Purpose Mental health concerns among students in South African universities have grown more severe in recent years, influenced by inequalities in access, institutional cultures and wider socio-economic pressures. Despite this, dominant mental health responses in higher education remain predominantly top-down and often neglect students’ lived experiences and diverse cultural identities. This paper aims to deepen the understanding of how participatory methods can act as transformative approaches for reimagining mental health support in university settings. Design/methodology/approach The study draws on empirical reflections and Participatory Action Research (PAR) conducted at two South African universities. Through narrative interviews, photovoice, social media-based photovoice and engagement with culturally grounded support systems, the research examines how participation functions not merely as consultation but as co-creation of mental health practices. Findings The study concluded that participatory approaches enhance students’ sense of belonging, agency and resilience. Peer-led initiatives and culturally rooted practices, including communal forms of care, proved vital in addressing the limitations of traditional, individualised mental health frameworks. These participatory activities empowered students to articulate contextually relevant strategies and to challenge institutional cultures that inadvertently perpetuate exclusion. Practical implications The results indicate that universities should move beyond individualised, clinical models of mental health support and adopt participatory, culturally grounded approaches that involve students as co-creators of well-being initiatives. Such approaches have implications for institutional policy, student affairs practice and inclusive governance in higher education. Originality/value The paper demonstrates that involving students and other stakeholders in decision-making can shift campus mental health initiatives from a narrow focus on individual treatment towards broader, community-centred well-being. This aligns with national objectives for social justice and transformation in higher education and offers a more inclusive approach to mental health policy and practice.

This study presents a systematic review on the integration of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in mathematics education to advance inclusive and equitable Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) in South African higher education. Guided by the PRISMA 2020 framework, 126 records published between 2010 and 2025 were identified across Scopus, Web of Science, ERIC, Sabinet, and Google Scholar, with 42 studies meeting the inclusion criteria after quality appraisal. The review synthesises empirical and conceptual evidence on how UDL principles—multiple means of engagement, representation, and action/expression—are applied to promote participation, accessibility, and epistemic justice in mathematics education. Findings highlight persistent barriers, including curricular rigidity, inequitable assessment practices, resource limitations, and linguistic exclusion. However, enabling conditions such as culturally responsive pedagogy, multilingual instruction, and reflective professional communities demonstrate promise for inclusive transformation. The review concludes that integrating UDL within SoTL offers a rigorous and contextually responsive pathway to institutionalise inclusive pedagogical practices, particularly within the policy landscape shaped by the Language Policy Framework for Public Higher Education Institutions (2020). Recommendations emphasise curriculum redesign, flexible assessment, sustained professional development, and alignment of institutional policy with inclusive design principles. By situating UDL within SoTL, this study reframes inclusive mathematics education as both pedagogically robust and socially just, contributing to a more equitable higher education landscape.

Climate change is the single largest health threat facing the world today. The purpose of the current article is to help nurses of faith more deeply explore a Catholic Christian response to climate change. Christian moral justice teachings from the Catholic Church's extensive social teaching efforts, including the far-reaching papal encyclicals Laudato Si and Laudato Deum by Pope Francis, and now championed by Pope Leo XIV, are explored.

ABSTRACT This paper presents a theoretical discussion on the central role emotion has gained in critical educational discourse since the end of the 20th century. After describing the dominant global agenda of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL), we discuss how emotion is being incorporated into critical educational discourse, specifically: a) attempts to reframe SEL from a critical perspective; b) the emotionalised reworking of critical pedagogy’s concept of ‘conscientization’, and c) the ethical and political shifts produced by the new focus on emotion as a central aspect of educational justice. We argue that these attempts can be understood as an expression of an emotionalised ethos that favours an individualistic and fragmented view of social order. To further contribute to this debate, we introduce the notion of ‘emotionalisation of education’ to describe the manifestations of this ethos in the educational field, and to critically reflect on its ethical and political implications.

ABSTRACT Critical Pedagogy (CP) has proven to be a valuable teaching approach to strengthening democracy and social justice towards a more just education. CP challenges the status quo, amplifies students’ voices and agency and calls for socially-controversial topics to be critiqued. This pedagogical approach encourages educators to rethink embedding CP in education to harness its democratic political goals. Yet, critical pedagogical practices have become dissuaded in higher education classrooms under the forces of neoliberalism. This qualitative case study involving semi-structured interviews and direct classroom observations with six university-based Australian teacher educators revealed a range of affordances, tensions, and lingering questions concerning their understandings of CP in varied academic disciplines. They contend that applying CP in their practice is a challenging yet worthwhile intellectual endeavour, given its potential to expose and address social injustices within and beyond education in their work with future teachers. This paper explores how a CP approach can strengthen both individual and collective capacity in preparing teachers for social justice-informed teaching. The findings offer insights for international teacher educators considering CP as a modality for advancing social justice in education.

ABSTRACT As global migration reshapes school demographics, migrant teachers often face symbolic racism, subtle yet pervasive exclusion through deficit framings, epistemic violence, and the devaluation of non-Western knowledge. This article examines how migrant teachers navigate (c)overt forms of racialization within systems shaped by colonial and white supremacist ideologies. Grounded in the principles of Critical Race Theory (CRT), the study reveals how racialized norms of “proficiency” and legitimacy impact teachers’ positioning. However, rather than focusing solely on their marginalized experiences, the study highlights migrant teachers’ agency, resistance, and resilience toward dominant ideologies and practices. Through qualitative methodology, the article explores how they challenge dominant discourses, create affirming pedagogical spaces, and assert themselves as capable educators and transformative leaders. The study contributes to broader conversations on racial justice in education by centering the counter-narratives of migrant teachers who both endure and reshape the institutional boundaries that seek to confine them.

This conceptual paper challenges the dominance of the equity model of social justice in education by arguing that it is fundamentally anti-educational, reducing students to recipients of standardized outcomes and eroding their authorial agency and ownership of learning. Instead, the author proposes a radical alternative: the uniqueness model of educational justice, which affirms learners’ rights to self-education, self-direction, and democratic self-governance. Grounded in a sociocultural approach and democratic schooling practices, this model views education as a process of personal meaning-making rather than as the standardization of learning outcomes. Through critical analysis and a richly narrated case study of the Gaga Ball Game Corporation at a democratic school, the paper illustrates how authentic education arises when students define and evaluate their own learning in dialogue with others. The uniqueness model rejects the bureaucratic, totalized educational paternalism and moral intrusiveness of equity frameworks and instead champions intrinsic motivation, learner autonomy, and diversity of educational goals. In doing so, it reframes educational justice not as sameness of outcomes but as the cultivation of human dignity through authorial learning pathways.

Efforts to advance educational justice in higher education increasingly emphasize inclusive leadership, representation, and equity-oriented reform. Yet epistemic, institutional, relational, and political boundaries continue to constrain transformative change. Drawing on critical pedagogy (Freire, 1970; Brookfield, 2017), intersectionality theory (Crenshaw, 1991), and culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995), this conceptual article argues that boundary-breaking is fundamentally a literacy challenge. Leaders may occupy positions of authority without possessing the critical literacies required to interpret, navigate, and disrupt systems shaped by racialized power. Building on the Critical Literacies Advancement Model (CLAM) (Robinson, 2020, 2021a; Robinson et al., 2025), this paper positions inclusive leadership as a developmental, justice-oriented praxis. Situated within the theme of the 2025 American Association of Blacks in Higher Education Annual Conference, Breaking Boundaries: Cultivating Inclusive Leadership, this article serves as a conceptual anchor for the Educational Justice Journal special issue and offers a shared interpretive framework for advancing educational justice.

The persistent underrepresentation of women of color in academic leadership reflects enduring structural inequities embedded within doctoral education and faculty development pipelines. This conceptual paper advances a justice-oriented argument for mentorship as a critical intervention for leadership development among doctoral women of color. Drawing on Black Feminist Thought, Critical Race Theory, Community Cultural Wealth, and Transformative Leadership Theory, the paper reframes mentorship as a liberatory, relational, and institutionally accountable practice rather than a peripheral or individualized support mechanism. Through synthesis of interdisciplinary scholarship and practitioner insight, the authors identify systemic barriers, including cultural isolation, implicit bias, epistemic marginalization, and inequitable access to mentoring networks, that constrain leadership advancement. In response, the paper proposes a mentorship ecosystem model that centers culturally responsive mentoring, collective care, and inclusive leadership development. Implications are offered for higher education institutions seeking to move beyond performative diversity toward structurally embedded, equity-driven mentoring practices that expand leadership pathways and support institutional transformation. This work aligns with AABHE’s mission to advance Black leadership, equity, and justice in higher education.

Amid intensifying calls to decolonise education in South Africa, this article advances a theoretically grounded model of ‘decolonising from below’ – an approach that foregrounds student voice as both a site and a method of epistemic justice in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET). Drawing on Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy and African decolonial thought, the study conceptualises Africanisation as the epistemic re-centring of African worldviews, languages, and values, and decolonisation as the structural dismantling of colonial hierarchies in knowledge and pedagogy. Using qualitative data from Learning Cycle Groups or dialogical spaces in which 15 isiXhosa-speaking TVET students collectively interrogated curriculum, language, and institutional culture, the article analyses how students theorise transformation from their lived realities. The findings reveal that students positioned as epistemic agents reframe vocational education beyond employability, envisioning it instead as a relational and ethical practice grounded in Ubuntu and collective self-determination. Contribution: The article contributes a conceptual model of Africanisation from below, which integrates Freirean praxis with African humanist philosophy, offering both a methodological and a theoretical advance for decolonial research in vocational education.

ABSTRACT This research examines a Children’s Literature Research Fellowship designed to enhance preservice teachers’ cultural competence by promoting diverse and authentic representation in children’s literature. Acknowledging systemic biases in teacher preparation, the fellowship aims to empower underrepresented preservice teachers – particularly those of color, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and students with disabilities – with tools to select and advocate for inclusive texts in future classrooms. Guided by the Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors framework, the fellowship emphasizes the role of literature in reflecting identities and fostering understanding of others’ experiences. Through participatory research and capstone projects, fellows critically reflect on stereotypes, representation, and the impact of books on young learners’ self-perception and societal views. Addressing gaps in teacher education, it offers targeted support for preservice teachers from marginalized backgrounds, further promoting advocacy and cultural responsiveness. Findings indicate that such programs can positively influence future educators’ perceptions and classroom practices, fostering more equitable, culturally sustaining classroom communities. The study also underscores the importance of innovative, student-centered, and inclusive approaches in teacher training. Given contemporary challenges to equitable education such as book bans and curriculum censorship, this research advocates for educators to become and remain committed to promoting diversity, equity, and social justice in early childhood education.

This study examines educational leadership in the digital era with a particular focus on how strategic management and artificial intelligence (AI) can be mobilized to reduce global disparities and foster inclusive learning. Drawing on a systematic literature review of 75 peer-reviewed studies identified through Scopus, Web of Science, JSTOR, and IEEE Xplore, the research employs a hybrid thematic content—Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) approach that combines inductive thematic coding with strategic analysis. The findings reveal that digital inequalities remain persistent, disproportionately affecting marginalized learners and institutions with limited resources. Transformative and AI-supported leadership models demonstrate potential to bridge technological and social gaps, yet they also raise ethical, cultural, and contextual challenges that require human oversight. Effective leaders in this environment must integrate technical expertise, cognitive agility, and socioemotional intelligence to ensure that digital transformation supports educational justice rather than deepening divides. The paper contributes theoretically by advancing a hybrid methodological framework for analyzing digital leadership and practically by offering policy recommendations, including the development of global funding mechanisms, public–private partnerships, and ethical governance of AI. While the study is limited by potential regional bias and the static nature of SWOT analysis, it provides a replicable framework for examining how inclusive leadership can navigate the tensions between technological innovation and equity in education.

ABSTRACT How are Black and Indigenous education in the US related? How are antiBlackness and settler colonialism interconnected? This essay addresses these questions, reexamining the history of one of the only US schools to educate both groups: Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute. To explore the contemporary legacies of Hampton, we bring together a race-centered historical methodology and Black and Indigenous studies perspectives. We argue that three enduring legacies – subhumanity, genocide and self-determination – with roots in the school itself frame the present, collective struggle for Black and Indigenous justice in education. This focus provides both historical and current insights with global relevance on Black and Indigenous education in analyzing the post-US Civil War era to the early twentieth century. To conclude, we highlight implications for educational stakeholders related to building interracial coalitions for racial justice and recognizing how settler colonialism and antiBlackness have historically been and continue to be intertwined in contemporarily revealing ways.

In response to the rising tide of xenophobic and anti-educator sentiments, fostering solidarity and resilience in educational spaces has become essential. This paper explores the use of collective poetry as a pedagogical tool to cultivate community and resistance within a teacher education classroom at California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH). Grounded in the framework of comadrerismo—centered on care, community-building, and advocacy—teacher candidates use a "Social Justice Cypher" activity to share their beliefs, struggles, and aspirations for social justice in education. Through poetic expressions, participants engage in critical discussions on identity, belonging, and resistance, fostering agency and empowerment. This study demonstrates how collective poetry not only enhances social and emotional learning but also supports teacher candidates in navigating and challenging oppressive sociopolitical forces.

ABSTRACT This article explores the pervasive influence of deficit thinking in language teacher education across the United States and the United Kingdom, particularly in relation to language and race. Drawing on a transatlantic research project funded by the Spencer Foundation, the authors trace the historical and ideological roots of deficit perspectives, highlighting how raciolinguistic ideologies have shaped teacher education policy and practice. The manuscript critiques the dominance of accountability‐driven reforms and standardized curricula that marginalize multilingual and racially minoritized students by framing their linguistic practices as deficient. Through a dialogic and comparative approach, the authors, who are applied linguists and teacher educators based in the UK and US, share their pedagogical strategies for resisting deficit ideologies and promoting linguistic justice in TESOL teacher education. By fostering dialogue across borders, the authors aim to inspire educators to rethink their practices and coconstruct inclusive, transformative educational futures.

This article argues that legal education must reclaim its public role through critical and transformative pedagogy. Drawing on interviews with animal law educators from five Australian universities, it examines the disconnect between how educators describe their teaching – often in neutral terms – and the reality of their classroom practices, which reflect critical and transformative approaches. These practices foster ethical reflection, emotional engagement and justice-oriented learning. The article calls for greater recognition and support of such pedagogies as essential to preparing students to question legal norms and challenge injustice within and beyond the law.

This article proposes understanding active learning methodologies as a framework that reshapes expectations about learning, teaching, and legitimizing teaching practice. To this end, a qualitative narrative review was conducted, organized through thematic synthesis and critical-interpretive reading of the corpus, articulating empirical and conceptual evidence on the teacher's role, authority, inclusion, and technological mediations. The results show, first, that "active learning" is established as a promise of improvement and as a transferable narrative of innovation, but its meaning becomes situated when design, evaluation, institutional culture, and real-time considerations are taken into account. Second, the shift toward active learning produces an identity expectation for teachers—the teacher as facilitator—that demands emotional and professional negotiation. Third, power relations do not disappear: they are reconfigured in visible and invisible ways that condition who participates, what is recognized as valid, and who is exposed. The article concludes that the debate must shift from "which methodology to choose" to the ethical and institutional conditions that allow for meaningful participation and educational justice.

ABSTRACT This study explores career guidance practitioners’ understandings of social justice in Poland, Portugal, Denmark and Finland using Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory. Interviews and focus groups revealed traces of various theoretical discourses on social justice, including redistributive, recognition-based, justice as fairness, libertarian and utilitarian perspectives in all four countries. Findings show diverse understandings of social justice among practitioners, ranging from concerns about social stratification to individualistic, meritocratic views. Social justice emerges as a “floating signifier” in career guidance, with context-dependent meanings. A strong presence of individualisation and responsibilisation discourses reflects neoliberal influences. The study highlights the complexity of social justice conceptualisations in career guidance practice and emphasises the need for critical reflection on social justice in education and professional development programmes for guidance practitioners.

ABSTRACT Some college campuses are actively uplifting Latine/x educational endeavors. These efforts, whether supported by Hispanic-Serving Institution designations or diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, are intentional about improving the lives and academic achievement of Latine/x students. However, critical educational researchers have highlighted the limits of these initiatives and criticized their role in dampening more radical visions of educational justice. This study examines how a critical community of Latine/x students, faculty, staff, and community members at a large university conceptualized and engaged Latine/x education through a ‘Chicane/x and Latine/x Education Symposium’ (CLES). Findings show that the symposium evoked labels and terms associated with Chicane/x and Latine/x identity in ways that challenged essentialism but also sometimes demonstrated ambivalence. Findings also identify a broad politics of justice as the defining quality of Latine/x education. Overall, this study looks at how one campus community grapples with the politics of imagining and defining Latine/x education.

Children with disabilities face inequities in accessing timely special education services, often reinforced by fragmented healthcare and educational systems. Pediatric practices play a critical role in addressing social determinants of health (SDOH) by integrating educational navigation into routine care. Education is consistently identified as a major social determinant of health, shaping long-term outcomes in literacy, employment, and health equity. Recent studies highlight that gaps in provider training and fragmented systems delay evaluations and interventions. Programs such as the EASE Clinic demonstrate that embedding advocacy within pediatric settings improves coordination, strengthens family engagement, and reduces inequities for marginalized communities. Integrating special education advocacy into clinical care transforms pediatrics into a platform for upstream intervention. The EASE Clinic model supports provider training, aligns healthcare with federal educational protections, and reduces disparities in access. Replication across pediatric systems can improve developmental outcomes and establish educational equity as a foundation of child health, offering a scalable public health model that aligns medical care with educational justice.