38 plus District of Columbia
Number of states in the report
100
Colleges of Education in the Report
Executive Summary
Colleges of Education (COEs) across the country have incorporated the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) Learning for Justice (formerly Teaching Tolerance) resources, lessons, and Social Justice Standards (SJS) into pre-service teacher preparation programs, coursework, departmental frameworks, and educator training initiatives.
Because COEs are the primary institutions responsible for preparing future K-12 classroom teachers, as well as the continuing education of present teachers and administrators, they play a major role in what content, materials, “best practices,” and perspectives shape educators.
Additionally, pre-service and current teachers often rely on curriculum, lessons, and resources promoted by Colleges of Education because these institutions are trusted by K-12 schools and educators.
This report exposes the various ways that Learning for Justice/ Teaching Tolerance content, materials, resources, Social Justice Standards, and ideologies are promoted, utilized, and integrated into Colleges of Education nationwide.
The SPLC’s websites, content, programming, and standards are found in:
- Course work, classroom activities and assignments
- Pre-service degree program evaluations and handbooks
- Foundational department frameworks
- Various educational resources
Importantly, few COEs outwardly acknowledge their use of SPLC materials; instead, many COEs hide their usage and promotion behind faculty login pages.
This report also examines academic journal articles, doctoral dissertations, and master’s theses to provide additional insight into how SPLC materials and Social Justice Standards are incorporated into Colleges of Education, teacher preparation programs, and K-12 classrooms.
Key Takeaways
- A $275,000, grant-funded National Science Foundation Computer Science for All program between Northern Arizona University (AZ) and Flagstaff Unified School District features curriculum that incorporates Learning for Justice’s Social Justice Standards into lessons.
- In 2019, the Department of Education granted California’s Claremont Graduate University (GCU) $3.3M to “develop and cultivate educators-in-training for the Claremont Fellows Program.” According to GCU’s grant proposal, the program would “introduce Fellows to the following core social justice teaching ideas and practices” including the “Social Justice Standards from Teaching Tolerance.”
- Sacramento State University (CA) College of Education requires that pre-service teachers be evaluated on the integration of the Social Justice Standards into their professional practice.
- The Maryland State Department of Education incorporates the Social Justice Standards into its regulations governing new teacher induction programming run by school districts and “Programs for Professionally Licensed Personnel.”
- The University of Maryland College of Education’s Master’s in Teacher Leadership: STEM features a “Key Theme” of “Equity, Access, and Anti-bias Education” that foregrounds “anti-bias education and integrate social justice standards and critical practices from the organization, Learning for Justice, into our programs.”
- According to Brandeis University’s (MA) Teacher Education Program Handbook, it “uses Learning for Justice Social Justice Standards as a guide for our program-wide theme: Teaching for Social Justice.”
- The University of Michigan’s Marsal Family School of Education’s ASSETS Framework is focused on a “more just and equitable elementary science teaching” that includes developing a “critical consciousness” (i.e. woke) and “draws from or connects to” Learning for Justice’s Social Justice Standards.
- As part of the Kutztown University of Pennsylvania’s (PA) Pre-candidacy Field Experiences, students are to complete a “Teaching Tolerance module” to fulfill the “Developing My Understanding of Diversity” requirement.
- The University of Pittsburgh’s (PA) Falk Laboratory School, a progressive private K-8 school affiliated with the School of Education, incorporates the Social Justice Standards into the middle school Social Justice course curriculum.
- The University of North Texas’ (TX) summer of 2026 course EDCI 5360: Advances in Teaching features “Required Readings” that include Learning for Justice’s Social Justice Standards.
- Linfield University’s (OR) Department of Education states that it “integrates the Learning for Justice Social Justice Standards” into program curriculum. A program course titled EDUC 580: Planning, Implementing & Assessing Instruction for ESOL features a “Key Assessment” worth 20% of the overall course grade that requires students to create a “Social Justice Lesson Plan” that includes the Social Justice Standards.
- Portland State University’s (OR) Master’s of Elementary Education program incorporates the Social Justice Standards into its professional standards to be addressed by students.
- The College of William and Mary’s (VA) School of Education integrates the “Learning for Justice Social Justice Standards” into “course readings and assignments, deliberate integration into instructional planning, and the evaluation of professional dispositions for teachers” and requires that preservice teachers “integrate the Social Justice Standards for their selected grade levels across academic courses and in practica and internship instructional planning and instruction.” The teacher education program also states that the Social Justice Standards “reflect the School of Education’s philosophical approach to teaching and learning.”
- At Western Washington University (WA), student teachers are evaluated on their integration of the Social Justice Standards into planning documents by demonstrating “clear links to identity and diversity anchor standards found in Learning for Justice/ Teaching Tolerance Standards.”
Indirect Integration
Learning for Justice content and Standards sometimes work their way into courses, pre-service programming, and K-12 classrooms indirectly. For example, a University of Kentucky College of Education professor, who consults for the SPLC, is the “co-creator and co-director of C3 Teachers (c3teachers.org).”
The C3 Teachers website gives the public access to free lesson plans that often feature Learning for Justice/ Teaching Tolerance materials, links, and Social Justice Standards. For Example, a lesson titled “What should we do about hate groups recruiting young people?” integrates the Social Justice Standards and states that “students will plan and carry out collective action against bias and injustice in the world and will evaluate what strategies are most effective.” The lesson includes a video clip as an authoritative source discussing the events surrounding the 2017 Charlottesville (VA) Unite the Right Rally.
The C3 Teachers site and content can be found in university teaching methods courses and even state-level Department of Education websites.
There were cases in which course descriptions, websites, or other documents listed the use of “social justices standards” in that particular course or program (see the example from Johns Hopkins University below), but it was not possible to validate that these were Learning for Justice’s Social Justice Standards. Therefore, they were left out of this report.
Colleges of Education Examples
A “Research-Practitioner Partnership (RPP)” between “Northern Arizona University (NAU) and educators from W.F. Killip Elementary School in the Flagstaff Unified School District” includes curriculums that incorporate Learning for Justice’s Social Justice Standards into the lessons.
The Partnership was intended to “introduce Native American students in elementary school to computer science through an innovative curriculum that integrated culturally-responsive pedagogy and problem-based learning to focus on understanding and measuring the internet.” The program received a $275,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) Computer Science for All grant to facilitate the partnership and creation of “culturally-responsive computer science curriculum.”
California State University Channel Islands’ School of Education incorporates the Social Justice Standards into at least two required courses.
According to Sacramento State University’s College of Education “Multiple Subject Credential Program” handbook, pre-service teachers are to be evaluated on the integration of the Social Justice Standards into their professional practice.
The “Teaching Credential Branch” of the College states that its “Mission” is to prepare “socially just teachers and teacher leaders to be agents of change, committed to equity and inclusion in culturally and linguistically diverse schools and communities.”
Brandeis University’s Teacher Education Program Handbook states that it trains future educators to engage “students in issues of equity and justice.” The Teacher Education Program features a central theme of “Teaching for Social Justice.”
The handbook notes that the Program “uses the Learning for Justice Social Justice Standards as a guide for our program-wide theme: Teaching for Social Justice.”
The College of William & Mary’s School of Education 2025 – 2026 Teacher Education Handbook states that its “teacher education program in Curriculum & Instruction (C&I) is founded upon the department’s Social Justice Framework for Teachers.” The handbook notes that C&I integrates the “Learning for Justice Social Justice Standards” into “course readings and assignments, deliberate integration into instructional planning, and the evaluation of professional dispositions for teachers.”
According to the handbook, “preservice teachers will integrate the Social Justice Standards for their selected grade levels across academic courses and in practica and internship instructional planning and instruction.”
The document also states that the Social Justice Standards “reflect the School of Education’s philosophical approach to teaching and learning” and are meant to “supplement instructional planning and professional dispositions as a guiding framework and resource for teachers.”
According to Western Washington University’s (WA) Woodring College of Education, student teachers are evaluated on their integration of the Social Justice Standards into planning documents which demonstrate “clear links to identity and diversity anchor standards found in Learning for Justice/ Teaching Tolerance Standards.”
Journal Articles, Dissertations, and Theses Examples
As part of the report, education journals and College of Education dissertations and Master’s Theses were utilized as additional sources of how Learning for Justice content and its Social Justice Standards were integrated into university courses, preservice teacher programming, and K-12 classrooms.
A journal article published in 2021 titled “Social Justice Standards in Teacher Education: Pre-Service and In-Service Teachers’ Successes, Struggles, and Futures” highlights the integration of the Social Justice Standards by “five pre-service and in-service teachers” while part of a “rural teacher education program.”
The article notes that one of the participant’s coursework “overwhelmingly centered around collective action for social change” and their “proposed student projects integrating the SJS with Texas curriculum standards for English included ‘writing a letter to a government representative, presenting at a local town hall meeting using argumentative, informative, or persuasive techniques, and writing poetry into action.”
An article titled “‘I Used to Think, But Now I Know’: Interrupting Preservice Teachers’ Beliefs about Equity” featured in the Fall 2022 issue of Transformative Dialogues: Teaching and Learning Journal discusses integrating these Learning for Justice materials into a Foundations of Education course for aspiring teachers.
In a journal article titled Learning to Lead Group Discussions: Teacher Education at the Intersection of Content, Pedagogy, and Equity, the authors note how preservice teachers embedded the Social Justice Learning Standards into their fieldwork experiences.
A California State University, Northridge thesis titled “Teaching for Social Justice: A Professional Development Series” explains how they used professional development training sessions for Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) teachers to promote social justice and advance the use of the Social Justice Standards.
SAMPLE LIST OF JOURNAL ARTICLES, DISSERTATIONS, AND THESES
Below is a sampling of journals, dissertations, and theses that do one or more of the following:
- Promote the use and/or integration of Learning for Justice content and standards
- Recommend the adoption of the Social Justice Standards
- Notes how professors and preservice teachers embed these materials and standards into the classroom and lessons
This is not a comprehensive list.
- “I Used to Think, But Now I Know’: Interrupting Preservice Teachers’ Beliefs about Equity” (Transformative Dialogues: Teaching and Learning Journal)
- “A Target Model for Social Justice Supervision” (Teaching and Supervising in Counseling – University of Tennessee Knoxville)
- “Social Justice in Action: A Document Analysis of the Integration of Social Justice Principles into Teaching” (Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning)
- “Social Justice Standards in Teacher Education: Pre-Service and In-Service Teachers’ Successes, Struggles, and Futures”
- “The Social Justice Educational Assessment Scale: Filling a Gap in Social Justice Education Assessment and Evaluation” (Health Sciences and Physical Education – Northern Illinois University)
- “Toward a Critical-PBL: Centering a Critical Consciousness in the Middle Grades”
- “Transforming PETE’s Initial Standards: Ensuring social justice for Black students in physical education”
- “Early Childhood Faculty Perspectives on Inclusion of Antibias Curriculum in Preprimary Teacher Training Curriculum in the United States” (Walden University)
- “Empowering Early Learners: An Exploration of Anti-Bias Education in Early Learning Environments” (Northeastern University)
- “‘We lead from the English Department’: English Teachers Enacting Social Justice Leadership” (University of Florida)
- “Antibias Pedagogy and the Progressive Legacy” (Bank Street College of Education)
- “The Classroom as a Catalyst for Change: Promoting Anti-Racist Pedagogy Through Tolerance in the Elementary Classroom” (Georgia Southern University)
- “Convening Social Justice Learning Communities to Encourage Pre-Service Teachers to Build Anti-Oppressive Pedagogies and Practices” (Northern Arizona University)
- “Experiences and Tensions in Justice-Oriented Teacher Education” (University of Minnesota)
- “A Natural Pairing: Social Justice and Theatre Education” (Columbus State University)
- “Professional Development Workshop for Kindergarten Teachers to recognize their unconscious bias towards gender in STEM Education” (Hamline University)
- “Social Justice Teaching in the Elementary General Education Classroom” (Hamline University)
- “Teaching for Social Justice: A Professional Development Series” (California State University, Northridge)
- “Teaching Social Justice in Kindergarten to Reduce Bias in Children” (Rowan University)
- “The Duty of Non-Neutrality: Teacher Perceptions of Social Justice and Critical Pedagogy in the Classroom” (California State University Sacramento)
Universities
Below is a list of Colleges of Education by state that feature Learning for Justice/ Teaching Tolerance links, content, resources, or promote the organization’s Social Justice Standards. This is not a comprehensive list and will be updated as new information is identified and vetted.
University of North Alabama
Arizona State University
Northern Arizona University
California Polytechnic State University
- EDUC 431: Learning to Teach K-8 Social Studies with Diverse Populations
- EDUC433: Foundations of Bilingual Education
California Polytechnic State University, Humboldt
The California State University System
California State University Channel Islands
- EDMS 526: Modern Methods in Mathematics Teaching to Grades 4-6
- EDSS 533: Teaching English in Middle Schools
California State University, Dominguez Hills
California State University Long Beach
- Content-Specific Pedagogy and Instructional Practices
- EDSP 454: Academic Language Development and Inclusive Instruction for English Language Learners (FA 2022)
California State University, Northridge
Claremont Graduate University
Sacramento State University (California State University, Sacramento)
- Single Subject Teaching Credentials Field Handbook
- Multiple Subject Credential Field Handbook
- Teaching Credentials – Resources
- Teaching Credentials – Antiracist Teaching
San Jose State University
Santa Clara University
Stanford University
University of California Berkeley
University of Colorado Boulder
Quinnipiac University
Western Connecticut State University
Wilmington University
American University
Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University
Florida Atlantic University
- EDF 2085: Introduction to Diversity for Educators
- EDF 3202: Equity Issues in Multicultural Education – Curriculum Development Resources
- EDF 3610: Education in Multicultural Society
- EEX 4616: Classroom Management for Inclusive Elementary Schools
University of Florida
Kennesaw State University
Eastern Illinois University
- SOS 3400: Middle Level and Secondary Social Studies Teaching Methods
- HIS 4925: Methods, Theory, and Pedagogy for History and Social Justice Teaching
Elmhurst University
Northwestern University
William Penn University
University of Kansas
Western Kentucky University
The University of Maine
Maryland State Department of Education
University of Maryland
Brandeis University
Fitchburg State University
Harvard University
Stonehill College
Michigan State University
- Inclusive Excellence and Impact – IDI & IDEA Coordinators Programming
- Resources for Difficult Dialogues in the Classroom
Northern Michigan University
University of Michigan
Western Michigan University
Metropolitan State University
Minnesota State University Mankato
St. Olaf College
University of Minnesota
Delta State University
Mississippi Valley State University
University of Nebraska Kearney
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
The College of New Jersey
Rutgers University
William Paterson University
City University of New York
Columbia University Teachers College
State University of New York – Brockport
University at Buffalo
Appalachian State University
North Carolina State University
Western Carolina University
University of North Dakota
Heidelberg University
Kent State University
Mount St. Joseph University
The Ohio State University
Youngstown State University
Central Oregon Community College
Linfield University
Oregon State University
- Youth Education Resources – Color Blindness (Learning for Justice)
- Equity, Diversity, Accessibility and Inclusion (EDAI) resource library – EDAI webistes
Portland State University
University of Portland
Western Oregon University
Kutztown University of Pennsylvania
University of Pittsburgh
Westminster College
Brown University
The University of Rhode Island
Prairie View A&M University
Stephen F. Austin University
Texas A&M University San Antonio
University of Houston
University of North Texas
- EDCI 4070: Teaching Diverse Learners
- EDCI 4840: Instructional Strategies & Classroom Management
- EDCI 5360: Advances in Teaching
- EDEE 3320: Foundations of Education: The School Curriculum
- EDRE 4850: Teaching the Tools and Practices of Reading Across the Curriculum
University of Texas at Austin
University of the Incarnate Word
Southern Utah University
University of Vermont
College of William & Mary
George Mason University
- EDUC 301-003: Educating Diverse and Exceptional Learners (FA 2019)
- EDUC 301-003: Educating Diverse and Exceptional Learners (SP 2024)
- EDCI 597.B02: Special Topics in Education: Teaching & Learning Difficult History
