Agents Of Social Justice Research Articles

The Applicability of Critical Pedagogy in Adult English Language Teaching (ELT)

This paper explores the applicability of critical pedagogy in adult ELT, emphasizing its role in fostering social awareness and change. Critical pedagogy encourages learners to critically examine their social reality, engage in meaningful dialogues, and become active agents for social justice. However, incorporating this approach into adult ELT faces some challenges. This study addresses four major obstacles to critical pedagogy implementation. The four challenges are a) lack of teacher preparation, b) potential risk of misguiding learners, c) cultural barriers in certain countries and regions, and d) insufficient infrastructure for aligning materials and assessment with critical pedagogy. Despite these challenges, evidence from literature and existing successful case studies suggest that critical pedagogy can be integrated inro ELT with thoughtful adjustments. The current paper provides insights for adult English program leaders to overcome such challenges and implement critical pedagogy effectively, thus empowering learners to achieve both linguistic proficiency and social transformation.

Social Enterprises as Agents of Social Justice: A Rawlsian perspective on institutional capacity

Many scholars of organizations see social enterprise as a promising approach to advancing social justice but neglect to scrutinize the normative foundations and limitations of this optimism. This article draws on Rawlsian political philosophy to investigate whether and how social enterprises can support social justice. We propose that this perspective assigns organizations a duty to foster institutional capacity, a concept we define and elaborate. We investigate how this duty might apply specifically to social enterprises, given their characteristic features. We theorize six different mechanisms through which social enterprises might successfully discharge this duty. These results affirm the value of conversation between organizational studies and political philosophy and shed new light on debates regarding social enterprise, institutional theory, and several other topics.

Beyond awareness: Social justice agents and preservice teacher possible selves

Despite significant inequalities in Australian education, social justice appears absent in recent government reports and low in foreshadowed practical changes to teacher education programs. This study analyzes 13 transcripts from preservice teacher interviews and 94 related university assignments in a four-year Australian teaching degree. Findings revealed social justice as multi-dimensional, including selected group association, fair and equitable treatment, and strategies to achieve inclusion. Such tangible ideas are helpful; however, newly graduated teachers also require progressive exposure to enact these ideas in context to gain confidence and realize the potential inherent in their aspirations to support student inclusion.

Nursing Students' Experience of a Poverty Simulation and Its Impact on Empathy and Social Justice Awareness: A Descriptive Qualitative Study.

Holistic nursing practice requires an understanding of the constraints of poverty as one of the social determinants of health. Future nurses need to be change agents for social justice. A descriptive, qualitative study was conducted to explore students' experience of the Missouri Association for Community Action Poverty Simulation© (CAPS) and its impact on empathy and social justice awareness among a purposive sample of 56 sophomore baccalaureate nursing students at a public university in the Northeastern United States. Inductive thematic analysis was applied to data collected from a postparticipation reflection paper. Five themes emerged: (a) emotions, (b) personal history of poverty, (c) empathy, (d) rising advocacy, and (e) lessons learned. The results support that the CAPS simulation provides an experiential opportunity which impacts empathy and foundational attitudes to be a change agent for social justice. Recommendations include structured education about social determinants of health prior to the CAPS simulation, continued education throughout nursing curricula, and experiential opportunities to apply social justice skills before graduation.

An evaluation of a professional development program aimed at empowering teachers’ agency for social justice

This article reports on an evaluation study of a professional development program to promote teachers’ agency for social justice and educational equality. Despite that teachers are seen as change agents for social justice, few studies have investigated what empowers them to adopt this role. Therefore, we designed a theory of change with seven manifestations of agency for social justice (e.g., being committed and experts, taking initiatives). Fourteen primary school teachers participated, engaging in individual reflections, focus group interviews, and an open-ended questionnaire. Thematic analysis was used to code manifestations of agency such as commitment and initiatives. The results demonstrated an empowered sense of agency among the participants. For example, they displayed heightened awareness of inequalities and a critical stance toward their own actions, school policies, and the education system in relation to educational equality. This study contributes to theoretical knowledge about how a professional development program for experienced teachers can be used to develop agency for social justice. Key factors that supported teachers’ agency included sufficient time and support in the program to familiarize themselves with social justice and educational equality concepts, as well as receiving comprehensive knowledge on practical interventions and dedicated time for discussing their applicability in their own teaching practice.

Social Enterprises as Agents of Social Justice: A Rawlsian Perspective on Institutional Capacity

Social Enterprises as Agents of Social Justice: A Rawlsian Perspective on Institutional Capacity

Redressing the Big 4’s male, pale and stale image, through LGBTIQ+ ethical praxis

• Business case recognition of LGBTIQ+ staff began in the Australian Big 4 around 2010. • Ethical praxis championed by agents for social justice emerged from the mid-2010s. • Staff from whom silence had formerly been expected valued both phases of development. • Nonetheless, business case logics continued to dominate and favoured ‘white’ gay men. • Limited recognitions of the face of LGBTIQ+ perpetuated ongoing violence for all. This study explores developing responses to the recognition of LGBTIQ+ staff within the ‘Big 4’ professional service firms in Australia through the 2010s. Employing semi-structured interviews, we explore the substance underpinning claims to related change, and the drivers of those developments. We draw on arguments of ethical praxis, which build in turn from insights of Judith Butler and Emmanuel Levinas about possibilities for the representation of some, while dehumanising others. We identify a first pre-ethical praxis phase of business case driven rhetoric from around 2010, as each firm sought to redress perceptions of a ‘male, pale and stale’ image. Here, rhetoric had some value for LGBTIQ+ staff, from whom silence had formerly been expected. Those rhetorical moves then transitioned into more substantive praxis from the mid-2010s, as activists for social justice found opportunity to link related messaging to broader community momentum for change. Nonetheless by 2019, hetero-male centres of power continued to dominate, and tenuous achievements remained focused on ‘white’ gay men. With an ongoing dominance of business case logics, violence and silence persisted for many. By 2019, any sense of opportunity for further praxis change was passing.

The Changing Landscape of Technical Services Education

Technical Services (TS) has been undergoing many changes in response to societal, technological, and institutional shifts as are many areas within LIS. In addition to understanding changes in cataloging standards, technical services staff must have cultural and behavioral competency to meet the needs of increasingly diverse user populations. To prepare LIS students effectively, technical services educators must continually adapt and update their courses. 
 The Technical Services Education SIG session will include a panel of three educators who will discuss current areas of importance in TS education: innovative online pedagogy, EDI (equity, diversity, and inclusion), and core competencies.
 Susan Rathbun-Grubb will report on the development of a new online course supported by a University of South Carolina Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) Innovative Pedagogy Grant. This includes collaborating with a CTE instructional designer in preparation for teaching the course in Spring 2024. This presentation will describe the creative process and the proposed course plan including objectives, topical coverage, pedagogical strategies, and assessments. Dr. Rathbun-Grubb is interested in having a conversation with attendees about their best practices for teaching TS management online in a student-centered seminar format.
 Lesley Farmer will present on the incorporation of EDI into the Organization of Information course in California State University Long Beach's Teacher (school) Librarian program. An explicit EDI strand was developed for the course, including readings/videos for each module and corresponding learning activities. Students have responded very favorably by actively identifying and addressing EDI issues and by seeing themselves as necessary change agents for social justice. This presentation explains the process, the results, and useful resources.
 Karen Snow is leading an effort to revise the American Library Association’s 2017 Core Competencies for Cataloging and Metadata Professional Librarians and will report on the status of the endeavor. This includes determining if the 2017 Competencies are sufficient for current cataloging and metadata professionals. Dr. Snow will discuss how TS educators help provide a good foundation of cataloging and metadata competencies that best prepares our students for such a rapidly-changing field. 
 After the presentations, audience members will be encouraged to ask questions and offer their own experiences and ideas concerning this area of LIS education. These presentations align well with the ALISE 2023 conference theme of “Bridge the Gap: Teaching, Learning, Practice, and Competencies.”

Institutional Forums

Chapter 3 of the Constitution of South Africa makes provision for cooperative system of governance between the three tiers of government: national, provincial and local. In higher education this provision finds expression through the Higher Education Act 101 of 1997 and institutional statutes. Cooperative governance of public universities pivots around key institutional actors as part of democratisation of institutional governance. Cooperative governance is an important twentieth-century governance innovation for South African public universities. In juxtaposing university governance and public accountability, democratisation has been identified as a crucial ingredient in broadening the processes of decision making, promoting greater participation and ensuring inclusion of black “bodies” in university governance. One of the cooperative governance structures of South African public universities is the institutional forum (IF). Born in the crucible of student activism in the 1980s, IFs have had a mixture of success and failures since their first implementation in 1998. They were conceived as agents for social justice and democratisation in the driving of transformation of public universities. This paper examines extant literature on the evolution, functions and challenges of the IF in driving institutional transformation and concludes by suggesting further areas for research.

A tapestry of multiple perspectives: Contextualising inclusive education through the study of a rural government school in Uttarakhand, India

This article presents the multiple perspectives of school community members at a remote, rural government school in Uttarakhand, India, by using a strength-based participatory and multiple perspectives approach. By incorporating the capability approach and intersectionality to conceptualise inclusive education, qualitative data were generated with ten students using photographs/drawings/writings, and seven parents, three teachers, and one school leader using in-depth interviews. Reflexive Thematic Analysis helped construct the participants’ shared beliefs in the value of schooling, the development of diverse valued capabilities, the role of teachers as agents of social justice, and school as an equalising space. Simultaneously, adverse conditions of teaching and learning were identified that posed significant risks in the creation of inclusive and equitable educational opportunities at the school.

The Impact of Gentrification upon Culture, Tradition, Identity and Language: A Case Study of the Bo-Kaap Community

Language is central and important to the identity of every community. It defines who they are, their culture, social milieu, and traditions. It is through language that people communicate with one another and preserve their heritage and history. The history of colonisation in South Africa is an example of how culture, identity, language, and history have been subjected to colonisation. In this paper, I will discuss the impact of gentrification upon the Bo-Kaap community in Cape Town. Today, gentrification is not only displacing people, but slowly erasing the culture, identity, and language of this area. This paper is intended to continue the work of Achmat Davids, who first began documenting the history of Bo-Kaap. This paper analyses the potential of participatory action research (PAR) in communities to become more critically reflective and socially conscious about gentrification. First, this paper explores the rationale and process of engaging the Bo-Kaap community who, at the time this paper was written, were subjected to a gentrification. The research for this paper included the participation of students for them to develop greater awareness and become agents of social justice. This study also used oral testimonies in developing a strategy designed to help other communities in becoming more vigilant against gentrification and its resulting displacement, and to preserve local culture, traditions, and language.

Teacher narratives and understandings of (de)humanising pedagogy

A pre-requisite to teaching and learning for humanisation, is the acknowledgement of our situated selves. Situated selves are positioned in our previous, current, and future experiences. The words we use refer to realities and views of the world (Roux and Becker 2016). For Freire (1993, 68) “to speak a true word is to transform the world”. Education plays a crucial role in transforming people’s worlds, their mindsets, and social relations, that is, in how we name and rename our world. Teachers, therefore, are key mediators of transformative change as agents of social justice, and in the facilitation of learning as transformative specialists (Giroux 1983). Education is therefore a space that would reap the benefits of humanisation. The case study draws on teacher narratives and interviews to explore how teachers understand and reflect on a humanising pedagogy. I conclude that drawing on a humanising pedagogy is a priority for student accomplishment and significant for academic and social resilience.

“Slowly by Slowly”: Youth Participatory Action Research in Contexts of Displacement

Background/Context: Despite substantial evidence documenting the benefits of community involvement in the decisions that impact their lives, much humanitarian action in settings of displacement continues to be driven by the interests and funding streams of donors and international agencies. These dynamics particularly marginalize youth, who fall between interventions designed for children and opportunities for voice and agency that are reserved for adults. As youth-centered approaches have proliferated across diverse fields, pointing to the important insights gleaned from positioning young people as experts on their own lives, we rarely have a sense of how young people were included in the research or planning processes carried out, or the extent to which these processes reflect issues that local youth populations consider meaningful and relevant to their everyday lives. Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) aims to redress the limitations of traditional approaches, recognizing youth as co-researchers with the agency to shape the inquiry process, positioning them as both knowledge producers and agents of social justice beyond the research context. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: Youth agency is central to YPAR, but interpretations and enactments of this agency are often implicitly bounded by nation-state constructs of legality and citizenship. How do we apply this approach in contexts where youth populations lack legal citizenship status and experience habitual threats to spatial movement, freedom of expression, and social belonging? In this paper we explore how youth locate openings to enact the agency that YPAR assumes of them, and the dilemmas that emerge as they aspire to address local challenges and contribute to the common good in contexts of forced displacement. Research Design: We examine these questions in the context of YPAR collaborations we carried out with displaced youth living in refugee camps and urban settlements in three country contexts: Burundi, Jordan, and Kenya. We approached YPAR collaborations with distinct research methods, positionalities, timelines, and varying levels of resources and institutional support. In each case, granting youth agency as co-researchers, we implicitly and explicitly raised questions about how young people come to understand the limits to their rights and agency, when forcibly displaced by conflict. Conclusions/Recommendations: Across the three collaborations detailed in this text, we underscore the ways that YPAR became a novel, and at times a radical, form of democratic citizenship education for a youth population traditionally positioned as passive recipients of both school curriculum and humanitarian aid. Notwithstanding significant challenges, we point to ways that this approach “slowly by slowly” created openings for young people to make claims on their rights and organize towards changes. It underscores the empowering potential of developing young people’s civic capacity and instilling their rights to understand and interact with their communities in exile.

Social Justice and Community-Based Rehabilitation Counseling

This invited article reports and reflects upon the proceedings of a presentation at the NRCA Symposium on Social Justice held on in Memphis Tennessee in 2019. The author posits that a proper understanding of social justice opens the door for a new, international vision for rehabilitation counseling in the context of community. The model reinterprets rehabilitation counseling as social justice counseling within the framework of community-based rehabilitation as currently defined within the established matrix and guidelines. This model augments our understanding of rehabilitation counseling role and function with an emerging practice in advocacy/empowerment. The construct of empowerment is operationalized for development in practice across community settings. The author reflects upon lessons learned in advancing this model of practice in the Asia/Pacific region. In a call for collaborative next steps, he concludes that the way to an empowered international identity for rehabilitation counseling is through an activist, inclusive, international community of practice that advocates for our role as agents of social justice.

Community Health Workers: Connecting Communities and Supporting School Nurses.

For over a century, community health workers (CHWs) have acted as agents of social justice, health care promotion, and change for the underresourced communities they serve and come from. Over 50,000 CHWs are employed in the United States, and this number is growing with the need for CHWs to help fight both the COVID-19 pandemic and social injustice plaguing our nation. Even with many students learning from home, it is crucial that healthcare be integrated into the school system since a child's health greatly affects their ability to learn. CHWs in schools can help overcome community and cultural barriers to connect families to various community resources and provide important health screenings and education. On return to the traditional classroom, the myriad of tasks such as infection prevention, contact tracing, and temperature screening are not feasible for a school nurse to do alone. CHWs may be just the leaders we need to help schools address the challenges faced in 2020.

Cyberbullying: Roles of school psychologists and school counselors in addressing a pervasive social justice issue

School psychologists and school counselors can act as agents of social justice in schools to prevent cyberbullying, particularly among the most vulnerable populations. Cyberbullying is an emerging form of bullying that has shown an alarming increase in society within the last decade and in schools as microcosms of society. Cyberbullying among K-12 students has adverse social, physical, and emotional impacts for victims, perpetrators, and bystanders. Advocacy for prevention, intervention, and more effective policies from school psychologists and counselors is of paramount importance for student and school community well-being and safety. This article provides an overview of cyberbullying in schools as a social justice issue; explores advocacy, ethical, and practitioner roles of both school psychologists and school counselors to address this issue among students in schools; discusses empirically based psychotherapy techniques for intervention and risk assessment; and offers policy and practice options to address cyberbullying.

Social justice implications for educational psychologists working with orphans and vulnerable children in South Africa

The aim of this article is to discuss the social justice implications for educational psychologists working with orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) who comprise 3.7 million of the population in South Africa. The author begins with a global conceptualisation of social justice and then discusses the nature of social justice in South Africa. This is followed by an exploration of social justice within the discipline of educational psychology and how it would apply to the contexts of OVC, especially taking their psychosocial and educational challenges into consideration. These challenges allude to the point that educational psychologists have to be active agents of social justice who advocate for better learning and development opportunities for OVC to succeed in life. Thus, the social justice implications for educational psychologists working with OVC are discussed. In concluding, the author points out the global value of this article noting that OVC and educational psychologists are prevalent across the globe.

Roles, practices and contexts for acting as agents of social justice – student teachers’ perspectives

ABSTRACTStudent teachers are oftentimes encouraged to apply theoretical principles of social justice to their professional practice. However, this can be problematic when theoretical knowledge is contested or if it is inconsistent with the practices in their future workplaces. Studies in this area often examine student teachers’ beliefs and understanding of their roles without taking account of how concrete working contexts shape what they see as possible in their practice. This study explored how students in two teacher education programmes based at the University of Edinburgh perceived their roles, practices and contexts for acting as agents of social justice. Mixed methods were used for data generation and triangulation including a questionnaire survey (n = 299) and scenario-based interviews (n = 9) to explore how students think about social justice issues in context. Student teachers generally saw agency for social justice as part of their role. Their understanding of the ways of addressing context-embedded issues of social justice focused on classroom practices while they raised concerns about how their practice depends on others in the system. We discuss the implications of these findings for teacher education.

Taxation and Democracy

Political economy assumes that taxation and democracy interact beneficially when there exists “congruence” or “equivalence” among those who vote on the tax, those who pay the tax, and those who benefit from the tax. Yet this only holds true when we look at the community of taxpayers as an aggregate, not at the position of the individual taxpayer. Individuals might regard democratic decision-making as a tool for the majority to exploit the minority. They might also perceive powerful special interest groups to extract preferential tax treatment to the detriment of other constituencies. In the international situation, the notion of “congruence” or “equivalence” comes under additional strain. Why do most countries allow citizens abroad to vote without being subject to tax while resident aliens are subject to tax without the right to vote? In recent years, tax competition has exerted even more pressure on democratic discourse: Is the “exit” option for individuals a source of irritation for democratic tax legislation or is it rather a useful device to protect the individual against being overtaxed? To what extent shall outside investors take into account the redistributive policies of States? These issues do not only challenge the traditional balance of taxation and democracy. They also challenge our views on how we perceive the State and how we define the community of taxpayers as agents of social justice. In tax law, the borderline between “us” and “them” has to be addressed as unlimited tax liability involves a notion of solidarity that is hard to capture in a globalized world. Against this background, this article explores the constitutional framework of taxation and democracy in a comparative fashion. It presents two major pathways for the protection of the individual in fiscal matters: protection by “content” (material tax principles) and protection by “consent” (voting rights) as they have evolved since the days of Hobbes and Locke. While the United Kingdom and the United States largely rely on the protective value of democratic consent, countries in Europe and in Latin America have resorted to hard-wired constitutional constraints on tax legislation, ensuring a high-degree of judicial review by constitutional courts. This constitutional framework comes under increased pressure once a country opens itself to the globalized world. It remains to be seen to what extent material principles – like the principle of equality – are in the position to restrain a country’s engagement in international tax competition.

Whose world and what knowledge? Reading comprehension and knowledge of the world

This article examines the assertion that good reading comprehension is, in part, reliant on what the Primary National Curriculum terms “knowledge of the world”. Drawing on academic literature rather than first-hand observation, the article explores how the phrase “knowledge of the world” may be interpreted and enacted by teachers, questioning the interplay between knowledge, pedagogy and power. Following the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, debate has circled around those who have felt marginalised by mainstream elements of society, including the political and educational systems. In the light of this, the article proposes that this is a key moment for UK schools to review the way in which the curriculum is translated and made meaningful to pupils. Teachers – by repositioning themselves in relation to the knowledge content of the curriculum, their pupils and their families – are uniquely situated to act as agents for social justice.