Book Review:Advancing Social Justice: Tools, Pedagogies, and Strategies to Transform Your Campusby Davis, T., & Harrison, L. M.

Abstract

Davis, T., & Harrison, L. M. (2013). Advancing Social Justice: Tools, Pedagogies, and Strategies to Transform Your Campus (1st ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. 240 pp. ISBN: 978-1-118-38843-3 (hardback) The term social justice is described in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society. Accordingly, this phenomenon can be approached from many different perspectives such as race, gender, and socioeconomic status. Irrespective of the approach, social justice proponents are expected to hold certain epistemologies and apply appropriate skills toward the development of a just society. Advancing Social Justice (Davis & Harrison, 2013) proposes a comprehensive argument toward facilitating social justice education in a practical way. Davis and Harrison (2013) have a strong academic and practice background in the social justice field. They draw from their experience to inform what they believe is needed in higher educational settings to reexamine the processes and approaches that educators use to promote learning and liberation (p. xvii). Supporting the latter statement in the book's foreword, Larry Roper emphasizes that there is a lack of adequate frameworks and conceptual rigor in addressing and implementing social justice efforts in higher education. The authors state that the audiences for the book are faculty, practitioners, and students. However, the book primarily addresses the role faculty play in advancing social justice in the classroom. Many examples provided in the book are about the authors' experiences as instructors who have amassed learning experiences dealing with students in some challenging situations that involved social justice themes. The book contains eight chapters, each beginning with a quote related to the chapter's theme. The first chapter includes an argument about the underlying epistemological perspectives required of educators to foster a social justice-oriented educational setting. The authors advocate post-positivist perspective as opposed to positivist and relativist frameworks to demonstrate how emancipatory educational settings are cultivated. Chapter 2 clarifies commonly used terms in the social justice field, while Chapter 3 reviews a number of historical implications of social justice. Chapter 3 closes with a quote from Loewen (1993), who suggests, Citizens who are their own historians, willing to identify lies and distortions and able to use sources to determine what really went on in the past, become a formidable force for democracy (p. 318). Chapters 4 through 8 principally address practical applications for advancing social justice in higher education. The authors' inclusive approach to the advancement of social justice helps the reader to not only learn about the concept of social justice but also view the potential barriers that may hinder one's development toward a social justice orientation. …