Teaching and Teacher Education 59 (2016) 457e467

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Teaching and Teacher Education

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tate

Reclaiming agency: Justice-oriented social studies teachers respond to

changing curricular standards
Alison G. Dover a, *, Nick Henning b, Ruchi Agarwal-Rangnath c
a
Department of Secondary Education, California State University e Fullerton, 2600 Nutwood Ave., Fullerton, CA 92831, USA
b
California State UniversityeFullerton, College Park CP600-18, Fullerton, CA 92834-6868, USA
c
San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway Ave, San Francisco, CA 94132, USA

h i g h l i g h t s

 Justice-oriented social studies teachers respond strategically to changing mandates.

 Teachers' strategies reflect their disciplinary expertise and professional agency.
 Teachers embrace, reframe, and resist local impact of changing standards.
 Teacher educators should highlight viability of and model justice-oriented agency.
 Future research needed about impact of changing mandates on enactment of justice.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Emphases on high-stakes testing and accountability can undermine teachers' ability to use their pro-
Received 25 June 2015 fessional expertise to respond to the localized needs of their students. For justice-oriented teachers, they
Received in revised form also create ideological conflicts, as teachers are forced to navigate increasingly prescriptive curricular
6 July 2016
mandates. In this article, we examine how justice-oriented veteran social studies teachers in the United
Accepted 14 July 2016
Available online 6 August 2016
States use their disciplinary expertise and professional agency to respond strategically to the influence of
the Common Core State Standards on their discipline. We conclude by discussing the implications for
preparing candidates to teach for social justice in accountability-driven contexts.
Keywords:
Social studies
© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
History
Teaching for social justice
Teacher agency
Curriculum reform
Curriculum standards
Teacher education
Teacher preparation
Accountability
Common core standards

1. Introduction
Teaching for social justice, democracy, and inclusion is
increasingly emphasized in teacher education programs world-
wide, including those in South Africa, Japan, South Korea, Scotland,
Spain, and Australia (Florian & Rouse, 2009; Gordon, 2006; Harber
& Serf, 2006; Henning, 2013; Mills & Ballantyne, 2010; Santos Rego
* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: adover@fullerton.edu (A.G. Dover), nhenning@fullerton.edu
(N. Henning), rarangnath@gmail.com (R. Agarwal-Rangnath).
& Nieto, 2000). These ideals are central to our work as teacher
education faculty in the United States, where we guide candidates
in examining justice-oriented approaches to theory and practice as
they prepare for the myriad challenges they will face in the class-
room. In our classrooms, we model approaches to theorizing with
students about contextually-relevant issues of (in)equity and jus-
tice, and require candidates to develop academically rigorous,
standards-aligned curriculum that addresses locally relevant con-
cerns. We encourage teacher candidates to develop strong, trusting
relationships with their students and communities, center their
teaching in students' lived experiences, and create engaging and
critical curricula using robust, student-centered methods. Our

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2016.07.016
0742-051X/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
458 A.G. Dover et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 59 (2016) 457e467
approach is not unique: justice-oriented teacher educators describe
similar practices within their own classrooms and communities
(e.g. Bieler, 2012; Miller, 2010; Picower, 2012).
However, candidates are learning to teach in complex times. In
the U.S., emphases on accountability can create climates where
teachers feel disempowered and constrained by prescriptive cur-
riculum and standardized testing (Agarwal, 2011a; Kelly & Brandes,
2001; Weingarten, 2014; Willis & Sandholtz, 2009). Accountability-
driven reforms can create both ideological and practical conflicts
for teachers, as they are forced to navigate competing priorities and
prioritize the content and skills privileged by local curricular
mandates (Au, 2009; Berliner, 2011; Ross, Mathison, & Vinson,
2014). As a result, even those teachers with strong social justice
orientations can struggle to build, integrate, and enact social justice
pedagogies in their first classrooms (Agarwal, 2011b; Cochran-
Smith et al., 2009; Dover, 2013a; Gorski, 2010; Henning, 2013;
Picower, 2011).
The analysis presented in this article is drawn from a broader
qualitative U.S.-based study examining how justice-oriented social
studies teachers are responding to their changing curricular,
pedagogical, and policy landscapes (Agarwal-Rangnath, Dover, &
Henning, 2016). Participating teachers were experientially
diverse: some entered their first classroom immediately prior to
the implementation of the Common Core State Standards for En-
glish Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies (CCSS);
others have twenty or more years of experience navigating multiple
sets of content standards, state and federal regulations, and shifts in
educational priorities. They teach social studies in classrooms
throughout the country, and are required to meet different state
content standards and curricular emphases. Collectively, they
illustrate the sophisticated, nuanced and strategic ways teachers
navigate the dilemmas of teaching for social justice in heavily
regulated classrooms. In this article, we examine (1) how teachers
use their disciplinary expertise and professional agency to create,
implement, and advocate for academically-rigorous, justice-ori-
ented social studies practice and (2) trans-disciplinary strategies for
responding strategically to restrictive curricular mandates. We
conclude this article by examining the implications for teacher
educators seeking to better prepare justice-oriented candidates for
accountability-driven schools.
2. Conceptual framework: teaching for social justice in the
age of standards
Published accounts of teaching for social justice cite a wide
range of conceptual foundations, including democratic education,
critical pedagogy, culturally responsive education, ethnic studies,
multicultural education, and social justice education (see Agarwal-
Rangnath, 2013; Cochran-Smith, 2010; Dover, 2013b; Gorski, 2010;
Grant & Agosto, 2008; Hytten & Bettez, 2011; Kaur, 2012; North,
2006, 2008; Sleeter & Grant, 2009; Sleeter, 2015; Tintiangco-
Cubales et al., 2015). Contemporary approaches to teaching for
social justice build upon this scholarship by foregrounding the
imperative to enact justice within the context of increasing
emphasis on standards-based and accountability-driven schooling.
2.1. Curricular and pedagogical aspects of teaching social studies for
social justice
While individual teachers may choose to foreground different
disciplinary concepts and content, conceptual frameworks for
teaching for social justice reflect their shared curricular and peda-
gogical ideals (see Agarwal-Rangnath, 2013; Dover, 2013b, 2015;
North, 2006, 2008; Sleeter, 2015; Tintiangco-Cubales et al., 2015).
Justice-oriented teachers learn about the lives of students, develop
reciprocal relationships with students' communities, and use this
foundation to support academically rigorous curriculum that meets
students' individual and communal needs (Cochran-Smith, 2004;
Dover, 2013b; Haberman, 1995; Ladson-Billings, 1994, 1995; Slee-
ter, 2005, 2011, 2015). They situate their work within a wider
analysis of structural inequities (Sleeter, 2015), embracing their role
as active participants in challenging policies and practices that
negatively impact the experiences of linguistically, culturally, so-
cioeconomically, and academically diverse students (Oakes &
Lipton, 2003; Zollers, Albert, & Cochran-Smith, 2000). They value
theirdand their students'dtransformative potential, and
encourage students to join them in examining and enacting change
in their schools, communities, and world (Dover, 2013b; Oakes &
Lipton, 2003; Nieto, 2000; Sleeter, 2015). Finally, justice-oriented
teachers work collaboratively with students, communities, and
other stakeholders as they navigate educational policies and pro-
mote curricular reform (Bigelow, Harvey, Karp, & Miller, 2001;
Horn, 2003; Picower, 2012; Sambell & McDowell, 1998).
Teaching for social justice has multiple points of alignment with
social studies curriculum and pedagogy. Teachers can engage stu-
dents in critically examining past and present histories, analyzing
multiple perspectives, and imagining possibilities of social change
in their world today (Agarwal, Epstein, Oppenheim, Oyler, & Sonu,
2010, 2011a,b; Au, 2009). Justice-oriented social studies teachers
challenge culturally hegemonic portrayals of history, examining
how women, people of color, youth, and other traditionally
excluded groups contribute to and change their worlds (Au, 2009;
Bigelow & Peterson, 1998; Tintiangco-Cubales et al., 2015). They
nourish students' critical literacy and consciousness by interrupting
and interrogating the texts used in the classroom, and make explicit
connections between historical and contemporary examples of
struggle and resistance. Overall, they see their work as preparing
students to critically transform their worlds (Agarwal, 2011a, b; Au,
2009; Wade, 2007).
2.2. Accountability-driven schooling in the United States
This justice-oriented vision is antithetical to accountability-
driven education policy; a movement which was, in the United
States, sparked in 1983 with the publication of A Nation at Risk and
institutionalized by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. By relying
upon students' standardized test performance as the primary
measure of student learning, accountability mandates result in
widespread alignment between disciplinary curriculum and testing
requirements (Au, 2009). However, despite NCLB's requirement
that all students meet or exceed state-determined proficiency
standards by 2014, there has been little change in the performance
of U.S. students as measured by the Program of International Stu-
dent Assessment (PISA) (NCES, 2013). Moreover, PISA scores attest
to the persistence and prevalence of race-based inequities in
educational achievement in the U.S., with statistically significant
differences in achievement on the basis of race and school poverty.
Nevertheless, despite this seeming failure of accountability-driven
reforms in the United States, international competitiveness remains
a driving force behind U.S. curricular policies like the CCSS (Duncan,
2010).
In the United States, high-stakes tests focus primarily on English
Language Arts and mathematics, resulting in the marginalization of
social studies as a discipline, and the pressure to focus more on
students' literacy development (Au, 2009; 2013a,b; Ross et al.,
2014). Indeed, prior to the adoption of the CCSS, U.S. social
studies recommendations saw few structural changes since the
publication of the report of the NEA Committee on the Social
Studies in 1916 (Marker & Mehlinger, 1992; Marker, 2006). State-
level curricular frameworks have consistently foregrounded lists
 A.G. Dover et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 59 (2016) 457e467
of historical events and figures, and historical, economic, and
governmental “facts,” with little overall emphasis on social studies
concepts, disciplinary skills, or critical thinking. In response to
these trends, a coalition of social studies and civic organizations, led
by the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) (2013), pro-
posed a framework for state-level curricular reform. This frame-
work, called the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for
Social Studies State Standards is intended to support states in
“upgrading” standards through an increased critical thinking, his-
torical analysis, democratic citizenship, thematic curricular orga-
nization, and social studies teachers' “shared responsibility” for
teaching literacy (NCSS, 2013, pp. 6e7). In the C3 Framework, the
CCSS literacy standards are described as providing the “foundation
for inquiry in social studies, and as such … should be an indis-
pensable part of any state's social studies standards” (2013, p. 20).
Thus, the C3 framework is explicitly positioned as aligned with the
overarching vision of the CCSS.
Published in 2010, the Common Core State Standards for
Mathematics, English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social
Studies, Science and Technical Subjects (CCSS) represent a dramatic
shift in the approach to curricular standards in the U.S. Described by
supporters as an internationally benchmarked set of standards
intended to increase rigor and college and career readiness among
students in the U.S. (National Governor's Association, 2010), the
CCSS require teachers of all disciplines to work towards a common
set of literacy goals. The CCSS have been adopted by 43 states, the
District of Columbia, and four U.S. territories (CCSSI, 2015), and
their visibility within the C3 Framework underscores their
tremendous impact on social studies education throughout the U.S.
Although a few states have begun to write and review new
state-level social studies standards that grapple with the com-
plexities of disciplinary literacy in social studies, the dominant re-
action has been to “push” the CCSS literacy standards into
previously-existing state social studies content standards. This, in
concert with the proliferation of state-adopted textbooks and high-
stakes tests that narrowly align to the standards (Au, 2013a; Brooks
& Dietz, 2012/13) pressures social studies teachers to privilege the
close reading of text and transmittal of factual information (Ross,
2014). This creates a contradiction for justice-oriented social
studies teachers, who define effective teaching as student-driven,
contextually-responsive, and inquiry-based. In the remainder of
this article, we examine how participants engage this tension as
they strategically respond to the specific, practical impacts of the
CCSS in their local contexts.
3. Methods
3.1. Participants and data collection
The data presented in this paper emerged from a larger book
project examining the advice that veteran, justice-oriented social
studies teachers would offer new teachers entering the field
(Agarwal-Rangnath et al., 2016). We posed questions for partici-
pants to consider when writing letters to new teachers, including:
How do you translate your vision of social justice into practice?
How are social justice themes integrated into your lessons and/or
curriculum? How do you push back against educational/school
policies you don't agree with? What advice would you give to new
teachers to help them uphold their commitment to social justice?
What helps you stay committed to social justice and stay in the field
of teaching? In this article, we read across participants' letters to
examine their strategic navigation of curricular, pedagogical, and
political complexities associated with teaching for social justice in
standards-driven contexts.
We recruited participants through our active engagement in a
459
diverse array of face-to-face and virtual teacher networks (e.g.,
NCSS, the National Association for Multicultural Education, Teach-
ers for Social Justice, and Facing History Facing Ourselves). We
distributed information about our project within these and similar
communities, and used targeted and snowball sampling to recruit
justice-oriented social studies/history teachers with at least five
years of experience teaching grades 6e12. 22 teachers responded to
our call, all of whom submitted letters; 20 of these teachers (all of
those who had five or more years teaching social studies at the
secondary level) are included in the study presented in this paper.
Study participants are ethnically, geographically, and experientially
diverse, with between six and 20 years of experience teaching in
urban, suburban, and rural schools across 11 U.S. states. Most (80%)
had taught or currently teach in urban classrooms; two participants
taught exclusively in suburban schools, and two exclusively in rural
schools. Participants included 13 women and seven men, and seven
teachers who identify as people of color (three as Latina, one as
Indian, two as Asian, and one as Sinhalese [Southeast Asian]); the
remaining 13 teachers identified as White or European American.
Almost a third of the teachers (seven participants) are also current
or former teacher educators; three of these teachers have left their
K-12 classrooms to engage in teacher education full-time. Three
participants are currently pursuing doctoral studies in education.
3.2. Data analysis
Once we received the letters from participating teachers, the
three members of the research team independently read all of the
letters, using line-by-line and focused coding processes (Charmaz,
2006) to identify emergent themes. Initial codes included con-
cepts like teacher identity, community building, curricular content,
critical literacy, teacher activism, teacher education practice, and
teachers' relationships with students. We then worked collectively
to refine our coding structure and identify central themes in par-
ticipants' letters. These themes highlighted teachers' conceptual
approaches to the CCSS as they have experienced them, specific
curricular and pedagogical tools teachers used to enact justice-
oriented curriculum in the classroom, and ways teachers were
able to develop, support, and sustain their identities as justice-
oriented teachers in standards-driven classrooms. We reviewed
the letters to gather data related to each of these themes, and used
Google docs to write collaborative memos (Charmaz, 2006)
examining how these constructs manifested in both the letters and
the wider field of justice-oriented teaching and teacher education.
In keeping with the tenets of constructivist grounded theory
(Charmaz, 2006), we contacted teachers throughout the analysis
process to gather additional data and refine our evolving model.
The following excerpt from one of our emails to a participating
teacher is illustrative of how we used theoretical sampling and
member checking to develop and validate our emergent
framework:
One of the themes we're exploring is the way justice-oriented
teachers are using the CCSS as an opportunity to redefine so-
cial studies education. You speak to this in your letter, when you
advise new teachers that ‘what Common Core and teaching will
become is going to be decided largely by you, your choices, your
movements, your creativity, your associations, and your ability
to avoid or reframe and outright refuse.’ We're curious about the
choices, movements, avoidance, reframing and refusal that you
yourself enact. Can you give an example of an aspect of the CCSS
that you reframed or refused? … Likewise, you refer to the
“small conversations” that decide the future of teaching and
learning. Can you recall a specific moment when you realized–
460 A.G. Dover et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 59 (2016) 457e467
either at the time or in retrospect–that you were engaged in this
type of redefinition?
In addition to contacting teachers for clarification, we also
invited teachers to share examples of lessons or unit plans that they
developed or implemented that reflect their approach to justice-
oriented social studies. By collecting examples of curricular mate-
rials, we hoped to gain a better understanding of how teachers'
philosophical approaches manifested as practical, classroom-level
processes.
4. Results
As we analyzed teachers' letters, we were struck by participants'
nuanced and situated responses to the CCSS. Rather than speaking
narrowly to the disciplinary implications of the CCSS, teachers
instead described their multifaceted and strategic approach
teaching for social justice in the context of accountability-driven
education policy. Participants provided detailed descriptions of
their own standards-aligned lessons, offered advice about how to
engage in school- and district-level curricular advocacy, and
critiqued local and national education reforms. Moreover, partici-
pants rarely offered blanket endorsements or rejections of the
CCSS; instead, they spoke to their multiple and overlapping stra-
tegies for negotiating the curricular, pedagogical, and political di-
mensions of the CCSS and related education reform traditions. The
letters offer a compelling testimony to the complexity of teaching
for social justice in accountability-driven times, and we invite
readers to review them in full at www.socialstudiesforsocialjustice.
com.
Based on this research, we developed a theoretical model
depicting how teachers respond to the CCSS by embracing,
reframing, or resisting the impact of the CCSS on social studies
curriculum (Agarwal-Rangnath et al., 2016). This framework builds
upon existing research regarding teachers' responses to curricular
mandates (e.g. Stillman and Anderson's (2009) “follow, reject or flip
the script” and Sleeter’s (2005) “unstandardizing” of curriculum) by
focusing on teachers' enactment of justice-oriented agency in the
present Common Core era. In the following sections we present an
overview of this model, before examining how participants use
their disciplinary expertise and professional agency to strategically
create, implement, and advocate for academically-rigorous, justice-
oriented social studies curriculum. We conclude our discussion
with an analysis of the implications of this work for teaching and
teacher education.
4.1. Responding strategically to the CCSS
Participants' letters referenced three primary strategies for
navigating the opportunities and challenges presented by the
Common Core State Standards: teachers focus on aspects of the
standards they can embrace as inherently aligned with their
curricular priorities, take advantage of opportunities to reframe
social studies in response to the standards, and resist elements of
the CCSS that they see as negatively impacting their students and
discipline. While some teachers could be characterized as primarily
working from one of these stances, most participants cited all three
approaches in describing their strategic response to the CCSS in
their local context. In the following analysis, we use excerpts from
teachers' letters to illustrate trends associated with each of these
approaches, before centering our analysis on teachers' enactment
of justice-oriented agency.
4.1.1. Embracing the possibilities of the CCSS
In their letters, participants described elements of the CCSS that
they consider generally aligned with what they were already doing
or wanted to do in the classroom. Specifically, they see the CCSS as
offering more flexibility and greater latitude in choosing materials
for use in the classroom, and hope the CCSS will validate their use of
social studies curriculum that is less focused on prescriptive con-
tent and more reflexive, student-centered, and grounded in critical
thinking. Teachers also welcomed the CCSS' emphasis on literacy
development, and saw this as an opportunity to foreground the
types of critical literacy practices that are central to justice-oriented
social studies instruction.
In her letter, Eran, a director of professional development and
social studies teacher in San Jose, California, describes the CCSS as
an “avenue” for preparing students to engage in justice-oriented
community activism:
Rather than seeing standards such as Common Core as a road-
block getting in the way of my passion for social justice, I
consider it an avenue to achieve my goals. I want my students to
be activists in the 21st century, a role which requires a specific
skill set. Any advocate who works for justice must be a strong
critical thinker, a thoughtful listener, and an effective commu-
nicator. The framework of Common Core outlines standards that
will help students to obtain these skills. So when I am creating
curriculum and instructing my students about the world around
them, I can use Common Core to help guide my practice.
Eran goes on to identify parallels between the themes of the
CCSS and her own emphases, including being a “critical think[er],”
“thoughtful listener,” and an “effective communicator.” In her let-
ter, Eran describes how she uses CCSS requirements that students
“evaluate sources of information” (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11e12.3)
and “integrate information from diverse sources … noting dis-
crepancies among sources” (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11e12.9) to
help students digest and deconstruct what they are reading rather
than passively take in information. Eran describes this as “an
invaluable skill that will allow a student to be critical of ballot
initiatives, Supreme Court rulings, media and political campaigns,
and advertising.”
Similarly, Eran embraces the CCSS' emphasis on speaking and
listening as central to her approach to justice-oriented social
studies practice, noting that
The student who becomes a justice advocate must be able to
listen thoughtfully to divergent and diverse viewpoints in order
to understand members of the community. Common Core de-
mands this of schools as it states that students should be able to
“set rules for collegial discussions and decision-making” and
“actively incorporate others into the discussion; and clarify,
verify, or challenge ideas and conclusions” (CCSS.ELA-LITER-
ACY.SL.9e10.1.B and 10.1.C). Moreover, students must “respond
thoughtfully to diverse perspectives” (CCSS.ELA-LITER-
ACY.SL.9e10.1.D). Being able to listen carefully to others can help
build empathy and understanding in a community. This allows
individuals to make more compassionate and inclusive de-
cisions that can make a more equitable, just environment.
By focusing on the many ways the CCSS reflect her vision of
justice-oriented social studies practice, Eran is able to translate the
CCSS' emphasis on skill-development into objectives that directly
align with her focus on social justice. She sees her work as using the
tools given, including the CCSS, to her to empower her students to
“create a more inclusive and just community.”
 A.G. Dover et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 59 (2016) 457e467
Laura, a 9th grade history teacher in San Lorenzo, California
describes herself as a critical social studies educator, one who is in
“the constant process of learning and revising curriculum.” Like
Eran, Laura embraces the CCSS' focus on skills rather than content,
emphasizing the ways this allows social studies teachers to “regain
control over the content of their courses” and center justice-
oriented content.
We are given much more flexibility in designing our courses
when our target is, for example, “Determine the central ideas or
information of a primary or secondary source” (CCSS.ELA-LIT-
ERACY.RH.11e12.2) rather than “Describe the emergence of
Romanticism in art and literature (e.g., the poetry of William
Blake and William Wordsworth), social criticism (e.g., the novels
of Charles Dickens), and the move away from Classicism in
Europe” (California History Content Standard 10.3.7) …. The
Common Core requires practice and proficiency with reading
and writing at advanced levels (something we all want for our
students), but does not (currently) mandate which texts and
what content we select to accomplish this.
In her letter, Laura describes how she “took advantage of the
leeway afforded by the move to common core [sic] to write a new
course on race, class, gender, and sexuality.” She details the ways
her objectives align with the priorities of the standards:
We will practice all of the foundational literacy skills demanded
by the common core. However, instead of “evaluating authors'
different points of view on the same historical event or issue” in
the context of the Federalist papers or Adam Smith's Wealth of
Nations, we will hold up Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Repa-
rations” against Kevin Williamson's response in the National
Review. Our texts within the “11-CCR text complexity band” will
be written by Gloria Anzaldua, Barbara Ehrenrich, Michelle
Alexander, and bell hooks. Using these relevant and timely texts,
students will write weekly literature reviews using the “They
Say/I Say” structure in order to “evaluate an author's premises,
claims, and evidence by corroborating or challenging them with
other information” [CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11e12.8] …. I am
confident that the rigorous discourse, reading, and writing in
this classroom will more than satisfy the baseline established by
the common core test; but the content will enable all of us to
explore our own identities and gain a more complete under-
standing of the historical underpinnings of the structure in-
equities of our society today.
In this newly created course, Laura is able to meet standards, but
with texts that challenge students to look at history from a critical
lens. She embraces the ways the new standards allow her to hold
true to her vision of social justice teaching, while still teaching the
foundational literacy skills her students need.
Eran and Laura speak for many participants in articulating
points of alignment between the CCSS and their own commitments
to critical literacy, inquiry, and research. However, despite the op-
portunities participants described in the shift towards the CCSS,
their letters also highlight complex dilemmas the CCSS can create
for justice-oriented teachers. Laura, for example, balances her
encouragement that new teachers “take advantage” of the oppor-
tunity the CCSS offers to “leave Eurocentric, male-centric, straight-
centric textbooks far behind and pick topics and texts that are
relevant to your students and return agency to disenfranchised or
objectified people” with the recognition that there are “serious
problems with and implications of” the CCSS. In the following
section, we examine how participants are reconciling these
461
tensions through a strategic reframing of the CCSS and its impli-
cations for social studies curriculum.
4.1.2. Using the CCSS to reclaim their discipline
In addition to embracing elements of the CCSS that align with or
reinforce their approach to teaching social studies, participants
described their efforts to strategically exploit the CCSS in order to
reclaim and reframe their discipline and their role as curriculum
creators. In this way, justice-oriented social studies teachers are
using the implementation of the CCSS to as an opportunity to
reclaim professional autonomy, subvert dominant curricular and
pedagogical paradigms, and recenter issues of equity, social loca-
tion, and justice.
Brian, a former teacher with sixteen years of experience teach-
ing History and American Government in East Los Angeles, re-
sponds to the CCSS with a call for teachers to take an active role in
redefining their field:
What CCSS and teaching will become is going to be decided
largely by you, your choices, your movements, your creativity,
your associations, and your ability to avoid or reframe and
outright refuse. Revolutionaries exist amongst us …. Rather than
the shout on the street or the angry frustrated denouncements
of the department or faculty meeting, it is the whispered con-
versation in the hallway, the lunch time spent talking and
planning, the lesson or unit shared that makes the most
difference.
Brian sees teachers who use standards-aligned curriculum to
enact justice as “warriors” whose daily instructional decisions can
shape the future of teaching and learning. When faced with
intrusive curricular and assessment requirements, Brian and his
colleagues worked collectively to develop and advocate for a social
studies curriculum that was thematically aligned, grounded in
critical pedagogy, and inclusive of the required skills and content.
Ultimately, this led to changes in the instructional requirements at
Brian's school, as they convinced their principal and superinten-
dent of the importance and validity of their approach to teaching
social studies.
We reframed the conversation around what good or strong
teaching is allowing us to bring in other material, other forms of
evidence that show student growth which led to stronger con-
versations amongst colleagues about teaching and learning. Not
perfect, but an improvement.
In this way, Brian and his colleagues weren't embracing the
curricular requirements of the CCSS, but rather reframing them as
necessitating a comprehensive, justice-oriented redevelopment of
the social studies curriculum. Brian's emphasis on the critical role
of teachers as curriculum creators echoes elements of the standards
themselves; in describing the standards, developers claim they
create an opportunity for “teachers, curriculum developers, and
states to determine how these goals should be reached and what
additional topics should be addressed” (National Governors
Association, 2010, p. 4). However, Brian's approach also highlights
a significant challenge associated with teaching for social justice in
standards-driven classrooms: the necessity that teachers have both
a comprehensive foundation in their disciplines and a willingness
to engage in the difficult work of curricular authorship and
activism.
In their letters, participants described multiple ways they rise to
this challenge. Melissa, an 8th grade teacher with experience
teaching in Guadalajara, Mexico, Chicago, Los Angeles, and
462 A.G. Dover et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 59 (2016) 457e467
Wisconsin, claimed that mandates like the CCSS are what inspire
her to reclaim her creativity and professional autonomy.
Call me crazy, but working within (sometimes hostile) param-
eters like CCSS has actually made my teaching more robustly
justice-oriented. Beginning again in Mexico, I kept remembering
a Chicago workshop with a creativity expert. Standards and
assessments had us in a chokehold. How could we teach in their
grip? This improv coach challenged us: “Creativity is not only
dreaming up whatever you want! It is taking what you're given
and imaginatively reinventing it. Creativity within structur-
edit's the improv principle of ‘Yes, and … ’” Teaching for social
justice, particularly in our standardized era, requires creativity.
Yes, and: We can take structures like CCSS and do the critical
work of teaching for social justice within them.
This should be reassuring: To teach for social justice, you don't
have to build curriculum from scratch. But whatever you teach, you
must do so critically. Our worlddwith its myriad injustices, with
tangled and misrepresented histories, with social science built on
colonizing methodologiesdrequires critically conscious citizens
….As Howard Zinn (2002) said, “You can't be neutral on a moving
train.” Whatever you teach, it's a moving train. What direction are
you headed?
Like Brian, Melissa uses the shift towards the CCSS as an op-
portunity to redefine social studies curriculum as both student-
driven and justice-centered. When building curriculum, Melissa
uses key questions about ownership and perspective to hold herself
accountable as a critical educator, asking “Whose voice is missing?
… How would this (hi)story be different if told from another
perspective? How does this connect to the world today?” She then
uses the tools and emphases of the CCSS to frame an alternate
curriculum that focuses on what she describes as the “heart of
critical social studies.” In this way, Melissa strategically exploits the
CCSS framework in order to enact student-driven, justice-oriented
curriculum. In so doing, she echoes other participants' emphases on
using the CCSS to reframe the discourse about social studies edu-
cation and support transformative social studies practice. By
relying upon their robust content knowledge, awareness of the
demands of the CCSS, and ability to critically and creatively reframe
the social studies curriculum, justice-oriented teachers are able to
reframe the requirements of the CCSS in order to reclaim their
professional agency.
In addition to strategically embracing or reframing elements of
the CCSS in order to support justice-oriented practice, participants'
letters also highlighted their efforts to resist elements of the CCSS
that they see as harmful for their students and discipline. In the
following section, we explore howdand whydjustice-oriented
teachers are resisting the CCSS in their classrooms and
communities.
4.1.3. Resisting standardization and corporatization
Despite the many opportunities participants saw in selectively
embracing or reframing aspects of standards-driven reform, they
also emphasized the need to strategically resist elements of this
“new” curricular shift. This emphasis on resistance reflects teach-
ers' deep understanding of the broader historical context of
educational reform, and the powerful influence of politicians, the
wealthy, and large corporations in the creation and implementa-
tion of the CCSS (Au, 2013a; Ross et al., 2014). Participants' letters
revealed that justice-oriented teachers are acutely aware of the
limitations and risks of accountability-driven reforms, and actively
resist the elements of the CCSS that they see as harmful for their
students and discipline.
Participants routinely described the CCSS as a double edged
sword. Dawn, who has nineteen years of experience teaching in
urban districts throughout Massachusetts, put it simply: “The
Common Core curriculum offers much to critique, but I decided a
long time ago to critique and question, then settle on what I can
use.” Tom, who taught high school social studies for seven years
before taking a temporary leave to work with a non-profit organi-
zation focused on supporting the implementation of the CCSS,
echoed Dawn's concerns about the ways accountability-driven re-
forms are implemented.
Common Core simultaneously represents to me great promise
and great fear. Holding all students to high academic standards
in literacy, critical thinking, and problem solving is essential to a
more socially just education system. Yet, I fear we will be our
own worst enemies.
Tom notes that many educators have never known anything
other than a standards-driven, high stakes testing, accountability
policy context, and sees no indication that this context will change
with the CCSS:
Law makers, leaders, and teachers have been immersed in a
culture of high-stakes testing and accountability. Few teachers I
work with remember anything other than education driven by
multiple choice tests, pacing guides, and district mandates. Even
fewer have trust in the people (from local to national) making
decisions about what is best for our students. We should
embrace standards that emphasize higher-order thinking and
communication skills, but we must also learn from our recent
mistakes to build strategic systems and programs around the
implementation of these standards.
Tom's emphasis on the difference between the stated intent of
the standards and their school-level implementation was a com-
mon theme in participants' letters. Multiple teachers described the
corrosive impact of standards-aligned standardized tests, leading
some to question their whether they will stay in the classroom.
Laura, who elsewhere detailed the aspects of the CCSS that she
finds useful, also centered her concerns about the impact of
accountability mandates on teachers and students. She asks,
Who's making money off of these tests? What about the schools
with inadequate computers or internet connection? Will test
questions with proven bias be thrown out? Wasn't the field test
[of Smarter Balanced] a nightmare? Will teachers be forced to
‘teach to this test’ with the same gusto as the [previous] state
content standards, robbing teachers of their creativity and local
control?
Michael, a teacher and teacher educator with thirteen years of
experience teaching social studies in south central Pennsylvania,
echoes Laura's skepticism and critique. His letter is a richly-
referenced indictment of the CCSS, describing a process through
which business leaders and politicians put the CCSS together
hastily with significant financial support from Bill Gates and related
industries, and little input from teachers. He argues that the CCSS
were enthusiastically embraced by President Obama and Secretary
of Education Arne Duncan without adequate field testing, and
against the best interests of students. As Michael puts it:
[The CCSS] are a one-size-fits-all pseudo-solution to what ails
many of our public schools. The testing industry, which helped
to write these standards, is already taking advantage of the vast
new markets the standards created (see Ravitch, 2013;;
Figueroa, 2013). In the end, the [CCSS] is part of a thinly veiled
 A.G. Dover et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 59 (2016) 457e467
effort to reform public education in order to destroy public
education, one “failing” school at a time.
However, despite his extended critique of the CCSS, Michael also
reassures new teachers that they will not be alone as they engage in
justice-oriented resistance:
If you are like me and share my skepticism toward this latest
trend, fret not. While Common Core is not going away anytime
soon, resistance has mounted from both sides of the political
spectrum, and from outside as well as within the schoolhouse
walls. Students and teachers across the nation have been
standing up to the high-stakes testing requirements that the
Common Core has helped to intensify … From a macro level, one
can see the pushback bearing fruit. And as a social studies
teacher, I am sure you can easily see what the protests are about:
fairness, equity, and treating our children with respect. In other
words, social justice.
Michael's emphasis on resistance to the CCSS as social justice
activism was echoed by other teachers, many of whom put little
credence in the longevity of the CCSS as either a revolutionary or
restrictive reform.
Overall, teachers chose to strategically resist aspects of the CCSS
that violated their curricular, pedagogical, or political priorities.
Depending upon teachers' unique stance and context, this resis-
tance included personal and public critique of the standards, covert
acts of curricular resistance, participation in opt-out movements,
political activism, and even deciding to leave the classroom.
Collectively, participants described their resistance as necessary
advocacy on behalf of their students, themselves, and their pro-
fession, articulating the importance of choosing to resist any aspect
of the CCSS that does not serve their students or their vision of
justice.
4.2. Using professional expertise and enacting agency
A central theme in participants' letters is the imperative for
teachers to use their professional expertise to advocate for justice-
oriented curriculum, pedagogy, and policy. Sarah, who has taught
social studies for ten years in Oregon and Arizona, described a
trifecta of qualities she considers necessary for justice-oriented
teaching: “compelling content,” “rigorous & relevant skills,” and
“authentic relationships.” Sarah's approach to curriculum-building
reveals the depth and rigor of her disciplinary foundation:
I became a social studies teacher because I am genuinely curious
about the enduring questions that historians, political scientists
and economists pursue … I research. I read. I listen to experts
speak about their work. I develop my own intellectual intimacy
with historical figures and pivotal turning points, with political
trends, with driving economic forces … Even units that I have
taught for years, that I “know” inside and out, require that I turn
key events over from a different angle, seek out new sources, or
pursue a more nuanced way of “knowing” the human beings at
the center of an historical moment.
Sarah uses her professional expertise to prioritize curricular
content, center sophisticated social studies concepts and skills, and
build curriculum that is relevant to her students' daily lives. In
addition to analyzing issues of social justice throughout history, she
and her students also interrogate locally resonant injustices. In her
words:
463
Deciding how to address the social justice issues that impact us
most personally requires considerable courage. However, when
we avoid these delicate and difficult explorations, my students
surely learn that the content they are studying is not really
relevant, that working for social justice may apply to other times
or places, but not their own.
Sarah, like many of the participants in this study, is able to use
her disciplinary expertise, sophisticated skills, and “considerable
courage” to respond strategically to the curricular, pedagogical, and
political dimensions of changing curricular mandates. Jennifer, who
taught middle school for seven years in Chicago before leaving to
pursue doctoral studies, placed a similar emphasis on the impor-
tance of autonomy and agency as elements of justice oriented
practice:
With top down mandates such as the CCSS, educators often
forget that they are professionals and not technicians. Reading
the introduction to the CCSS carefully one finds that it leaves
wiggle room for teachers to decide how to apply the standards,
but do not take my word for it. Read the standards yourself,
learn about the history of the standards, apply a critical lens
such as questioning who benefits from the CCSS.
Jennifer, like many of the teachers who were most vocal
regarding their resistance to the CCSS, sees justice-oriented
teaching as increasingly difficult in the current educational
climate, but encourages teachers to work collectively to enact
curricular and legislative change. She notes that she is “not willing
to sit on the sidelines and attempt[s] to take action personally and
professionally through activism as well as [her] teaching and
scholarly work.”
In his letter, Prentice, a former social studies teacher in rural
Alabama who is now a university-based teacher educator, cited
Evans (2006) in reminding himself and other educators that “If you
don't like the current direction of curricular reform, take heart, it
may not last” (p. 317). According to Prentice, mandates should not,
and cannot, dictate teaching practice if they are found by teachers
to be in conflict with their philosophical and professional expertise.
You have several pedagogical decisions to make. They can be
summarized in a question that one of my methods students
asked me, “Can you really teach like this? Should we just play by
the rules and then teach this way when we get tenure?” In this
question we can see the tension between teaching for social
justice and teaching as an act of self-preservation. In an ideal
world, the mandates of the state and the ideals encapsulated in
social justice would have a symbiotic, give and take, yin-yang
relationship. But, we don't live in an ideal education world.
In fact, when Prentice taught in rural Alabama, he thought of
himself as “raging against the machine, quietly”. He had recognized
early in his career that justice-oriented teaching in rural Alabama
would be impossible if he made himself a target, and instead that
“going underground” with social justice was necessary. He studied
the standards and found ways to integrate social justice oriented
content into the state approved framework. In his role as gate-
keeper (Thornton, 1991) Prentice “found chinks in the curricular
armor, openings where [he] chose to allow the voices of the
oppressed to speak on their own behalf.”
Prentice's ability to find “chinks in the curricular armor” is
neither incidental nor accidental. Instead it is the product of his
strategic effort to use his professional expertise and social location
to engage in justice-oriented activism with and on behalf of his
464 A.G. Dover et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 59 (2016) 457e467
students. He sees this as integral to the work of a social studies
educator:
Social studies teachers are called to push the envelope. In this
way, we are simply following in a tradition of educators who
sought to help students understand their imperfect worlds. We
should draw strength from this idea and recognize that when
we teach for social justice, we are not alone, and that CCSS
represents a roadblock yes, but not one that is insurmountable.
Rise up.
Whether seeking points of alignment, opportunities to inform
disciplinary discourse, or engaging in political activism, partici-
pants in this study do indeed “rise up” as they create, implement,
and advocate for justice-oriented curriculum and policy.
5. Discussion
As justice-oriented former teachers and teacher educators, we
resonate with participants' emphasis on their multiple and over-
lapping approaches to the complexities of teaching critically in
heavily regulated, accountability-driven classrooms. Our study
revealed that justice-oriented teachers are strategic in their
response to this challenge, and draw upon three primary stances in
response to the Common Core State Standards. They focus on the
ways the CCSS can align with their vision of student-centered,
justice-oriented curriculum and pedagogy. When teachers draw
from this stance, which we describe as embracing the CCSS, they see
the adoption of the CCSS as offering increased curricular flexibility
and validating their emphasis on teaching traditionally marginal-
ized histories. These teachers describe the CCSS not as an obstacle,
but as a validation of the importance of teaching students to think
critically about some key social studies concepts and skills.
In addition to appreciating the curricular flexibility and literacy
emphases of the CCSS, justice-oriented teachers also interpret the
CCSS as an opportunity to reclaim social studies curriculum as
inherently justice-oriented. By reframing the discipline in response
to the CCSS, teachers can use the new standards as an opportunity
to subvert dominant curricular and pedagogical paradigms and
recenter issues of equity, social location, and justice. Teachers who
adopt this stance argue that the shift towards CCSS creates both the
opportunity and imperative for justice-oriented social studies
teachers to take up the National Governors Association's invitation
to “teachers, curriculum developers, and states to determine how
these goals should be reached and what additional topics should be
addressed” (2010, p. 4). Teachers using the CCSS to reframe cur-
riculum also emphasize the importance of collaboratively devel-
oping and disseminating justice-oriented social studies curriculum.
However, justice-oriented social studies teachers are also
acutely aware of the ways the CCSS are being used to justify top-
down curricular mandates and ever-increasing testing re-
quirements. For example, while many teachers welcome the CCSS'
emphasis on critical literacy, they caution against its glorification of
close reading and resultant decontextualization of historical inter-
pretation. They question the evolution of the CCSS, asking who
these new standards benefit, and how justice-oriented teachers can
avoid inadvertently institutionalizing and reifying corporate edu-
cation reforms. These teachers highlight the importance of resisting
elements of the CCSS in order to protect justice-oriented curricu-
lum in and pedagogy within standards-driven classrooms, and
share their strategies for collective action on behalf of their stu-
dents and communities.
The stances adopted by these teachers echo those cited by
justice-oriented educators nationwide in the United States, and
internationally in countries like Australia, Canada, and New
Zealand (Day, Elliot, & Kington, 2005; Dover, 2013a; Lasky, 2005;
Picower, 2011; Skerrett, 2010; Smith, Anderson, & Blanch, 2016).
The teachers were acutely aware of the politicization of education
policy and practicedincluding the standards themselvesdand
sought to foster their and their students' critical consciousness
(Freire, 1970) within and beyond the classroom. By strategically
responding to the implications of the CCSS for their discipline, these
teachers were able to respond effectively to the unique pressures
and challenges associated with teaching in an increasingly
accountability-oriented climate. These strategies are similar to
those described in Stillman & Anderson's (2011) analysis of how
language arts teachers navigate tensions caused by scripted cur-
riculum, as well as those proposed in Sleeter's (2005) framework
for “unstandardizing” curriculum.
Our research extends the literature base by focusing specifically
on social studies teachers' enactment of agency in response to their
changing curricular landscape. Participants used their localized
knowledge of students, content-area expertise, and professional
wisdom to develop academically rigorous, standards-aligned cur-
riculum that addresses key disciplinary concepts and skills. Thus,
rather than passively allowing external mandates to dictate their
practice, participants instead used their professional agency to
curate, critique, and create curriculum designed to increase their
students' ability to think critically about history and contemporary
society. In so doing, they not only met, but often exceeded, the
requirements of the CCSS, thus challenging prevailing rhetoric that
too frequently faults teachers and their students for the supposed
lack of rigor in P-12 education (Kumashiro, 2012).
Participants' ability to enact justice-oriented curriculum and
pedagogy in the context of the CCSS contributes to a growing body
of scholarship regarding the relevance and viability of teaching for
social justice within and despite heavily mandated classrooms (e.g.
Agarwal-Rangnath, 2013; Dover, 2015, 2016; Sleeter, 2005, 2011;
Stillman, 2011; Stillman & Anderson, 2011). Like other justice-
oriented teachers and teacher educators, participants considered
themselves primarily accountable to themselves, their students,
and their community, rather than externally imposed mandates
(see Hefflin, 2002; Picower, 2011; Sleeter, 2011; Tintiangco-Cubales
et al., 2015; Ullucci, 2011). We consider this a critical enactment of
agency within the context of broader neoliberal reforms, which are
characterized by political and rhetorical efforts to undermine the
professional expertise and autonomy of teachers (Giroux, 2013).
However, while this stance reflects teachers' deep commitment
to practices that reflect the needs of their students and local con-
texts, it is not without risk. Picower (2011) refers to a “state of fear”
that is created when political and institutional factors inhibit
teachers' freedom to “learn how to use their classrooms for social
change” (p. 1113). Although participants in this study didn't artic-
ulate fear per se, they were vocal about the ways the accountability
climate inhibited their work by limiting the scope of available
curricular resources, increasing the emphasis on standardized
testing, and undermining their authority and autonomy in the
classroom. These concerns echo those expressed by justice-
oriented teachers in other disciplines; Dover's (2013a) research,
for example, examined the impact of individual and institutional
resistance and insufficient personal and curricular resources on
justice-oriented approaches to teaching English Language Arts.
Similar themes are visible throughout the research on factors
inhibiting early career teachers' ability to enact justice in their
classroom (e.g., Agarwal, 2011b; Agarwal et al., 2010; Cochran-
Smith et al., 2015, 2009,; Gorski, 2010; Henning, 2013; Picower,
2011), as well as that regarding teachers' decision to leave the
profession (e.g. Dunn, 2015; Olsen & Anderson, 2007).
In considering our findings, it is important to note the ways in
which participants are both representative of, and unique in
 A.G. Dover et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 59 (2016) 457e467
comparison to, U.S. social studies teachers at large. They are
significantly more diverse than the U.S. teaching population,
approximately 80% of which is comprised of white females (NCES,
2013). They are also active in justice-oriented virtual or face-to-
face networks (through which they learned about this study),
interested in writing and theorizing about their experience, and see
themselves as having advice to offer new teachers. We suspect, but
cannot confirm, that participants in this study have a greater sense
of agency regarding the CCSS than is the norm among teachers;
however, as a study designed to learn from the practices of a tar-
geted sample of justice-oriented veteran social studies teachers, we
do not consider this a limitation of our research. We do, however,
wonder about the distribution of strategic responses of embracing,
reframing, and resisting among a more representative sample of
teachers.
We were also troubled by the number of participants who have
left or are considering leaving the classroom; these teachers
frequently cited decreasing autonomy and increasing standardiza-
tion as the impetus for their exit. We wonder about this trend, and
how it impacts and is impacted by teachers' strategic response to
the CCSS. Do teachers ‘burn out’ more quickly if they attempt to
embrace curricular changes that in some way violate their vision of
justice-oriented practices, or if they attempt to resist an increas-
ingly overwhelming set of accountability mandates? Additional
research is necessary in order to more fully unpack these questions.
6. Implications
As justice-oriented teachers, teacher educators, and scholars, we
are acutely aware of the challenges associated with teaching criti-
cally in the current educational climate. In the U.S., neoliberal
mandates, such as those related to standardized testing, curriculum
scripting, and high-stakes accountability, have a deprofessionaliz-
ing and disempowering impact on teachers (Agarwal, 2011b;
Giroux, 2013). These policies tend to have the most dramatic
impact in historically marginalized urban communities of color,
resulting in especially alarming attrition rates among urban edu-
cators (Ingersoll & Merrill, 2013). We are also deeply concerned
about the implications of changes in teacher education policy, such
as the rapid institutionalization of high-stakes, privatized teacher
performance assessments like edTPA, that socialize new teachers to
see themselves as primarily accountable to external, anonymous
authorities rather than local classroom and community priorities.
The types of mandates undermine the integrity of the teacher
preparation process by requiring candidates to teach towards an
external vision rather develop and learn how to enact their own.
We fear the implications of this for the next generation of teachers.
Thus we see our research as offering a framework for concep-
tualizing how justice-oriented teachers can respond strategically to
attempts to regulate and standardize their work. By examining the
ways participants utilized multiple and overlapping strategies to
enact dynamic, situated responses to curricular mandates, we hope
to encourage readers to consider the strategies best suited to their
own philosophy and teaching context. We see this consideration as
a first step towards justice-oriented action.
Moreover, as former teachers ourselves, we are aware of the
many reasons why justice-oriented teachers might pursue univer-
sity appointments or work in educational non-profit organizations.
As stated earlier, we are concerned by the number of participants
who have left or are considering leaving the classroom. We wonder
how justice-oriented teacher educators might more effectively
prepare pre-service teachers to navigate the challenges of teaching
for social justice in contemporary classrooms. We also see a
pressing need for future research regarding ways to support and
sustain justice-oriented teachers in staying in their classrooms,
465
especially in the face of a sometimes hostile climate (Henning,
2013; Picower, 2007, 2011; Quartz, 2003).
Research underscores the efficacy of justice-oriented profes-
sional development groups for facilitating teachers' conceptual and
practical approaches to teaching for social justice (e.g. Henning,
2013; Picower, 2011; Ritchie, 2011). Some of these groups are
formally affiliated with universities, beginning during and
continuing beyond candidates' pre-service experiences (e.g. Oakes
& Rogers, 2006; Quartz, 2003; Ritchie, Cone, An, & Bullock, 2013).
Others take the form of informal, unaffiliated inquiry groups, such
as grassroots Inquiry to Action Groups (ItAGs) hosted by the New
York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE) in New York City,
Teachers for Social Justice in Chicago, Teachers 4 Social Justice
(T4SJ) in San Francisco, the Association of Raza Educators (ARE) in
California, and justice-oriented teacher networks nationwide (see
Network of Teacher Activist Groups, n.d.). Picower's (2015) research
on ItAGs in New York, and Kohli, Picower, Martinez, and Ortiz's
(2015) related work on critical professional development (CPD),
highlight the way these groups enhance teachers' fluency in social
justice theory and content and their sense of membership in a
wider community of justice-oriented educators. We see significant
possibility in this work, and recommend additional research to
assess how teacher-led, justice-oriented professional development
might increase teachers' longevity in the classroom.
As teacher educators, we are inspired by participants' strategic
engagement with restrictive mandates, as well as their emphasis on
the importance of teachers' ability, and right, to think and act for
themselves. Participants in this study embodied Gorlewski’s (2015)
vision of simultaneous critical compliance with and reflective
resistance to neoliberal education policy, and used that vision to
inform their daily practice. Especially in light of research regarding
the relationship between teachers' social justice visions and social
justice practices (e.g. Dover, 2015; Hawley & Jordan, 2014), we see
opportunities to use our findings to support candidates in “trying
out” potential responses to changing mandates.
In their analysis of social studies teachers' development and
articulation of a disciplinary vision (or “rationale”), Hawley and
Jordan (2014) argue that the visioning process prepares candi-
dates to advocate for and enact transformative curricular practices.
Thus, we see great value in challenging candidates to articulate
their social justice vision and translate it into concrete curricular
and pedagogical practices. Teacher educators might invite candi-
dates to consider which aspects of the CCSS they embrace, reframe,
or resist overall, or with regard to a specific disciplinary concept or
skill. Likewise, teacher educators could guide candidates in
analyzing the philosophical, pedagogical, and curricular ap-
proaches detailed in the letters themselves, which are available as
an open-access resource at www.socialstudiesforsocialjustice.com.
This use of study-related findings could facilitate the investigation
of persistent questions regarding the relationship among teacher
preparation, candidate beliefs, and classroom practices (see
Cochran-Smith et al., 2015), while simultaneously meeting teach-
ers' expressed need for additional pre-service modeling of justice-
oriented approaches to teaching in accountability-driven class-
rooms (Agarwal et al., 2010; Dover, 2013a; Cochran-Smith et al.,
2009; Dover, 2013a; Henning, 2013; Picower, 2011).
As justice-oriented teacher educators, we too are forced to walk
a tightrope of preparing candidates to both succeed within and
critique the current educational landscape. The authors of this
article all teach classes that directly and explicitly engage the CCSS
and other curricular standards, high-stakes teacher performance
assessments, and the curricular priorities of our state regulatory
agencies. Like our participants, we have to think strategically about
what to embrace, reframe and resist. Our involvement with other
justice-oriented educators through organizations like the National
466 A.G. Dover et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 59 (2016) 457e467
Association of Multicultural Education (NAME) and the American
Educational Research Association (AERA) Critical Educators for
Social Justice (CESJ) Special Interest Group), and ongoing work with
teachers like those in this study, is critical to our ability to effec-
tively navigate increasingly restrictive mandates.
However, we, like the participants in this study, had dramati-
cally different pre-service experiences than those of up-and-
coming teacher candidates: our K-12 schooling predated contem-
porary emphases on standards and standardized-testing, and our
teacher education programs were constrained by far fewer
accountability demands. We wonder how our current students'
educational worldviews will differ from those expressed by the
veteran teachers in this study, and echo their insistence on
analyzing and advocating for our students within an increasingly
regulated field. It is not yet clear how shifting educational policies
and high-stakes teacher performance assessments will impact new
teachers' ability to articulate and enact justice-oriented practice.
However, preliminary research isn't reassuring: a growing body of
scholarship suggests these policies have a reductive impact on
teacher preparation, within the field of social studies specifically
(e.g., An, 2015; Au, 2013b) as well as in teacher education overall.
We find this profoundly troubling, and share participants' emphasis
on strategically embracing, reframing, and resisting educational
policy as necessary to best advocate for our students, our col-
leagues, and our profession.
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