The language of “community-university engagement” and “consensus” can obscure and reproduce structural inequities. In this paper, we argue for the necessity of moving beyond comfortable partnerships to engaging with disagreement and conversations about power as central to moving towards equitable decision making, participation, knowledge production and sharing across diverse university and community spaces. We weave together theory and practice, drawing on our experiences as academics, community activists, and educators with different positionalities and disciplinary backgrounds. We examine our experiences and academic literature focusing on how power circulates within community and university spaces and shapes whose voices are heard or marginalized, who is recognized as part of the community, whose knowledge counts and who holds the authority to define “the community’s” needs and aspirations. We question common assumptions embedded in the notions of community and consensus, and ask how these ideals can mask inequities and silence dissent. We suggest that fostering a space for disagreement requires intentional structure, attention to organizational hierarchies including who is present and absent in decision making and why, and careful examination of positionality.
The socio-economic and political instability in Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in Nigeria, has significantly disrupted the education sector, leading to compromised educational outcomes. Using a systematic review of literature sourced from Web of Science and Scopus, the study examined current research trends, types, causes, and the impact of socio-economic and political instability on education in Nigeria between 2019 and 2024, a period marked by heightened insurgencies, socio-political tensions, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Following the PRISMA framework, the study employed rigorous inclusion and exclusion criteria, ultimately selecting 38 eligible studies for analysis. The findings revealed that schools have frequently become targets of attacks, resulting in student abductions, killings, sexual violence, and ransom demands, with girls being disproportionately affected. These attacks have led to widespread school closures, increased dropout rates, reduced female enrollment, limited access to education, and severe psychological distress among teachers and students. Furthermore, the findings indicated that Northwestern Nigeria experiences the highest levels of insecurity, and most studies adopted qualitative methodologies. The major causes of instability include religious extremism, marginalization, economic inequality, poor governance, arms proliferation, and climate-induced food crises. The study suggested that, beyond military interventions, solutions must include promoting good governance, strengthening educational infrastructure, expanding online learning, and investing in youth empowerment programs. Additionally, integrating mental health support into educational policies is essential to mitigate the long-term psychological impact on students and teachers. The study provides valuable insights for policymakers, educators, and researchers seeking to enhance the resilience of Nigeria’s education system amid socio-economic and political instability.
This article draws attention to the implications of two sites of surveillance in which youth occupy the majority of their time: school and social media platforms. In exploring youth’s perceptions and understanding of critical social justice issues, we found that they were noticing the disconnect between how organizations, institutions, government leaders and their peers were responding to George Floyd’s murder, the resurgent #BlackLivesMatter protests, and the resulting (in)actions. This overlapping surveillance has profound implications for youth’s understanding of critical social justice issues and their ability to differentiate between performative allyship/activism and genuine, impactful actions.
Canada’s population has increased by 5,000,000 people since 2014. In New Brunswick, where our Atlantic Antiracism Collaboration Team (AACT ) is based, the province’s population has increased by 100,000 people in 10 years. This growth is linked to increased immigration. This paper examines the rapid demographic change in New Brunswick, a province in Eastern Canada and an historically predominately White location. We draw thematic data from six qualitative case study school-based projects comprising 17 ethnoculturally diverse schools in New Brunswick and a report commissioned by the provincial government to study systemic racism in the province. Findings revealed that New Brunswick-born students, educators and administrators, and community members from across the province are grappling with the rapid demographic changes in their schools and communities, specifically the cultural and racial changes. We highlight five key themes in this paper: Language and Communication, Professional Learning for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion; Disrupting Whiteness; Engagement and Mattering; and Racism. The AACT core vision is to contribute positively through antiracist education, dialogical leadership, and action embedded within a transformative leadership framework. We work with children, educators, administrators, communities, and political leaders who are struggling in the face of the new social realities in our province that increasing population has brought upon them. This paper supports our team’s mandate.
This paper introduces the Schoolhouse of Modernity as an architectural analytic for understanding how modern schooling reproduces defuturing logics even as it claims to advance progress, equity, and sustainability. Extending critiques of the “House of Modernity,” we show how the Schoolhouse operates as a globally circulating blueprint—materialized through policies, metrics, infrastructures, and pedagogical norms that standardize learning and foreclose alternative futures. Through a room-by-room mapping of its architecture, we demonstrate how schooling organizes knowledge, subjectivity, and time in advance, rendering modernity’s assumptions natural and benevolent. Moving beyond reformist approaches, the paper advances a transition imagination oriented toward the undoing of the Schoolhouse through a set of situated gestures—unlearning, composting, hospicing, preserving, repairing, rewilding, and walking out—that resist synthesis, move at different tempos, and demand ongoing response-ability to power, relation, and place. Rather than offering solutions or blueprints, the paper reframes educational futures as processes of restorying—collective, relational, and more-than-human practices through which learning is reimagined beyond mastery, extraction, and universality in times of planetary uncertainty.
