Submissions

About

VUE is an open-access journal published twice annually and endeavors to serve as a “roundtable-in-print” by bringing together diverse education stakeholders with a wide range of viewpoints, including leading education writers and thinkers, as well as essential but frequently underrepresented voices in educational scholarship, such as students, parents, teachers, activists, and community members.

Each issue of VUE is organized around a theme and strives to provide cutting-edge analysis of a vital issue in urban public education. Formats include visual arts, articles, interviews, video and written documentaries, poetry, and autoethnographies.

Focus and Scope

Voices in Urban Education (ISSN 1553-541X) is published twice a year in Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter by the Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools at New York University in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. It features articles and other works of scholarly and general significance to a wide range of interests and communities who experience urban education through a variety of entry points.

Articles seek to cover a wide range of disciplines with a strong emphasis on trans-sectional and transdisciplinary perspectives aimed at examining successes, problems, and questions in policy, advocacy, and teaching and learning practices in urban education. VUE pays particular attention to pieces that highlight the experiences, hopes, dreams, and concerns of historically underrepresented and vulnerable groups in education along lines of gender, race, sexual identity, dis/ability, language, ethnicity, religion, and indigenous or immigration status. As an open-access journal, VUE aims to disseminate important, topical, relevant, and urgent research, thoughts, and commentary to a wide audience.

• Conversations in Urban Education consist of interviews (in-person transcripts or electronic correspondence) with thinkers, leaders, advocates, and students at the forefront of struggles for equity in schools. Interviews may contain footnotes but require few or no references and should be vetted for factual accuracy by the interviewer prior to submission. Interviews may range between 3,000 and 5,000 words, but word counts may be adjusted at the discretion of the editors. In addition to completed interviews, VUE accepts offers to be interviewed as potential submissions. Potential interviewees should indicate the topic(s) about which they would like to be interviewed, a summary of their relevant background or expertise on the topic(s), and how their interview might add to the body of knowledge around a specific conversation of interest in urban education.
• Research Perspectives in Urban Education consist of more traditionally academic research pieces, either studies conducted with an urban education focus or technical commentaries on existing research or strands of research. VUE has a preference for transdisciplinary, trans-sectional, participatory or partnership (researcher-practitioner, practitioner-student, practitioner-advocate, advocate-student, etc.) pieces that are inclusive of broader perspectives and experiences within urban education. However, we will consider more traditionally academic pieces that add to the body of knowledge or to important topical conversations around equity, liberation, abolition, and justice in education. Action research and design-based studies with an equity focus conducted by teachers and/or students/parents will be considered. Research pieces should include an abstract, introduction, and up to 40 references (hyperlinked if possible) and may include up to six tables/figures.
• Commentaries in Urban Education consist of technical comments, opinions, and narratives of experience and/or guidance from leaders at the forefront of important conversations and issues in urban education, including but not limited to: school integration, school funding, disproportionality, school culture and climate, school discipline, campus safety, racial bias, culturally responsive/sustaining education, the decolonization of education, critical theories in education, etc. VUE considers anyone a potential thought leader, from students and non-instructional school staff through district and state leadership, as well as within and beyond the frames of what is traditionally thought of as leadership. Thought leaders’ pieces should be between 2,000 and 4,000 words and may contain up to 10 references to scholarly or other contextual sources.
• Expressions in Urban Education consist of any pieces relevant to expanding the understanding and horizons of urban education that do not fall within the three main genres listed above. Such pieces may consist of lyrical, slam, poetic, video, musical, documentary, narrative, artistic, or other pieces traditionally un(der)represented in academic scholarship. Because a variety of formats and modalities that go beyond textuality may fall into this category, Expressions in Urban Education Voices in Urban Education pieces may appear in the online-only version of VUE but will be credited in both the online and print versions. Submission size and guidelines will vary by piece, but all submissions that potentially fall into this category are welcome and will be reviewed.

Invitation for Submissions

Science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM), and computing education are often presented to teach concepts so learners can investigate phenomena and build with technology as they gain agency and develop self-efficacy in applying their knowledge. However, educational activities are often taught in ways that detach the disciplines from their social and political dimensions. These dimensions are significant in terms of: (1) the way the work is accomplished—including who is involved in the design work and who technological innovations are designed for; as well as (2) the way the work is situated within society—including what problems innovations are designed to solve and who benefits from particular innovations (Benjamin, 2020; Noble, 2018). Attending to how these disciplines are situated in society is essential for creating equitable educational experiences that recognize and respond to the ways in which knowledge and technological artifacts impact communities and society more broadly. 

The arts disciplines can create opportunities to examine the subjective and interpretive aspects within STEM fields because of their ability to develop learners’ critical examination and reflection. The arts have cultural and historical significance with practices that can support creation of technological artifacts that can integrate various representations and perspectives, enable learners to draw on their knowledge within them, and facilitate sharing within learners communities outside of the immediate learning context (DesPortes et al., 2022; Halverson & Sawyer, 2022). These characteristics present new pathways from which social justice can be centered within STEM education. By forefronting social justice, community members impacted by systemic racism and inequities can develop an understanding of the role technological artifacts have in holding up inequitable social systems, and the role they could play in dismantling them (Gutstein, 2012). Educational interventions that center cultural sustenance and asset-based community development provide pathways for learners to engage in recognizing and working with resources that already exist within their communities, as well as building from and developing new opportunities (Alim, Paris, & Wong, 2020; Agdal, Midtgård, & Meidell, 2019). In this special issue, we seek submissions that connect community knowledge and resources as a starting point to grow STEM and computing knowledge.

In this Spring 2024 special issue of Voices in Urban Education, we are looking to promote scholarship examining how we can support racial equity through arts-integrated STEM education that intentionally addresses systemic racism. In line with anti-racist pedagogy, we are looking to highlight work that actively seeks to dismantle oppressive and marginalizing forces against individuals and communities within their approach to design of learning experiences situated within community contexts. Specifically, those that take an arts-integrated approach to promote social change and provide expansive examples beyond protesting of how learners can engage in activism in their own communities. 

Additionally, there has been a lot of debate around critical race theory and what children are able to learn about. We want examples of young people learning about these ideas to combat that vision that they can’t handle or shouldn’t be exposed to the realities of the social context in which they live. As part of this special issue we will also be accepting submissions of commentary and artwork from youth from K-12 as well as those currently enrolled in undergraduate or graduate programs. 

We’ve listed some guiding questions to help jumpstart your submission process:

• What types of examples do you have that are indicative of storytelling within and through STEM and computing disciplines? 
• What types of challenges have arisen within your social justice work surrounding storytelling with STEM and computing? 
• How have assets (i.e. CBOs, local business owners, individuals, other institutions) in your community supported storytelling (both in the creation and in the elevation of the stories) through STEM?
• How does storytelling integrate into your practices with STEM? 
• How do you encourage development of learners' STEM knowledge, creative problem solving, and critical thinking?
• How do you support learners’ critical consciousness—awareness & understanding of inequities that exist, being able to identify them, and developing orientations towards actions rather than fatalism. How does building STEM knowledge & storytelling help contribute to these efforts? 
• How do you incorporate anti-racist principles and asset-based community development into your work?
• How do you develop individual and community resilience through your STEM programming?
• How do you integrate data literacy into your STEM programming? And how then do you support the students’ processing and communication of this data through the lens of their unique lived experiences?

VUE will consider pieces that go between and beyond these initial questions as well.

REFERENCES

Alim, H. Samy, Django Paris, and Casey Philip Wong. "Culturally sustaining pedagogy: A critical framework for centering communities." In Handbook of the cultural foundations of learning, pp. 261-276. Routledge, 2020.

Agdal, Rita, Inger Helen Midtgård, and Vigdis Meidell. "Can asset-based community development with children and youth enhance the level of participation in health promotion projects? A qualitative meta-synthesis." International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 16, no. 19 (2019): 3778.

Benjamin, Ruha. "Race after technology: Abolitionist tools for the new Jim code." (2020): 1-3.

DesPortes, Kayla, Kathleen McDermott, Yoav Bergner, and William Payne. "“Go[ing] hard... as a woman of color”: A case study examining identity work within a performative dance and computing learning environment." ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE) 22, no. 4 (2022): 1-29.

Halverson, Erica, and Keith Sawyer. "Learning in and through the arts." Journal of the Learning Sciences 31, no. 1 (2022): 1-13.

Noble, Safiya Umoja. "Algorithms of oppression." In Algorithms of oppression. New York University Press, 2018.

Submission Checklist

Guidelines for intent to contribute submissions:

If you’re interested in submitting a piece for this issue please send us a short description of the topic/subject and format of your proposed contribution (100-150 words). The deadline to submit is August 7, 2023

Guidelines for full draft version submissions:

Upon acceptance of your proposal, you will be invited to submit a full draft of your submission. Below, you will find guidelines on the full submission.

• Manuscript length: 2,000-5,000 words depending on format of submission (see formats in Focus and Scope section), excluding cover page, abstract, references, tables and figures. Please indicate the submission format for which you wish your manuscript to be considered.

• All manuscripts must include an abstract of 100-150 words. Below the abstract, include five keywords for indexing purposes.

• All manuscripts will be copy edited to adhere to APA 7th Edition Formatting and Style Guide. You can find guidelines and examples online and/or we will work with you to ensure accurate stylistic guidelines are met.

• Once a manuscript is formally accepted, VUE reserves the right to publish it. To request withdrawal of your manuscript after formal acceptance, please contact our managing editor at nyumetro-vue@nyu.edu. 

• Authors of accepted manuscripts will be required to sign the Transfer of Copyright Agreement form. This is standard practice  for journals.

• Authors of accepted manuscripts will agree to help promote their work by sharing the journal with others. 

• Manuscripts and submissions categorized as Expressions in Urban Education should be submitted through Janeway via our submissions page.
• All manuscripts must follow ADA accessibility guidelines. Please see guidance on how to produce accessible Microsoft Word Documents and Google Docs. 

We will work with all contributors to ensure that these guidelines are met. Please let us know ahead of time if you have any questions. The deadline to submit full manuscripts is November 30, 2023.

Copyright Notice

Written submissions to VUE are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Permission for use should be obtained from the authors who hold the copyright. Student artwork is not under an open license unless otherwise specified and remains the copyright of the creator.

Peer Review This journal operates under an open peer review process. Licences

VUE (Voices in Urban Education) allows the following licences for submission:

• - More Information  
  None
• CC BY 4.0 - More Information  
  Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Publication Fees

We do not charge a publication fee for Voices in Urban Education. We are currently being funded by the Spencer Foundation.

Publication Cycle This journal published bi-annually with one issue released in the Fall/Winter and the other released in the Spring/Summer. This current call Volume 52, Issue 2 (Spring 2024). The theme for this special issue is Centering community healing, sustenance, and resilience in STEM and computing education through art and social justice  Sections