This article explores the limits of introductory social justice education and the ways in which a social foundations course could expand and deepen the social justice lens of current and future educators. The authors, members of an introductory graduate-level Social Foundations course, discuss the limitations they realized in their previous social justice education courses, and the importance of courses that further student's understandings of the ever-evolving ways people enact and experience identity, power, and privilege. The authors identify three main pedagogical (...) and theoretical elements that advanced their social justice knowledge: examining theories for their potential to uncover or obscure lived experience; unpacking binary constructions of identity; and exploring the limits and possibilities of intersectional thinking. This article offers implications and suggestions for educators who seek to challenge and expand the social justice knowledge of future educators and administrators. (shrink)

In this article I report on the ways that an educational philosophies course in a performance-based program enables teacher candidates to identify, reflect upon, and evaluate a wide range of educational purposes. The context for the report is an accelerated graduate program in childhood education at a small urban college where intensive fieldwork is required every semester and applied learning is the norm. Using teacher candidates? reactions to selected texts in the history of educational thought as evidence, I aim to (...) show that an encounter with provocative foundational ideas can promote effective value-formation and reflective analysis of educational practice. (shrink)

The third edition of the Standards for Academic and Professional Instruction in Foundations of Education, Educational Studies, and Educational Policy Studies (Standards) challenge us to envision what ?a more holistic, inclusive and intellectually challenging approach to preparing educators? might look like. This article discusses how the operating principles of a teacher education program parallel the commitments for educators found in the Standards and explores why collaborative relationships between teacher education and social foundations matter. Given the current political and social climate (...) surrounding the field of education, it is important for those of us in the field of social foundations to think outside the box. (shrink)

Schools of education have seen many changes over the last 100 years (Labaree 2004). More recent modifications have included the slow and steady elimination of the social foundations of education in lieu of a more direct attention to teacher skills and basic training. The increased focus on the so-called ?nuts and bolts? of teacher education trumps the larger vision of the purpose or function of education. This article proposes an alternative view of teacher education?one that places primary importance on the (...) benefits of the social foundations on teacher education. In an effort to subvert the current trend toward technically trained teachers, schools of education should instead look to create teachers capable of critically investigating the context of their classroom within the broader world. (shrink)