“To promote justice is to care”: Pedagogy of care and socially-just instruction among Iranian English language teachers

Abstract

Despite the growth of research on emotions of care and social justice over the past decades, little is known about how these two significant dimensions of language teachers’ professional practice intersect. The present study drew on data from 10 Iranian English language teachers to unpack the intersection between care and social justice. The analysis of qualitative data collected from open-ended questionnaires, narrative frames, and semi-structured interviews revealed three major themes in relation to care and socially-just instruction: (1) care as a prerequisite for promoting social action, (2) institutionalizing social justice beyond discourse through collective care, and (3) care as a tool for resisting social injustice(s) in order to transform education. Our findings revealed that effective delivery of socially-just instruction is highly defined by the pedagogy of care that teachers invest in order to resist the dominant injustices. Based on the findings, we provide implications for teacher educators to run professional development courses that have as their cornerstone focal attention to dimensions of care and social justice.