CALL FOR CHAPTERS--Social Justice, the Common Core, and Closing the Instructional Gap: Empowering Diverse Learners and Their Teachers

Social Justice, the Common Core, and Closing the Instructional Gap:

Empowering Diverse Learners and Their Teachers

Edited by Janet C. Richards, Ph.D. and Kristien Zenkov, Ph.D.

(Forthcoming from Information Age Publishing)

Chapter proposals due Friday, February 28, 2014

Chapter drafts (for accepted proposals) tentatively due June 27, 2014

Book Premise

There is little doubt that the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are a controversial entity. They are

provocative for the way in which they have been developed, for the ways they are being implemented and

evaluated, for their content, and for their failure to explicitly consider the needs, interests, and histories of

diverse populations. While the CCSS continue to be problematized by critics around the country—

including the editors of this volume—it is evident our nation is moving toward (some would argue we

have arrived at) a national set of standards and/or a national curriculum. This text will be an important

volume for multiple audiences, in large part because it will bring together critical perspectives on the

CCSS and the notion of national standards/curricula. It will simultaneously provide a social justice

orientation as a way to interpret the CCSS and respond to their limits, while presenting practical examples

of social justice-oriented, CCSS-focused curricula that empower diverse learners and their teachers.

Social Justice, the Common Core, and Closing the Instructional Gap will consist of chapters by

classroom teachers and university scholars who portray honest, engaging, first-person accounts of their

successes and challenges connecting a social justice pedagogical orientation to the Common Core State

Standards. These authors will candidly and passionately share the challenges of navigating between a

social justice curriculum and high stakes standards- and test-driven environments. They will highlight

their accomplishments that include effectively supporting students to consider social injustices and devise

plans to work toward a more equitable world.

Despite criticisms of the CCSS, tenets of the Common Core can connect to social justice pedagogies. As

such, the following ideas and practices will be highlighted in this volume:

1) Moving from instruction to inquiry. More than ever, curriculum will start with questions

rather than the delivery of information. Subject matter is important, but teachers need to

know how to apply knowledge through designing a problem solving process. Teachers might

begin by posing a significant challenge to students and capturing the challenge in a

manageable problem statement or driving question. The question frames the project while the

problem sets the solution process into motion. Choosing and crafting a suitable problem

requires experience, curiosity, and passion, as well as thorough knowledge of the discipline.

2) Balancing knowledge and skills. The CCSS rebalance the equation between content and

skills. The emphasis is on a blend of knowing/doing and learning/demonstrating, in which

students apply what they know and demonstrate mastery of 21st century skills such as

presentation and collaboration. This shift changes expectations for mastery, rearranges

assessments and grading systems, and relies on coaching students for better performance.

3) Going deep. “Deep” thinking sounds good in theory, but it takes time, making it problematic

in the context of a 48-minute period or a 180-day school year. Deep thinking also conflicts

with current testing requirements, which do not reward insight and analysis. The CCSS

suggest that teachers overcome these problems by assessing fewer standards (the goal of the

Common Core), using a variety of proven thinking tools, and designing a controlled process

that helps students focus their thinking on the driving question.

4) Teaching teamwork. The CCSS identify collaboration and teamwork as 21st century skills to

be taught. This is laudable, but something bigger is underway. As the outside world shows

us, we are moving into a collaborative culture of continuous learning within networked

communities. Teachers might meet this goal of teaching collaboration by using team

contracts, peer collaboration rubrics, and work ethic rubrics to turn group work into effective

teams. This guidance is a necessity for a curriculum that emphasizes problem solving and

inquiry, now often utilized in the real world through work projects that require teamwork.

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5) Establishing a culture of inquiry. Inquiry is central to of the CCSS. It challenges teachers by

removing a convenient and traditional means of being in charge—because inquiry cannot by

taught by a teacher standing in front of the classroom. Instead, to remain in charge we must

teach students how to take charge of themselves, to respect the inquiry process, and become

self-directed learners. This requires time, patience, and a blend of assessments and tools that

promote the development of self-awareness, respect, self-control, and other attributes of a

functioning community.

6) Blending coaching with teaching. This tenet requires that teachers often work shoulder to

shoulder with students, giving them feedback, questioning them, and urging them on to the

next level of achievement. It is a collaborative, communal form of teaching and learning that

requires good listening, appropriate praise, and focused criticism (Markham, 2012).

Opening Chapters

This book will open with an accessible chapter that focuses on the development of the CCSS and the

content of these standards. Given their centrality to the future of our schools’ curricula and teachers’

pedagogies, it is vital that academics and teachers engage thoughtfully with the motivations behind and

the development of these standards. The second chapter will explore the notion of social justice

education, including a bit of history and detailing just what a social justice stance looks like in practice

and in terms of standards and curricula. The third chapter will be another accessible and not too lengthy

exploration of the intersections and tensions between the CCSS, their development and content, and the

social justice notions explored in the second chapter. This chapter will examine both ideas and practices,

beginning to introduce the types of explorations that will comprise the remainder of the book.

Body of the Book

The bulk of the book will be 12-15 relatively brief (15-20 pages) explorations of the CCSS as they

intersect with and enact a social justice orientation. These chapters might include descriptions of how

educators are critically examining and implementing the CCSS, with particular emphases on particular

grade levels, content standards, classroom strategies, and assessment practices. These chapters will be

written by university- and school-based authors, but the focus must absolutely be on K-12 practices.

Combined these chapters will depict what the CCSS look like in practice, guided by a social justice

orientation. Each chapter must include the following elements:

• 15-20 double-spaced pages; 1-inch margins; 12 pt Times/Times New Roman font

• Description of the authors’ contexts—urban, suburban, ex-urban, rural—and factors teachers are

facing, including CCSS, high stakes testing, district and school regulations, etc.

• Explicit description of the author’s notion of social justice in relationship to the author’s

teaching/learning context, with relevant references

• Explicit focus on one specific grade level—elementary, middle school, or high school

• Explicit identification of the specific CCSS authors utilize for their social justice-focused inquiry

projects and pedagogies

• Written for teacher/academic audience with authentic lessons for K-12 curricula and pedagogies

• Related in active and authentic voice and through the lens of actual classroom practice (i.e., what

happens in social justice classrooms when they extend CCSS into equity-focused educational

activities)

• Tools teachers utilize that illustrate how they enact CCSS-oriented social justice pedagogies in

their classrooms

• Explicit discussions of the tensions teachers and academics face when implementing social

justice-focused pedagogies and how they might respond to direct instruction and standardized

assessment pressures with more holistic, social justice-focused assessment methods

• Poignant, compelling, insightful, aesthetic representations as valid data (e.g., visual art, poetry,

photo-art, memoirs, e-mail messages, in-class student discussions, and comments, etc.) from

diverse students, families, and future teachers that portray their experiences, feelings, and

perceptions in their quest for social equity in the classroom and in communities

Maximum 500 word chapter proposals due Friday, February 28, 2014 to

Janet Richards at janetusm@me.com and to Kristien Zenkov at kzenkov@gmu.edu