Justice Education Research Articles

Treat me fairly now or I will commit misconduct later: integrating general strain and procedural (in)justice in graduate education

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to integrate general strain theory and procedural justice in the context of research misconduct in university settings. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on media accounts and past research, the authors present data on the financial costs of research misconduct to universities and identify graduate school processes as a possible source of strain may lead to misconduct. Relevant research on procedural justice in organizational settings is also examined. Findings The available literature suggests that the use of procedurally just practices will help reduce strain, and in doing so, potentially prevent research misconduct in university settings. The authors present an integrated theoretical model that can be tested in future empirical studies of research misconduct and other forms of white-collar crime in universities. Directions for future theoretically informed research are discussed, along with recommendations for graduate program administrators. Originality/value Research misconduct causes significant financial and reputational costs to universities. While past research focuses on mentoring and training for preventing misconduct by graduate students, this study argues that the use of fair evaluations and other procedurally just processes is also important.

Being the supervisor: A duo-ethnographic exploration of social justice in postgraduate health professions education.

There is growing global awareness of the importance of matters of equity and social justice. In health professions education (HPE), research has focused at undergraduate level and on health sciences curricula. Increasingly, health care professionals engage in HPE Master's and doctoral studies, where they are educated as curriculum designers and 'producers' of knowledge through their research. Considering their role in shaping what (and how it) is taught in health sciences curricula, questions can be asked about the extent to which postgraduate pedagogies are mindful of matters of social justice. As supervisors of postgraduate HPE students and as directors of such programmes, we interrogated and juxtaposed our perspectives on social justice and how these perspectives influence our postgraduate HPE supervisory and directing practices in our respective contexts. Utilising a duo-ethnographic approach, in which we each represented a site of enquiry, we generated data through written reflections and dialogic engagement framed around research questions about (1) our understanding of social justice, (2) how this influenced our practices as postgraduate supervisors and (3) how this influenced our practices and policies as directors of postgraduate studies. We recorded and transcribed our data generation meetings. Based on open coding of the transcriptions and written reflections, we constructed a conversation around our research questions. We integrated our reflexive journals in the conversation. Our conversations were characterised by three sets of ideas involving the terminology around social justice, the complex nature of social justice, and the individual and social justice. These played out differently in our contexts, but they caution both of us against assumptions and encourage us to create time for conversations with our students, to consider what we 'teach' them, how we guide them and how we avoid gatekeeping their entry into the disciplinary space.

Increasing the diversity of the teaching workforce: a review of minority teacher candidates’ recruitment, retention, and experiences in initial teacher education

ABSTRACT Diversifying the teaching profession is critical for social justice and equity in education. Yet, teacher candidates from ethnic minority backgrounds remain underrepresented in initial teacher education (ITE) programmes in many countries. This paper reports on a review of 40 studies that examine the experiences of minority teacher candidates and the strategies to improve their recruitment and retention. Findings reveal structural and institutional barriers that affect minority teacher candidates’ experiences and their transformative power and agency to navigate these challenges. Recruitment and retention strategies are identified. This paper contributes to the discourse on equity, diversity, and inclusion in teacher education and offers insights for policymakers and ITE providers. Implications for policies and practice are discussed.

Basic advantages of education in the spirit of Confucianism and lessons for Vietnam today

Confucianism considers human education as upholding the role of educational culture, considering academic education as an important way to promote social development and create human identity. Although Confucius's views on the purposes, guidelines, contents and methods of education were introduced more than 2500 years ago, many of the contents still have topical significance up to now. The article explores the basic advantages of education in the spirit of Confucianism and draws lessons related to education in Vietnam today. Accordingly, for Vietnam today, after 37 years of implementing the doi moi process, along with economic growth, macroeconomic stability has been maintained in all aspects: politics, society, national defense and economic development. security is guaranteed and stable, including very encouraging achievements in education and training. The lesson for education in Vietnam today is: the lesson of attaching importance to education and training as the top national policy and the lesson of social justice in education. The limitation of this article is that it has not analyzed the limitations of education in the spirit of Confucianism.

“Mirrors and windows:” a case study of educators’ culturally responsive teaching aspirations and syllabi transformation in the arts

This qualitative case study explored educators’ aspirations to transform arts pedagogy into a culturally sustaining praxis. Twenty-four educators engaged in a 20-h online training, including engaging with prints in the Artura.org print collection, reading culturally sustaining scholarship, dialoguing, and decolonizing lesson plans. Twenty educators participated in dyadic interviews, revealing a deeper understanding of cultural identities and pedagogical changes to shape positive cultural identities for students. Findings highlight how art contributes to social justice teaching goals emphasizing intentional educator self-reflection to anticipate challenges and avoid cultural exploitation. Recommendations include utilizing online art databases with diverse artists in teacher professional development.

Faculty and Student Perspectives on Online Learning in Higher Education

The international transforming learning community, coupled with cultural diversity and technological complexities, spurred an unprecedented acceleration in the adoption of online learning. This reshaped the educational landscape, presenting both challenges and opportunities for educators and learners worldwide. To provide insights into the use of information technology and online learning in higher education and to inform future practices, this qualitative study investigated university faculty and students’ online learning experiences. Purposeful sampling was employed to ensure a diverse selection of participants. Eight faculty and eight students from diverse higher education institutions in the U.S. participated in one-on-one interviews. The study utilized a social constructivist interpretive paradigm, and data were analyzed using iterative categorization. Findings revealed concerns about online learning effectiveness due to limited social interaction. Three main themes emerged: challenges encountered, student engagement, and strategies to improve online learning effectiveness. This research enriches the scholarly discourse on online education by elucidating faculty and student perceptions regarding factors impacting the effectiveness of online learning and sustainable teaching strategies for future higher education. It highlights a paradigm shift in higher education and emphasizes the importance of equitable access to digital resources and inclusive policies to address disparities in online learning support, promoting equity and social justice in education.

The power should be balanced: Central dimensions of healthy intergenerational partnerships

This article tells the story of the Kentucky Student Voice Team (KSVT), a youth organization that is working toward educational justice in Kentucky by amplifying student voice in education research, advocacy, and policy. In particular, this study examines what makes a healthy intergenerational partnership. Findings reveal three key dimensions of the constitution of healthy intergenerational partnership: the purposeful shifting of power; flexible, vulnerable communication; and ongoing acknowledgement and accommodation to different people, processes, and places. Challenges and opportunities within contemporary collaborative research are also discussed.

Intersections of social justice and emotion labor among English language teachers: A perezhivanie inquiry

In light of the recent growth of research on social justice and emotion labor in TESOL teacher education, the present study aimed to fill a gap regarding the intersections of these two constructs. Thus, the study explored emotion labor and social justice among Iranian English language teachers through the theoretical lens of perezhivanie. Data were collected from narrative frames and semi-structured interviews as situated within a narrative inquiry methodology. Data analyses showed that the teachers' perezhivanie included not just how contextual demands and institutional expectations impeded effective actualization of social justice, but the latter itself became a source of emotion labor for the teachers through discourse, culture, and ideology. The findings highlight that inasmuch as social justice is a constructive purpose in educational work, it should equally be understood and enacted cautiously because it has the potential to become a source of emotional challenges and professional conundrums for teachers. We provide implications for teachers and teacher educators to contextualize social justice based on situational particularities so that teachers’ perezhivanie is featured more by emotional transformation than by emotion labor.

Defining restorative justice: a perspective from England and Wales’s further education sector

ABSTRACT Despite the lack of clarity in the literature in understanding restorative justice, scholars argue that it is rich and diverse in its meaning and application. However, a gap exists between theory and practice, and since ‘practice without theory is blind, and theory without practice is meaningless’ (Morrison, 2015, p. 449), a definition of restorative justice is essential, especially as the concept has now been adopted in other sectors such as education. This study defines restorative justice practices for institutions in the UK’s further education sector to guide them and their practices. As these institutions regularly deal with behavioural challenges in education, they have adopted restorative justice practices to better manage and deal with such situations and to create a safer environment and help the perpetrator reflect on the impact of their behaviour. In the UK, research on restorative justice in education focuses on primary and secondary schools, but is limited and underdeveloped in the further education sector. Based on data collected over 14 months, this study explores how the staff at these institutions explain restorative justice practices and purposes and finds a consensus based on these explanations.

Kontribusi Pemerintah Kota Bitung dalam Memajukan Pendidikan Non-Formal melalui Bantuan Sosial kepada PKBM

This research illustrates how the Bitung City Government's policy through social assistance for the distribution of the implementation of non-formal education programs in the center of community learning activities in an effort to increase the level of graduation of the community in Bitung City through the Equality Examinations program. As well as how the Bitung City Government's policy related to budget assistance to the center of community learning activities can accommodate the needs of people who drop out evenly and have the same opportunity in the fulfillment of educational services in Bitung City. Thus, this research focuses on two things, namely 1) Analyzing a non -formal education budget assistance policy issued by the Bitung City Government; 2) Knowing the optimization of social assistance to the center of community learning activities for justice and equity in education for people of Bitung City. The research uses a qualitative approach with a type of descriptive research by collecting data that researchers will use, namely through: in-depth interviews, observations and documentation studies. Through this research, it is known that the Bitung City Government has tried to strengthen the non-formal education sector through social assistance in the operational budget for equitable implementation of equality education programs at the center of community learning activities; the conclusion is that the Bitung City Government must maintain the aid policy for the long term by making a Mayor Regulation Consider the number of high school dropout communities and the limitations of the community learning activity center itself.

Where we are: reflecting on our use of critical mapping practices for spatial justice in teacher education

PurposeThe purpose of this article is for three teacher educators to reflect on their use of mapping and mapping-adjacent activities in university courses vis-à-vis the development of their own critical praxis toward spatial justice. The authors focus on how the centering of geospatial literacies through spatial justice issues impacts the development of criticality for preservice teachers and their teacher educators.Design/methodology/approachThe paper opted for collaborative reflections about our teacher educator praxis through self-study and critical friends. Three teacher educators wrote vignettes about their experiences with place-based mapping approaches in teacher education coursework.FindingsThe paper suggests that mapping activities (broadly defined) create space(s) for courageous conversations on difficult topics (e.g. race and social-economic status). These spaces are not only between teacher and student but also can be extended to teacher educators by focusing on critical and collaborative self-study.Research limitations/implicationsBecause of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalizability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to use critical and collaborative reflection to inform their own praxis.Practical implicationsThe paper shares pedagogical approaches and reflections for highlighting geospatial literacies and critical place consciousness within teacher education.Originality/valueThis has significance as there is a relative dearth of literature detailing how critical teacher educators can learn with and from each other when working to focus place-based learning in the context of teacher preparation.

(Re)constructing and (re)negotiating identities: A case study of postsecondary language teachers and social justice education

AbstractThis study explores the identity formation of two postsecondary language teachers and course coordinators—one in German and one in French—as they created intermediate‐level, content‐based social justice curricular units for a multiyear project. Using a multiple‐case‐study methodology and cultural–historical activity theory, this qualitative investigation answers the following research question: How do experienced postsecondary language teachers (re)construct and (re)negotiate their identities while developing social justice teaching materials? Findings, based on multicycle descriptive coding, reveal that participants’ past experiences, personal values, feelings of self‐doubt, and positionality as content‐based language teachers influenced their language teacher identity, as did tensions within and across three activity systems: the curriculum development project, classroom teaching, and the coordination of multisection courses. These findings have important implications for teacher professional development and community building related to social justice in language education.

Environmental justice teaching in an undergraduate context: examining the intersection of community-engaged, inclusive, and anti-racist pedagogy

Since the early 1980s, the environmental justice (EJ) movement was critical in drawing much needed attention on how Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC), and low-income groups have experienced a disproportionate burden of environmental harms. This movement eventually formed the field of environmental justice, a multidisciplinary area of study that attempts to identify environmental injustices and provide theory and practice for their resolution. Despite the expansion of the EJ field and recent public attention, research shows that both EJ content knowledge and BIPOC students are isolated and excluded from Interdisciplinary, Environmental, and Sustainability (IES) programs within higher education. In addition, these studies have shown a relationship between EJ content and community-engaged practices with the inclusion of BIPOC students. This study sought to examine how and why EJ teaching and community-engaged pedagogies may be associated with inclusive or anti-racist practices by examining four faculty members teaching undergraduate EJ courses at four institutions. Using a multi-case study design, primary findings showed that faculty members held activist course objectives, which led to distinct community-engaged practices, such as the invitation of diverse guest educators, inclusion of readings from diverse authors, field experiences with EJ communities, and the integration of alternative ways of knowing that resist Eurocentric biases. The discussion and implications explore how these practices intersect with inclusive and anti-racist pedagogies, and provide recommendations for their implementation within the context of Environmental Studies and Sciences (ESS) in higher education.

Measuring and understanding contemporary English educational inequalities

Abstract This commentary argues that educational inequality is not one thing but an intricate and complicated amalgam of many different factors. The dominant political view regarding education is one that accepts the efficacy of the market, and does not question the consequences of the preoccupation with performativity and outcomes for learning processes and pedagogy. Furthermore, there has been a general endorsement rather than challenge of social mobility as the main mechanism of social justice in education, an acceptance of private schools, and an influential movement within the discipline that promotes the notion of knowledge as power rather than any strong concern with analysing and understanding the workings of power within education. I will focus on all these trends and their consequences for educational inequalities, taking a multi-disciplinary approach that brings together insights from sociology and psychology as well as education. However, first I will examine the issue of measurement in relation to educational inequalities.

Critically Conscious Early and Elementary Educators: Towards Abolitionist Education in Teacher Preparation

How do teacher preparation programs re-culture themselves so that we can supply educational settings with teachers who work toward liberation from racism and other systems of oppression? Abolitionist education is one strategic framework that can be utilized to support this systemic re-culturing. I share my experiences in re-designing and facilitating a diversity course in an early childhood education (ECE) teacher preparation program toward abolitionist education through culturally and historically responsive learning, social justice teaching frameworks, Chicana/Latina feminist philosophy, and abolitionist pedagogy. The course explored four units: Identity, Justice and Anti-Bias, Intergenerational Genius, and Freedom Dreaming and Abolition. In-class and at-home projects included positionality statements, analyzing characteristics of white supremacy culture operating in ECE, studying abolitionist movement organizers, and transforming mandated curriculum based on social justice for young children. In this article, I share the context of the course redesign, my facilitation, and reflexive ideas for moving toward abolitionist education as a field of teacher preparation.

Exploring the Challenges of Implementing the Integration Plan of Students With Borderline Intellectual Functioning in Ahvaz City Ordinary Schools: A Qualitative Study

Background and Aims Integrated education is a movement towards educational justice and integration of the education program for all, the implementation of which is still facing challenges. The present study aimed to explain the challenges of implementing the integration plan for students with borderline mental functioning in the ordinary schools of Ahvaz City, Iran. Methods The present study was conducted using a qualitative approach in primary schools in Ahvaz City using conventional content analysis based on the approach of Lundman and Graneheim from December 2020 to August 2021. Data were collected through field notes and 17 in-depth semi-structured interviews with 12 individuals, including 7 teachers, 2 principals and 3 assistants. Data coding and analysis were performed using MAXQDA software, version 18. Results Data analysis led to the emergence of 28 codes, including 3 categories of educational system challenges (with two subcategories of lack of planning and poor system of appraising borderline students), teachers’ challenges (with 5 subcategories of annoyance and objection of ordinary students, not following educational calendar program, high workload in integration classes, crowding and confusion of integration classes, and the teacher’s emotional reaction to not learning of the borderline students), and the attitude and response to integration plan (with 3 subcategories of reaction of ordinary students’ parents toward the integration plan, negative attitude of educational staff toward integration plan, and teachers’ objection toward integration plan). Conclusion The results showed that the administrators have a negative attitude toward implementing the integration plan and are against it. The successful implementation of the integration plan depends on solving the challenges in the path of this plan. It seems that the results of the present study can help education managers and policymakers design suitable and desirable programs to solve the challenges and facilitate the integration of students with borderline mental functioning in ordinary schools.

Becoming a restorative university: The role of restorative justice in higher education

Becoming a restorative university: The role of restorative justice in higher education

Lived Experiences of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Leaders in U.S. Music Education Professional Associations

Abstract Music education professional associations (MEPAs) are membership-based nonprofit organizations focused on advancing music education through actions including professional development, policy work, and advocacy. In this instrumental case study, we interviewed diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) leaders from MEPAs in the United States (N = 16) to elicit self-reports of their leadership experiences. Participants identified the deep, personal work involved in enacting and sustaining DEI efforts. They reported experiences of harm in DEI work and described progress toward liberation for people of color as a slow, exhausting slog. Participants’ responses also indicated movement toward intersectional approaches to equity and justice. MEPA DEI leader experiences have important implications for advancing equity and justice in music education, including the need for MEPA leadership to consider ways institutional logics create harm and take steps to support and uplift people who are striving for equity and justice within the organizations, including through compensation, solidarity, and structural changes.

Culturally Responsive Teaching: Bridging the Achievement Gap

Culturally responsive teaching (CRT) is an approach that recognizes the diverse cultural backgrounds and experiences of students and seeks to integrate these perspectives into the classroom to promote academic success and equity. This paper explores the principles and practices of culturally responsive teaching and its role in bridging the achievement gap among students from different cultural backgrounds. It examines the importance of cultural competence, cultural relevance, and social justice in education and highlights the benefits of adopting a culturally responsive approach for both students and educators. Additionally, the paper discusses strategies and instructional practices that educators can use to create culturally responsive learning environments, including incorporating students' cultural identities, experiences, and languages into curriculum and instruction. By embracing culturally responsive teaching, educators can create inclusive, engaging, and empowering learning experiences that meet the diverse needs of all students and help close the achievement gap.

Ethics and context in second language testing: rethinking validity in theory and practice. M. Rafael Salaberry, Albert Weideman, and Wei-Li Hsu (2023). New York, Routledge, 248 Pages, ISBN 9781032471754

A resounding body of scholarship highlights the necessity of considering ethical concerns and social impacts of language tests and assessment practices in second language (L2) education (Brown & Harris, 2016; Davies, 2008; Fan et al., 2017). Without taking these issues into account, ensuring the right, reliable, and fair judgment is a tough task for L2 practitioners (Cohen, 2006; Gipps & Stobart, 2009). Inspired by the significance of ethics in L2 assessment, various studies have been done on the perceptions of stakeholders and common professional codes of ethics in the field of L2 education (Brown et al., 2020; Shohamy, 2020). Nevertheless, the situated nature of ethics across contextual particularities and in light of test validation theory has remained under-addressed. Urged to bridge this gap, Salaberry, Weideman, and Hsu (2023) compiled a handbook entitled “Ethics and Context in Second Language Testing: Rethinking Validity in Theory and Practice”, as a timely response to the need for a critical approach to L2 assessment. In so doing, they collected the voices of different stakeholders from different languages and contexts to comprehensively picture the status of social justice and equity in language education. The book, hence, provides an overview of key concepts, theories, and models of ethics and validity in language education and makes seminal suggestions for researching and practicing these constructs. This invaluable handbook is momentous for teachers, students, and researchers, especially those majoring in applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, and language policy and planning.