Resistance, Indigenous Settler Relations Issues for Teachers, Education Leadership, Reform, and Curriculum Innovation, Leadership in Social-Change Organizations, Adaptive Leadership: Power, Identity, and Social Change, Equity & Anti-Oppression in Practice and the Promise of Diversity: Addressing Race and Power in Education Settings, Strategies and Policies for Narrowing Racial Achievement, and Major Concepts and Issues in Education.

This collection consists of theoretical discussions, personal reflections, research reports, and policy suggestions sourced in the experiences of our most vulnerable students with an eye to making schools places all students might love rather than hate. The essays take up these issues from the perspectives of poverty, gender, race, ethnicity, ability, language, and religion among others.

These essays also provide practical advice for teachers and administrators—both practicing and pre-service—for making classrooms and schools spaces that would encourage our students to say, “I love school.”  

Perfect for courses in: Introduction to Education, General Methods, Social Foundations of Education, Diversity, Management/Assessment, Philosophy of Education, Sociology of Education, Educational Research, Educational Administration/Leadership, Teacher Leadership, Curriculum Theory, and Curriculum Development.

W. E. B. Du Bois’s seminal work, The Souls of Black Folk, not only captures the experience of African Americans in the years following the Civil War but also speaks to contemporary conditions. At a time when American public schools are increasingly re-segregating, are increasingly underfunded, and are perhaps nearly as separate and unequal as they were in earlier decades, this classic can help readers grasp links between a slavery past and a dismal present for too many young people of color. Disagreeing with Booker T. Washington, Du Bois analyzes the restrictiveness of education as a simple tool to prepare for work in pursuit of wealth (a trend still very much alive and well, especially in schools serving economically disadvantaged students). He also, however, demonstrates the challenges racism presents to individuals who embrace education as a tool for liberation. Du Bois’s accounts of how racism affected specific individuals allow readers to see philosophical issues in human terms. It can also help them think deeply about what kind of moral, social, educational and economic changes are necessary to provide all of America’s young people the equal opportunity promised to them inside and outside of schools.

Perfect for courses in: Social Foundations of Education, Political and Social Foundations of Education, Foundations of American Education, Foundations of Education, Introduction to Education Theory and Policy, Philosophy and Education, History of American Education, and African American Education.