Part II: Resistance, Justice and Collective Action

Loshini Naidoo^a and Verónica López^b

^aSchool of Education, Western Sydney University, Australia

^bSchool of Psychology, Pontificia Catholic University of Chile, Chile

Across diverse global contexts in Brazil, Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand and Latin America, educational and social movements continue to resist inequality and exclusion by reclaiming classrooms, cultural spaces and political arenas as sites of justice. The cases of Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy, conscientização and cultural circles, Australia’s Fair Go Program (FGP), contemporary gender-based struggles, youth activists crafting new pedagogies through Deep Harmony arts-based anti-racist education and climate change “politics-as-action” reveal a shared commitment: that education must be more than a transmission of knowledge; it must be a practice of liberation.

The chapters in this section, when taken together, illustrate that resistance to inequality and exclusion cannot be reduced to isolated reforms or symbolic gestures. Rather, they illuminate a set of interdependent practices: democratic engagement, the centring of youth agency and activism, the pursuit of gender equality and the recognition of education and culture as sites of praxis and transformation. From Brazilian schools to Chilean protests, feminist classrooms to climate justice activism and creative justice anti-racist frameworks to Indigenous-led arts activism, these struggles collectively argue that change emerges when education and culture are reclaimed as political terrains where power can be redistributed.

Knijnik and Oliveira, in their chapter, illustrate how the legacy of Paulo Freire’s cultural circles has functioned as a pedagogy aimed at fostering democratic education. Drawing on a study abroad programme conducted in Brazil in 2023, in which ten student-teachers from Aotearoa New Zealand visited public schools and universities in São Paulo, the authors show how participants experienced and enacted Freirean principles of dialogue through rodas de conversa in public, university, and Indigenous community contexts. The chapter discusses how, despite Freire’s continued influence in critical academic scholarship and Māori studies, his work is often overlooked in mainstream teacher education. It further demonstrates how embodied intercultural experiences can challenge prior assumptions and ethnocentrism, while revitalising intercultural dialogue Ultimately, the study abroad emerged as a lived pedagogical and political process, in which the student-teachers experienced the roda de conversa not merely as an observed method, but as a transformative democratic educational practice, expanding their understanding of education through South–South dialogue and immersion .

These struggles reaffirm a key Freirean insight: democratic practice must be continuously defended and reinvented in the face of authoritarianism. In their chapter, Gava and Knijnik discuss how educators responded to ESP through solidarity networks such as Teachers Against ESP, collective advocacy campaigns and recourse to Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court, which ruled restrictions on teacher autonomy unconstitutional in 2020. They demonstrate how schools, despite their contradictions, continue to be essential sites for cultivating pluralism, critical reflection and collective action. In these chapters, the focus on Brazil exemplifies how resistance to exclusion requires protecting education as a public good and preserving it as a site of democratic participation.

Similarly, in Chile, Zammit’s chapter examines the  Fair Go Program (FGP) that explores what helps classrooms succeed for students in schools serving low socioeconomic communities, with a strong emphasis on student engagement in learning. This chapter shifts the focus from the practices of individual teachers to the role of teaching teams and whole-school approaches. It examines how schools can create environments where students feel they belong and see education as meaningful for their future, while also ensuring teachers feel supported in their professional growth and view teaching as a sustainable career. The chapter opens with an overview of the FGP’s student engagement frameworks and then describes key FGP research projects that deepens understanding of effective, engaging classrooms and guided teacher-led action research. It also discusses the program’s impact on school culture through the concepts of the Insider School and Engaging Messages frameworks, and concludes with a summary of the FGP Chile Pilot Project .

These case studies demonstrate that resistance to exclusion necessitates not only a critique of policy but also creative, solidaristic forms of resistance, affirming that schools, far from being passive sites of transmission, are active terrains of democratic struggle. While Brazil’s and Chile’s contexts are specific, it resonates across the Global South, where gendered hierarchies and colonial legacies reinforce structural inequities. Here, feminist praxis functions as critique and blueprint, reframing schools as sites where patriarchal power can be named, contested and reorganised in favour of inclusive futures.

The chapter by Gannon, Ullman, Knijnik and Gava shows how exclusion is not only economic or generational but also profoundly gendered. Girls, women, LGBTQ+ youth and others are disproportionately excluded from education, silenced in political discourse and subjected to intersecting forms of marginalisation. Feminist praxis addresses these exclusions by reshaping curricula, challenging harassment and linking education to broader struggles for bodily autonomy and justice. Crucially, it expands the meaning of resistance: fighting inequality requires dismantling patriarchal knowledge structures and amplifying the voices of those historically silenced. This feminist turn also expands the repertoire of resistance into spheres of embodied cultural practice, a bridge to climate justice movements where performance and protest intertwine.

Collin, in her chapter, indicates that globally, climate change movements have rendered young people as not merely recipients of pedagogy but producers of political knowledge. Their actions relocate learning into streets, legislatures and digital spaces, embodying what Isin (2002) and Rancière (2010) call politics-as-action: disruptive, generative interventions that make new publics. Framed as public pedagogy (Biesta, 2012), youth climate activism teaches intergenerational democracy and intersectional solidarity, responding to well-documented gaps in climate and civics education.

Through performance and protest, Finneran and Jacobs reveal another dimension of democratic struggle in their chapter: the capacity of culture to transform social imaginaries. Dance, theatre, murals and digital storytelling allow young people to articulate visions of justice in ways that transcend policy language. Arts activism is especially significant for youth who are otherwise excluded from formal politics; it offers accessible, embodied and affective means of participation (Belfiore, 2011; Taylor, 2004). The framework of Creative Justice clarifies this further, positioning art not as ornament but as intervention. Principles of accessibility, equity and liberation guide projects such as Chill the Heat in Sydney, where poetry, cartooning and performance became vehicles for critiquing climate injustice and imagining collective alternatives. Here, art becomes both a method of resistance and a site of transformation, capable of reshaping identities, solidarities and systems.

If creative justice frames how culture transforms politics, Deep Harmony in Jacobs’ chapter shows how arts pedagogy can transform schools into anti-racist learning communities. Racism in Australian schooling is widespread, experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and African Australian students at especially high rates, making schools both sites of harm and key arenas for early intervention. Her research indicates that active anti-racism outperforms generic “diversity” celebrations, aligning with Hage’s (2016) typologies that move from incident reduction to culture change. Deep Harmony synthesises these insights with Southern, decolonial knowledges: cultural artforms are taught as living archives of resistance, with explicit attention to protocol, appropriation and sovereignty. In short, the program turns “Harmony Week” from a soft multicultural spectacle into a capstone for hard, preparatory anti-racist work, moving from celebration to transformation.

Taken together, the chapters foreground the multiple ways in which education is entangled with colonial legacies, linguistic hierarchies and epistemic exclusions. Yet, they also highlight the creativity and resilience of communities, educators and families who disrupt these hegemonies and reclaim education as a site of justice, identity affirmation and collective transformation. Schools are battlegrounds, but so too are theatres, streets and digital platforms. Resistance requires recognising these as interconnected sites of praxis where knowledge, identity and solidarity are forged. In this sense, resistance is not only about tearing down oppressive systems but also about building new democratic, feminist and cultural futures, ones where education, climate change and art are not marginal but central to the struggle for justice.

Author Note

Loshini Naidoo https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9495-2579

Verónica López https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7405-3859

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Loshini Naidoo. Email: l.naidoo@westernsydney.edu.au.

Cite This Chapter

Attribution

Except where otherwise noted, this work by Loshini Naidoo and Verónica López is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

References

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