Universities engage students in traditional service-learning projects that often yield “good feelings”, even a savior mentality, but typically leave the root causes of social justice issues unexamined and untouched. In contrast to traditional service-learning, critical service-learning bridges this gap with an explicit focus on justice and equity, situating scholars’ work with the community rather than for it. A public university in the southeast offered a doctoral course that focused on critical service-learning in the context of a professional development school partnership. Designed as an ethnographic multi-case study, each graduate student in the on-site course represents a case. Data collection included interviews, observations, written reflections, and artefacts. The analysis revealed that developing critical service-learning projects with educators—rather than for them—supported participants’ critical consciousness. Findings and discussion highlight that facilitating community-engaged scholarship through critical service-learning impacts graduate students and middle-grades educators’ research interests, work, and future directions.

To inform equity-oriented and responsive middle grades teacher education, the current article is a qualitative study of the lived experiences of middle grades teacher candidates enacting critical consciousness in their first semester in a two-year equity-oriented middle grades teacher preparation program. Equity-oriented and responsive middle grades teacher education is defined as professional learning for middle grades preservice and inservice teachers that advances their development of critical consciousness, develops their capacity, knowledge, and skills as culturally and developmentally responsive teachers of young adolescents, and attends to their cultural and historical locations, pedagogical needs, interests, and concerns. Using a phenomenological research tradition and theories of critical consciousness and culturally relevant pedagogies, researchers closely examined 20 participants’ narratives and annotated reflections on how they “read the world” as perceived through the lenses of their cultural and historical locations and their descriptions of their experiences with critical incidents of perceived injustice as documented in Justice Journals. Two major themes emerged in participants’ data regarding their lived experiences of engaging in critical consciousness: (1) noticing and commenting on systems of oppression and (2) describing responses and strategies in connection to instances and patterns of injustice. Within the theme of noticing and commenting on systems of oppression, three sub-themes included (a) gender socialization, (b) classism, and (c) racism. Within the theme of describing responses and strategies in connection to instances and patterns of injustice, analysis revealed four sub themes: (a) responding to discomfort, (b) critiquing/distancing, (c) stopping, and (d) feeling blessed. These themes and sub-themes represent teacher candidates’ lived experiences of engaging in critical consciousness, primarily focused on critical awareness, critical reflection, and critical analysis. Implications for developing equity-oriented and responsive middle grades teacher education are provided.

In the realm of middle level education, advocacy is an integral aspect of school culture and community. Advocacy helps to foster a school environment characterized by a sense of respect and value for young adolescents and should take up an awareness of the social and cognitive characteristics of young adolescents. Advocacy competency is also a necessary teacher disposition to foster socially just and successful middle school cultures and climates. We conducted a systematic review of the literature guided by the following driving question: What does the research say about middle level teacher development and advocacy? Our review yielded 38 relevant sources and key thematic ideas across four thematic categories. We anticipate this review of the literature will be of interest to and inform middle level educators and researchers around equity- and justice-oriented middle level teacher development.

Historically, the field of middle-level education has taken it as a given that teachers of young adolescents should be specially prepared to teach in the middle grades, developing a teacher identity that centers around responding to and advocating for the age group above an identity as a subject area teacher. Defined broadly as teachers’ dynamic conceptualizations of themselves as educators and their related roles, decisions, and actions, teacher professional identity has garnered considerable attention in the research literature as a potential source of leverage in multiple dimensions of schooling, preservice teacher education and in-service teachers’ professional learning, and teachers’ professional lives. Teacher identity at the middle level is ideally grounded in a deep commitment to helping young adolescents realize their power and possibilities. While the literature on teacher identity development is well-established in some educational contexts, studies specifically examining the potentially unique developmental trajectory of teacher identity among middle-level educators remain limited. To address this gap, we conducted a review of the literature to address the question: what does the research say about middle-level teacher development and identity? Our review identified 26 relevant sources on middle-level teacher development and identity, published from 2015 through the first half of 2024, and yielded key ideas within three themes: (a) the development of teacher identity, (b) the intersectionality of teacher identity, and (c) critical consciousness, agency, and teacher identity. This review identifies both progress and gaps in the current literature, recognizes potential future directions for research on middle-level teacher identity, and offers possible implications for preservice and in-service middle-level teacher education.

Why do we need a national middle grades policy agenda? To push back against decades of dismissive depictions and deficit-focused rhetoric about young adolescents (e.g., Davis, 1996; Deutsch, 2022; ...

The authors describe collaborative efforts between novice teachers and their former university teacher educators who partnered to design and enact equity-oriented teaching and learning experiences for teacher candidates and young adolescents despite limitations, barriers, and disruptions generated by COVID-19. Observations and feedback from students, teachers, and leaders speak to mutual benefits that the partnership generated. Authors will describe their collaborative processes, feature artifacts from the activities, and discuss implications for future practice.