How to Educate for Social Action

To succeed in school, in life, and as contributors to a more equitable society, students must be able to recognize, analyze, and challenge systemic injustices, say Lecturer Aaliyah El-Amin, Ed.M.'13, Ed.D.'15, and Boston College Professor Scott Seider, Ed.M.'04, Ed.D.'08. Through their research, they are examining what it truly means to pursue education for justice in K–12 schools.

“The kids who are in classrooms right now are our country's next generation of leaders,” says El-Amin. “They’re the people who are going to help determine whether we continue on our current path of deep injustice and human suffering, or whether we chart a new course toward a more just society — one where people across differences have equal access to well-being and thriving.”

El-Amin and Seider argue that equipping young people with the tools to understand and respond to injustice is not only critical to building a more just society but also key to supporting youth development — academically, emotionally, and civically.

“Young people who are more critically conscious of injustice are more civically engaged. They have higher self-esteem. They have better mental health…” says Seider. “The primary goal of nurturing young people's understanding of injustice is to prepare them to help build a better world. But we also have growing evidence that this critical consciousness contributes to positive youth outcomes.”

To explore how justice-oriented education is being implemented across different contexts, the researchers studied more than 100 schools, identifying four core strategies for embedding this work throughout K–12 education:

1. Building adult capacity
2. Centering justice in the curriculum
3. Partnering with families and communities
4. Engaging students in social action

While this work may look different depending on the local context, El-Amin and Seider believe it can be implemented in schools everywhere.

“Students are asking big questions about the world around them,” says El-Amin. “And when students are curious, engaged, and eager to participate in these conversations, educators have a powerful opportunity to bring them into critical consciousness and advocacy right in the classroom.”

This episode of the EdCast explores how schools can become places where students are not only academically prepared but also empowered to confront — and help transform — the world they inherit.

Transcript

JILL ANDERSON: I'm Jill Anderson. This is the Harvard EdCast.

Aaliyah El-Amin and Scott Seider want educators to think of critical consciousness not just as a social justice goal, but a powerful tool for helping all students thrive. They're leading researchers in justice-centered education and have spent years studying how young people learn to recognize, question, and challenge injustice. Their research spans thousands of students across more than 100 schools nationwide, even elementary classrooms. What they're finding is, when schools intentionally foster critical consciousness, students show stronger academic motivation, higher GPAs, and deeper engagement in their communities. But they also know this work isn't easy. And so, they have identified ways that educators can bring this justice-oriented approach into their classrooms. I asked, why is it so important that students learn to recognize and respond to injustice?

AALIYAH EL-AMIN: The real reason that we think that critical consciousness development is essential for young people is that there are pervasive injustices in the United States that impact all of our lives. And this has always been true but maybe, to most people, is especially evident right now. Injustice across multiple domains, class, ability, language, race, religion, impacts every sector, including the sector of education. We think, ultimately, our K–12 students are our country's next generation of leaders. Literally, the kids who are in classrooms right now are our country's next generation of leaders. And they're the people who are going to help determine whether we continue on our current path of deep injustice and human suffering, or whether or not we find a way to a more just society, where folks across differences have equal access to well-being and thriving. And so for our young people to do that, to actually help us turn the tide towards justice, they need tools. They have to have access to specific knowledge and skills and dispositions. In our research and our work in schools, we refer to part of this toolbox as the ability to recognize, analyze, and challenge injustice, which is frequently packaged using this term critical consciousness, which is a well-known term by Paulo Freire.

SCOTT SEIDER: And I would just add, Aaliyah described the ways in which nurturing young people's understandings of justice and injustice is important for the communities we live in and for the society that we live in. And then, there's also research — and Aaliyah and I have done some of this research, along with a number of other folks — that suggests that nurturing young people's understandings of injustice and their critical consciousness of injustice is also good for young people themselves as individuals. And so, in other words, young people who are more critically conscious of injustice are more civically engaged. They have higher self-esteem. They have better mental health.

One of the projects I did a number of years ago with some collaborators — that's one of my most cited papers — is one that found a positive relationship between critical consciousness and academic achievement, that young people who are more critically conscious are also actually doing better in school. Again, the primary goal for nurturing young people's understandings of injustice is about equipping them with the tools necessary to build a better world. But there's also evidence that being critically conscious contributes to positive youth development.

JILL ANDERSON: And as your work shows us, this is something that you can start young, and you can do this work in elementary school all the way through. Do we have a good idea of how much this might be happening in schools across the country, or is it hard to gauge at this point?

SCOTT SEIDER: That's a really great question. I mean, my instinct, based on someone who has spent a lot of time in schools, first as a high school teacher myself, for the last decade and a half as a researcher, is that this type of justice work often happens in piecemeal ways. In other words, that there's a small number of teachers in almost every school who feel very comfortable engaging with their kids around issues of justice and injustice. But it's not comprehensive. And the challenge with that, right, is that if there were only a few teachers in a school who were doing mathematics with young people, young people aren't going to learn mathematics in a consistent and scaffolded way that gets them where they need to go. For me, Aaliyah, and actually another collaborator of ours, Julia Bott, one of our real goals has been to try to think about ways in which schools can do this work more comprehensively.

AALIYAH EL-AMIN: It's really interesting that you said, Jill, you can do this critical consciousness development and justice work with really young kids in elementary school. And as Scott described it, is happening all across the country in isolated pockets in schools, maybe not as much sort of school-wide, which is what we're moving towards, but it's probably also happening more towards later adolescence in our high schools and our upper middle schools. There are really important reasons that's probably true.

I think a lot of times people think you can't have these kinds of conversations and really dig into these topics with our smallest little people. But, essentially, if young people are going to have a deep grasp of these tools that might help us shift towards a more just society, we need to be having these conversations from the very beginning. And we talk a lot in our work about how our youngest people are really interested in things related to fairness and justice, and are having those kinds of dialogues with adults and other kids in their lives all the time. So it's kind of natural to formally bring those conversations into young people's learning in schools.

JILL ANDERSON: How do you define educating for justice?

SCOTT SEIDER: That's a great question. And I'm not sure that any one person could define all of the aspects of what it could mean to educate for justice. But I can say, within the work that me and Aaliyah and our collaborator Julia have been doing for a few years now, there's a couple of key ideas that we've been focusing on. So, the first is, we really want students, in young people, to be able to recognize, analyze, and challenge injustice. And in thinking about the relationships between those three things, the recognizing, the analyzing, and the challenging, we draw on Paulo Freire's work, who Aaliyah mentioned before, who really talked about the importance of what he called a praxis between reflection and action. Freire sort of argued that if you learn about injustice but aren't engaged in challenging injustice, then you're prone to hopelessness. And you're not accomplishing anything, right? But he also said that if you're engaging in action, challenging injustice, but you haven't thought deeply about the injustices that you're working to challenge, you potentially are going to engage in what he called disastrous activism, activism that isn't achieving its goals. And so, one piece of educating for justice, from our perspective, is this real synthesis between engaging young people in recognizing injustice where it's happening, giving them the tools to understand its roots and consequences, and then also engaging with them in opportunities to challenge the injustice.

And then in terms of, a little bit more specifically, how can schools do that work, that involves four pieces. These are by no means the only four pieces that go into educating for justice. But we talk about building adult capacity, like building the capacity of adults in the school building to lead young people in this work. We talk about centering justice in the curriculum, making teaching and learning about injustice a central piece of what educators and schools are doing. We talk about partnering with families and community partners to advance justice. And we talk about engaging students in social action. And so, for us, those four pieces, while not comprehensive, really fit together in a nice way to support a school's efforts to nurture students' critical consciousness.

JILL ANDERSON: What advice do you have for educators who want to do this type of work, but they fear some type of pushback, or they legitimately face some type of pushback in their district?

SCOTT SEIDER: That's a really important question. And it's a question we've been thinking about a lot. I mean, I think first and foremost, we have to acknowledge, this is an incredibly harrowing moment we find ourselves in. Educators in a number of states have been dealing with these conditions for a number of years now. In Massachusetts, where the three of us live, I think this feels particularly harrowing in this moment. But there are a number of educators in other states who've been living with this for several years.

I think it's really important and appropriate for both educators and school leaders to ask themselves a really context-specific question about what's possible sort of in their state context, in their district context, in their school context, and then for them specifically as individuals, with the identities they hold and the responsibilities that they hold within their school and within their community. And people are going to be in different places, both because of where they live and the district they work in and because of the identities they hold in terms of the amount of risk they feel they can take on in pushing on a system to engage with issues of injustice.

I teach a class at Boston College on oppression and transformation and really thinking about these same issues at the college level. And my students and I were just having a conversation where we were doing this reading. It was actually with regard to sexism specifically. And it was sort of nudging people to take little risks, to figure out, where are the spaces where they can push and do so. The definition of what's feasible is going to be very different in different places for different people in different roles. And so, I think we want to first start by acknowledging that.

AALIYAH EL-AMIN: Essentially, what we're saying, Jill, is we do want educators to ask themselves, what can I do? with a deep analysis of their context and their reality. But I think one of the things that we know from our time in schools, and as educators ourselves — I was also an elementary school teacher — is that educators can often find even just the smallest opportunity to do something related to critical consciousness work, even in places where there might be some legitimate restrictions.

So, for example, maybe in a particular school or context, an educator can't change their curriculum, but they can add a text that complicates a narrative that's presented in their curriculum or textbook, or they can share a perspective from a group that's excluded from the content. And we've also seen in our work with schools a few broader ways that educators are engaging in this work, even in this complex time, that I think helps to mitigate some of that fear. One of those ways is working in teams, teaming up with other teachers and not trying to do this work alone.

Lots of injustice and justice work has shown us that there's a lot of cover, a little bit more cover with more people engaged. So, educators are teaming up and thinking about how they can partner with each other. I think we're also seeing educators consider how their families or their students can be partners or allies. Students are also asking a lot of questions about what's happening in the world around them. And so, to the extent that students are interested and engaged and want to be a part of these conversations, educators are also able to bring their students into a kind of advocacy for critical consciousness work in the classroom.

And then the last thing, maybe, I'll say is, I think it's been really important in our work that we help clarify that we know critical consciousness development is not a distraction from academic learning and academic goals. So, we've seen educators really consider their state objectives and where there's actually opportunity for critical consciousness development. So, for example, in every state, there's an ELA writing objective across grade levels that's about persuasive writing, for example. And the state objectives don't necessarily mandate what that writing can be about. So how are there opportunities and standards like that to allow students to explore topics of injustice or resistance, or just even ask questions about what they're observing in the world around them?

JILL ANDERSON: I'm thinking a little bit about how you mentioned a lot of people do this work kind of piecemeal, or it's being done in pockets. And one of the interesting things about the schools that you studied and observed is that they were able to implement a curriculum that went beyond just a couple folks doing the work in their school. It really became part of the overall curriculum. How were they able to make that happen?

SCOTT SEIDER: One of the schools that we were excited to study and have been excited to talk about and to write about is an elementary school that we call the Sarah Roberts Elementary School. And I think it was exciting to us to focus on an elementary school because I think, as Aaliyah said a little while ago, I think often, when folks think about studying issues of justice and injustice, they think about teenagers. And, of course, teenagers are at a terrific developmental moment for thinking about these issues. But we think younger children are, too. And so, it was really exciting to find this elementary school that had worked very systematically over many years to embed learning about justice and injustice into every grade level, into every subject area. And I would actually say into every unit, into every curriculum unit, at every grade level, in every subject area. That was sort of just part of teaching and learning. And there were a couple different things they did to make that possible.

The principal of the school started by working collaboratively with her leadership team to help educators in the school spend time thinking about their investment in doing justice work with young people. The principle led discussion and study and dialogue with her leadership team and then had those leadership team members spread out into the grade level teams to hold those same kinds of conversations, and really engage in reflection about, what role does learning about justice and injustice have in public education, in powerful teaching and learning.

And so, she worked on this investment piece and then paired that with this really amazing years-long arc of professional learning to help teachers feel comfortable doing this work in their classrooms. And so, it started with examining model lessons in units that other educators had implemented, and looking at what was happening in those lessons. And then it moved into interrogating teachers' own curriculum units and seeking out opportunities within those units to bring in issues of justice and injustice. 

It involved model teaching lessons, where members of the leadership team would teach a lesson in front of the entire faculty and then take feedback from that faculty and do the same thing in their grade level team meetings. And it involved coaching. And so just, in a really deliberate and methodical way, the leader of the Roberts Elementary School just really made sure that her faculty felt invested in doing the work. And then they got sufficient scaffolding and practice to do it.

And then she also — and this connects to the centering justice and curriculum piece. As a staff, they adopted a justice framework to help them do this work in their curriculum planning. For this particular school, they all, as a school, read Gholdy Muhammad's Cultivating Genius, which is just one of the most important education books that's come out, I'd say in the last decade, that offers this idea that teaching and learning should be in pursuit of skills, intellect, nurturing student's identity, and nurturing students' critical consciousness, their understandings about justice and their commitment to challenging justice.

And the school sort of used that framework. Those pursuits, they embedded it into their unit plan template for the entire school so that, when teachers were doing their curriculum planning, or modifying the mandated curriculum from their district, they were doing so with this eye towards, how can we be nurturing skills and intellect, but also identity and critical consciousness? In just a whole bunch of different ways, the school and the leadership of the school was really working to provide the scaffolding and the structures necessary for teachers to feel supported in doing.

AALIYAH EL-AMIN: I mean, we could probably talk about this all day. We get really excited about this school because it was both an elementary school and they were doing this work school-wide. But let me also just share two quick other things that we saw them doing. One was just really deeply partnering with families and community members. And so really understanding that if you want to have young people talk about issues that they're seeing play out in their community or in the world, that there are plenty of other people who know about these issues. And so, the school is really engaging family members and community members to come into the school to help plan with the teachers, to help give guest lectures, or have conversations with students. And then the other thing that they were doing was — and this part I'm very passionate about, and I think we mentioned earlier, is engaging students in social action. So, they were really recognizing that change doesn't just happen from thinking about it. We have to do something.

And so instead of just having kids sit in classrooms and learn about what other people might have done to push back or challenge injustice, they were actually creating opportunities for students to do that kind of challenging themselves as a part of their curricular work. So, we can imagine ninth graders writing letters to congresspeople after studying Puerto Rico's relationship with the United States, or even smaller types of actions. I had a teacher that I worked with who had her third-grade students write comments on Party City's website on costumes that were appropriating people's cultures and communities. So just giving students the opportunity to actually practice for themselves. What does it look like to say, actually, I don't think this is right, and I want to intervene here?

JILL ANDERSON: What mindsets do teachers and school leaders need to have to just develop and be effective advocates for educational justice? It sounds like at the Roberts School, there was a lot of work done with just the adults to really get this on board.

SCOTT SEIDER: Yeah, a powerful K–12 school is a space where students are learning a lot, and adults are learning a lot. And so, when I think about, what are the skills and mindsets and qualities that enable educators to do this work with young people? I do think some content knowledge about injustice and resistance to injustice is important. Seeking out opportunities to learn about injustice is quite important. But I also think it's important, when you're taking that learning stance and seeking out those opportunities to learn about these topics, to also recognize that these topics are dynamic and changing. Right? There's no end zone where you get to say, OK, I'm now an expert on racism and sexism and classism and ableism. I've learned what I need to know, and now I'm ready to teach.

These topics are shifting and changing all the time. And so, I always say to educators, we can't wait to get started until we feel like we fully know everything there is to know because we'll never get to that point. We have to jump in. And that takes courage. A piece of being able to do that is recognizing that you don't need to have all the answers. A big part of your job is raising questions that you and your students can explore together. And I actually think it's incredibly powerful for students to see that you don't have all the answers, and that you're invested in these topics, like you're invested in thinking through these topics with them, but that you also are a learner in this work.

AALIYAH EL-AMIN: I would definitely reemphasize courage, I think, is an important part of this work. But maybe the only other one I add is a stance rooted in love, right? Nothing worth doing is easy. And I think, ultimately, this work is about caring for humans, humanity and human beings. And so, I think to do critical consciousness development work in schools, educators have to, obviously, love their students, love, broadly, the idea of human beings thriving and being well, and doing this work rooted in that love.

JILL ANDERSON: And I know you just talked about how you probably don't want to do this work alone. But I have to imagine, in some places, in some schools, there are educators who truly want to do this work and believe in it but don't have the support, perhaps of leadership or maybe the majority of educators in their building. And what about those folks?

AALIYAH EL-AMIN: Maybe the best-case scenario is the best set of conditions is to be able to be in partnership with someone when you do this work. But that doesn't take it off the table for doing it independently. There's a quote by Bell Hooks where she talks about the classroom as one of the most radical sites of possibility. And to the extent that a teacher has young people in front of them by themselves in a room for some portion of the day, there is an opportunity to engage in this work, even if no one else in your building thinks it's important or is willing to walk alongside you. So, I think we think that all of the things that we've said can still apply for a teacher who's working in isolation.

SCOTT SEIDER: I frequently find this kind of finishing with James Baldwin. Baldwin has this talk to teachers. He just reminds us as educators that teaching our students how to examine society and how to try to change it is essential for society to thrive going forward. We really have an enormous privilege and responsibility, as educators, to engage young people in developing the skill and the will to do that work.

JILL ANDERSON: It's interesting, too, because democracy in general seems like it should lend itself to the idea of educating for justice, that it would be a big piece of it, no matter what.

AALIYAH EL-AMIN: Yeah, absolutely. James Baldwin really says, doing this work in schools is really the only hope society has.

JILL ANDERSON: Aaliyah El-Amin is a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Scott Seider is a professor at Boston College. They are the authors of “Educating for Justice, School-wide Strategies to Prepare Students to Recognize, Analyze, and Challenge Inequity.” I'm Jill Anderson. This is the Harvard EdCast, produced by the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Thanks for listening.