This book is motivated by our work with students and their families in urban communities, and the urgent imperative to address the endemic educational and societal inequities that pervade the lives of urban students, particularly those who live in poverty, are of minority and immigrant backgrounds, and are otherwise marginalized within current educational discourses and practices. In spite of the fact that over the last three decades policy makers, educators and communities across the globe have called for in-depth structural adjustments to urban education, these changes are rarely evidenced in the academic and practitioner spheres. On the contrary, guided by normative assumptions that ignore the realties of students' lives, narrow outsider notions of what ought to be continue to focus on deviance and constrain urban students within restrictive boundaries. These underlying discourses, in the form of deficit beliefs, thoughts, and actions, shape urban research, theory, and practice and blind prospective change agents to students' strengths, and delimit the transformative potential of social justice praxis within urban environments. This volume brings together a range of scholars from Canada and the United States that present a variety of different lenses on issues of diversity, equity and social justice in urban schools. Their analyses highlight the richness and complexity of urban education, and illustrate how multiple theoretical and practical configurations of difference impact students, their families and communities, and facilitate or hinder the creation of inclusionary learning environments.

The focus of this book extends the discourse on student engagement beyond prescriptive definitions and includes substantive ethical and political issues relating to this concept. As such, this collection includes voices of educational theorists, practitioners, and students. It provides a counter discourse to the current dialogue on student engagement in educational theory and practice which equate it primarily with behavioural and attitudinal characteristics including student compliance and qualities of teaching or teachers. In this collection, engagement is not viewed simply as a matter of techniques, strategies or behaviours. Rather, the understandings of student engagement presented, while distinct from each other, are imbued with a common vision of education for democratic transformation or reconstruction as operational for and in democratic communities. Contributors to this volume examine issues of the purpose of student engagement, and the question of the criteria, standards, and norms which are used to determine the quality and degree of engagement, and ultimately whether or not all forms of student engagement are equally worthwhile. This collection is intended for use in teacher and administrator preparation programs as well as school and district professional development initiatives.

Convictions of Conscience: How Voices From the Margins Inform Public Actions and Educational Leadership seeks to help educational leaders to develop the competencies and capacities required to create socially just and equitable schools. It is for educational leaders interested in transforming systems and decolonizing education rooted socially, structurally and ideologically in hegemony. This edited volume promotes the questioning of assumptions embedded in neoliberal new managerialism practices that often undergird the preparation and training of school leaders. New managerialism in higher education seeks to understand the market forces in order to cater to the idiosyncratic, often self-promoting needs and interests of the few and seeks to respond with programs and policies aligned with those forces and interest. This volume suggests that the confluence of context, theory and pedagogical strategies within the field of educational leadership should inform curricular decisions in educational leadership preparation programs and such programs should be designed to prepare school leaders as both activists and advocates for marginalized students, parents, communities, and staff. Convictions of Conscience is a call on educational leaders who are committed to success for all students to reject new managerial approaches at all levels of educational leadership and is an invitation to expand their emphasis to concerns rooted in human context, particularly identity politics. Towards this end a decolonizing philosophically grounded practice of educational leadership that disrupts static relations within the structures of power is required to move toward a more socially just praxis. The chapter authors seek to problematize understandings of diversity and inclusion by emphasizing the integral role of equity and social justice as critical dimensions of human relationships. Additionally chapter authors intentionally interrogate the socio-cultural dimensions that affect educational leaders.

Convictions of Conscience: How Voices From the Margins Inform Public Actions and Educational Leadership seeks to help educational leaders to develop the competencies and capacities required to create socially just and equitable schools. It is for educational leaders interested in transforming systems and decolonizing education rooted socially, structurally and ideologically in hegemony. This edited volume promotes the questioning of assumptions embedded in neoliberal new managerialism practices that often undergird the preparation and training of school leaders. New managerialism in higher education seeks to understand the market forces in order to cater to the idiosyncratic, often self-promoting needs and interests of the few and seeks to respond with programs and policies aligned with those forces and interest. This volume suggests that the confluence of context, theory and pedagogical strategies within the field of educational leadership should inform curricular decisions in educational leadership preparation programs and such programs should be designed to prepare school leaders as both activists and advocates for marginalized students, parents, communities, and staff. Convictions of Conscience is a call on educational leaders who are committed to success for all students to reject new managerial approaches at all levels of educational leadership and is an invitation to expand their emphasis to concerns rooted in human context, particularly identity politics. Towards this end a decolonizing philosophically grounded practice of educational leadership that disrupts static relations within the structures of power is required to move toward a more socially just praxis. The chapter authors seek to problematize understandings of diversity and inclusion by emphasizing the integral role of equity and social justice as critical dimensions of human relationships. Additionally chapter authors intentionally interrogate the socio-cultural dimensions that affect educational leaders.

The focus of this book extends the discourse on student engagement beyond prescriptive definitions and includes substantive ethical and political issues relating to this concept. As such, this collection includes voices of educational theorists, practitioners, and students. It provides a counter discourse to the current dialogue on student engagement in educational theory and practice which equate it primarily with behavioural and attitudinal characteristics including student compliance and qualities of teaching or teachers. In this collection, engagement is not viewed simply as a matter of techniques, strategies or behaviours. Rather, the understandings of student engagement presented, while distinct from each other, are imbued with a common vision of education for democratic transformation or reconstruction as operational for and in democratic communities. Contributors to this volume examine issues of the purpose of student engagement, and the question of the criteria, standards, and norms which are used to determine the quality and degree of engagement, and ultimately whether or not all forms of student engagement are equally worthwhile. This collection is intended for use in teacher and administrator preparation programs as well as school and district professional development initiatives.

This book is motivated by our work with students and their families in urban communities, and the urgent imperative to address the endemic educational and societal inequities that pervade the lives of urban students, particularly those who live in poverty, are of minority and immigrant backgrounds, and are otherwise marginalized within current educational discourses and practices. In spite of the fact that over the last three decades policy makers, educators and communities across the globe have called for in-depth structural adjustments to urban education, these changes are rarely evidenced in the academic and practitioner spheres. On the contrary, guided by normative assumptions that ignore the realties of students' lives, narrow outsider notions of what ought to be continue to focus on deviance and constrain urban students within restrictive boundaries. These underlying discourses, in the form of deficit beliefs, thoughts, and actions, shape urban research, theory, and practice and blind prospective change agents to students' strengths, and delimit the transformative potential of social justice praxis within urban environments. This volume brings together a range of scholars from Canada and the United States that present a variety of different lenses on issues of diversity, equity and social justice in urban schools. Their analyses highlight the richness and complexity of urban education, and illustrate how multiple theoretical and practical configurations of difference impact students, their families and communities, and facilitate or hinder the creation of inclusionary learning environments.