What is Critically Compassionate Intellectualism (CCI)

Diversity in contemporary classrooms (across class, race, gender, and other social identity groups) is here to stay. Social justice education is a viable alternative to reach out to all participants with equity towards construction of democracy. In this chapter, the authors share about their co-teaching experience in a required Multicultural Education course for pre-service teachers where a social justice framework guided their work. They expand on the course objectives and their social justice aims. They describe how their praxis was conducive to building community in the classroom and being with each other. They expose and explore, however, a misalignment between theory and praxis surrounding social justice education when preservice teachers transition from teacher preparation programs to their own classrooms as practicing teachers. They describe through the concrete experience of one of the authors how practicing teachers are faced with different particular variables that may hinder the full realization of a social justice approach to education.