Contesting This Political Moment Editors’ Introduction To Special Issue Teachers’ Work In Contentious Times

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Published: Aug 5, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.14288/workplace.v36i1.187291
Keywords:
Teachers' work

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Dana Morrison
West Chester University
Brianne Kramer
Southern Utah University
Lauren Ware Stark
Université de Sherbrooke
Erin Dyke
Oklahoma State University
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1594-5547
Denisha Jones
Defending the Early Years

Abstract

Introduction to the first installment of special issues on Teachers’ Work in Contentious Times.

Article Details

Issue
Vol. 36 No. 1 (2025): Teachers’ Work in Contentious Political Times (Special Series, Part 1) + GLRC Symposium + Featured Articles & Commentary
Section
Teachers’ Work in Contentious Political Times
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Author Biographies

Dana Morrison, West Chester University

Dr. Dana Morrison holds a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Delaware, specializing in Sociocultural and Community-Based Approaches. Her scholarship has focused on teacher activism, critical teacher education theory and practice, and the financialization of public higher education. She is faculty co-advisor to the WCU Chapter of the Student Pennsylvania Education Association (SPSEA) and the current Secretary of ASPCUF-WCU. Dr. Morrison also co-chairs the Teachers’ Work/ Teachers Union SIG for the American Education Research Association (AERA). Dr. Morrison teaches courses in the Social Foundations of Education both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Principle specializations include: Philosophy and History of education, educational policy (K-Higher Education), and qualitative research methods in education.

Brianne Kramer, Southern Utah University

Brianne Kramer, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Education in the College of Education and Human Development at Southern Utah University where she teaches Social Foundations of Education courses. Additionally, she coordinates the Educational Foundations and Policy major for the Master’s of Education and Master’s of Interdisciplinary Studies programs. She earned a Ph.D. in Social Foundations of Education from the University of Toledo, and her research focuses on teacher workforce issues, diversity, equity, and inclusion, educational policy, and teacher activism. She co-edited the 2022 book Children and Trauma: Critical Perspectives for Meeting the Needs of Diverse Educational Communities. She also currently serves on the ACLU Utah Board of Directors and is a Contributing Scholar for the Policy Research-to-Policy Collaboration housed at Pennsylvania State University.

Lauren Ware Stark, Université de Sherbrooke

Lauren Ware Stark is an assistant professor of education at the Université de Sherbrooke. Her research explores the work of social justice educators inside and outside of the classroom. She completed her PhD in the social foundations of education at the University of Virginia after spending nine years teaching secondary English, ELL, French, and Humanities in public schools in Delaware, Texas, and Washington. Her research interests include critical race theory and whiteness studies, critical multicultural education, the social foundations of education, critical pedagogy and social justice education, teachers' work and teachers' unions, and teacher and student engagement in social movements.

Erin Dyke, Oklahoma State University

Erin Dyke is an associate professor of curriculum studies at Oklahoma State University. Her primary line of research examines the pedagogies, organizing, and impacts of contemporary educator movements on educational practice and policy. Dyke has published work in this area in the Berkeley Review of Education, the edited volume Walkout: Teacher Militancy, Activism, and School Reform, and she co-edited a four-part special issue series for Critical Education highlighting empirical studies of and organizer interviews with educator movements from across North America. With support from the Spencer Foundation, Dyke undertook a two-year community-based oral history study of the 2018 Oklahoma Education Walkouts with a team of teacher-researchers, with whom she co-authored an article in Critical Education to address underrepresented narratives and perspectives in public accounting of the event. She and her research team curated a public collection of educators' oral history narratives of their strike experiences, preserved and published with the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program at OSU. This research informs her 2023 book, co-authored with Brendan Muckian-Bates, Rank-and-File Rebels: Theories of Power and Change in the 2018 Education Strikes with WAC Clearinghouse and the University Press of Colorado. Dyke has published ethnographic studies of liberatory curriculum and pedagogy with K-12 students and teachers in Educational Studies, International Journal of Multicultural Education, and Journal of Education Human Resources. In 2022, Dyke received the American Education Research Association's Critical Educators for Social Justice Revolutionary Mentor Award.

Denisha Jones, Defending the Early Years

Dr. Denisha Jones joined the Defending the Early Years Advisory Board in 2014 and worked as the Director of Early Childhood Organizing and Co-Director before becoming the Executive Director in 2022. She has a B.S. in Early Childhood Education and a Certificate in Nonprofit Leadership from the University of the District of Columbia, a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from Indiana University, and a J.D. from the University of the District of Columbia. Denisha is an adjunct faculty member in the Art of Teaching Program at Sarah Lawrence College and the School of Education Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Howard University. Her research interests include organizing activist research projects that examine grassroots movements to achieve racial justice in education, documenting the value of play as a tool for liberation with an emphasis on global approaches to play, and collaborating with parents and educators to foster positive racial, ethnic, and cultural identity development in the early years. Her first co-edited book, Black Lives Matter at School: An Uprising for Educational Justice, was published in 2020 by Haymarket Books.