Voices in Urban Education (VUE) publishes themed issues and does not accept articles on a rolling basis. Please review our current active call prior to submission.
Before submitting you should read over the guidelines here, then register an account (or login if you have an existing account)
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 ScopeVoices 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.
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:
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 ChecklistGuidelines 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.
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 NoticeWritten 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. LicencesVUE (Voices in Urban Education) allows the following licences for submission:
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 SectionsPublic Submissions
Peer Reviewed
Indexed
Abstract
Commentaries in Urban Education
Conversations in Urban Education
Research Perspectives in Urban Education
Expressions in Urban Education