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Articles, Book Chapters, & Invited Presentations by John Lupinacci

Posthumanism and Higher Education: Reimagining Pedagogy, Practice, and Research , 2019

Encyclopedia of Teacher Education , 2019

Encyclopedia entry in the Encyclopedia of Teacher Education

Animals, Disability, and the End of Capitalism, 2019

Education for Total Liberation, 2019

Mathematics Teaching (Journal for the Association of Teachers of Mathematics), 2018

Nataly Chesky, John Lupinacci, and Mark Wolfmeyer share a thematic unit they have devised to expl... more Nataly Chesky, John Lupinacci, and Mark Wolfmeyer share a thematic unit they have devised to explore of social justice through mathematics education.

Issues in Teacher Education (ITE), 2018

A special issue for Issues in Teacher Education (ITE) that includes diverse ecocritical perspecti... more A special issue for Issues in Teacher Education (ITE) that includes diverse ecocritical perspectives in teacher education.

This article seeks to address often overlooked cultural assumptions embedded within neoliber-alis... more This article seeks to address often overlooked cultural assumptions embedded within neoliber-alism; specifically, the researchers explore what ecofeminist Val Plumwood describes as centric thinking, leading to a logic of domination. The authors argue that social justice educators and activists who are committed to critiquing neoliberalism must take into consideration the ways in which a logic of domination undergirds the unjust and destructive social and economic ideologies and policies that constitute neoliberalism. The authors examine and share pedagogical moments from experiences in teacher education seeking to: (a) challenge and disrupt dualistic thinking; (b) interrupt perceptions of hegemonic normalcy—referring to a socio-cultural process by which actions, behaviors, and diverse ways of interpreting the world are perceived by dominant society as " fitting in " and being socially acceptable; and, (c) contest false notions of independence—the degree to which an individual is perceived as able to meet their social and economic responsibilities on their own—as measures of success in schools and society. The authors detail how they work with(in) teacher education programs to introduce how an ecocritical approach, drawing from ecofeminist frameworks, identifies and examines the impacts of neoliberal policies and practices dominated by " free " market ideology. The authors assert that educators, especially teacher educators, can challenge harmful discourses that support the problematic neoliberal understandings about independence that inform Western cultural norms and assumptions. Concluding, the authors share a conceptualization for (un)learning the exploitation inextricable from the policies and practices of neoliberalism.

The articles presented in this special issue each take up lines of posthuman, complex, materialis... more The articles presented in this special issue each take up lines of
posthuman, complex, materialist thinking, answering questions of “how
might we live,” “how might we educate,” and “how might we research
education/teaching” with affirmative, monistic, immanent, multiplistic
theories of difference. These serve as points of departure from normative
(humanistic) ways of thinking about teacher education, teaching, and
research on teaching. We envision the theoretical scope of the articles
in this issue as spanning a continuum, ranging from modes of thought
that trouble and dismantle normative and circulatory social categories to
conceptual and methodological frameworks that reinterpret the human
condition itself. The broad and diverse conceptual and methodological
approaches in this collection are “put to work” as guiding frameworks
regarding a wide range of equity and social justice issues relevant to
education and teacher education.

Special issue of Issues in Teacher Education with guest editors Kathryn J. Strom and Adrian D. Ma... more Special issue of Issues in Teacher Education with guest editors Kathryn J. Strom and Adrian D. Martin

In this chapter we discuss a case study from Detroit, Michigan, that highlights what educators ca... more In this chapter we discuss a case study from Detroit, Michigan, that highlights what educators can learn from community efforts to address food insecurity. Advocating that educators and policy makers rethink how they recognize and come to understand food enclosures—socio-political and economic arrangements that limit access to the production, preparation, and consumption of local, healthy, and culturally relevant food—the chapter emphasizes the importance of working together to learn from and with food movements.

Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 2017

This century's global challenge, the highly complex and interwoven fabric of minute and grand soc... more This century's global challenge, the highly complex and interwoven fabric of minute and grand social and environmental catastrophes, necessitates curriculum theorizing in a multiplicity of ways and across a variety of knowledges and other contexts. Curriculum studies as a field has begun this formidable work, examining various types of atrocities (e.g., environmental catastrophe, oppression of women, white supremacy). Often, it has approached each type in isolation; in some cases, it has approached each type together as interrelated features of Western industrial culture. Nevertheless, we consider the scholarship in recent decades as the emergence of a new program in curriculum studies that attends to both the social and environmental issues we face today. We will review this work briefly, but not only as a means to discuss mathematics education; we do so more importantly to suggest that such projects in curriculum studies have reached a depth at which we can, and arguably must, focus on specific domains, such as particular knowledges and school contexts. Therefore, this article presents an ecocritical (re)consideration of the curricular challenges of mathematics education. We approach this in two parts: first, we discuss the ecocritical scholarship relevant to mathematics as knowledge and mathematics education as practice; second, we review the domains in mathematics education relevant to ecocritical conceptions of education. The latter refers to a handful of strands, including critical mathematics education, poststructuralist feminist understandings of mathematics education, and the expansive field of ethnomathematics. From these efforts, we articulate a conception of EcoJustice Mathematics Education (EJME) and conclude with an example lesson that specifically reimagines in detail the Kolam, a mathematical, artistic practice from India of great interest to ethnomathematicians.

Philosophy of Mathematics Education, 2017

In this article, we first review an ecocritical trend in curriculum studies, as it might relate t... more In this article, we first review an ecocritical trend in curriculum studies, as it might relate to projects in mathematics education for the environment, by highlighting a call to interrelate issues of social and environmental justice and confront Western habits of mind rooted in a logic of domination and human-centric thinking. Relevant ecofeminist thinking further supports our review of such curricular work. Next we analyze a handful of existing scholarship in mathematics education as it relates to this ecocritical trend, revealing that ecocritical mathematics teaching and learning currently exists, albeit without an explicit grounding in ecofeminist theory or ecocritical work. Finally, to motivate further mathematics education work rooted more directly by these considerations, we share an example curricular project titled " A Story of Incarceration. " As an example of mathematics education for the environment that is rooted in ecocritical curriculum studies, learners partaking in the unit will acquire mathematics content related to rate, ratio, proportion, and scale drawing while directly interrelating issues of social and environmental justice and confronting the anthropocentric worldview at the heart of Western industrial culture.

In this chapter: "John Lupinacci presents how comics, Liberator and Animal Man, serve as pedagogi... more In this chapter: "John Lupinacci presents how comics, Liberator and Animal Man, serve as pedagogical materials for teaching about animal and Earth liberation front by inspiring and engaging in utopian and distopian (im)possibilities of posthuman identities. Drawing from CAS, anarchist pedagogies, and an ecocritical educational framework Lupinacci illustrates how comics can be used to teach in support of imagining and enacting resistance to modernist subjectivities. His orientation toward teaching superheroes in the classroom serves as the very model by which radical praxis can come about by teaching about popular culture" (Schatz & Parson, 2018, p. xix)

Educational Studies: A Journal of the American Educational Studies Association, 2017

This special issue presents a collection of articles that multiplies Science and Technology Studi... more This special issue presents a collection of articles that multiplies Science and Technology Studies (STS) with Educational Studies, in an attempt to think differently about science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. We hope this cross product of the two fields amplifies the philosophical insights from each, stretching scholarship in new directions and across disciplines. While diligently refusing reductive scientisms, we open up this manifold space so as to cultivate discussions of a possible rapprochement between the physical and social sciences (Wilson, 2015 Wilson, E. (2015). Gut feminism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
[Crossref], [Google Scholar]
). This work responds to the changing theoretical landscape across the humanities or posthumanities, following the ontological turn and the shift to consider more-than-human agencies. This work is thus highly relevant for the field of educational studies and the social foundations of education, providing insights into alternative onto-epistemologies, and tracking the impact of these across education policy, research, and curriculum.

Critical Education, 2017

In our efforts to foster space for critical work in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and M... more In our efforts to foster space for critical work in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) Education, we put forward differing framings for STEM education that interact with one another, emerging and reconstituting themselves as STEM continues. At present, we suggest three intersecting dimensions to this ontology: STEM as apolitical curricular trend, STEM as Eurocentric economic policy, and STEM as discursive episteme. With the goal of interrupting and proposing alternatives, we conclude by pointing to existing spaces where critical work in mathematics and science education already occurs and how STEM education might move forward. Readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and Critical Education, it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work.

Issues in Teacher Education, 2017

The acronym STEM is a ubiquitous term for seemingly anything in—or related to—the fields of scien... more The acronym STEM is a ubiquitous term for seemingly anything in—or related to—the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and the current dominant educational STEM discourse in teacher education is often organized around questions of how to integrate math and science into the other content areas or vice versa. The purpose of this essay is to pose a different question: How can an ecological model for subject inquiry become the organizing focus for an integrated ecological inquiry? In this article, we provide a glimpse of where we are currently in our thinking and writing as we put theory to work in teacher education.

Junior Secondary STEM , 2017

The chapter begins by asking whether STEM education is a friend or foe to the field of critical m... more The chapter begins by asking whether STEM education is a friend or foe to the field of critical mathematics education (CME) by reviewing how mainstream STEM conflicts with CME but also provides spaces for critical work. Tensions between CME and STEM include mainstream STEM’s emphasis on human capital, inattention to environmental degradation, and soft-critical orientation to social justice issues. However, STEM’s emphases on interdisciplinarity can provide opportunities for critical mathematics education to take place. We argue that STEM education as policy can be an opportunistic space to simultaneously resist and reconstitute in line with the values and goals of CME. We extend CME’s goals with deeper theoretical consideration to the nature of the ecological and social crises, in so doing we draw on ecofeminism and EcoJustice Education. The chapter concludes with a model “critical STEM” unit plan sketch that is appropriate for the Junior Secondary level. CME, ecofeminist theory, and internationally benchmarked content standards provide the foundation for our STEM unit plan titled “A Story of Incarceration.” By this example, we intend to show that critical STEM projects can be transformative for learners as well meet the content goals of standard STEM education.

In this chapter, the co-authors discuss the environmental commons as a space for youth activism. ... more In this chapter, the co-authors discuss the environmental commons as a space for youth activism. We use the term to refer to communities of interdependence--humans with other living things--and to public space where people, including young people, gather and engage in civic affairs. Our particular focus is on the intersection of social and environmental justice action that links human interdependence with other living things. We argue that this important nexus is a space ripe for youth civiv engagement in part because an understanding of the commons, and the sense of responsibility and care that accompanies it, compels one to notice and respond to the injustice that exists in one's community.

This chapter shares context for and examples of how young activists recognize the intersectional ways they are affected by enclosing the commons, transform public discourse to retain access to public space, mobilize communities through culturally relevant forms, and lay claim to the commons with cross-generational work.

An entry in a reference book that briefly introduces a critical examination of military use of an... more An entry in a reference book that briefly introduces a critical examination of military use of animals.

Posthumanism and Higher Education: Reimagining Pedagogy, Practice, and Research , 2019

Encyclopedia of Teacher Education , 2019

Encyclopedia entry in the Encyclopedia of Teacher Education

Animals, Disability, and the End of Capitalism, 2019

Education for Total Liberation, 2019

Mathematics Teaching (Journal for the Association of Teachers of Mathematics), 2018

Issues in Teacher Education (ITE), 2018

Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 2017

Philosophy of Mathematics Education, 2017

Educational Studies: A Journal of the American Educational Studies Association, 2017

Critical Education, 2017

Issues in Teacher Education, 2017

Junior Secondary STEM , 2017

Educational Foundations , 2019

Through a case study of two doctoral programs situated in the United States, this essay highlight... more Through a case study of two doctoral programs situated in the United
States, this essay highlights how doctoral programs designed to prepare
leaders in K-16 institutions and other contexts can be “framed around
questions of equity, ethics, and social justice to bring about solutions to
complex problems of practice” (CPED, 2016; Buss, Zambo, Zambo, Perry, &
Williams, 2017; Zambo, Buss & Zambo; 2015). More specifically, we argue
that programs should be able to clearly and explicitly articulate their
distinctive understanding of “social justice” and trace the ways that this
understanding is operationalized in particular facets of their program.

This collection of essays presents to the reader leading voices within food justice, environmenta... more This collection of essays presents to the reader leading voices within food justice, environmental justice, and school-to-prison pipeline movements. While many schools, community organizers, professors, politicians, unions, teachers, parents, youth, social workers, and youth advocates are focusing on curriculum, discipline policies, policing practices, incarceration demographics, and diversity of staff, the authors of this book argue that even if all those issues are addressed, healthy food and living environment are fundamental to the emancipation of youth. This book is for anyone who wants to truly understand the school-to-prison pipeline as well as those interested in peace, social justice, environmentalism, racial justice, youth advocacy, transformative justice, food, veganism, and economic justice.

EcoJustice Education offers a powerful model for cultural ecological analysis and a pedagogy of r... more EcoJustice Education offers a powerful model for cultural ecological analysis and a pedagogy of responsibility, providing teachers and teacher educators with the information and classroom practices they need to help develop citizens who are prepared to support and achieve diverse, democratic, and sustainable societies in an increasingly globalized world. Readers are asked to consider curricular strategies to bring these issues to life in their own classrooms across disciplines. Designed for introductory educational foundations and multicultural education courses, the text is written in a narrative, conversational style grounded in place and experience, but also pushes students to examine the larger ideological, social, historical, and political contexts of the crises humans and the planet we inhabit are facing.

Pedagogical features in each chapter include a Conceptual Toolbox, activities accompanying the theoretical content, examples of lessons and teacher reflections, and suggested readings, films, and links. The Second Edition features a new chapter on Anthropocentrism; new material on Heterosexism; updated statistics and examples throughout; new and updated Companion Website content.

"Designed for introductory social foundations or multicultural education courses, this text offer... more "Designed for introductory social foundations or multicultural education courses, this text offers a powerful model for cultural ecological analysis and pedagogy of responsibility, providing teachers and teacher educators with the information and classroom practices they need to help develop citizens who are prepared to support and achieve diverse, democratic, and sustainable societies in an increasingly globalized world. The Companion Website for this book (www.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415872515) offers a wealth of resources linked to each chapter.

"Authentic hope is the gift Rebecca Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci offer readers of EcoJustice Education…. We learn what it means to recover the ancient arts and skills of cultivating commons, common sense, and community collaborations in our hard times." Madhu Suri Prakash, Pennsylvania State University

"EcoJustice Education should become a core part of teacher education programs across the country as it provides both the theory and examples of classroom practices essential for making the transition to a sustainable future." C. A. Bowers, author, international speaker, and retired professor
"

Educational Studies, 2019

Reflections on Bowers and teaching for EcoJustice.

Kappa Delta Pi Record, 2019

Book review for Santone's "Reframing the Curriculum: Design for Social Justice and Sustainability"

Australian Journal of Environmental …, Jan 1, 2011

Educational Studies, Jan 1, 2012

Sense/Brill

While schools have long played a strong role in the social reproduction of inequity and injustice... more While schools have long played a strong role in the social reproduction of inequity and injustice, since the 2001 passing of " No Child Left Behind " and the re-authorization with the 2015 " Every Student Succeeds Act, " schools have even further continued to be tools of corrupt anti-public education politicians, profit-seeking publishing regimes, special interest groups, corporate profiteers, and the inequitable power structure. With little attention to the importance of deep learning, the education system has become a beholden to measuring tools that sort students, reinforce the power of the dominant class, favor some groups over others, and reduce learning to a series of discreet, testable fragments. The purpose of this book is twofold and therefore in two parts. Part one will focus on critically and creatively describing the litany of current problems in education. By delving into historical trends and citing contemporary issues, this section will address the myriad of issues that are destroying education. Part two will focus on different visions that propose radical possibilities that could lead to an education system that celebrates deep and meaningful critical thinking and creative problems solving toward schools supportive of a diverse, equitable, and focused education for the 21 st century. Using research, essays, poetry, creative non-fiction, photojournalism, art, and spoken word pieces, the first section of the book will focus on the major social, political, cultural, curricular, instructional and other educational issues that are plaguing schools in the United States. By calling for authors to submit proposals for work that represents different styles of writing and researching utilizing diverse modes of communication, the idea of this book is to celebrate a variety of approaches of expression in exposing the issues before us and aimed at reaching a broader audience of readers. Part theory, part commentary, part research, and part creative writing, Emancipating Education will use multiple modalities to not only mirror the complexities of our educational system, but also allow for diverse voices from various fields to address the issues and potentialities of our education system. Including narratives from academics, activists, practitioners, and people interested in our education system, Emancipating Education speaks across contexts to discuss the challenges and opportunities of

This special issue seeks manuscripts focused on addressing how 21st century challenges that emerg... more This special issue seeks manuscripts focused on addressing how 21st century challenges that emerge from the complex intersections of social justice and sustainability are addressed through public scholarship influencing and being enacted in teacher education. As critical educators have been arguing for decades, teacher educators as public intellectuals can, and arguably must, be activists-scholars (Collins 2012; Giroux 2004; Giroux et al. 1986). The editors of this special issue maintain that scholar-activist educators must acknowledge and reject all forms of domination and injustice against both humans and nonhumans, recognizing that these injustices are mutually reinforcing. Such a position necessitates the examination of how a cultural logic of domination (Warren, 2000) undergirds the unjust and destructive social and economic ideologies and policies that constitute schooling and thus teacher education. Consequently, we believe it is essential for teacher educators to consider how anthropocentric assumptions and actions work to limit education as a transformative practice in relationship to addressing social justice and sustainability. Western industrial notions of human-centered progress exist in K-12 curriculum and in Colleges of Education, and this special issue seeks diverse critical perspectives from those situated within teacher education programs. Specifically, the editors solicit manuscripts that reflect insights from teacher educators who are working to challenge and shift cultural logics that support domination and injustice, logics that are often pervasive in Western industrial schooling.

2017 AERA Annual Meeting - Environmental Education SIG Call for Proposals The AERA 2017 Annual M... more 2017 AERA Annual Meeting - Environmental Education SIG Call for Proposals

The AERA 2017 Annual Meeting will be held this year in San Antonio, Texas and the theme of this upcoming year’s conference is “Knowledge to Action: Achieving the Promise of Equal Educational Opportunity” (Gadsen, Arzubiaga & Davis, 2016). For the Environmental Education Special Interest Group (EE SIG) conference theme, we build upon the AERA general call and, in this critical moment, we are asking the EE research community to turn their attention towards the following questions: Who/what benefits and who/what suffers unjustly in connection with the knowledge(s) and action(s) shaping what is—and historically has constituted—Environmental Education? Specifically, we ask, “How can EE scholar-activists, as educational researchers, (re)consider and then put into action Environmental Education?”

Critical Education provides a space for inquiry into the philosophies and contexts of educational... more Critical Education provides a space for inquiry into the philosophies and contexts of educational priorities set by today's global elite and the role of STEM Education in the political and economic restructuring of education and educational research. The time is now for an ongoing, dedicated space that deconstructs and reconstructs the interdisciplinary, ubiquitous, powerful and perhaps dangerous STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). The series title reflects our concerns and suggests a space for dedicated inquiries taking up oppositions to—and substantive and timely reframings of—STEM. It is the desire of the editors of this series to cultivate a series of articles from a diverse array of educational research occurring both within and from outside the critical-foundations community. The special series continues a long tradition of such critique, at least those occurring in STEM related journals like For the Learning of Mathematics, Journal of Urban Mathematics Education and Cultural Studies of Science Education, and will be the first location dedicated specifically to critical explication of STEM on the whole. We invite manuscripts that contribute to understanding and defining STEM education in a variety of ways, from critical curricular and pedagogic explorations of STEM contents on their own and in total, to broader conception of STEM such as the infiltration of STEM culture throughout higher education and research programs. In considering STEM, we especially seek explorations (re)considering how STEM perpetuates systems of domination and hierarchy while potentially offering unexpected moments for reformations that foster alternatives. In other words, how is mainstream STEM a part of the problem? In (re)considering STEM, we hope contributions will provide the opportunities for scholarly projects that range from policy to grant research, curriculum to media, experiences in STEM education from diverse students, and from teacher innovation to student resistance. The issue aims to critique STEM but also present it as a space for critical examinations that move beyond the traditional perspectives reproducing the dominance of STEM. Such endeavors might include but are not limited to manuscript submissions that draw from a variety of frameworks appropriate to critical-foundations work, including critical theories like, ecojustice education, critical race theory and critical disability studies and with goals that counter neoliberal projects and embrace community, democracy, anarchism and anti-capitalism. In general, this series seeks to foster an ongoing scholarly conversation through manuscripts that broadly engage the question: How are critical scholars engaging and working within STEM educational spaces and/or habits of mind?

This special issue seeks scholarship that takes an alternative approach to the study of STEM in e... more This special issue seeks scholarship that takes an alternative approach to the study of STEM in education and education research. Critical approaches to STEM education have typically studied how it serves the 'control society' through its disciplinary discourse, its monopoly on funding, and its gate-keeping status. Despite the important insights from this work, showing how STEM education is situated in the socio-political, there is a need to dig deeper into the political power of specific STEM practices and their implications for education research. We seek work that pushes the critical perspective beyond previous limitations, and too simple binaries between science and culture. For this landmark issue, we seek manuscripts that deploy STEM in new and unscripted ways in the philosophy of education. This is a powerful political move for education research, a field all too often enthralled with positivist images of science. We invite manuscripts using new insights from science and technology studies, tapping the history and philosophy of science to contravene Humanist notions of intentionality and agency, and undermining conventional notions of achievement and progress and individuation. We are looking for manuscripts that show how STEM can be used to help us study the highly distributed nature of collective processes of learning, the political framing of education, the onto-epistemologies of material pedagogical relations, etc. Because this paradigm shift around the role of STEM in education research demands a new kind of empiricism, we encourage contributors who experiment with method and data. In other words, this special issue aims to put philosophy to work as a pragmatic intervention into the concrete STEM practices that saturate the field, and also as a creative platform for tapping and formulating subversive STEM practices that might open up a radically different imaginary. Building upon the growing number of critical sessions and papers on STEM at the 2014 and 2015 meetings of AESA, we hope to push the envelope of educational foundations to better engage in addressing the intersections between STEM and cultural studies. This call for manuscripts is informed by insights from the sociology of science and the now reinvigorated field of science and technology studies (STS), fields which have played a crucial role in our current understanding of STEM disciplines. Much of this work pursues a philosophical, historical, ethnographic, sociological and anthropological approach, showing how scientific truths emerge within and are managed by communities and institutions. Emerging from within this tradition are new paradigms for how to think about scientific practice (This paradigm shift draws on both past and contemporary science to rethink the nature of material agency at the human and more-than-human scale. Moreover, current combinations of science and philosophy have been producing cutting-edge theorizations about not only the nature of knowledge and reality, but also about the mechanisms of power involved in the production and dissemination of science writ large, including social science. These developments are already influencing researchers in education, triggering an unprecedented take-up of alternative STEM concepts as tools for analyzing the material and ideological entanglements of education, be it in mathematics education (de Freitas This marks a radical change within socio-political research on education, as researchers consider the potential of STEM ideas outside of conventional scientism. This work is thus highly relevant for the field of Educational Studies and the social foundations of education. This special issue aligns with the vision of Educational Studies, the official journal of the American Education Studies Association (AESA), in providing a cross-disciplinary and international forum for the exchange and debate of ideas generated from innovative approaches to studying STEM practices.

INVITED KEYNOTE COLLOQUIUM American Education Studies Association Friday, November 4, 2016, 8:00-... more INVITED KEYNOTE COLLOQUIUM
American Education Studies Association
Friday, November 4, 2016, 8:00-9:30pm
Grand Hyatt, Seattle, Washington

We are in the midst of a transformation of education. When a generation ago, a quarter of all college instructors were temporary and off the tenure track, now three quarters are. Our public schools are increasingly becoming privatized. What does this transformation of academic labor mean for the working conditions of K-12 and higher education faculty, student learning, academic freedom, and other important issues? The panelists will discuss these issues in today’s K-12 and higher education environment from their perspectives as social foundations scholars/activists.

An interview with John Lupinacci, Anthony Nocella, and Kim Socha discussing Anarchism and Animal ... more An interview with John Lupinacci, Anthony Nocella, and Kim Socha discussing Anarchism and Animal Liberation.

Institute for Critical Animal Studies interviews scholar-activists and publishes these interviews... more Institute for Critical Animal Studies interviews scholar-activists and publishes these interviews as part of a series.

Dr. John Lupinacci presenting at the 3rd Annual Eco-ability Conference.

In this talk, I will call attention to—and critically question—the epoch now referred to as the A... more In this talk, I will call attention to—and critically question—the epoch now referred to as the Anthropocene in relationship to Western industrial assumptions rooted in the understanding of human-beings as separate from and superior to all other life-forms and the environments upon which they depend. Drawing from an ecocritical framework in education, I emphasize that because anthropocentrism is cultural rather than inherently natural, it is amenable to social change. As a scholar-activist educator, I take the position that (un)learning anthropocentrism as radical change is imperative in light of environmental degradation, climate change, and the multitude of social and ecological problems that follow as a consequence. The stakes are high and the capacity of the planet for sustaining life depends upon future generations learning to live in harmony and at peace with the diverse ecosystems within which they reside. More than a critique of anthropocentrism, I work to challenge this worldview and seek ways of engaging educators and educational researchers in doing the same. Drawing from ecocritical projects in education—including critical animal studies, anarchism, and ecofeminism—while recognizing centuries of wisdom in indigenous epistemologies, this talk shares a pedagogical process aimed at helping educators to recognize an anthropocentric worldview, to examine how this worldview is implicated in maintaining human (and male, white, able-bodied) supremacy, and to rethink anthropocentrism in favor of ecological alternatives that are socially just and encompass all living systems.

On August 28th in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his defining “I Have a Dream” speech, sp... more On August 28th in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his defining “I Have a Dream” speech, speaking of his dream that America would rise up that live out the true meaning of its creed “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal”. What progress have we, as a nation, made in achieving this dream?

Panelists include:
- Carolina Silva, graduate student, Cultural Studies and Social Thought in Education
- Jeff Guillory, Director, Diversity Education
- Fadumo Ali, undergraduate student, Communications
- Johnny Lupinacci, Assistant Professor, Teaching & Learning

Doctoral Dissertation, Sep 19, 2013

Education can have a tremendous impact on how we, as humans, understand and relate to each other ... more Education can have a tremendous impact on how we, as humans, understand and relate to each other and the larger environmental systems to which we belong. In efforts to address the role of education in alleviating and eliminating social suffering and environmental degradation in many of the worlds’ diverse communities, the purpose of this critical ethnographic case study is to qualitatively examine the design of an intermediary organization within the context of eco-democratic reform.
The study involved observation, interviewing, and analysis that included personal narrative accounts from 12 key members in the organization and their thick descriptions of the design and function of the Southeast Michigan Stewardship Coalition (SEMIS). The study explores new territories for community-based collaborations and examines the complexity of such initiatives, while focusing on professional development and adult learning framed by an EcoJustice Education approach to place-based education. The study illustrates the identity of SEMIS as a learning organization with a strong commitment to designing and providing sustained professional development in the region. The deep design of SEMIS offers insight into the structure and the complexity of the networks of learning relationships in this intermediary organization. Major contributions from this case study include a) an organizational history of SEMIS; b) an articulation and analysis of the SEMIS sustained professional development; and c) a unique learning model for the development of an eco-ethical consciousness. The study presents the examination and analysis of a unique intermediary organization in the context of eco-democratic reform and illustrates both the design and the complex approach to the work in SEMIS.

Educational Studies, 2019

Proceedings of the 2020 AERA Annual Meeting

Reimagining Education: The International Science and Evidence based Education Assessment

Encyclopedia of Teacher Education, 2019

Encyclopedia entry in the Encyclopedia of Teacher Education

EcoJustice Education, 2020

This article introduces the main tenets of an ecocritical framework in social and cultural founda... more This article introduces the main tenets of an ecocritical framework in social and cultural foundations of edu- cation; specifically, it explores how scholar-activist, EcoJustice educators work to actively deconstruct and reconstitute basic, foundational cultural assumptions that currently frame education within the United States. The article asserts that social justice educators in K–12 schools and higher education must take into consideration the ways in which a cultural logic of domination (Warren, 1990) constitutes unjust and destructive social and economic ideologies and policies that constitute schooling. The authors introduce an ecocritical conceptual framework and present learning heuristics for engaging students in recognizing, respecting, and representing diversity as a condition of difference upon which our collective survival depends. The authors make the argument that an ecocritical perspective in social and cultural foundations is important in order to foster the potential for teachers to be agents of change in support of socially just and sustainable communities.

In our efforts to foster space for critical work in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and M... more In our efforts to foster space for critical work in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) Education, we put Barad’s notion of agential realism to work in describing the ontological space of STEM. We suggest three intersecting dimensions to this ontology: STEM as apolitical curricular trend, STEM as Eurocentric economic policy, and STEM as discursive episteme. With the goal of interrupting and proposing alternatives, we conclude by pointing to existing spaces where critical work in mathematics and science education already occurs.

Policy Futures in Education, 2018

This article seeks to address often overlooked cultural assumptions embedded within neoliberalism... more This article seeks to address often overlooked cultural assumptions embedded within neoliberalism; specifically, the researchers explore what ecofeminist Val Plumwood describes as centric thinking, leading to a logic of domination. The authors argue that social justice educators and activists who are committed to critiquing neoliberalism must take into consideration the ways in which a logic of domination undergirds the unjust and destructive social and economic ideologies and policies that constitute neoliberalism. The authors examine and share pedagogical moments from experiences in teacher education seeking to: (a) challenge and disrupt dualistic thinking; (b) interrupt perceptions of hegemonic normalcy—referring to a socio-cultural process by which actions, behaviors, and diverse ways of interpreting the world are perceived by dominant society as “fitting in” and being socially acceptable; and, (c) contest false notions of independence—the degree to which an individual is percei...

Educational Studies, 2017

Educational Studies, 2019

Impacting Education: Journal on Transforming Professional Practice, 2017

This article critiques the notion of individually-focused notions of leadership, instead offering... more This article critiques the notion of individually-focused notions of leadership, instead offering an ecocritical conceptual framework that works to support education at all levels with the aim of recognizing the importance of how leaders in Western industrial culture think, act, and thus organize communities. This framework is applied to examine the potential for EdD programs to critically (re)imagine the role K-12 and higher education institutions might play in reinterpreting how leadership might be (re)constituted—as local and in support of social justice and sustainability. From this lens, the article explores how 21st century challenges that emerge from the complex intersections of social justice and sustainability might be addressed through EdD program development, supportive program structures, and course content influencing teacher education and K-12 school leadership. Calling for a particular kind of leadership supportive of social justice and sustainability, this article sh...