Feminisms in education: struggles and solidarities in a time of regressive social change

This article serves as the introduction to the special issue, “Beyond Now: Feminist Politics, Policy, and Research Futures in Education.” As co-editors, we came together as colleagues to examine how the field engages feminist thought and what this means for advancing critical inquiry, theorizing, and research praxis. We begin by situating our work within a period representing widespread cultural and political change, and in doing so, offer a chronicling of feminist situatedness to such historical moments—a looking back to reenvision research considerations for those who engage this work. After discussing the urgency of feminisms in education, we present an overview of nine articles by authors who advance a range of critical theoretical and methodological frameworks. We curated this special issue across diverse disciplinary, epistemic, generational, geographic, and professional backgrounds to contemplate necessary political, policy, and research futures beyond now—a horizon of possibility that resists the constraints of the present and insists on future-making grounded in abolitionist, decolonial, and feminist commitments.