Critical Storytelling in Uncritical Times shares the stories of undergraduate students and educators in U.S. higher education. Storytellers in this volume grapple with issues of bullying, stigma surrounding mental health, cultural barriers, gender inequity, and other forms of struggle in educational settings. The disciplinary backgrounds of the authors are diverse, including Psychology, English, Communication Studies, Business, and Educational Foundations. The authors write stories about their role(s) in resisting (or failing to resist) oppressive conditions in schooling, and their contributions draw attention to critical problems in 21st century. This anthology was planned, written, and edited by students and four faculty members. The stories shared in each chapter were completely at the discretion of the contributor. By making themselves vulnerable, participants investigated stories of personal and social import. This book engages a community of critical voices in an age where critical storytelling has never mattered more. “Critical Storytellling in Uncritical Times is a pulsating work of self and social discovery, where autoethnographic accounts of high school students, pre-service teachers and teachers are assembled into a ‘cut and mix,’ a flux-and-change ethnographic prism that enables readers to view students as educators and educators and future educators as students. It is a book that shows how alliances for social justice can be formed that transcend race, class, age, gender, sexuality and social capital. All of us in the teaching profession would do well to read this book together with their students.” – Peter McLaren, Distinguished Professor, Chapman University

Critical Storytelling in Urban Education shares poems and stories written by college students attending Metropolitan State University in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. The poets and storytellers in this gripping volume address challenges they have faced: issues of sexual abuse, racial politics, cultural identity, stigmatization of marginalized communities, immigration, and other forms of struggle within and outside of urban educational settings. They are students in Education, Communication Studies, Business, and English, among other disciplines. Academic writing has been frequently reserved to professors and doctoral students. This collection is different in that the writing of undergraduate and master students is featured. In a world of unrest, strife, and division, critical stories are sacrosanct.

Critical stories are more than just anecdotes or tales. They are narratives that raconter, or recount, the author’s own experiences, situating them in broader cultural contexts. Just as the autoethnographer situates the self in relation to the “others” of which the self is both a part and from which it is distinct, the critical storyteller situates his or her story of conflict in relation to the broader reality from which the conflict arises. The key is the reality that is being related and the perspective from which it is being shared. In Critical Storytelling in Millennial Times, marginalized, excluded, and oppressed people share insights from their liminality and help readers learn from their perspectives and experiences. Examples of stories in this volume range from undergraduate perspectives on financial aid for college students, to narratives on first-hand police brutality, to heartbreaking tales about addiction, bullying, and the child sex trade in Cambodia. Undergraduate authors relate their stories and pose important questions to the reader about inciting change for the future. Follow along in their journeys and learn what you can do to make a change in your own reality. Contributors are: Ben Brawner, Dwight Brown, Bryce Cherry, Kaytlin Jacoby, Jimmy Kruse, Dean Larrick, Bric Martin, Kara Niles, Claire Parrish, Grace Piper, Claire Prendergast, Alexsenia Ralat, Alec Reyes, Stephanie Simon, S. H. Suits, Katy Swift, Morgan Vogels, and Brittany Walsh.

"The volume describes and vividly illustrates the critical qualities that make PK-12 teachers both effective and memorable. These critical stories, and the editors' concluding conceptual analysis, will prove especially valuable to pre-service and in-service teachers who are engaged in the important responsibility of teaching our nation's youth. Each chapter will include an analysis drawn from research on identity in teacher education, theory, and research in education, psychology, and human development"--

In this volume of Critical Storytelling , female incarcerates and undergraduate writers share insights from their liminality of living with/from behind/within invisible bars, posing important questions about how to incite change for the future.

Capturing the voices of Americans living with student debt in the United States, this collection critiques the neoliberal interest-driven, debt-based system of U.S. higher education and offers alternatives to neoliberal capitalism and the corporatized university. Grounded in an understanding of the historical and political economic context, this book offers auto-ethnographic experiences of living in debt, and analyzes alternatives to the current system. Chapter authors address real questions such as, Do collegians overestimate the economic value of going to college? and How does the monetary system that student loans are part of operate? Pinpointing how developments in the political economy are accountable for students’ university experiences, this book provides an authoritative contribution to research in the fields of educational foundations and higher education policy and finance.

"What happens to people when they choose to unhook from the rules and modes of thought whiteness requires and expects of them? Whiteness promotes a form of hegemonic thinking, which influences not only thought processes but also behavior within the academy. Working to dismantle the racism and whiteness that continue to keep oppressed people powerless and immobilized in academe requires sharing power, opportunity, and access. Removing barriers to the knowledge created in higher education is an essential part of this process. The process of unhooking oneself from institutionalized whiteness certainly requires fighting hegemonic modes of thought and patriarchal views that persistently keep marginalized groups of academics in their station (or at their institution). In the explosive Unhooking from Whiteness: Resisting the Esprit de Corps, editors Hartlep and Hayes continue the conversation they began in 2013; they and the chapter contributors are brave enough to tell a contemporary reality few are brave enough to discuss. “In this groundbreaking and revolutionary sequel volume to Unhooking from Whiteness: The Key to Dismantling Racism in the United States, Nicholas Hartlep and Cleveland Hayes and a group of fearless scholars-activists continue to manifest liberative counternarratives, counteraccounts, personal memoirs, poetry, and testimonios of ‘humanity destroying crimes’ of racism, white supremacy, and ‘academic lynching’ that pervade the academic psyche through epistemology, ontology, and axiology in the United States. This radical work poses a troubling challenge to humanity not only to unhook from, but also to contest, transgress, and liberate from, white supremacy to cultivate extraordinary human potential in a trembling and unjust world.” – Ming Fang He, Georgia Southern University Nicholas D. Hartlep is an award-winning Assistant Professor of Educational Foundations at Illinois State University and co-editor of Unhooking from Whiteness: The Key to Dismantling Racism in the United States and Critical Storytelling in Uncritical Times: Stories Disclosed in a Cultural Foundations of Education Course. He lives and writes in Normal, Illinois.www.nicholashartlep.com Cleveland Hayes is an Associate Professor in the College of Education and Organizational Leadership at the University of La Verne. Dr. Hayes teaches Secondary and Elementary Science Methods in the Teacher Education program and Research Methods in the Education Management and Leadership Program. He lives and writes in Upland, California."

"Critical Storytelling in Uncritical Times shares the stories of students and a professor in a Cultural Foundations of Education Course. Storytellers in this volume grapple with issues of white privilege, racial microaggressions, bullying , cultural barriers, immigration, and other forms of struggle in educational settings. The disciplinary backgrounds of the authors are diverse: Psychology, Communication Studies, Higher Education Administration, and Educational Foundations. The authors write stories about their role(s) in resisting (or failing to resist) hegemony, and their contributions draw attention to critical problems scholars and practitioners find in 21st century schooling. This anthology was planned, written, and edited by course participants. The stories shared in each chapter were completely at the discretion of the author. By making themselves vulnerable, participants investigated stories that mattered to them. This book engages a community of critical voices in an uncritical age."

This book discusses current issues in literacy teacher education and illuminates the complexity of supporting self-efficacious educators to teach language and literacy in the twenty-first century classroom. In three sections, chapter authors first detail how teacher education programs can be revamped to include content and methods to inspire self-efficacy in pre-service teachers, then reimagine how teacher candidates can be set up for success toward obtaining this. The final section encourages readers to ruminate on the interplay among teacher candidates as they transition into practice and work to have both self- and collective- efficacy.

The Journal of International Students (JIS), an academic, interdisciplinary, and peer-reviewed publication (Print ISSN 2162-3104 & Online ISSN 2166-3750), publishes narrative, theoretical, and empirically-based research articles, student and faculty reflections, study abroad experiences, and book reviews relevant to international students and their cross-cultural experiences and understanding in international education.