Shifting out of "neutral": beginning teachers' struggles with teaching for social justice

deirdre m. kelly and gabriella minnes brandes

"We discerned 5 distinct positions about the possibility and desirability of teacher neutrality."
"Teachers alone cannot overcome the social injustices that currently impede democracy, but they can play an important role in nurturing a more active form of citizenship among young people."
"Those who have written about critical pedagogy are clear that teaching is inevitably political and teachers cannot be value-neutral."
"knowledge is individually rather than socially constructed"
"Teacher neutrality is not only undesirable but impossible."
Some teachers thought "of action in modest and student-appropriate ways that unfolded in local contexts."