Social justice beliefs and curricular freedom: Factors supporting critical composition pedagogy in a U.S. middle school Nadia Behizadeh a, * , Charity Gordon b , Clarice Thomas b , Beth Marks b , Latricia Oliver b , Heidi Goodwin c a Georgia State University, College of Education and Human Development, Department of Middle and Secondary Education, P.O. Box 3978, Atlanta, GA, 30302-3978, USA b Georgia State University, USA c Atlanta Public Schools, USA highlights  Critical composition pedagogy (CCP) can be enacted in middle school settings.  Major supports for CCP include teacher belief/knowledge; curricular freedom; professional development; and years teaching.  Curricular freedom is produced by curricular resources, trust of teachers, and minimal focus on raising test scores.  Additional CCP supports are teacher biography/identity; teacher activism; and a progressive school culture. article info Article history: Received 14 July 2018 Received in revised form 24 December 2018 Accepted 8 June 2019 Keywords: Case study Critical composition Critical pedagogy Middle level education Social justice teacher education Writing instruction abstract In this case study, we explore one social justice-oriented middle school teacher's instruction and the factors that influence her way of teaching. Findings indicate that this teacher's instructional practices represent all tenets of critical composition pedagogy (CCP) and that teacher belief and knowledge in social justice/critical pedagogy; curricular freedom; professional development; years of experience teaching; teacher biography/identity; teacher activism outside of school; and a progressive school cul- ture are supports for CCP. However, curricular freedom is produced by many contextual factors, including available curricular/pedagogical resources, trust between teachers and administration, and the absence of pressure to increase test scores. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. I am a white teacher, a die-hard liberal, wear my heart on my sleeve writer, slam poet-rap-everything-words-lover and willing to feed, house, transport, run interference for, and watch over my students. Still, race relations in the south where the weighted in- heritance we're left to shoulder is real. It's hard to build trust in a place a history of distrust has undone, again and again and again, what any clear-thinking young black man - say - might be persuaded by the best most loving and well-intentioned white teacher to otherwise believe …. The consciousness of a classroom - if it's actually not bullshit - is the consciousness of the broader immediate community and then, by extension, our country's. Black boys know this when white folks cross the street as they step onto the sidewalk to fetch a carton of milk from the corner store & we're kidding ourselves to imagine they don't. Our work as educators could be noble in these present times, if we could share that work with a broader citizenry equally dedicated to re-educating its thinking about race, class & access. (Greta, personal communication, May 4, 2017) In this note from Greta (pseudonym), an English language arts (ELA) teacher at an urban middle school in the United States, her words voice a strong social justice focus and a critical pedagogy orientation that highlights the potential for schools to help * Corresponding author. E-mail address: nbehizadeh@gsu.edu (N. Behizadeh). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Teaching and Teacher Education journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tate https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2019.06.004 0742-051X/© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Teaching and Teacher Education 85 (2019) 58e68