Graffiti as public pedagogy: Cross-institutional collaboration for student expression, healing, and transformation

“I Want Others to Know:” Digital Storytelling as Participatory Multiliteracies Pedagogy for Refugee Adults

Shifting policies and increased polarization around immigration underscore the need for classroom practices that foster inclusion and resilience, enabling learners to navigate complex sociopolitical landscapes in a new language. Participatory action research has long been understood as a form of adult learning, and participatory arts‐based research (PABR) methods have powerful potential for dispelling stereotypes, cultivating empathy, and highlighting the resilience and cultural, linguistic, and practical knowledge refugees bring to their new communities. Resulting from an ongoing community‐based participatory research project in the Midwestern United States, this paper examines the process and products of a 10‐week PABR workshop with refugee adult English learners through the lens of Critical Refugee Studies. Findings indicate that using photovoice and digital storytelling enabled learners to express complex experiences, affirm their identities as knowledge producers, develop critical consciousness, and challenge dominant refugee narratives by articulating both the structural causes of displacement and their own agency and advocacy for change.

Cultivating critical global citizenship education through defamiliarisation and collaborative online international learning

This study employed Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional approach to critical discourse analysis to investigate the potential of defamiliarisation, supported by collaborative online international learning, to help pre-service teachers in South Africa and Germany challenge neoliberalism and promote critical global citizenship. A group of pre-service teachers in South Africa and Germany (N = 54) were prompted to critically analyse capitalism’s global influence and articulate their ideas using creative illustrations inspired by the short online film Marx and I. The resulting artwork of a sub-sample of the South African student teachers (n = 7) shows their individual and collective reflections on global injustice, capitalism and human rights abuses, while that of the German student teachers (n = 7) emphasises the refugee crisis in Europe, environmental degradation and social exclusion. The research highlights the usefulness of defamiliarisation in producing context-specific criticisms and transforming student teachers’ perceptions of global socio-political environments. The authors found that defamiliarisation promotes a transdisciplinary approach to teacher education and is valuable for contesting neoliberal beliefs and prevailing narratives, thereby encouraging student teachers’ critical engagement with global challenges.

Afrocentric Pedagogy as Transformative Praxis in Social Work Education

Problem: Social work education is still stuck in epistemologies of Eurocentrism that continues to perpetrate epistemic violence on the African systems of knowledge, where the Black students are sidelined and the practitioners are unprepared to serve the Black communities. However, the translation of Afrocentric theory into pedagogical practice is under researched, even though in recent years, there is increasingly more awareness about this crisis. Method: The qualitative thematic synthesis of the interdisciplinary literature was the method of this study that involved Afrocentric theory, critical pedagogy, decolonial theory, and social work education. Based on the six-step model provided by Braun and Clarke, the analysis systematically found the patterns in both canonical and contemporary literature to create an overall conceptual framework. Findings: The analysis showed that there were nine interconnected themes that were grouped into four areas, including epistemological (epistemic justice and centering African knowledge systems; validation of multiple ways of knowing; historical reclamation and counter-narrative) and curricular (representation of Black contributors; integration of African philosophical frameworks; diversified assessment modalities) domains and relational (collective learning communities and Ubuntu relationality; recognition of racialized identities and belonging) and institutional (institutional resistance and the labor of transformation) ones. Contribution: In this paper, Afrocentric pedagogy is developed as transformative praxis, the dialectical unity of reflection and action to humanization and liberation, instead of simply adding content to it. It offers educators, administrators, and advocates with a consistent argument to support epistemological, curricular, relational, and institutional aspects of change in social work education at the same time.

From the Hood to the PWI: A Self-Reflective Journey as Learner and Educator

Decoloniality, staff development and the limits of inclusive education in UK higher education: A reflexive case study

Inclusive education in higher education is increasingly framed through commitments to equity, diversity, and epistemic justice, yet the enactment of these commitments remains uneven and contested. This qualitative case study examines a cross‐disciplinary staff development initiative at a UK post‐92 university that engaged academic and professional services staff with decolonial approaches to curriculum design. Grounded conceptually in praxis, positionality and pluriversality, the initiative comprised participatory workshops and a practical toolkit intended to support critical reflection on colonial legacies in teaching and learning. Data were generated through workshop feedback, reflective testimonies and follow‐up consultations with 40 self‐selecting participants across education, health, business and professional services. Reflexive thematic analysis indicates that the initiative functioned primarily as a space for conceptual clarification and affective engagement rather than sustained pedagogical or structural transformation. Participants reported increased confidence in articulating decolonial concepts and heightened awareness of epistemic exclusion, alongside persistent constraints linked to assessment practices, institutional regulation and audit cultures. Although framed within inclusive education, issues of Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and neurodiversity were largely absent from participant reflections. Rather than treating this as a limitation, the paper interrogates this absence as an empirical finding.

Teaching Across Cultures in Music: Rethinking Authenticity and Practice in Initial Teacher Education

In contexts of growing social polarisation and cultural complexity, tertiary educators are increasingly called upon to move beyond celebratory multiculturalism towards critically informed intercultural praxis in preparing students for 21st-century classrooms. Drawing on a sustained transnational collaboration between Australia and Spain within initial teacher education, this paper adopts a collaborative autoethnographic approach to critically reflect on our pedagogical practices and their implications for culturally responsive music education. We examine how intercultural musical encounters, particularly those involving culture bearers, can foster cultural competence and critical reflection among pre-service teachers, while also generating tensions related to knowledge, cultural ownership, authenticity, and appropriation. Building on these reflections, we reconceptualise authenticity as a relational and dialogic process, co-constructed through interaction, mediation, and context-sensitive engagement. We propose a conceptual framework grounded in three interrelated dimensions: collaborative partnerships, relational authenticity, and dialogic mediation through educator facilitation. Together, these principles offer an ethically informed and pedagogically grounded approach to intercultural music education that moves beyond representation towards sustained, meaningful engagement with cultural diversity. By foregrounding the role of the educator as a cultural mediator and drawing on insights generated through sustained intercultural practice and prior research, this paper contributes to ongoing debates on belonging, inclusion, and the development of culturally responsive practices in contemporary music teacher education.