Nicole Mirra – författare

In an era when education can extend far beyond traditional classrooms, this volume explores how young people engage with civic life and shape their futures through creative, critical, and collective action. This timely volume brings together a diverse group of scholars and practitioners who highlight the rich potential of out-of-school spaces, digital platforms, and community-based practices to nurture the next generation of civic leaders.

From youth-driven podcasts to speculative fiction and social media activism, the chapters in this book chart a range of innovative and empowering practices that support young people’s development as activists, storytellers, and agents of change. Contributors examine how Black, immigrant, refugee, and urban youth are crafting new narratives of justice, belonging, and resistance—often in the face of systemic oppression.

In this volume, you’ll discover:

The first volume focuses on the future-oriented civic literacy learning taking place in K–12 classrooms. The third volume explores the transformative role of civic education in ELA classrooms and teacher preparation programs, focusing on social justice, critical literacy, and activism. This collection redefines what it means to be civically engaged in the twenty-first century and offers actionable insights for educators, community leaders, and anyone interested in empowering young people to create more equitable and inclusive societies. Join the conversation and learn how, outside the classroom, young people are building the futures they deserve.

The Civic Literacy series showcases how the knowledges, skills, and commitments of English language arts can explore traditional understandings of “civic education” and in its place offer creative possibilities for civic world-building in K–12 classrooms and communities.

This, the third volume of the series, features contributions from educators, researchers, and students to explore:

The essays in the Civic Literacy volumes share innovative stories and strategies of how literacy has been leveraged by youth, teachers, and community members to imagine and enact equitable social futures. The first volume focuses on the future-oriented civic literacy learning taking place in K–12 classrooms. The second volume examines the transformative learning that occurs in out-of-school informal literacy learning environments.

This volume outlines powerful theoretical and methodological approaches for expanding the possibilities of educational research. By illuminating speculative education as an emerging scholarly practice, this collection offers pragmatic guidance for scholarly world-building.

It introduces “speculative education” as a critical and hopeful approach to educational research. Through empirical scholarship, the book describes paradigms of collective thriving beyond the existing horizons guiding research, policy, and practice in educational research. The collection of scholarship here offers visionary and future-oriented approaches to teaching and learning that operate beyond the bounds of current social, economic, and cultural arrangements that perpetuate various forms of oppression. Through specific examples and a collection of thematic interludes, this collection details a framework through which educational researchers and practitioners can enact speculative dreaming. This speculative framework seeks to foreground ethical relations as the basis of civic trust; foster an ethos of collaborative practice as the work of world-building; and engage in joyful struggle toward just futures. Ultimately, this volume highlights how researchers, designers, educators, and individuals linked in community with each other must question the intended outcomes of educational scholarship writ large and if the priors of academic scholarship actually lead toward destinations of freedom. In recognizing the pluralistic nature of speculative worlds that might be built, the possibilities for new educational models and experiences are boundless.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of the Learning Sciences.

This volume outlines powerful theoretical and methodological approaches for expanding the possibilities of educational research. By illuminating speculative education as an emerging scholarly practice, this collection offers pragmatic guidance for scholarly world-building.

It introduces “speculative education” as a critical and hopeful approach to educational research. Through empirical scholarship, the book describes paradigms of collective thriving beyond the existing horizons guiding research, policy, and practice in educational research. The collection of scholarship here offers visionary and future-oriented approaches to teaching and learning that operate beyond the bounds of current social, economic, and cultural arrangements that perpetuate various forms of oppression. Through specific examples and a collection of thematic interludes, this collection details a framework through which educational researchers and practitioners can enact speculative dreaming. This speculative framework seeks to foreground ethical relations as the basis of civic trust; foster an ethos of collaborative practice as the work of world-building; and engage in joyful struggle toward just futures. Ultimately, this volume highlights how researchers, designers, educators, and individuals linked in community with each other must question the intended outcomes of educational scholarship writ large and if the priors of academic scholarship actually lead toward destinations of freedom. In recognizing the pluralistic nature of speculative worlds that might be built, the possibilities for new educational models and experiences are boundless.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of the Learning Sciences.

Doing Youth Participatory Action Research offers an unprecedented, in-depth exploration of the pragmatics and possibilities of youth-driven research. Drawing upon multiple years of experience engaging youth in rigorous, critical inquiry about the conditions impacting their lives, the authors examine how YPAR encourages the educational community to re-imagine the capabilities of young people and the purposes of teaching, learning, and research itself.

Much more than a "how-to" guide for those interested in creating their own YPAR projects, this book draws upon the voices of students and educators, as well as the multiple historical traditions of critical research, to describe how youth inquiry transforms each step of the traditional research process. From identifying research questions to collecting data and disseminating findings, each chapter details how YPAR revolutionizes traditional conceptions of who produces knowledge, how it is produced, and for what purposes. The book weaves together research, policy, and practice to offer YPAR as a practice with the power to challenge entrenched social and educational inequalities, empower critically aware youth, and revolutionize pedagogy in classrooms and communities.

For researchers, educators, community members, and youth who want to connect, question, and transform the world collectively, Doing Youth Participatory Action Research is a rich source of both pragmatic methodological guidance and inspiration.

Doing Youth Participatory Action Research offers an unprecedented, in-depth exploration of the pragmatics and possibilities of youth-driven research. Drawing upon multiple years of experience engaging youth in rigorous, critical inquiry about the conditions impacting their lives, the authors examine how YPAR encourages the educational community to re-imagine the capabilities of young people and the purposes of teaching, learning, and research itself.

Much more than a "how-to" guide for those interested in creating their own YPAR projects, this book draws upon the voices of students and educators, as well as the multiple historical traditions of critical research, to describe how youth inquiry transforms each step of the traditional research process. From identifying research questions to collecting data and disseminating findings, each chapter details how YPAR revolutionizes traditional conceptions of who produces knowledge, how it is produced, and for what purposes. The book weaves together research, policy, and practice to offer YPAR as a practice with the power to challenge entrenched social and educational inequalities, empower critically aware youth, and revolutionize pedagogy in classrooms and communities.

For researchers, educators, community members, and youth who want to connect, question, and transform the world collectively, Doing Youth Participatory Action Research is a rich source of both pragmatic methodological guidance and inspiration.