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To address this, the Progressive Education Network (PEN) convened 800+ educators for its 2015 National Conference, “Teaching the Possible: Access, Equity, and Activism!” The article analyzes PEN’s workshop agenda through discourse analysis of program abstracts, identifying three professional development functions and explaining how alignment with a critical justice theme supports equitable progressive pedagogy.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/teaching-the-possible-justice-oriented-professional-development-for-progressive-educators/594710/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/teaching-the-possible-justice-oriented-professional-development-for-progressive-educators/594710.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Ben ","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-21","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":81},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"Why is justice-oriented professional development considered a site of tension for progressive educators?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"The document describes justice-oriented professional development as historically contested, with tensions arising around how progressive pedagogy confronts social injustice. The article then presents PEN’s conference as a structured response to that tension.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"What was the theme and purpose of PEN’s 2015 National Conference?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"The conference theme was “Teaching the Possible: Access, Equity, and Activism!” Its purpose was to bring 800+ educators together to engage in dialogue about social injustice across education systems, especially within participants’ own schools.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What three areas of professional development did the discourse analysis identify?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"The analysis found workshops designed by teachers to share methodologies, workshops that prompted critical examination and reframing of educational problems, and workshops that supported understanding of how different groups experience systemic issues to enable innovative solutions.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},594710,1792188612,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":81,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":144,"read_time":145},2336478951081,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_276721f389ce27ea32af1340a28f341c","Teaching the Possible: Justice-Oriented Professional Development for Progressive Educators  \nMollie A. Gambone  \nDrexel University  \nAbstract  \nProviding justice-oriented professional development for progressive educators has historically been a site of tension. To address this, The Progressive Education Network (PEN), the leading professional organization of progressive educators in the United States, brought together over 800 educators for its 2015 National Conference, titled “Teaching the Possible: Access, Equity, and Activism!” This article documents PEN’s framework for facilitating an opportunity for educators to engage in dialogue about areas of social injustice throughout education and within their own schools. Findings derived from a discourse analysis of workshop abstracts published in the conference program suggest that the conference provided professional development in three areas: 1) workshops were designed by teachers to share useful methodologies relevant to the conference theme with other teachers; 2) workshops encouraged attendees to critically examine how problematic issues in education are commonly understood, then reframe them to consider the issues from different perspectives; 3) doing so gave rise to an understanding that in order to imagine innovative solutions to systemic problems, one must first be able understand how different groups of individuals experience the problems. This analysis establishes that by aligning the conference with a critical, justice-oriented theme, the workshops were designed to provide attendees with opportunities to investigate their own roles in producing, changing, and interpreting socially-just learning and teaching in their own school contexts. This is important because it advances the study of equitable access to progressive pedagogy, while at the sametime utilizing Desimone’s (2009) framework for judging effective professional development for teachers.  \nKey words: Social justice curriculum, progressive education, education access, teacher professional development  \nDr. Mollie Gambone graduated from the PhD in Educational Leadership Development Program at Drexel University with a special focus on progressive education, urban education, and teacher leadership. Currently, she is a research associate on a federally funded grant to support cradle-tocareer opportunities for children living in the West Philadelphia Promise Zone.  \n[Email: mad432@drexel.edu](Email: mad432@drexel.edu)  \nHistorically, encouraging young people to analyze, critique, and work to fix enduring issues of social injustice has been one of the most compelling and contested aspirations underpinning progressive education (Bruce & Eryaman, 2015; Counts, 1932; Cremin, 1961; Dewey, 1916/2008; Kliebard, 1995; Westheimer & Kahne, 2004) . Currently in the United States, the effects of divisive political tension, the inequity inherent in standardized testing, and the rise of common curricula that fail to recognize the contextual differences between individual schools give renewed urgency to developing curricula that encourage teachers and students to think critically about meaningful ways to address inequity in both education and in society (LadsonBillings, 1995; Milner, 2012) . One way of addressing this issue is through focused and effective teacher professional development.  \nThe Progressive Education Network (PEN), the leading national professional organization that provides pedagogical guidance for K-12 progressive educators, endorses this need for training justice-oriented citizens. Through their biannual professional development conferences, the PEN executive council works not only to guide teachers to foster these values in their students, but also to critically examine and confront the injustices inherent in progressive pedagogy. To address historic issues of inequality, the theme of PEN’s 2015 National Conference was Teaching the Possible: Access, Equity, and Activism! Over 800 progressive educators came ","cbCaikBKJXhlJ2RN","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaikBKJXhlJ2RN","pdf",556543,14,"English","# Abstract\n# Background and Rationale\n# PEN 2015 National Conference Theme\n# Purpose and Analytical Framework\n# Findings: Three Areas of Professional Development\n# Implications for Equitable Progressive Pedagogy","[{\"question\":\"Why is justice-oriented professional development considered a site of tension for progressive educators?\",\"answer\":\"The document describes justice-oriented professional development as historically contested, with tensions arising around how progressive pedagogy confronts social injustice. The article then presents PEN’s conference as a structured response to that tension.\"},{\"question\":\"What was the theme and purpose of PEN’s 2015 National Conference?\",\"answer\":\"The conference theme was “Teaching the Possible: Access, Equity, and Activism!” Its purpose was to bring 800+ educators together to engage in dialogue about social injustice across education systems, especially within participants’ own schools.\"},{\"question\":\"What three areas of professional development did the discourse analysis identify?\",\"answer\":\"The analysis found workshops designed by teachers to share methodologies, workshops that prompted critical examination and reframing of educational problems, and workshops that supported understanding of how different groups experience systemic issues to enable innovative solutions.\"}]","Teaching the Possible: Justice-Oriented Professional Development for Progressive Educators | PDF",1792079689,35]