Institute for Emancipatory Education

There is an urgent need to radically transform our educational systems.

Too many of our P20 students are marginalized and/or multiply-marginalized based on race, class, national origin, language, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, and neurodiversity. For decades, we have been tinkering around the edges, providing patchwork programs and band-aid solutions but our core educational systems continue to perpetuate inequity and injustice. An emancipatory approach will challenge our epistemic framework, prioritize learning in partnership with community, and radically reimagine systems to center historically marginalized perspectives.

The Institute for Emancipatory Education (IEE) at San José State University (SJSU) will facilitate community-engaged research and advance emancipatory pedagogies that support the redesign of learning from preschool through post-secondary. As a result, we will support the development of equitable and inclusive educational systems that nurture the creativity and brilliance of all learners so that our diverse, democratic society can truly thrive.

• Recent News
• Foundational Activities
• Guiding Principles and Signature Activities
• Download our 1-pager (PDF)

Recent News

Emancipatory Education from Theory to Praxis Webinar with Dr. Tara Yosso

Monday, October 25, 5-6:30pm PDT, Zoom, RSVP

The Institute for Emancipatory Education at the SJSU Lurie College of
Education is honored to present Dr. Tara J. Yosso as our Inaugural Distinguished Scholar in Residence. Dr. Yosso will kick off this new role by leading the webinar "Emancipatory Education from Theory to Praxis: Community Cultural Wealth, Counterstorytelling, and Critical Race Media Literacy."

This webinar is for SJSU students, faculty, and staff interested in moving
the concept of emancipatory education from theory to praxis. Tara J. Yosso will discuss three areas of her work: community cultural wealth, counterstorytelling, and critical race media literacy. Together, participants will identify points of praxis for our own work.

• Dr. Yosso's bio

  • Tara J. Yosso examines access to educational opportunities for Students of Color at critical transition points in their schooling trajectories (e.g. high school to community college, baccalaureate to doctorate). Her research seeks to recover counternarratives of race, schooling, inequality, and the law. Her extensively cited publications examine the ways People of Color utilize community cultural wealth to
    survive and resist racism and other forms of subordination.

    She is a first generation college student, a Professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California Riverside, and this year has been appointed as the Inaugural Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the Institute for Emancipatory Education at the Connie L. Lurie College of Education at San José State University.

RSVP to attend Dr. Tara Yosso's seminar

Intersectional Disability Studies Speaker Series

Monday, October 18, and Thursday, December 2, 4:30-5:30pm, Zoom, RSVP

The Intersectional Disability Studies Strand (IDSS), under the SJSU Lurie College of Education’s Institute for Emancipatory Education (IEE), serves as a community-engaged, culturally sustaining space that centers disability visibility and disability as an intersectional identity. Our strand provides specific resources and support to engage intersectional disability studies and accessibility in education.

Join us on Monday, October 18, from 4:30-5:30pm PDT on Zoom to learn from Lydia X.Z. Brown, advocate, organizer, attorney, strategist, and writer whose work focuses on interpersonal and state violence against disabled people. Also join us on Thursday, December 2, from 4:30-5:30pm PST on Zoom to learn from Alice Wong, disabled activist, writer, editor, media maker, consultant, and founder and director of the Disability Visibility Project.

Live captions will be available at both events and ASL interpreters will be available at Alice’s event. If you are in need of additional accommodations, email luriecollege@sjsu.edu.

RSVP for either speaker series event

SJSU x REP4 Learner Design Summit

“I really, really enjoyed this experience of meeting and connecting with great people. Everybody shared what problems they had faced, and that really opened up my mind to see what we can do and what we need to change.” - JC Jacinto, Learner Design Summit participant

In partnership with the Rapid Education Prototyping (REP4) Alliance, we launched a free Learner Design Summit, which is a leadership development opportunity designed to bring together rising 10th, 11th, and 12th grade students, recent high school graduates, community college students, and SJSU undergraduate students to collaborate and design creative proposals to address existing challenges in the higher education system.

Read the full story on the SJSU Newsroom blog

Summer 2021 K-12 Teaching Academy

Why is it critical to start with centering our students' humanity and drawing from our students' identities, particularly as we transition away from the 2020-2021 academic year? - Betina Hsieh, Associate Professor of Teacher Education at CSU Long Beach.

Building upon the success of our Summer 2020 and Winter 2021 K-12 Teaching Academy webinar series', our Summer 2021 series focuses on returning to a “new normal” in classrooms in Fall 2021 with topics such as (re)building classroom community, anti-racist teaching, student voice and choice, and more.

Broadband Access Study

The fact that this region has had issues with Internet access has less to do with the Internet itself, but rather the populations affected. - Eduardo Muñoz-Munoz, Assistant Professor of Teacher Education at SJSU

Our SJSU Lurie College faculty Luis Poza, Eduardo Muñoz-Muñoz, and Tammie Visintainer, along with SJSU faculty Ahoura Zandiatashbar, collaborated with California Assemblymember Robert Rivas and the Watsonville High School ECHO Leadership Academy to better understand the impact of known gaps in broadband internet access across California's 30th Congressional District.

Read the full story on the SJSU Newsroom blog

Foundational Activities

Emancipatory Education Speaker Series

Many are looking forward to a time when we can go back to “normal” in education; however, that "normal" wasn't working for too many of our children, youth, families and communities. Watch the recordings of series of conversations with nationally recognized speakers such as Sec. John King, Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings, and many more who shared their visions for a more equitable and emancipatory education system.

Read the full story on the SJSU Newsroom blog

K-12 Teaching Academy

We established our free K-12 Teaching Academy in Summer 2020 to support current teachers, teacher candidates, and community partners in transitioning to online teaching as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, our webinar recordings have been viewed over 25,000 times and our series has been highlighted on ABC7 News, EdSource, and the COVID-19 CA website.

Read additional coverage on the SJSU Newsroom blog

Emancipatory Education Now

Emancipatory Education Now is a student-led initiative that was established in Fall 2020 to examine what emancipatory education – the critical evaluation of the systems and structures of oppression that maintain the status quo in our educational institutions – looks like in today’s society and advocates for the expansion of emancipatory education research, policies, and practices.

Faces of Learning Project

This arts-based research initiative elicited student voices to provide insights into learning experiences at SJSU. A group of SJSU undergraduate student researchers met with students in the Fall 2019 and Spring 2020 semesters to get a deeper understanding of their learning experiences and then synthesize and share those experiences with the larger university community.

Future of Learning Summit

At our Fall 2019 Summit, attendees and speakers engaged in dialogues about how we learn today and consider how teaching and learning can and should evolve in the years ahead. Read the coverage by the SJSU Newsroom and listen to the 10 featured speakers' talks.

Read the full story on the SJSU Newsroom blog

Guiding Principles

• Center Historically Marginalized Learners

  • We will intentionally focus on research and innovation designed to center learners who have historically been disenfranchised in educational spaces, learners who are Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC), disabled people, LGBTQ+ people, emergent bilingual students, from immigrant and refugee communities, and from communities multiply-marginalized by persistent poverty.

    Design theory posits that by focusing on the “extreme user” when seeking to redesign products, systems, and structures, it is possible to develop radically new approaches that bring significant benefit to all users. By centering marginalized learners in our work, our efforts at radical educational transformation will support the re-design of educational systems, structures, and spaces in order to better serve all learners.

• Partner with Community

  • We will intentionally and consistently partner with learners, their families, and community leaders to ask hard questions, assess existing educational systems, structures, policies, and practices and - where appropriate - imagine new possibilities.

    This approach differs dramatically from the traditional exploitative model of research in which the locus of control rests with the researchers who come into communities, take community knowledge, and offer little in return. Our research and innovation activities will prioritize listening to and working alongside students and communities as co-researchers and co-designers, recognizing and valuing their expertise as essential to the work.

• Bridge Boundaries Preschool Through Post-Secondary

  • We will bridge boundaries across institutions from preschool to K-12 schools and school districts to community colleges and universities.

    The silos that currently exist in research, policy, and practice across these sectors prevent us from learning from one another and have a disproportionately negative impact on our most marginalized students and communities. We will serve as a hub for our regional educational ecosystem, convening educators, policymakers, community leaders, and perhaps most importantly, students and families from across the P20 spectrum to explore common concerns, questions, successes, and solutions. Additionally, our researchers and leaders will work with partners across the ecosystem to examine the current P20 structure, ask whether the existing divisions between early childhood, K12, and post-secondary are appropriate, and explore alternative approaches that are more responsive to student demands and degree requirements for career pathways. 

Signature Activities

• Community-Engaged Research

  • Our researchers and students will work alongside preschool and K12 educators, college and university faculty, P20 students, parents, and community members to engage in research that seeks to understand the radical transformation needed in our approach to learning.

    Together, we will expose existing inequities and explore questions of what it means to tear down racist, sexist, misogynistic, xenophobic, and homophobic structures and rebuild systems that center our BIPOC learners and communities who have historically been marginalized. Community engaged research approaches employed by us will include community-based participatory research (CBPR) and youth participatory action research (YPAR).

• Emancipatory Pedagogies

  • We will advance emancipatory pedagogies through educator preparation, professional learning, research, and advocacy.

    The institute will work in collaboration with community to develop inclusive, anti-bias, anti-racist pedagogies that center the learning of BIPOC and other historically marginalized students, promote a critical examination of existing power structures and norms, develop critical conscientization and self-actualization in learners, and advocate for systemic and structural change. Institute-affiliated faculty and students will assess the impact of this work, engage with community to iterate the approaches, and share the results broadly with practitioners, researchers, policymakers, and BIPOC communities nationally and internationally. Examples of emancipatory pedagogies to be supported by the institute include Ethnic Studies, culturally sustaining STEM pedagogies, and the Institute for Teachers of Color (ITOC).

• Dissemination of Knowledge

  • We will be a nationally-recognized center of excellence for researching, cultivating, and advocating for emancipatory education.

    We will disseminate the learning that is derived through its own institute-led community engaged research and emancipatory pedagogy initiatives and will also curate external research and resources that resonate with the equity-driven priorities of the institute. Approaches that may be used to support dissemination include a Journal of Emancipatory Education, convenings, and visiting scholars and expert consultations.

IEE Advisory Board

• Magdalena Barrera, PhD - Professor, SJSU Chicano and Chicana Studies and Interim Vice Provost for Faculty Success

• Demerris Brooks, EdD - Director of Workforce Development and Organizational Culture, Santa Clara County Office of Education

• Rebeca Burciaga, PhD - Professor, SJSU Chicano and Chicana Studies and Educational Leadership

• Eva Condron-Wells - Sr. Manager of Learning and Growing, Xilinx

• Patrick Day - Vice President, SJSU Student Affairs

• Victor Duarte-Vasquez - Director of Community Organizing and Policy, SOMOS Mayfair

• Mark Felton, PhD - Professor, SJSU Teacher Education and Faculty Associate Dean for Research, SJSU Lurie College of Education

• Chris Funk - Superintendent, Dublin Unified School District

• Jennifer Husbands, PhD - Senior Program Officer, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

• Walt Jacobs, PhD - Dean, SJSU College of Social Sciences

• Kristin Jordan - Ford Corporation

• Ash Kalra, JD - Assembly Member, 27th District, California State Assembly

• Michael Kaufman, PhD - Dean, SJSU College of Science

• Saili Kulkarni, PhD - Associate Professor, SJSU Special Education

• Nidhi Mahendra, PhD - Professor and Chair, SJSU Communicative Disorders and Sciences

• Robert Marx, PhD - Assistant Professor, SJSU Child and Adolescent Development

• Kent McGuire, PhD - Program Director, Education, Hewlett Foundation

• Jorge Pacheco - Trustee, Oak Grove School District

• Cassandra Paul, PhD - Associate Professor, SJSU Physics and Astronomy

• Marcos Pizarro, PhD - Professor, Chicano and Chicana Studies and Associate Dean, SJSU Lurie College of Education

• Luis Poza, PhD - Assistant Professor, SJSU Teacher Education

• Arun Ramanathan, PhD - CEO, Pivot Learning

• Andres Rodriguez - Vice-President for Young Adults, League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)

• Rowena Tomaneng, EdD - President, San José City College

• Tammie Visintainer, PhD - Assistant Professor, SJSU Science Education and Teacher Education

• Jahmal Williams - Directory of Advocacy for Racial Justice, SJSU Community and Government Relations

• Kathleen Wong (Lau), PhD - Chief Diversity Officer, SJSU Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion