Transformative Ruptures Toward Social Justice Teaching: Theorizing Ways In-Service Teachers Shift Toward Deeper Forms of Critical Consciousness

Context: Critical pedagogies, such as social justice teaching (SJT), present opportunities for PK–12 students to critique, question, and envision a more just and equitable democracy. Yet as SJT gains traction in the field, research has documented its surface-level implementation, undertheorization of potential complexity, and scant impact on fostering critical consciousness. Purpose: Within the context of a university–district partnership, this study seeks to illuminate the spectrum of how PK–12 teachers conceive of and embed elements of critical consciousness in SJT to ultimately provide specific pedagogical insights for increasing the criticality of its implementation. Research Design: The research team conducted a qualitative analysis of lesson and unit plans and focus group data using a provisional coding scheme based on Dover’s 2015 framework for capturing the critical consciousness variance across the three dimensions of SJT—curriculum, pedagogy, and social action. Conclusion: The findings provide illustrative examples of educator artifacts that capture this variance across each SJT dimension. Based on these illustrative examples, the authors conceive of three transformative ruptures, or dynamic shifts in teacher practice that support their teaching and learning to embody deeper levels of critical consciousness: (1) centering diverse individuals, communities, histories, and ways of being; (2) designing critical inquiries and promoting students as agentic inquirers; and (3) examining throughlines from the past to the present. Implications from the study speak to how support providers and universities might support educators to deepen the element of critical consciousness within SJT implementation.