Justice Orientation Research Articles

Impact and Inclusion: Transforming an EdD Program into a Crucible for Systems Change

This article shares insights from a review of dissertations produced by students in an EdD program in Educational Leadership at a public university in Connecticut. Program curriculum and learning experiences, built upon a social justice platform, prepare students to engage in scholarship and action to improve educational systems. However, retaining students’ focus on designing capstone projects that explore and seek to mitigate systemic injustice has been an ongoing challenge. To understand more about the impact of the EdD program’s vision of developing students’ capacities for systems transformation and social justice, program faculty conducted a document analysis of dissertations produced in the 15 years from program inception to the present, examining themes and trends that emerge from the focus areas, research questions, and research methods applied in dissertations. Document analysis revealed that, while earlier student dissertations tended to be more aligned with the educational policy cycle than with the program’s focus on social justice, more recent dissertations demonstrate a shift toward a stronger social justice orientation. As a member of the Carnegie Project on the Educational Doctorate (CPED) since 2018, this university’s EdD program engages in ongoing redesign to maximize impact on the field and to cultivate activism among program graduates who will lead systemic transformation in education. A conceptual framework for transcendent third-order change - cultivating systems leadership that transcends the limits of current paradigms and action, fosters collaborative engagement, and provides coherent structures for collaborative impact - is the foundation for this redesign.

Working in Solidarity: An Intersectional Self-Study Methodology as a Means to Inform Social Justice Teacher Education

ABSTRACT In this article, we critically analyze our experiences in preparing pre-service teachers (PSTs) to teach for social justice. We utilized an intersectional lens to identify and validate our different positionalities and pedagogies. It is this interplay of validating our differences and commonalities that enabled us to form a sense of solidarity in our efforts to nurture our students’ critical consciousness. Through our collective engagement with intersectionality and self-study methodology, we co-constructed a common ground of what social justice teaching meant to us and how we navigated the highly personal, messy, and often contradictory experiences of engaging in this work with students. From this process, we uncovered three themes from our self-study: 1) curriculum is a living entity; 2) teaching is personal and vulnerable, and 3) co-teaching and collaboration invigorates us to keep practicing our social justice orientation.

Contributors

Contributors

Measuring public support for distributive justice principles: assessing the measurement quality of the Basic Social Justice Orientations scale

Measuring public support for distributive justice principles: assessing the measurement quality of the Basic Social Justice Orientations scale

Psychological sense of community, community civic participation, and ethnic identity on social justice orientation and psychological empowerment between LGBQ and Non-LGBQ youth of color

For lesbian, gay, bisexual, and questioning (LGBQ) youth of color, the intersection of identifying as both LGBQ and a person of color results in not only managing racial stereotypes, but also heterosexism and genderism. Developing a critical understanding of oppressive social conditions and ways to engage in social action is a form of resistance for these youth. Research is needed among LGBQ youth of color that examines the range of predictors and outcomes related to civic engagement, development, and empowerment. Drawing on data derived from a sample of urban youth of color (N = 383; 53.1% Female; 75% Hispanic; Age range = 14 to 18 years; 15% identify as LGBQ), this study will: (1) examine the relationship between community-based perceptions (e.g., psychological sense of community), ethnic identity, behaviors (e.g., community civic participation) and awareness of social justice concerns with dimensions of psychological empowerment; and (2) assess differences that these relationships have between LGBQ and non-LGBQ youth of color. Findings indicate that main predictors have a positive impact on intrapersonal and cognitive dimensions of psychological empowerment through social justice orientation, with noted variations between LGBQ and non-LGBQ youth of color.

Shifting Discourse on Climate and Sustainability: Key Characteristics of the Higher Education Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement

In the last decade, the fossil fuel divestment (FFD) movement has emerged as a key component of an international grassroots mobilization for climate justice. Using a text analysis of Facebook pages for 144 campaigns at higher education institutions (HEIs), this article presents an overview and analysis of the characteristics of the higher education (HE) FFD movement in the US. The results indicate that campaigns occur at a wide array of HEIs, concentrated on the east and west coasts. Primarily student led, campaigns set broad goals for divestment, while reinvestment is often a less clearly defined objective. Campaigns incorporate a mixture of environmental, social, and economic arguments into their messaging. Justice is a common theme, used often in a broad context rather than towards specific populations or communities impacted by climate change or other social issues. These insights contribute to the understanding of the HE FFD movement as ten years of campus organizing approaches. In particular, this study illustrates how the movement is pushing sustainability and climate action in HE and in broader society towards a greater focus on systemic change and social justice through campaigns’ hardline stance against fossil fuels and climate justice orientation.

Enacting Critical Citizenship: An Intersectional Approach to Global Citizenship Education

Global citizenship is a popular concept that was fully embraced by UNESCO in 2015 with a framework for Global Citizenship Education (GCE). This pedagogical guidance can be characterized as transformative since it aims to foster reflective citizens who contribute to building a more inclusive, just, and peaceful world. Thus, GCE allows educators to take a critical approach to their teaching, hereby articulating a clear social justice orientation towards citizenship education. However, recent studies indicate that most interpretations and thus implementations of GCE do not translate into a social action approach. Therefore, this article conceptualizes an intersectional approach to GCE, to make a critical approach of GCE more likely by practitioners. Intersectionality was developed by Black feminists in the US, to highlight structural oppressions and privileges on the basis of analytical categories. Intersectionality, furthermore, allows for opportunities to recognize resilience and resistance in marginalized communities. Therefore, an intersectional approach to GCE would develop sensibilities among students to understand global structures of oppression and domination on the basis of analytical categories like race, gender, and class. This knowledge would lead to an awareness of one’s own complicity and shared responsibility, resulting in deliberations and eventually political actions. The overall aim is to provide practitioners with a concrete suggestion of a critical interpretation of GCE, to show its potential as a social justice-orientated framework for educators in especially continental Europe.

Spiritual leadership and organizational citizenship behavior for the environment: An intervening and interactional analysis

The present study proposes that spiritual leadership is positively associated with organizational citizenship behavior for the environment (OCBE) directly and indirectly, via environmental justice orientation. The study also proposes harmonious environmental passion as a moderator of the relationship between spiritual leadership and OCBE. The proposed relationships were tested using time-lagged survey data from 337 supervisor-employee dyads in 41 Chinese firms. We found that spiritual leadership is positively associated with OCBE, both directly and indirectly, via environmental justice orientation. Interestingly, the results revealed that the direct association of spiritual leadership with OCBE was contingent on harmonious environmental passion. Our findings offer important implications that can help managers make appropriate interventions to reduce organizations’ carbon footprint. Highlights The relationship between spiritual leadership and OCBE was examined Data were collected from 337 supervisor-employee dyads Spiritual leadership is positively related to OCBE Environmental justice orientation mediates the spiritual leadership-OCBE link Environmental harmonious passion moderates the spiritual leadership-OCBE link

Subnational constitutional courts and judicialization in Germany

This paper examines the contribution of German subnational constitutional courts to the judicialization of politics in the German states, known as Länder. This research goal entails three dimensions. First, I have to define and measure judicialization. To accomplish this task, I use an index recently developed by an international group of scholars of comparative politics. Second, based on major theoretical approaches, I identify possible causes that might give reasons for judicialization, namely institutional preconditions and preferences of justices. In a third step, I use a linear regression in order to test the theory empirically and find links between causes and effects of judicial decision-making in subnational constitutional courts. The findings confirm institutionalist approaches that contribute to explaining decision-making in German subnational constitutional courts.

Using a Trauma-Informed, Socially Just Research Framework with Marginalized Populations: Practices and Barriers to Implementation

AbstractSocial workers, including social work researchers, are called on to challenge social injustices and pursue social change. Research has shown a strong association between trauma and adversity and marginalized populations, exposing the unequal distribution of trauma and its effects throughout society. Given the focus on marginalized populations in social work, the social justice orientation of the field, and the intersection of trauma with marginalized populations, a framework to guide social work researchers in conducting trauma-informed, socially just research with marginalized populations is warranted. Therefore, this article provides a framework integrating trauma theory, trauma-informed principles, and intersectionality as a guide for social work research. The proposed framework is illustrated using a case study of low-income, predominantly African American men recruited from a criminal justice setting, acknowledging facilitators and barriers to implementation. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications for researchers and doctoral student training.

The moral, or the story? Changing children's distributive justice preferences through social communication

Can social communication alter children's preexisting inclinations toward equality-based or merit-based forms of resource distribution? Six- to eight-year-old children's (N = 248) fairness preferences were evaluated with third-party distribution tasks before and after an intervention. Study 1 indicated that stories about beavers dividing wood had no impact on children's fairness preferences, while Study 2 indicated that brief, direct testimony was highly influential. Study 3 matched storybooks and testimony in content, with each discussing a situation resembling the distribution task, and both formats exerted a significant impact on children's fairness preferences that persisted across several weeks. There were some indications that interventions preaching the superiority of equality-based fairness were particularly effective, but there were no differences between reason-based and emotion-based interventions. Overall, storybooks and testimony can powerfully and enduringly change children's existing distributive justice preferences, as long as the moral lessons that are conveyed are easily transferable to children's real-world contexts.

Суд как субъект защиты прав граждан

The article deals with the legal status of the court as a subject of protection of human and civil rights and freedoms. The article justifies that the subject matter is the cross-sectoral legal status of the court from the perspective of its human rights function with regard to human rights. The issue has been examined in terms of the human rights orientation of justice through the analysis of certain types of judicial proceedings. Certain categories of cases with the greatest human rights focus have been identified, and judicial statistics have been analysed. The human rights potential of the principle of protection of the weak party in the legal relationship was noted. It is pointed out that the protection of human rights provides a world-view of the work of the judge and determines the social effectiveness of justice. Conclusions and proposals on the development of the human rights capacity of the judiciary were formulated.

Fluid Decolonial Futures: Water as a Life, Ocean Citizenship and Seascape Relationality

ABSTRACT Interrogating the settler-colonial governmentality of natural resource extraction lies at the heart of this article while centering relationships to water and emergent forms of ocean citizenship. This article articulates a seascape epistemology that conceives of water as a life force, not a resource, and offers a non-extractive way to conceptualize ocean citizenship. From an environmental justice orientation, this article responds to the following question: how can we move from an extractive treatment of the ocean to a relational approach? Fusing environmental political thought and decolonial futures, this article examines how seascape epistemologies turn away from landlocked property-centric territorial geographies and engage with more embodied, fluid, storied, and vibrant ways of being, knowing, and sensing the world. Informed by interpretive methods, political ethnography, and community-engagement, this article demonstrates how seascape epistemologies across archipelagos in Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) and Coast Salish (Canadian) territories challenge the foundational underpinnings of extractivist settler-colonial governmentality.

Being ignored at work: Understanding how and when spiritual leadership curbs workplace ostracism in the hospitality industry

Abstract Drawing on the conservation of resources theory, the present study theorizes that spiritual leadership is negatively related to workplace ostracism, both directly and indirectly via job social support and that employees’ justice orientation moderates the negative relationship between spiritual leadership and workplace ostracism. Based on time-lagged (three waves, two months apart) survey data collected from 252 hospitality employees, our findings reveal that spiritual leadership is negatively associated with workplace ostracism, both directly and indirectly via job social support. We also find that justice orientation strengthens the negative relationship between spiritual leadership and workplace ostracism. These findings not only highlight core theoretical contributions towards the existing literature on spiritual leadership, job social support, justice orientation, and workplace ostracism but also offer useful practical implications for hotel managers concerned about the repercussions of workplace ostracism for employees’ and organizations’ outcomes.

Worship and Sacrifice in Isaiah 1:10-17 A Textual Study and Application to the Contemporary Church and Society

Worship, which includes sacrifices and offerings, has been commanded by Yahweh but not as a replacement for total obedience of the Torah. However, it is common knowledge that Israel and Judah have a long biblical history of disobedience to Yahweh. Isaiah seems to visualize a mixup of blood (bull and human), which becomes a contamination before Yahweh and in turn, rendering their sacrifices worthless. This paper examines Isaiah’s position alongside those of his contemporaries - Amos, Hosea and Micah - through a textual study - on Yahweh’s preference for obedience and social justice over empty liturgical observances. It also argues the prevalence of hypocritical services found both in Church and society today.

Missing the sociopolitical: examining discourses of writing in a US high-performing, urban middle school

PurposeThis paper aims to examine two teachers’ beliefs and practices on teaching writing at an urban, high-performing middle school to determine: What discourses of writing are being taught in an urban, high-performing US public middle school? What factors prevent or enable particular discourses?Design/methodology/approachDrawing on case study methods, this study uses a single-case design with two seventh-grade teachers at a high-performing urban school as embedded units of analysis. Data collection took place over one semester. Data sources included observations and interviews with the two teachers, an interview with an administrator and multiple instructional artifacts, including unit and lesson plans. Observational data were analyzed using a priori code for writing discourses (Ivanic, 2004) and interview data were analyzed for factors affecting instruction using open, axial and selective coding.FindingsBoth teachers enacted extended multi-discourse writing instruction integrating skills, creativity, process, genre and social practices discourses supported by their beliefs and experience; colleagues; students’ relatively high test scores; and relative curricular freedom. However, there was minimal evidence of a sociopolitical discourse aligned with critical literacy practices. Limits to the sociopolitical discourse included a lack of a social justice orientation, an influx of low-performing students, a focus on raising test scores, data-focused professional development and district pacing guides. Racism is also considered as an underlying structural factor undermining the sociopolitical discourse.Research limitations/implicationsAlthough generalizability is limited because of the small sample size and the unique context of this study, two major implications are the need to layer discourses in writing instruction while centering critical pedagogy and develop teacher beliefs and knowledge. To support these two implications, this study suggests developing university-school partnerships and professional development opportunities that create a community of practice around comprehensive writing instruction. Future research will involve continuing to work with the participants in this study and documenting the effects of providing theory and tools for integrating the sociopolitical discourse into middle school curricula and instruction.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the field of literacy education’s understanding of internal and external factors limiting the sociopolitical discourse in a high-performing, urban middle school in the USA, an understudied context.

Re-Mixing Making: examining the Intersections of Hip Hop Culture, Maker Spaces, and Social Justice Education

Abstract Despite the potential to promote critical literacy formation, academic engagement and social justice education, maker activities and maker spaces do not always support or engage historically marginalized communities. This paper chronicles a response to this problem by examining a study created to support equitable engagement with youth in an after-school workshop series over 8-weeks that focused on Hip Hop cultural practices and the simultaneous development of critical literacy and social justice perspectives. The series, open to community youth was located in the makerspace of the local public library. Within this study, project designers drew from Gutierrez and Rogoff’s concept of “repertoires of practice” and focused particularly on questions of what counts as making, and who has agency to make these decisions and how engagement with hip hop culture mediates these understandings. I consider two instances where students engaged in Hip Hop- centered generative practices (particularly beat making and graffiti writing) and analyze moments of student resistance and agency as opportunities to expand understandings of development of critical media literacy and social justice orientation. This paper foregrounds the importance of iterative analysis and design as participants develop artistic, social, and political identities over the course of the workshop. Finally, this paper explores implications for classroom learning that emerged from the work, including expression, exploration, and collaboration.

The Arc of Justice Runs Unbendingly through Personal and National Character

The unmediated character of a citizen body determines the prospects for democratic governing. This essay puts that proposition drawn from George Washington to the test, drawing forth from that example principles by which to assess character-forming statesmanship. We inquire whether the course or track of the nation's existence has been unbending since Washington set it on that path, or whether it has rather run on two or more tracks since that time. National character consisted in shaping distinctive manners and mores among the citizens as a necessary incident of republican self-government and prioritized the attainment of forbearance and justice within the citizen body as the independent variable enabling wise statesmanship and judicious deliberation to provide direction upon such a foundation. Washington so fervently believed this that, in his “Farewell Address,” he reiterated it most powerfully in the pertinent observation that the conduct of national policy must be unswervingly just, as a reflection of the national character. Washington's observation, however, was challenged by Franklin Roosevelt, who shaped the United States no less decisively than Washington had previously done. Roosevelt did so in such a way as fundamentally to alter the national character by fostering personal dispositions inhospitable to the degree of responsibility summoned by Washington. His was a knowing redirection of society toward a conception of human community–and therefore national character–that was self-consciously aware of departing from the “apparent utopia” of the founding. Roosevelt advocated an explicit conception of public stewardship (prior to the cumulative contributions of individuals). This resulted in a conception of individual fates plastically shaped by circumstances beyond their control, requiring efforts to generalize human experiences to be framed upon the application of plastic arts to the subject matter For, inasmuch as national character is derivative from personal character, where personal character no longer inclines or arcs toward forbearance and justice, national character can no longer be predicated upon the preference for justice.

Defining Justice: Restorative and Retributive Justice Goals Among Intimate Partner Violence Survivors

Intimate partner violence (IPV) and sexual violence (SV) are drivers of women's morbidity and mortality yet remain among the most underreported crimes in the United States. Understanding IPV/SV survivors' justice preferences and justice definitions can strengthen violence prevention and response systems. In-depth interviews were conducted with women who experienced past-year IPV (n = 26), to explore their justice preferences and recommendations. Primary themes included accountability, safety, and rehabilitation, with examples within and outside the current justice system, and across restorative and retributive justice frameworks. Women sought accountability through a variety of means. Retributive approaches like incarceration offered accountability as well as fleeting safety, but were critically limited in addressing the root causes of violence and, in some cases, were felt to exacerbate the problem. Women's expressed needs and preferences centered on restorative aspects of justice, including perpetrator's acknowledgment of harm, achieving physical safety and stability, and perpetrator rehabilitation through counseling. Paradoxically, women's safety-related justice goals both encouraged and discouraged their engagement in the formal justice system. The discordance between women's justice preferences and their perceptions and experiences within the current justice system illustrate complex and difficult trade-offs faced by survivors in achieving physical, social, and economic safety. Moreover, they likely contribute to the low levels of IPV/SV reporting to police. Women's goals were aligned with restorative justice principles, illustrating the value of this approach. In an era of unprecedented dialogue on justice reform, results provide direction for integrating restorative justice practices to strengthen the justice response to violence against women.

Exploring the Daily Relationship Between Envy and Well-Being Through Envy-Coping Behaviors at Work

Envy, while being stressful and painful, is an inevitable part of our contract with life. We draw on control theory and the functional perspective on emotions to evaluate the effectiveness of envy-coping behaviors, including both others-dysfunctional (i.e., harming the envied) and self-functional (i.e., seeking self-improvement) behavior. In contrast to control theory, which suggests that closing the gap between desired and actual states is beneficial, we posit that the distinctive nature of envy-coping behavior produces differential well-being for the envier. Furthermore, because envy is often rooted in unfair advantages received by others, we explore an envier disposition related to fairness—justice orientation, or the extent to which individuals internalize justice as a moral virtue and pay attention to issues of unfairness—as a moderator. We argue that justice orientation is a contingency factor driving functional versus dysfunctional reactions to envy, thus contributing to our understanding of the envy --> coping behavior --> well-being relationship. We conducted an experience-sampling study with a sample of 192 Taiwanese massage therapists, whom we surveyed for 14 consecutive workdays. Confirming most of our predictions, we find that envious individuals high in justice orientation engage in more others-dysfunctional behavior, which in turn results in reduced positive well-being and increased negative well-being. Envious individuals high in justice orientation also engage in less selffunctional behavior, which has an adverse impact on positive well-being. Interestingly, such individuals with low justice orientation engage in more self-functional behavior, which is beneficial for positive well-being. Theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed.