Social justice and critical peace education: Common ideals guiding student teacher transformation

Abstract

The primary objective of this paper is to report on two teacher educators’ development and assessment of a framework and workshop to introduce student teachers to social justice and peace education ideals within the domains of teachers’ work during student teachers’ first full-time experience of teaching in diverse schools in a major city in the Pacific region. The framework builds from a critical re-constructionist perspective and aims to raise student teachers’ critical consciousness of social and economic injustice, human rights, and defects in schooling and inspire a resolve to act on them to promote social justice (Bajaj 2008). Adopting an action research methodology, the authors/instructors assessed student teachers’ perceptions of their learning after a two-hour workshop that introduced a social justice and peace education framework. Secondary student teachers participated in workshops in two consecutive years. Student teachers reported positive outcomes from the workshop in Likert scale responses and open-ended remarks. The authors concluded that the workshop and framework over the two years offered effective guidance to student teachers in developing an initial understanding of social justice education and an openness to actively contributing toward making their classrooms and schools more just in the future. To continue to promote student teachers’ reflection and action to higher levels, the authors began efforts to infuse the seminar curriculum with social justice and peace education.