Academic literature on the topic 'Socially just schooling reform'

To fulfill the democratic dream for American schooling, educators and policymakers need to work together for the same common cause: reforming the academic-vocational dichotomy of schooling that has persisted over the past century. Academic subjects continue to be separated from vocational schooling with the effect of diluting each domain's effectiveness. The Deweyian vision of social justice provides a solution for healing this fundamental dualism that characterizes schooling. Even where integration has been attempted using academic-vocational models, tracking continues in public schools without commitment to whole-school reform design. This article discusses these issues in the context of the history of vocational education and Dewey's perspective of integrated education through the occupations. The authors also illustrate the concepts presented through promising whole-school reform designs for democratizing the public education system. Policy implications are addressed for moving toward a socially just system of schooling.

The socio-economic changes and neoliberal trends of the twenty-first century have been creating many profound impacts in the education industry, provoking the emerging need for an integrated environment where all individuals and organizations from different classes, backgrounds or communities are expectedly empowered with equal opportunities in order to develop to the fullest. Toward the ideals and goals of social justice in education, the function of leadership practitioners has been strongly challenged and critically redefined for a couple of decades. By theoretically investigating how the global research community has addressed this issue from various angles of view, this article hopes to remind current leaders of educational institutions to grow more sensitive to possible unjust occurrences and build up an inclusive schooling culture by putting learner-related values into the center of their work, addressing existing stereotypes in education, boosting active interactions with socially disadvantaged groups, adopting the perspectives of various stakeholders, as well as delivering other timely administrative reforms during their leadership practices.

The socio-economic changes and neoliberal trends of the twenty-first century have been creating many profound impacts in the education industry, provoking the emerging need for an integrated environment where all individuals and organizations from different classes, backgrounds or communities are expectedly empowered with equal opportunities in order to develop to the fullest. Toward the ideals and goals of social justice in education, the function of leadership practitioners has been strongly challenged and critically redefined for a couple of decades. By theoretically investigating how the global research community has addressed this issue from various angles of view, this article hopes to remind current leaders of educational institutions to grow more sensitive to possible unjust occurrences and build up an inclusive schooling culture by putting learner-related values into the center of their work, addressing existing stereotypes in education, boosting active interactions with socially disadvantaged groups, adopting the perspectives of various stakeholders, as well as delivering other timely administrative reforms during their leadership practices.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect upon our work as two insider teacher researchers using action research methodology with teacher colleagues, marginalised young people and community stakeholders to develop a sustainable and socially just senior secondary ‘second chance’ school for young people who had left schooling without credentials. Twelve years after our beginning developmental work, the Second Chance Community College (SCCC) continues with over 100 students enrolled in 2015. It has catered for over 1000 students since its development. Through pursuing critical forms of action research, enriched through active participation within a university led professional learning community, we became ‘radical pragmatic’ educators. This called us into collaborative, tactical and critical teacher work to navigate through constraining neoliberal logic with students and colleagues, reassembling our professional selves and radically changing the SCCC design from the design logics of conventional secondary schools. The research demonstrated that teachers can build a socially just school for marginalised young people and as a consequence make a significant difference to the lives of young people no longer involved in schooling.

This paper troubles notions of ‘social justice’ as being compromised and fractured by the autonomous school agenda. Drawing on interviews with 13 autonomous school principals in Australia, it demonstrates how the devolution of schooling simultaneously rips the seams of the ‘social’ fabric that makes collective justice possible. The stories of these principals signal a fracturing of the social cohesion that is necessary for creating a just and equal society. We aim to distinguish between individual efforts to create socially just conditions at the local level versus collective projects to create socially just conditions at the system level. We argue that, on the one hand, school autonomy affords individual principals opportunities to exercise what might be considered socially just discretion; on the other hand, this sometimes occurs at the expense of fracturing the cohesion of the greater public education system. In doing so, we challenge the extent to which social justice can be realised within a decentralised schooling system.

'Justice is the first virtue of all social institutions.' 2 This article discusses the astonishing ignorance at all levels as to how Britain has become a multiracial, multicultural society in a post-imperial age, the hostility towards changes in the education system which would help clearer understandings of the imperial past, and the efforts of teachers and other educators to assist in the creation of a socially and racially just society.

In the face of school crowding and fears about inequality-inducing summer learning loss, many schools have started to adopt multi-track year-round school calendars, which keep the same number of school days, but spread them more evenly across the calendar year. This change allows schools to support a larger student population by rotating which students are on break at any point in time. While year-round schooling can save money, the impact on academic achievement is uncertain and only recently have large-scale studies become available for policy makers. This brief examines research on the effects of multi-track year-round schooling, focusing on two rigorously executed case studies. This research gives little support for claims that year-round schooling will boost student achievement. Except as a remedy for highly over-crowded schools, year-round schooling seems to have little impact on achievement, and has even been shown to decrease achievement, especially among the most high-risk student populations.

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted schooling worldwide, compelling educators, researchers, and policymakers to grapple with the implications of these interruptions. However, while the scale of these disruptions may be unprecedented, for many students, interrupted schooling is not a new phenomenon. In this article, I draw insights from the field of Students with Interrupted Formal Education (SIFE) for supporting students who experience schooling interruption. In addition, I argue that the extensive accommodations offered to students in the midst of the pandemic must be preserved for future generations of SIFE students—a population for whom similar accommodations have been historically denied. Through this analysis, I demonstrate the need to interrogate traditional notions of interrupted schooling and the students who experience it. This article offers implications for rethinking interrupted schooling, as well as formal education writ large, toward more equitable and socially just ends.

This paper uses a natural experiment from Egypt to examine the effect of extending compulsory schooling on long-term educational and labor market outcomes. Beginning in school year 2004–05, the Egyptian government extended primary education from five to six years, moving from an eight-year compulsory schooling system to a nine-year system. Using a regression discontinuity design, I examine whether the compulsory schooling expansion affects years of schooling, literacy and cognitive skills, post-primary attendance, and labor market outcomes of individuals born just around the 1992 school entry cutoff. The results suggest that an extra year of compulsory education increases total years of schooling by 0.6 to 0.8 years. This effect, however, is concentrated among male individuals. In particular, I find that the school reform increases the schooling gap between male and female students by somewhere between 0.30 and 0.48 years. I also find no effect of expanding compulsory education on individuals’ literacy skills, schooling beyond the primary education level, or labor market outcomes. There is some evidence, however, that the school reform has improved reading and self-reported writing skills among male individuals.

Secondary schooling continues to marginalise a significant minority of young people attending school in South Australia. As a consequence, I was a teacher morally obliged to redress the institutional codes, social relations and pedagogical practices of three secondary schools for those young people who were marginalised by them. Unfortunately, my lack of critical sociological awareness at the time associated with the insidious influence of what Foucault described as `neoliberal governmentalities’ drove my emancipatory school re-engagement efforts towards a neoliberal schooling curriculum that valued the development of entrepreneurial values and schooling for the labour market. The losers in all of this were many of the students I worked with who soon discovered the harsh realities of a labour market that didn’t value nor want them. In this auto ethnographic action research study I developed, managed and taught in three engagement programs with teacher and community youth stakeholders across three mainstream secondary school sites involving over 200 marginalised young people. All three programs succeeded in improving school retention and are still active today but only one program empowered students to be active participants in their community, offering them transition pathways into university, TAFE, apprenticeships and work. In Lesson 1, I came to understand that teachers, parents and community youth stakeholders are the agents best placed to effect educational change for students with a disability in a large country secondary school. Through collaborative school and community based activism I was able to mobilise the voices of parent, teacher and community youth stakeholders to improve resourcing, curriculum options and work related opportunities for students. This action resulted in significant structural inclusion and vocational pedagogical change for the students with disabilities. In Lesson 2 providing an after-hours regional second chance schooling option drew over forty young people back into formalised learning. However, offering a vocational curriculum embedded in casual or part-time work expectations proved to be an inadequate option for those students unable to gain employment. There was significant structural and cultural change evident in this schooling program but little pedagogical and curricular rigour. In Lesson 3 I oriented senior secondary schooling within an adult education environment geographically removed from the mainstream school campus. This second chance senior schooling program involved young people, teachers and community stakeholders in a continual negotiation of school structures, culture, pedagogy and curriculum. This approach (re)engaged over 150 young people back into the SACE (South Australian Certificate of Education) over three years. By investigating the nature of the community-school nexus and using community as a curriculum resource, students were offered greater learning authenticity and opportunity, presenting some answers to the question; how can I (a teacher), (re)engage marginalised young people back into learning in the official senior school curriculum? The difficulty with the first two engagement initiatives was neoliberal public policy as it manifested in South Australia’s version of local school management and in my practice. For me, a way through the neoliberal quagmire came only through participation in an Australian Education Union (AEU) funded and university led Professional Learning Community (PLC). This dialogic community offered me thinking space, intellectual challenge and rich conversation with teacher colleagues and university partners to wrestle with and enact critical educational social theory and practice. Through my involvement in this PLC and my subsequent enactment of engaging and rigorous pedagogical practices I was able to work `against the grain’ of the existing neoliberal policy logic as it played out in schools and in my mind. This required a move to socially just critical praxis in my work with teacher colleagues, students, parents and community youth stakeholders to embed structural, cultural, curricula and pedagogical democratic schooling purpose within the final engagement initiative.
Thesis (D.Ed.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Education, 2011

This book looks at Italian American campaigns to reform American immigration laws from 1945 to 1965. It argues that even while Italian Americans were members of a coalition that pushed for liberal immigration reforms, their campaigns reflected a mix of liberalism and conservatism. Italian American immigration reformers invoked both secular principles of democratic liberalism and arguments based on Catholic social thought to call for a more humane and equal system of regulating immigration than the one in place based on a system of National Origins quotas. Yet in practice, Italian American campaign rhetoric and legislative strategies often reflected a socially and racially conservative vision of Americanism. Through displays of anti-communism, household mass consumption, assimilation, and advancing narratives of immigrant contributions to the nation, Italian Americans largely asserted their group’s fitness for immigration and citizenship rights in the United States. Each of those displays was highly racialized and hardly contested accepted political and social boundaries, but rather reaffirmed them. Those actions demonstrated that Italian Americans were just as concerned with their group’s political and social equality with older-stock whites as they were with liberalizing American immigration laws.

RACIAL DOMINATION WAS, FROM THE OUTSET, the most glaring flaw in the ideology of the American dream. It began when the dream began, with Captain John Smith’s move to the “New World” in 1607. In his comments are all the elements of the American dream: equal opportunity for all, a chance of success for each, control over our nation’s political and economic future, and virtue, since America was “as God made it when hee created the world.” But enslaved Africans, who arrived in Virginia soon after Smith did, were not “borne to a new life”—or at least not one that allowed participation in the American dream. They were brought into, not out of, “every extremity.” And that terrible irony, the simultaneous invention of American slavery and American freedom, has shaped American society ever since. It has shaped its public schools as well. Desegregation has been our nation’s most direct effort since Reconstruction to come to grips with the evils of racial domination in public schooling. Beginning in the mid-1960s, it was the first as well as one of the largest postwar efforts to make America’s schooling practices fit its ideals. Many of the issues that we discuss in later chapters, such as funding equalization, school reform, the separation of children, and distinctive group treatment, are in part extensions of the successes of school desegregation or reactions to its perceived failures. Controversy over desegregation showed the difficulty in trying to satisfy both the individual and collective goals of the American dream; the experience demonstrated both the power of the ideology and the intractability of its internal conflicts. It continues to reverberate throughout American schooling and society. School desegregation was, on balance, an educational success. Its accomplishments were smaller than its advocates promised and less than they hoped for, but except when done irresponsibly or very unwisely, it improved the chances for black children to attain their dreams and did not diminish the chances for white children. Members of both races usually gained socially from the interaction. If it were politically feasible, a continued effort along these lines would be educationally beneficial. Ending legal segregation in schools and other public facilities, fostering real, not just legal, desegregation, did more to move the American dream from ideology to practice than has any other public policy or private effort.

Chapter 8, the concluding chapter, suggests what needs to be done to build and strengthen transformative teaching and learning in further and adult education. It offers important re-imaginings of some of the major structural change that is necessary for the potential of post-schooling transformative education to be fully realised. It proposes the changes to funding, leadership and the influence of local as opposed to central government that are necessary to create the conditions in which transformative teaching and learning can flourish and contribute fully to bringing about a more socially just society.

The article analyzes the main aspects of economic efficiency of annuity assurance policy in Russia. The general trends in the development of pension systems in the countries of the West, the difference between Russia and the West in this aspect are revealed. The author offers to make the pension system of Russia more socially just and close to the ideas of the Constitution of the Russian Federation. The linkage of pension payments to the interest rate is seen as an ineffective and dangerous approach in modern Russian conditions to the organization of pension provision for the population, for which there is a negative Western experience. The purpose of this article is to designate the most suitable way for Russia to develop the pension reform within the framework of the review of the study of problems of increasing the efficiency of the pension system in Russia.

This chapter considers the prospects for improved social governance to tackle the global challenges of the 21st century, as humanity moves towards more sustainable patterns of consumption and production, and hopefully a more socially responsible, equitable, inclusive and just world. It particularly examines the emerging social policies being articulated by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in an effort to reform global capitalism. This international organization is made up of rich nation states and is in the process of repositioning itself as the international institution responsible for promoting ‘global social justice’, a highly challenging endeavour. The chapter finds that the OECD is now shaping important aspects of international governance and global social policy, attempting to establish a new global social governance architecture in an effort to tackle growing social inequality. The chapter looks at how the ‘growth paradigm’ is being maintained, while the opportunities for greater redistribution of resources within and among countries gets crowded out by the dominant discourse sustaining global capitalism.

I meant it when I said that I loved universities. But attitudes to universities are mixed. Other stages of education do better in winning hearts and minds, and politicians react accordingly. The target of three million apprenticeships was celebrated as a popular policy whereas there was little celebration of the reality of two million students in British universities. Telegenic rows of students serve as a backdrop for politicians’ speeches on any subject—apart from higher education itself. Legislation on schools was seen as popular use of parliamentary time but there was reluctance to devote any parliamentary time to sorting out an incoherent legal framework for universities which lagged way behind our reforms. Above all the early years of childhood were seen as far more important than later stages of education in shaping life chances and improving social mobility. I do not begrudge these other stages of education their political appeal— honest! Anyway politicians and their advisers are just reflecting a wider conventional wisdom. Universities themselves helped shape this view of educational priorities. I would go to university meetings where protesters outside demanded more public funding so higher education could be ‘free’ whilst inside earnest public policy students and academics told me that actually public funding should be shifted to the early years or that primary school literacy and numeracy programmes were the real educational priority. These attitudes are influenced by the tendency of educators at whatever level to blame the previous stage of education for their problems. Universities say they would love to recruit someone from a disadvantaged background but prospective students have been let down by their schooling so their A level grades just aren’t good enough and the university cannot gamble on their being able to catch up at such a late stage. Colleges say it is hard for them to focus on helping students get good A levels when they are also expected to provide remedial education for 16–18-year-olds who have failed at secondary school. Secondary schools say it is hard for them to deliver good GCSE results when too many kids arrive from primary school without the basics of reading and writing.

In the 1990s, Turkmenistan’s government dismantled Soviet educational provision, replacing it with lower quality schooling. The Başkent Foundation schools represent the concerted ef- forts of teachers and sponsors to offer socially conscious education grounded in science and math with an international focus. This case study of the Başkent Foundation schools in Turkmenistan establishes the vitality of Gülen schools outside of the Turkish Republic and their key role in offering Central Asian families an important choice in secular, general education. The paper discusses the appeal of the schools’ curriculum to parents and students, and records a decade-long success both in educating students and in laying the foundations of civil society: in Turkmenistan the Gülen movement offers the only general education outside of state provision and control. This is particularly significant as most scholars deny that there is any semblance of civil society in Turkmenistan. Notes: The author has been conducting interviews and recording the influence of Başkent schools in Turkmenistan since working as Instructor at the International Turkmen-Turk University in 1997. In May 2007 she visited the schools in the capital Ashgabat, and the northern province of Daşoguz, to explore further the contribution Gülen schools are making. The recent death of Turkmenistan’s president will most likely result in major reforms in education. Documentation of how a shift at the centre of state power affects provincial Gülen schools will enrich this conference’s broader discussion of the movement’s social impact. The history of Gülen-inspired schools in Central Asia reveals as much about the Gülen movement as it does about transition in the Muslim world. While acknowledging that transition in the 21st century includes new political and global considerations, it must be viewed in a historical context that illustrates how change, renewal and questioning are longstanding in- herent to Islamic tradition. In the former Soviet Union, the Gülen movement contributed to the Muslim people’s transi- tion out of the communist experience. Since USSR fell in 1991, participants in Fethullah Gülen’s spiritual movement have contributed to its mission by successfully building schools, offering English language courses for adults, and consciously supporting nascent civil so- ciety throughout Eurasia. Not only in Turkic speaking regions, but also as far as Mongolia and Southeast Asia, the so-called “Turkish schools” have succeeded in creating sustainable systems of private schools that offer quality education to ethnically and religiously diverse populations. The model is applicable on the whole; Gülen’s movement has played a vital role in offering Eurasia’s youth an alternative to state-sponsored schooling. Recognition of the broad accomplishments of Gülen schools in Eurasia raises questions about how these schools function on a daily basis and how they have remained successful. What kind of world are they preparing students for? How do the schools differ from traditional Muslim schools (maktabs or madrasas)? Do they offer an alternative to Arab methods of learning? Success in Turkmenistan is especially notable due to the dramatic politicization of education under nationalistic socio-cultural programmes in that Central Asian country. Since the establishment of the first boarding school, named after Turkish Prime Minister Turgut Ozal, in 1991 the Gülen schools have prospered despite Turkmenistan’s extreme political conditions and severely weakened social systems. How did this network of foreign schools, connected to a faith-based movement, manage to flourish under Turkmenistan’s capricious dictator- ship? In essence, Gülen-inspired schools have been consistently successful in Turkmenistan because a secular curriculum partnered with a strong moral framework appeals to parents and students without threatening the state. This hypothesis encourages further consideration of the cemaat’s ethos and Gülen’s philosophies such as the imperative of activism (aksiyon), the compatibility of Islam and modernity, and the high value Islamic traditions assign to education. Focusing on this particular set of “Turkish schools” in Turkmenistan provides details and data from which we can consider broader complexities of the movement as a whole. In particular, the study illustrates that current transitions in the Muslim world have long, complex histories that extend beyond today’s immediate questions about Islam, modernity, or extremism.

Aim/Purpose: This paper provides the results of the preliminary analysis of the findings of an ongoing study that seeks to examine the social media use, cultural and political awareness, civic engagement, issue prioritization, and social activism of Gen Z students enrolled at four different institutional types located in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. The aim of this study is to look at the group as a whole as well as compare findings across populations. The institutional types under consideration include a mid-sized majority serving or otherwise referred to as a traditionally white institution (TWI) located in a small coastal city on the Atlantic Ocean, a small Historically Black University (HBCU) located in a rural area, a large community college located in a county that is a mixture of rural and suburban and which sits on the border of Maryland and Pennsylvania, and graduating high school students enrolled in career and technical education (CTE) programs in a large urban area. This exploration is purposed to examine the behaviors and expectations of Gen Z students within a representative American region during a time of tremendous turmoil and civil unrest in the United States. Background: Over 74 million strong, Gen Z makes up almost one-quarter of the U.S. population. They already outnumber any current living generation and are the first true digital natives. Born after 1996 and through 2012, they are known for their short attention spans and heightened ability to multi-task. Raised in the age of the smart phone, they have been tethered to digital devices from a young age with most having the preponderance of their childhood milestones commemorated online. Often called Zoomers, they are more racially and ethnically diverse than any previous generation and are on track to be the most well-educated generation in history. Gen Zers in the United States have been found in the research to be progressive and pro-government and viewing increasing racial and ethnic diversity as positive change. Finally, they are less likely to hold xenophobic beliefs such as the notion of American exceptionalism and superiority that have been popular with by prior generations. The United States has been in a period of social and civil unrest in recent years with concerns over systematic racism, rampant inequalities, political polarization, xenophobia, police violence, sexual assault and harassment, and the growing epidemic of gun violence. Anxieties stirred by the COVID-19 pandemic further compounded these issues resulting in a powder keg explosion occurring throughout the summer of 2020 and leading well into 2021. As a result, the United States has deteriorated significantly in the Civil Unrest Index falling from 91st to 34th. The vitriol, polarization, protests, murders, and shootings have all occurred during Gen Z’s formative years, and the limited research available indicates that it has shaped their values and political views. Methodology: The Mid-Atlantic region is a portion of the United States that exists as the overlap between the northeastern and southeastern portions of the country. It includes the nation’s capital, as well as large urban centers, small cities, suburbs, and rural enclaves. It is one of the most socially, economically, racially, and culturally diverse parts of the United States and is often referred to as the “typically American region.” An electronic survey was administered to students from 2019 through 2021 attending a high school dual enrollment program, a minority serving institution, a majority serving institution, and a community college all located within the larger mid-Atlantic region. The survey included a combination of multiple response, Likert scaled, dichotomous, open ended, and ordinal questions. It was developed in the Survey Monkey system and reviewed by several content and methodological experts in order to examine bias, vagueness, or potential semantic problems. Finally, the survey was pilot tested prior to implementation in order to explore the efficacy of the research methodology. It was then modified accordingly prior to widespread distribution to potential participants. The surveys were administered to students enrolled in classes taught by the authors all of whom are educators. Participation was voluntary, optional, and anonymous. Over 800 individuals completed the survey with just over 700 usable results, after partial completes and the responses of individuals outside of the 18-24 age range were removed. Findings: Participants in this study overwhelmingly were users of social media. In descending order, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, WhatsApp, LinkedIn and Tik Tok were the most popular social media services reported as being used. When volume of use was considered, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube and Twitter were the most cited with most participants reporting using Instagram and Snapchat multiple times a day. When asked to select which social media service they would use if forced to choose just one, the number one choice was YouTube followed by Instagram and Snapchat. Additionally, more than half of participants responded that they have uploaded a video to a video sharing site such as YouTube or Tik Tok. When asked about their familiarity with different technologies, participants overwhelmingly responded that they are “very familiar” with smart phones, searching the Web, social media, and email. About half the respondents said that they were “very familiar” with common computer applications such as the Microsoft Office Suite or Google Suite with another third saying that they were “somewhat familiar.” When asked about Learning Management Systems (LMS) like Blackboard, Course Compass, Canvas, Edmodo, Moodle, Course Sites, Google Classroom, Mindtap, Schoology, Absorb, D2L, itslearning, Otus, PowerSchool, or WizIQ, only 43% said they were “very familiar” with 31% responding that they were “somewhat familiar.” Finally, about half the students were either “very” or “somewhat” familiar with operating systems such as Windows. A few preferences with respect to technology in the teaching and learning process were explored in the survey. Most students (85%) responded that they want course announcements and reminders sent to their phones, 76% expect their courses to incorporate the use of technology, 71% want their courses to have course websites, and 71% said that they would rather watch a video than read a book chapter. When asked to consider the future, over 81% or respondents reported that technology will play a major role in their future career. Most participants considered themselves “informed” or “well informed” about current events although few considered themselves “very informed” or “well informed” about politics. When asked how they get their news, the most common forum reported for getting news and information about current events and politics was social media with 81% of respondents reporting. Gen Z is known to be an engaged generation and the participants in this study were not an exception. As such, it came as no surprise to discover that, in the past year more than 78% of respondents had educated friends or family about an important social or political issue, about half (48%) had donated to a cause of importance to them, more than a quarter (26%) had participated in a march or rally, and a quarter (26%) had actively boycotted a product or company. Further, about 37% consider themselves to be a social activist with another 41% responding that aren’t sure if they would consider themselves an activist and only 22% saying that they would not consider themselves an activist. When asked what issues were important to them, the most frequently cited were Black Lives Matter (75%), human trafficking (68%), sexual assault/harassment/Me Too (66.49%), gun violence (65.82%), women’s rights (65.15%), climate change (55.4%), immigration reform/deferred action for childhood arrivals (DACA) (48.8%), and LGBTQ+ rights (47.39%). When the schools were compared, there were only minor differences in social media use with the high school students indicating slightly more use of Tik Tok than the other participants. All groups were virtually equal when it came to how informed they perceived themselves about current events and politics. Consensus among groups existed with respect to how they get their news, and the community college and high school students were slightly more likely to have participated in a march, protest, or rally in the last 12 months than the university students. The community college and high school students were also slightly more likely to consider themselves social activists than the participants from either of the universities. When the importance of the issues was considered, significant differences based on institutional type were noted. Black Lives Matter (BLM) was identified as important by the largest portion of students attending the HBCU followed by the community college students and high school students. Less than half of the students attending the TWI considered BLM an important issue. Human trafficking was cited as important by a higher percentage of students attending the HBCU and urban high school than at the suburban and rural community college or the TWI. Sexual assault was considered important by the majority of students at all the schools with the percentage a bit smaller from the majority serving institution. About two thirds of the students at the high school, community college, and HBCU considered gun violence important versus about half the students at the majority serving institution. Women’s rights were reported as being important by more of the high school and HBCU participants than the community college or TWI. Climate change was considered important by about half the students at all schools with a slightly smaller portion reporting out the HBCU. Immigration reform/DACA was reported as important by half the high school, community college, and HBCU participants with only a third of the students from the majority serving institution citing it as an important issue. With respect to LGBTQ rights approximately half of the high school and community college participants cited it as important, 44.53% of the HBCU students, and only about a quarter of the students attending the majority serving institution. Contribution and Conclusion: This paper provides a timely investigation into the mindset of generation Z students living in the United States during a period of heightened civic unrest. This insight is useful to educators who should be informed about the generation of students that is currently populating higher education. The findings of this study are consistent with public opinion polls by Pew Research Center. According to the findings, the Gen Z students participating in this study are heavy users of multiple social media, expect technology to be integrated into teaching and learning, anticipate a future career where technology will play an important role, informed about current and political events, use social media as their main source for getting news and information, and fairly engaged in social activism. When institutional type was compared the students from the university with the more affluent and less diverse population were less likely to find social justice issues important than the other groups. Recommendations for Practitioners: During disruptive and contentious times, it is negligent to think that the abounding issues plaguing society are not important to our students. Gauging the issues of importance and levels of civic engagement provides us crucial information towards understanding the attitudes of students. Further, knowing how our students gain information, their social media usage, as well as how informed they are about current events and political issues can be used to more effectively communicate and educate. Recommendations for Researchers: As social media continues to proliferate daily life and become a vital means of news and information gathering, additional studies such as the one presented here are needed. Additionally, in other countries facing similarly turbulent times, measuring student interest, awareness, and engagement is highly informative. Impact on Society: During a highly contentious period replete with a large volume of civil unrest and compounded by a global pandemic, understanding the behaviors and attitudes of students can help us as higher education faculty be more attuned when it comes to the design and delivery of curriculum. Future Research This presentation presents preliminary findings. Data is still being collected and much more extensive statistical analyses will be performed.