Supporting Teachers’ Engagement in Pedagogies of Social Justice (STEPS): A Collaborative Project Between Five Universities in Turkey and the USA

Abstract

            This paper reports the findings of a research project titled Supporting Teachers’ Engagement in Pedagogies of Social Justice (STEPS), in which pre-service teachers from five universities and in-service teachers from Turkey and the US participated in a six-week-long virtual exchange project. The main objective of the study was to promote social justice-informed pedagogies in K-12 schools through professional development and conversations between pre-service and in-service teachers from two countries. The study addressed the following research question: How does a six-week virtual exchange project influence in-service and pre-service teachers’ social justice orientation? For this purpose, we collected quantitative data through a questionnaire based on social justice standards developed by a group of researchers called “Learning for Justice”. Participants completed this questionnaire before and after their participation in the project. Additionally, we asked the participants to write a reflection post at the end of the project regarding its impact, and we treated their posts as qualitative data. At the end of the analysis, we found that the mean scores of the post-test results were significantly higher than those of the pre-test results, which indicated that the project changed the perspectives of the participants in a positive way. Furthermore, analyzing the qualitative data, we found four recurring themes: a) learning through sharing and working in collaboration, b) noticing common concerns with other educators, c) self-awareness and self-evaluation, and d) promise for taking action.