I review debates around the persistence of stratified educational outcomes. Three explanatory perspectives on social inequality, including educational inequality, are discussed: the “culture of poverty” perspective, the resistance perspective, and the “cultural wealth” perspective. Recent perspectives that emphasize the need to recognize and validate cultural wealth within marginalized urban communities offer an important counterbalance to viewpoints that highlight perceived deficiencies within such milieus. Cultural wealth scholarship views structural discrimination as the primary force that produces inequalities based on race and class. There is, however, a tendency in progressive scholarship to romanticize such communities and focus predominantly on structural change within schools. Many such scholars view community-based social capital initiatives with suspicion and generally deprioritize the urgent need to expand and diversify social capital within minoritized urban communities. I attempt to illustrate that, while structural forces are important to consider when addressing educational inequalities, overlooking social capital-related factors will result in marginalized urban communities continuing to suffer disadvantage.

needs.

Around 3.3 million young people are trafficked worldwide, with over half subjected to sexual exploitation (Data and Research on Forced Labour, 2024). However, little research exists on the role of school-based educators in learning about, preventing, and identifying human trafficking. This study examines educators’ knowledge of trafficking both locally and globally. Grounded in critical anti-trafficking frameworks, Schulman’s (1987) framework of teachers’ knowledge, and Bronfenbrenner and Cici’s (1994) Bioecological Model, the study surveyed 205 educators in Central Florida in the United States. Findings show that over 60% had received no training on human trafficking, while 24.3% of those who had training were uncertain about how to report trafficking cases. Educators also expressed a desire for more school-based training and professional development. Implications suggest using critical, pedagogical approaches like Ginwright’s (2018) healing-centred engagement to enhance educators’ understanding and help deter global trafficking networks.

This contribution presents a commentary on the special issue.

Many public institutions, including universities and colleges, have committed to Indigenous engagement – the institutional effort to engage with experiences, histories, and perspectives of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples in meaningful ways. In many areas of institutional endeavour, these commitments have frequently included a focus upon spiritual orientations of Indigenous peoples as a central aspect of their knowledge and worldviews. In this study, we sought to acquire knowledge on moral understandings that were resident in the consciousness of Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers situated at universities across Canada. Findings revealed that personal and communal experiences informed a developed sense of responsibility that may be situated in the unique manifestations of their respective knowledge systems, heritages, and consciousnesses. Although non-Indigenous orientations such as those of Christianity informed the narratives of some, a prevailing sense of traditional identity emerged from participants.

Milpa is an ancestral agriculture technique that has been passed down by Indigenous communities in so-called North America for millennia through stories of place. As an Indigenous knowledge system that is based on the symbiotic cultivation of diverse species, learning from milpa gifts lessons to cultivate polycultures of reciprocity. Drawing from my lived experience as a Mestizx educator from Mexico, I propose embodying milpa in learning environments as a horizon of possibility to refuse and disrupt the ways in which education has been limited, standardized, controlled and confined to colonial monocultures (Shiva, 1993). I use the cultivation of milpa as a metaphor to represent the transformation of modernist education systems that prioritize individuality and rationality shifting towards collaborative learning environments that are complex, messy and entangled with the land. Late Indigenous Professor Michael Marker (2018) invites scholars to center place as the beginning point of inquiry when excavating the specific effects of colonization on Indigenous landscapes and communities. Following his advice, I use stories of milpa to experience placeness and provide a representation of the transformation of modernist education systems through the resurgence of Indigenous knowledge systems. I begin this paper with a piece of the Mexica creation story to center “the consciousness of landscape” (p. 453) and continue to explain how from a modern perspective, place has shifted to produce bordered monocultures that eradicate diversity. I conclude by narrating the story of three sisters to envision the embodiment of milpa inside learning environments to form polycultures of reciprocity where animate and inanimate beings are all connected inside a web of relations belonging to the land.

A contribution with memories of Michael Marker shared by his family.

In 2021, Computing Information Technology Research and Education New Zealand (CITRENZ, 2021) held a conference for academics to explore information technology in a changing world. It provided a platform for those academics that teach in this industry a forum to discuss knowledge transfer and teaching practices. A workshop on “Mātauranga Māori in Information Technology,” which is a specialised type of expertise that continues to be in its infancy was presented. Mātauranga Māori in academia is a body of Indigenous Māori knowledge passed down from generation to generation, stretching back to te ao marama, the creation of the world (Sadler, 2007). Therefore, the depth of Mātauranga Māori is embedded in the earth and waters that cover the lands (Royal, 1998). Exploring ways to transfer this type of knowledge to a classroom or global online environment for Information Technology is a new type of pedagogy. Building the academic capacity of people and academic programmes in Information Technology that supports Mātauranga Māori is pioneering for Indigenous academics. Navigating this pathway in the tertiary sector is delegated many times to the Indigenous academic to take leadership in this discipline. It also becomes a challenge for the Indigenous academic to retain leadership in these areas when these topics become globally attractive, like Cyber Security, where the representation of Indigenous experts are scarce in this industry and the outcome is that knowledge transfer tends to be the responsibility of the non-Indigenous academics to lead capacity building initiatives. This article discusses five key issues: 1) programmes in the Digital Computing Information Technology sector; 2) Mātauranga Māori in Information Technology; 3) the pedagogy of teaching and delivery; 4) Indigenous leadership in this sector; and 5) capacity building initiatives. It draws heavily from the literature and experience of those academics who work in the Institute of Technology and Polytechnics in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Drawing on educational census data and a review of news articles and higher education policies in Brazil, this article examines the impact of COVID-19 on the access and retention of the low-income Brazilian population in higher education. Guided by the question, “What is the impact of COVID-19 on the most vulnerable population in Brazil in terms of access to, and retention in higher education?”, the paper is structured in two sections: the first offers a short historical overview of Brazilian higher education; the second examines the impact of the pandemic on student retention in higher education, looking at factors such as social isolation, job and income precarity, use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), internet access, and technological resources. I argue that distance education offered by private higher education institutions benefits the privileged students and that the effects of the pandemic are detrimental to the socially disadvantaged students since those who are in public universities do not always have access to technology, and those who study in private universities feel the impact of not being able to pay tuition fees, besides the loss of several jobs in different sectors. In conclusion, I recommend policy initiatives to improve access to higher education.

This paper explores the methods employed by Alberta Education to teach Alberta students about the Indigenous Peoples of Canada. Currently, Alberta Education has two approaches, which are: 1) the integration of the First Nations, Metis, and Inuit Policy Framework (FNMI), which is a framework that is a means to educate all Albertans on the history of Aboriginal Peoples, and 2) an optional Aboriginal Studies coursework. An urban high school participated in this research study, which was under the call for the integration of the FNMI policy framework and also offered Aboriginal Studies 10. I used a Blackfoot theoretical framework, grounded in an Indigenous research methodology, alongside principles of the Beadworking paradigm to conduct the research. I employed a survey that was quantitative in nature to determine students’ attitudes towards the Indigenous Peoples of Canada. I was interested in identifying whether taking Aboriginal Studies 10 made a difference in the participants’ views of Indigenous Peoples. I used principal-component factor analysis and multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) to analyze the data. The results from the MANOVA analysis indicate that the Aboriginal Studies 10 class plays a role in students’ perceptions of Indigenous Peoples specifically. These results indicate that students who participated in the Aboriginal Studies 10 course had a more positive view of Indigenous Peoples than students who did not participate in Aboriginal Studies 10.