Foregrounding diverse lived experiences and non-dominant forms of knowledge, this edited volume showcases ways in which narrating and sharing stories of pain and suffering can be engaged as critical pedagogy to challenge oppression and inequity in educational contexts. The volume illustrates the need to consider both the act of narrating and the experience of bearing witness to narration to harness the full transformative potentials of counternarratives in disrupting oppressive practices. Chapters are divided into three parts - "Telling and Reliving Trauma as Pedagogy," "Pedagogies of Overcoming Silence," and "Forgetting as Pedagogy" - illustrating a range of relational pedagogical and methodological approaches, including journaling, poetry, and arts-based narrative inquiry. The authors make the argument that the language of pain and suffering is universal, hence its potential as critical pedagogy for transformative and therapeutic teaching and learning. Readers are encouraged to reflect on their own lived experiences to constructively engage with their pain, suffering, and trauma. Focusing on trauma-informed non-hegemonic storytelling and transformative pedagogies, this volume will be of interest to students, faculty, scholars, and community members with an interest in advancing anti-oppressive and social justice education.

To understand contemporary times, we must appreciate the extent to which our lives are affected by the cultural and political struggle between "official" narratives and the counternarratives which emerge as oppositional responses. Counternarratives develops a concept of "postmodern counternarratives" as a frame for exploring the politics of media, technology and education within everyday struggles for human identities and loyalties. The authors identify two forms of counternarratives. One functions as a critique of the modernist propensity for grand narratives. The second concept, which is the focus of the book, builds on the first; the idea of "little stories" addressing cultural and political opposition to the "official" narratives used to manipulate public consciousness. Each marks an important point of contestation within contemporary education and culture: curriculum, pedagogy, literacy, media representations and applications of new technologies.

Critical Perspectives on White Supremacy and Racism in Canadian Education shows how K-12 schooling continues to produce and maintain white supremacist and colonial logics and questions the alternate future of schooling in Canada. It argues that white supremacy and race in schooling are present in colonial-centered approaches to teacher education, formal and informal exclusion through curriculum development, and persistent failed commitments to racial justice and decolonization. These themes guide the organization of this collection, which is further underpinned by theoretical perspectives, including critical race theory, anti-Blackness theory, abolition, and anticolonial theory. Contributions are drawn from classroom teachers, community educators, and pre-service teacher educators and are powerfully informed by first-hand accounts as well as stories of teachers and teacher candidates. Combining theory with practice, this edited volume will be important reading for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students in social justice education, multicultural education, and Indigenous studies. It will also be beneficial reading for antiracist and Indigenous education researchers, as well as policymakers and practitioners within critical education.

Enacting Anti-Racist and Activist Pedagogies in Teacher Education is a timely edited collection that examines the complexities, challenges, spaces of resistance, and possibilities when faculty—specifically Black, Indigenous, and racialized faculty—advocate and implement anti racism approaches and pedagogies in Canadian teacher education programs. Taking an explicitly critical anti-racist approach, the text challenges the pedagogical, curricular, structural, and institutional underpinnings in teacher education framed by whiteness. As a collective, the chapters explore how to disrupt white normalcy by dismantling the hierarchies in place and unpacking intersectionalities, positionalities, and knowledge production through transformative anti-racist pedagogies. Established and emerging academics, as well as field practitioners, present a holistic and nuanced understanding of anti-racism within the educational context and seek to reframe teacher education through resistance and activism, preparing teacher candidates as practitioners for anti-racist work with racialized students, families, and communities. Including key terms, discussion questions, and “toolbox” sections highlighting advice for pre-service K–12 teachers, this text is an essential resource for undergraduate and graduate students in teacher education.

This volume explores the importance of inter-generational oral culture and stories that transcend time, space, and boundaries transmitted historically from one generation to the next through proverbs, idioms, and folklore tales in different geographical and spatial contexts. These important stories and their embedded life lessons are introduced, explained, and supplemented with pre and post educational activities and lesson plans to be used as learning resources. The centering of orality as a tool and medium for educating the future generation is a reclamation and reaffirmation of Indigeneity, Indigenous knowledges. and non-hegemonic approaches to support students in a socio-culturally sustaining manner. Through this understanding, this book explores the interconnectedness between culture, traditions, language, and way of life through oral storytelling, sharing, and listening.

This edited volume is about diversifying the teaching profession. It is unique in its inclusion of multiple dimensions of diversity; its chapters focus on a wide range of under-represented groups, including those from lower socio-economic groups, Black and minority ethnic groups, migrants, the Travelling community, the Deaf community, the LGBTQI+ community and those of mature age. The book includes contributions from Australia, England, Iceland, Portugal and Scotland, as well as a number of chapters from the Irish context, mostly emanating from projects funded under Ireland’s Higher Education Authority’s Programme for Access to Higher Education (PATH): Strand 1—Equity of Access to Initial Teacher Education. The book also critically engages the rationale for diversifying the profession, arguing not only that representation still matters, but also that ultimately teacher diversity work needs to encompass system transformation to achieve a diverse, equitable and inclusive teaching profession.