2025 Theses Doctoral

From Seeds to Systems: A Qualitative Study of Global Majority Teacher Educators of Color Advancing Global Justice, Critical Pedagogy, and Sustainability in Higher Education

Raja, Rozena

Within teacher education, the imperative to foster critical global perspectives has emerged as a vital component of preparing educators for the complexities of an increasingly interconnected world. This qualitative multiple case study, grounded in critical pedagogy, critical globalization studies, and teacher agency, explores how four Global Majority teacher educators—individuals who identify as Black, Brown, Asian, Indigenous, dual-heritage, and/or racialized—understand, enact, and sustain their commitments to global justice within U.S. higher education contexts.

Drawing on contemplative thematic analysis (Bhattacharya, 2025) and Darder’s (2015) critical interpretivism, this multiple case study analyzes interview data and course artifacts to surface the pedagogical, ethical, and political labor these educators carry. Findings reveal justice as a deeply embodied and relational stance—expressed through practices of discernment, refusal, ethical subversion, and care. These educators navigate institutional constraint while cultivating student agency and preserving their own integrity, often through quiet yet powerful acts of resistance.

The study synthesizes these findings into a set of generative insights that function as guiding principles—not prescriptions—for justice-oriented teacher education. These include: honoring discomfort and complexity, refusing institutional co-optation, cultivating protective pedagogical space, and aligning justice commitments across roles. These principles are grounded in lived practice and invite reflection on how educators might design programs, relationships, and curricula with ethical clarity and sustainable vision.

This research contributes to the field of teacher education by offering a grounded, relational understanding of global justice as practice—deeply situated, emotionally demanding, and spiritually rooted. It challenges conventional frameworks of social justice teacher education and invites new conversations around sustainability, agency, and ethical alignment for educators committed to transformation across time, space, and systems.