









































Osei-Kofi, N., Boovy, B., & Furman, K. (Eds.). (2022). 
Transformative approaches to social justice education: 
Equity and access in the college classroom. Routledge. 304 
pp. $ 31.96 (Paperback), ISBN: 978-0367551032

While social justice has become an increasing priority in many public 
institutions in the country, the Difference, Power, and Discrimination 
program at Oregon State University has been enlightening 
undergraduates for 30 years. Born out of student advocacy and the 
faculty that supports them, the program is an established collection of 
diversity education courses and faculty training seminars. The program 
has survived budget cuts, critics, and other challenges throughout its 30 
years. Transformative Approaches to Social Justice Education describes 
the methods of the program pragmatically and unflinchingly so readers 
of the book can apply them to their classrooms.

M. A. Medved. Global Journal of  
Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3   
DOI  10.14434/gjte.v3i1.34260

Open Access

Published by the Global Insitutute of Transformative Education (http://www.gite.education)
© Zhaoyi, 2022. Open Access This journal is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 
NonCommercial NonDerivative 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which 
permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction without revision in any non-commercial medium, provided you 
give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license,

BOOK REVIEW

Michelle A. Medved

Full listing of authors and contacts can be 
found at the end of this article.

 Introduction
The book is comprised of four sections, all of which 

feature strategies and methods from DPD faculty that 
teach undergraduate students about different aspects 
of identity. Accessibility needs, race, gender, sexuality, 
and economic class differences are all addressed in the 
book. Additionally, a wide array of techniques is utilized 
throughout the book. Everything from collaborating 
with archivists and farmworker unions to incorporat-
ing social justice into STEM coursework is discussed. 
DPD is a requirement for undergraduates within their 
general education classes, but it does not add to the 
number of credits the students need to take (Osei-Kofi, 
et al., 2021, p. x-xi). It has the two-fold benefits of both 
broadening white students’ perspectives and helping 
students from historically marginalized groups feel 
more included. Faculty have also benefited from this 
program, which features specific training programs to

help faculty embody the spirit of DPD within their 
classes and pedagogy. 

The following review will cover the book’s four 
sections in order, touching on its fifteen chapters and 
their respective authors. The first section, “Archives 
and Power: Engaging History Collaboratively,” covers 
the history of the DPD program and how to incorporate 
diverse narratives through history. The second section, 
“Frameworks for Transformative Pedagogies” discusses 
the challenges of making courses more accessible both 
in the classroom and online. “Destabilizing Dominant 
Narratives,” the third section, addresses the triumphs 
and challenges of teaching difficult subjects such as 
race, economic class, and transgender rights. The 
final section, “Rethinking Approaches to Disciplinary 
Content” provides the reader with meaningful ways 
to incorporate social justice topics in both STEM and 
humanities-based courses.



Medved - Transformative Approaches to Social Justice Education Page 39

Section 1: Archives and Power: Engaging History 
Collaboratively

Echoing the sentiments of the introduction, the first 
chapter by Kali Furman addresses the circumstances 
in which the DPD program was created. It starts by 
addressing the racist founding of the state of Oregon. 
Oregon’s state constitution is the only one created with 
a clause banning Black people from residing there (p. 
4). When Oregon State University was founded, it too 
became an institution based on the interests of white 
Americans, including being established on the stolen 
land of Native Americans (p. 5). Over time, the demands 
of students and the student body’s diversity have 
grown. After incidences of racism on campus over the 
decades, student activists proposed creating a diver-
sity education program to try to make the university 
more inclusive (p. 3). The fact that the DPD program 
has survived multiple budget cuts and other threats to 
its existence, is a testament to the power of OSU stu-
dent advocacy and the faculty that supports them. The 
creation of the program and its continued existence 
demonstrates the ongoing need for such a program at a 
primarily white institution. Crucially, Furman notes that 
white and students of color still have “divergent” expe-
riences at OSU (p. 5). Consequently, the legacy of “stu-
dent activism and institutional moves to create offices 
or programs” to undertake “issues around diversity and 
inequity continue today” (p. 5).

The following two chapters, written by archivist 
Natalia Fernandez and ethnic scholar Natchee Blu 
Barnd, feature methods for teaching social justice 
through history. Fernandez shares the powerful possi-
bilities for archival texts to promote social justice both 
within OSU and in the larger community. She shares 
her collaboration with professors to create eye-opening 
document analysis activities for students. When voices 
were absent from the OSU archives, Fernandez sought 
to find representation for them. Fernandez and Boovy 
co-founded the OSU Queer Archives in 2014 and have 
expanded it with the help of student interviewers (pp. 
22-25). Barnd’s chapter details his students’ creation 
of social justice tours of the college town in which OSU 
is located. He describes how walking tours “remind us 
to pay attention to our relationships to the land (and its 
people) wherever we find ourselves,” something that he 
attributes to his upbringing as an indigenous man (p. 
43).  From the beginning of each course, “the students 
directly practice techniques for collecting, analyzing, 
and incorporating community histories and highlight-
ing contested productions of geography, especially in

relation to race and racism” (p. 44). After taking a tour, 
the shared stories come to him every time he walks 
by that location. Both Fernandez and Barnd provide 
practical ways to implement these activities and events. 
Universities’ archival resources provide transforma-
tive tools for sharing new perspectives on history with 
students.

Section 2: Frameworks for Transformative  
Pedagogies

Chapters Four and Five carry important reminders 
of equity and accessibility for anyone in the education 
field. Written by Jenkins and Smith, Chapter Four cov-
ers instructional design and their efforts to improve the 
accessibility of courses for students with disabilities 
through the principles of Universal Design. Jenkins also 
shares her experiences with having disabilities while 
in academia. Their chapter discusses the ubiquity of 
ableism in academia and how Universal Design prin-
ciples can help fight ableism (pp. 68-69). The chapter 
features recommendations for implementation, includ-
ing a tool for identifying the perceived challenges of an 
assignment and encouraging consideration for what 
consequences an academic requirement might have 
(pp. 76-78). They suggest providing options that best 
fit the needs of students including flexible attendance 
and multiple modalities to demonstrate learning (pp. 
80-83).

In Chapter Five, Myers expounds on many of the 
same concerns as Jenkins and Smith but for online 
academic settings. She argues, “design principles for 
accessibility should be a baseline” for online course 
design and suggests going further by including cultur-
al responsiveness (p. 99). Because online courses can 
exasperate inequities and accessibility issues, Myers 
explains some of the steps that instructors can take to 
allow flexibility, alleviate some of the instructor-student 
power imbalances, and enlighten students to institu-
tional discrimination through course tasks (pp. 90-96). 
Myers successfully brings awareness to considerable 
injustices and guides online instructors on how to pro-
mote greater equity and accessibility in their courses.

Chapters Six and Seven share many commonali-
ties in the internal, empathetic work that they suggest 
instructors and students take part in to bring greater 
awareness to injustices. Though the chapters cover 
different frameworks, they are both highly internalized 
and potentially emotionally difficult. Clough warns in 
Chapter Six that teaching peace literacy requires a deep 
personal understanding of one’s biases and it can be 

Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3



Page 40

Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3

draining (p.106). Pitcher and Martinez note in Chap-
ter Seven that the sentipensante work, largely done 
through reflective activities, is not something that 
everyone is ready for, especially in a public setting 
(p.136). If one is ready to take on this work, then 
Clough suggests peace literacy to build empathic soft 
skills and promote consciousness to both personal and 
structural biases and the systems that perpetuate them 
(pp. 106-107). Pitcher and Martinez describe sentipen-
sante as more of a belief system to promote one’s sense 
of belonging and restore their sense of being able to 
live their life wholly (pp. 127-129). Although powerful 
philosophies, both chapters hint at the challenges of 
tackling emotional issues correctly in the classroom. 
There needs to be extensive training and personal 
reflection on the instructor’s part to lead these types 
of activities (p. 129). These chapters should serve as 
a primer to these frameworks and further exploration 
should be done before attempting to use them in the 
classroom. However, when well done, students can 
“gain confidence, find strength, and resilience through 
their narratives combined with history and social is-
sues” (p. 135).

Section 3: Destabilizing Dominant Narratives
Containing some of the most engaging chapters of 

the book, Section Three aims directly at how to teach 
difficult topics of social justice and the impact a profes-
sor’s positionality can have on student interpretations 
of the content. Though positionality is prominent in 
Transformative Approaches, it is particularly addressed 
in how this section and Section Four’s Ronald Mize 
approach their respective social justice issues.

Chapters Eight and Nine prioritize bringing greater 
positionality to their respective fields. In Chapter Eight, 
Rakes and Driskill write about the specific inclusion 
of trans studies as part of its Queer Studies program. 
Within the field of Queer Studies, white voices have 
been dominant, and OSU’s QS courses work to disrupt 
that focus. Instead, by giving privilege to voices from 
people of color, various levels of (dis)abilities, and 
income levels, OSU’s program promotes intersection-
ality (pp. 146, 149). In doing this, white students must 
consider the spectrum of experiences and identities 
among the LGBTQ+ community and who is impacted by 
systems of oppression. They then teach how to grapple 
with anger at systemic oppression and put it towards 
“the fruit of collective liberation” instead of using anger 
to be destructive (P. 144). In Chapter Nine, Maldonado 
focuses on the ways that she incorporates intersection-

ality into her Latinx studies classes by including race 
and ethnicity, gender, and labor rights. She also reflects 
on how her own identity as a Latina impact how she 
is perceived by students. Many of her students have 
never had a Latinx educator before and they sometimes 
respond in different ways. Students of color may be 
validated by her presence and some, primarily white 
students seem to think she brings a “Latinx agenda” 
(pp. 160-161). These reactions from students bring a 
lot of assumptions to what can already be a difficult 
topic to teach. Additionally, Maldonado explains how 
she handles students who do not believe in her course’s 
relevance. She offers strategies to help students make 
personal connections and classroom exercises to 
discuss inequalities, workers’ rights, and unions (pp. 
167-168). Her inclusion of student reactions underlines 
both the work that educators of color can achieve, but 
also the biases they may encounter from others.

Growing up working-class herself, Hurst references 
back to her own identity in Chapter Ten. There seems 
to be a blind spot for the role economic class plays in a 
person’s identity, privilege, and understanding of the 
world. Hurst explains that while directly addressing 
economic class in the classroom is forceful, equally 
important is maintaining the privacy of those less priv-
ileged. Sharing personal experiences can be uncomfort-
able or even humiliating, especially for those that are 
less privileged. Instead, she suggests personal reflec-
tive exercises on privilege should be done privately or 
anonymously (pp. 181-182). However uncomfortable, 
we must keep tackling economic class and privilege. In 
talking about class, she explains, it helps “us build those 
necessary alliances between Black, Brown, and white 
people” to stop the “racists” from winning (p. 175). 

Boovy and Osei-Kofi finish the section by describing 
their individual experiences teaching about race at a 
predominantly white institution. They argue that OSU’s 
history, culture, and legacy all carry white dominance, 
which is why teaching about race is so crucial (p. 192). 
The teaching method that they share is “teacher as text” 
which started as a way for teachers to demonstrate 
their authentic selves and help students learn complex-
ity around social issues like race, poverty, and police 
brutality (p. 193). Both writers share their own expe-
riences of how their identities impacted how students 
respond to them for better or worse (pp. 196-201). 
They agree that misunderstandings will happen when 
teaching about race, which is why race must continue to 
be addressed (pp. 200-202).

Medved - Transformative Approaches to Social Justice Education



Page 41

Section 4: Rethinking Approaches to Disciplinary 
Content

Koehlinger and Freehling-Burton begin the sec-
tion by delineating the importance of challenging the 
Christian-based norms of mainstream American cul-
ture, for the country is far more religiously diverse than 
it may appear (p. 207). They share how their faiths 
impact their teachings and students’ interpretations of 
their teachings (pp. 208-210). The chapter moves on to 
historical and contemporary anti-Semitism and Islam-
ophobia in the U.S. (pp. 216-223). The reader will come 
away from the chapter reflecting on the perpetration of 
Christian dominance and on how harmful stereotyping 
of non-Christians is damaging to religious tolerance in 
the U.S. (p. 212).

Mize is the first generation of his family to have 
not spent time in the fields. In Chapter Thirteen, he 
discusses the intentional design of his course, which 
focuses on farmworker justice movements throughout 
American history (p. 237). To tie in the DPD program 
requirements, there is a particular emphasis placed 
on “the social construction of difference, the historical 
and contemporary relevance of racism and other forms 
of institutional discrimination, and how these social 
categories shape the lived experiences of farmworkers 
residing in the United States” (p. 238). He frequently 
collaborates with a union leader for this course and 
is quick to explain how service-learning can be done 
poorly (p. 237). Aims to help farmworkers should not 
be an act of voyeurism (pp. 240-241). Mize’s thoughtful 
analysis of service-learning and consideration for the 
farmworkers make it one of the more impactful and 
meaningful chapters of the book.

In Chapter Fourteen, Borradaile challenges the 
perception that social justice education has no place in 
STEM courses. She meaningfully embeds intersections 
of STEM and human rights together, such as how the 
American government uses surveillance against po-
litical and racial groups (p. 257). Borradaile provides 
specifics on navigating these issues and what methods 
to use. One is using “affinity groups” where students 
work to come to a consensus on incidents of discrimi-
nation that have occurred at their university and how 
they should respond. Students discuss the pros and 
cons of different actions, recognizing that there often 
is not a perfect response (253-254). Additionally, she 
shares the unfamiliarity of teaching and learning about 
emotionally difficult topics for STEM instructors and 
students. Borradaile herself had to adjust and she has 
found that students understand best from first-person

narratives. It adds a voice to sometimes complex and 
difficult topics (255). Though challenging, Borradaile 
demonstrates that bridging STEM and social justice is 
possible.

Chapter Fifteen rounds out the book by alluding 
back to the power of teaching history in a reflective 
way. Richards describes her work to “disrupt students’ 
notions of objective research” and demonstrates that 
historical work is “intimate, value-laden, and rich with 
struggles and questions of self” (p. 268). Chappell and 
Richards remind us of the power of primary documents 
for helping students “see the multiple dimensions of 
systemic and pervasive mechanisms of oppression in 
operation on multiple scales (p. 266). By taking classic 
history teaching methods and layering them with crit-
ical analysis, Chappell and Richards add to what many 
history educators already do.

Evaluation
As an educator, the themes of social justice and an-

ti-racism have been recently reverberating throughout 
both the K-12 and postsecondary institutions that I am 
a part of. It would be easy to write this book off as one 
following the current trends. However, this compilation 
sets itself apart because of its thoughtfulness, variety, 
and experience. Few other universities, and institutions 
for that matter, have a diversity and inclusivity program 
that is thirty years old. Oregon State University was 
not just following a trend, but in response to student 
advocacy and demands three decades ago. What bet-
ter source to learn about teaching social justice than a 
pioneer in the field? 

This level of experience is reflected in the various 
methodologies described in Transformative Approach-
es. The best chapters describe thoughtful consideration 
and planning, drawing from learned experiences and 
student reactions. They also featured underrepresented 
topics, such as transgender and disability rights. No-
tably insightful chapters include Mize’s “Sí, se puede! 
Teaching farmworker justice” and Hurst’s “Talking 
about class” for their insight and consideration of both 
the topics they teach and the students they work with. 
Mize co-planned with a local union leader, deciding 
that “this could not be yet another class where students 
learn about farmworkers and to repeat the surface rep-
resentations of them” (p. 239). Mize’s community part-
nership with a local union, as well as archivist Natalia 
Fernandez’s collaborations with faculty, and Barnd’s 
local history tours are all examples of the ways the DPD 
program extends beyond the OSU campus.

Medved - Transformative Approaches to Social Justice Education

Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3



Michelle A. Medved (michmedv@iu.edu) is a Ph.D. 
student and Associate Instructor in the Literacy, Culture, 
and Language Education Program in the Department 
of Curriculum and Instruction, School of Education at 
Indiana University Bloomington. 

Author

Many chapters were helpful with specific strategies 
that could be somewhat simply implemented in busy 
educators’ lives. Myers’ “Critical Pedagogy Online” and 
Jenkins and Smith’s chapter covering Universal Design 
both provide thoughtful tools for making courses more 
accessible and flexible –especially pertinent in the time 
of a pandemic. For a handbook on social justice edu-
cation, the chapters that featured pragmatic, simple 
suggestions were often the most valuable.

The most difficult chapters often featured peda-
gogies or frameworks that were out of reach for the 
average reader. They contained warnings about need-
ing extensive training and not being for everyone. While 
the chapters served as primers on sentipensante and 
peace literacy, they also described deeply philosophical 
(perhaps even spiritual) cognitive work. The chapters 
provided exercises to utilize but were also tinged with 
the implication that the pedagogies were extremely 
difficult to conduct correctly. They seem to be more 
intimidating than easily accessible.

Page 42Medved - Transformative Approaches to Social Justice Education

Conclusion
Transformative Approaches incorporates posi-

tionality, personal narratives, and experience-tested 
teaching methods to thoughtfully create a social justice 
handbook that educators from many fields will find 
valuable. Its personal sentiments and a wide variety of 
topics set it apart from other resources with a narrow-
er focus. Of its highlights are highly implementable 
strategies that have been time-tested and advocacy for 
underrepresented topics in diversity education. Its few 
downfalls are simply a few chapters that require much 
further education or lack realistic recommendations 
for classroom usage. Educators are busy and want 
practical takeaways. As Smith and Jenkins describe 
their approach to increasing course accessibility, it “is 
a pedagogical practice that requires ongoing commit-
ment and negotiation” (p. 80). Achieving greater equity 
and promoting social justice in educational institutions 
must also take this long-haul, step by step approach, 
hence the importance of manageable frameworks and 
methods like this book provides.


