Social Justice Practice Research Articles

Refusing “Endangered Languages” Narratives

Abstract Indigenous language endangerment is a global crisis, and in response, a normative “endangered languages” narrative about the crisis has developed. Though seemingly beneficent and accurate in many of its points, this narrative can also cause harm to language communities by furthering colonial logics that repurpose Indigenous languages as objects for wider society's consumption, while deemphasizing or even outright omitting the extreme injustices that beget language endangerment. The objective of this essay is to promote social justice praxis first by detailing how language shift results from major injustices, and then by offering possible interventions that are accountable to the communities whose languages are endangered. Drawing from my experiences as a member of a Native American community whose language was wrongly labeled “extinct” within this narrative, I begin with an overview of how language endangerment is described to general audiences in the United States and critique the way it is framed and shared. From there, I shift to an alternative that draws from Indigenous ways of knowing to promote social justice through language reclamation.

Linking global citizenship education and critical pedagogy: Women’s leadership and power

Global citizenship education (GCE) as a global social justice practice centres on a pedagogy that is responsive to the needs of learners and provides for the reimagining of an educator’s role, and the learner/educator relationship. While the literature on GCE emerged from a western perspective and tended to ignore gender, through gendered GCE, the intersectionality of race, ethnicity, social class and gender reveals the complexity of the influence of these factors and a need for action. This article presents critical pedagogy (CP) as an approach for learner-centred education that activates a GCE process for learners to be co-designers of their learning experience. The defining principles of CP, along with the qualities of an educator within a critical pedagogical practice will feature the tandem relationship of educator and learner. The results are an emerging process of dynamic self-awareness, cultivating a questioning mind and empowering praxis. Disrupting the understanding of leadership, agency and power allows for the emergence of an empowering approach to one’s identity as a leader and social change agent. This provides a new perspective for positioning women’s leadership and power within GCE. This case study reveals that when students connect to a palpable sense of agency, they become learners that know too much to revert to passive receptacles of information. New opportunities await in the development of leadership, social change and GCE when learners bear witness to lived experiences through a critical lens.

Social (in)justices during the educator developmental appraisal process: A post-apartheid South African case study

Globally, the appraisal of educators remains a contested issue as the process, which aims to provide support and development to educators, is generally considered a punitive measure for educators. Within the South African context, the Integrated Quality Management System is used to evaluate educators. Drawing on Fraser’s theories of social justice, this article explores the perspectives of 11 educators regarding educator developmental appraisal in post-apartheid South Africa as a catalyst for social (in)justice. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews and analysed using critical discourse analysis. This article highlights the importance of social justice practices in enhancing learner achievement and foregrounds the (in)justices often witnessed during the appraisal process. Findings reveal that the developmental appraisal process has the potential to promote social justice; however, contextual factors seem to be hindering the successful implementation of the appraisal process.

Joan Wynne on Living the Life of Yet

This is a narrative inquiry of Dr. Joan Wynne’s transformative leadership in education that traces the roots of Wynne’s social justice activism and rich descriptions and examples of her transformative leadership qualities. Akin to a Russian doll, integrity is the overall case within which all of Wynne’s transformative leadership qualities reside—constant love and caring for others; respect for other’s ideas, and the shifting of their perspectives; deep and active listening skills; the ability to build and maintain networks of relationships; commitment to the theory and practice of social justice; and hope in the power of youth to enact positive social change.

Passing the Torch: Perspectives on Effectively Preparing the Next Generation of Kinesiology Leaders – 2023 Praxis Lecture

ABSTRACT The 3rd annual Praxis Lecture exemplifies the National Association for Kinesiology in Higher Education’s (NAKHE’s) ongoing commitment to the principles and practices of social justice, diversity, and inclusive excellence as pillars of leadership development. This year’s lecture focused on perspectives, insights, and recommendations for NAKHE as the organization strategically prepares activities and programming to effectively develop, support, and advance future generations of leaders in the kinesiology discipline and beyond. The lecture highlighted an overview of the author’s journey as a scholar, administrator, and member of NAKHE. Additionally, a rationale for and description of six key perspectives on leadership development were offered for consideration. This lecture was dedicated to the author’s mentor, advisor, and supporter Dr. Jepkorir Rose Chepyator-Thomson of the University of Georgia’s Department of Kinesiology.

“Going for Broke”: Working with Teacher Candidates to Bring about Intersectional Socially Just Teaching

Embodying James Baldwin’s call to “go for broke” in the face of the current “dangerous time” and ongoing “determined resistances,” this article argues for an intersectional social justice praxis for preparing and supporting teacher candidates and novice teachers to work with diverse students. We posit a sustained intersectional social justice framework for teaching, coaching, and mentoring that requires reckoning with the foundations of the field of teacher education and working with teachers and teacher candidates.

Praxis, hashtag activism, and social justice: a content analysis of #StopAsianHate narratives

ABSTRACT The Atlanta Shootings spurred worldwide discussion about anti-Asian hate incidents in the U.S., which eventually evoked the #StopAsianHate movement on Twitter. Based on the theory of praxis, this study extended Walton et al.'s (2019) social justice heuristic of the ‘4Rs,’ which mainly focuses on actions of praxis, to include an additional ‘R’ to represent Reflection. A content analysis study was performed to explore how activists strategically employed the ‘5Rs’ social justice practices within tweets shared during the #StopAsianHate movement. This study further examined the chronological trends of the five social justice practices evident in the hashtag narratives. The results indicate that the public should pay more attention to the actions spurred by the hashtag movement while also reflecting on how its effects can be optimized to promote social justice.

‘It really has made me think’: Exploring how informal STEM learning practitioners developed critical reflective practice for social justice using the Equity Compass tool

ABSTRACT Critical reflective practice is a foundation of socially just pedagogy. This paper focuses on the informal STEM (science, technology, engineering, and maths) learning sector, where there is an acute shortage of support for critical reflective practice despite long-standing, entrenched issues of inequity. We analyse how practitioners used a new reflective tool, the Equity Compass, co-developed by researchers and practitioners through a five-year partnership. We report on multimodal qualitative data (interviews, ethnographic observations, group discussions, partner site visits, and workshops) from 12 practitioners in four settings in the UK: a community zoo, regional science centre, digital arts centre and an initiative supporting girls and non-binary young people into STEM. We discuss how using the Equity Compass: (i) increased and deepened practitioners’ knowledge and understanding of equity issues; (ii) supported personal and institutional critical reflection, helping practitioners move beyond ‘gut instinct’ to interrogate their own positionality, ask new questions, and critically evaluate the effectiveness of attempts at inclusive practice; and (iii) fostered more intentional equitable planning and practice, such as participatory approaches that shared authority with learners and introduced more inclusive forms of representation. We conclude by discussing the challenges, limitations, and implications for supporting critical reflective practice among educators.

Comments on Margaret McLaren’s Women’s Activism, Feminism and Social Justice

Margaret McLaren’s ethnographic study that is ostensibly about Indian women’s activism also presents a nuanced critique of liberal human rights discourse and advances a relational cosmopoli­tanism. Her defense of Tagore’s decolonial worldview has much in common with an African Ubuntu ethics, which also eschews pos­sessive individualism in favor of a sociocentric social justice praxis philosophy. McLaren’s book provides an important contribution to questions of women’s empowerment, women’s rights, cultural rites, and situated knowledges.

Time and social space in South Australian rural health social work practice

AimsTo gain a deeper understanding of rural health social workers' professional judgement and decision-making in the complex rural and regional environments within which they work. Methods: In-depth semi-structured interviews were undertaken with South Australian rural health social work leadership team members (n = 10), with focus groups (n = 14) before and after the interviews. Findings: Rural health social workers drew on both spatial and temporal understandings of their professional judgements and decision-making when explaining their rural health social work practice. Concepts of rural time, rural social space and acts of resistance were identified within the rich descriptions of professional judgement and decision-making in practice provided by the rural health social workers. ‘Rural time’ refers to the additional work that is done by rural health social workers across both their rural personal and professional social spaces. Conclusions: Institutional, systemic and spatial factors, constituted as they are of power dynamics, have implications for the skills needed to maintain a social justice practice. Clear-sighted analysis of these complexities, in the context of social power, can support this ongoing and longer-term project.

Collaborative Learning to Foster Critical Reflection by Pre-service Student Teachers within a Canadian–South African Partnership

Teachers often enter practice with a narrow perspective of teaching. Through critical reflection, the minds of pre-service teachers can be opened to the bigger realities of teaching and social justice practice. Paired pre-service student teachers from two diverse university settings, Canada and South Africa, were immersed in a collaborative learning experience that involved exchanges through email, text messages, and artwork collages. As lecturers, we implemented action research to determine how to foster critical reflection by pre-service teachers from diverse education contexts. We anticipated the diverse contexts to serve as a disrupting incident in support of critical reflection and possibly also transformative learning. Findings confirm that the collaborative reflective learning across contexts supported the development of critical reflective skills and provided an opportunity for students to confront their own assumptions of ethical and moral teaching practice. Revised strategies are suggested to support deeper critical reflections in collaborative learning across teaching contexts to support transformative learning.

Red-nosed fantasies of the future: a framework for social justice-informed performance creation in the Mump and Smoot Lineage of the Pochinko tradition of clowning

This article contextualises a specific lineage of the Pochinko tradition of clowning – which the author refers to as the Mump and Smoot Lineage – before offering an analysis of Judith Butler’s argument for the necessity of fantasy in social change. Putting these two analyses into dialogue, the article offers provocations and theories as to how clowning might provide a fruitful avenue for social justice-motivated fantasy as it is described by Judith Butler. The paper asks and offers responses to two central questions. Firstly, how might understanding clowning’s relationship to social justice pursuits be of use to those creating clown performances? Secondly, how can the practice and craft of the Mump and Smoot Lineage of the Pochinko Tradition of Cowning (MSLPTC) work in service of social justice aims? The author argues that the methodologies of this lineage do not require great alterations to work in meaningful service of social justice aims; the use of a message to the world, the focus on imaginative embodiment, and many of the lineage’s rules are easily deployed in service of social justice-oriented creation. In making these assertions, the author articulates a hope for further research into clowning and its intersections with social justice practice and also that clown practitioners might use their existing practices to further social justice goals.

Crossing the River by Feeling the Stones: Understanding and Integrating Social Justice in Chinese Language Class

AbstractRecent global social unrest—anti‐Asian violence in particular—was a wake‐up call compelling Chinese language teachers to not only reflect on their emotions but also actively incorporate social justice in their curriculum and instruction. Yet, research on social justice in Chinese language classrooms is scarce. Building on recent work on teacher agency, this study investigated 10 Chinese language teachers, originally from mainland China and Taiwan, about their understandings and practices of social justice in their teaching. Findings identified 3 major dimensions that influenced their understandings and practices—namely, community, curriculum, and, more importantly, culture. (Re)shaping their understandings and adapting pedagogical skills were ongoing processes through which the teachers experienced complex feelings, support, and challenges; nonetheless, they drew on their agency to embed social justice in their teaching, manifested through (a) centering social justice topics in curriculum and instruction, and (b) creating a justice‐oriented environment. This study explored social justice in the landscape of Chinese language education and provides implications for teaching and teacher education.

From Grassroots to Systems Change: Art for Social Justice

Art for social justice has long challenged notions of whose stories are told, how, and by whom, positioning it as a key body of practice to combat neoliberalism and other structures of domination. In the global struggle for liberation, art and social justice practices must be contextualized, requiring approaches and pedagogy that address the cultural landscapes in which they are rooted. Against this backdrop, the artivist-authors explore two questions: 1) In what ways do practices in the arts and social justice differ and intersect across cultural contexts? and 2) What lessons can be gleaned from grassroots and systems-level approaches to arts for social justice? Here, three vignettes, explored through Chicane testimonios and story circles rooted in Black and Indigenous theater practice, elucidate approaches to building creative justice in the landwaters colonized into Colombia, Rwanda, and the United States. Across these three vignettes, questions of practice and lessons learned emerge.

Methodologies of collective listening: What could be next for our cultural institutions?

This article focuses on the role of collective and collaborative conversation. It draws on a discussion that took place between Mark Sealy, director of Autograph; Dr Maggie Matić, curator, writer and researcher; Marie Smith, visual artist and writer; Becky Warnock, artist and organizer; Heather Agyepong, visual artist, performer and actor; Angela YT Chan, curator and artist, and Hannah Geddes, curator, writer and researcher. The event took place at London College of Communication (LCC), London, in November 2022. The conversation was centred on the provocation: What is next? How do we turn intentions into actions through social justice practice and curation? It started as an informal workshop, before concluding in a public discussion chaired by Sealy. The following article draws on the initial workshop discussion, surfacing the idea of listening as a form of collective and collaborative practice.

Outside-In: Entangled Openness as Subversion Influencing Emergent Change

Those of us in the open education field often talk about how open education expands access, supports knowledge sharing, and potentially enhances the quality of education. We also critique open education for sometimes reproducing inequalities despite promising to promote social justice. But what about the ways in which openness removes/destroys barriers within us? In what ways does openness empower us from the outside-in? When does openness influence critical change and when might it fail to do so? In this opinion piece, I will explore some of the things openness makes possible that are often not possible within the walls of institutions, and which can end up challenging and subverting injustice by focusing on some key principles within the practice of “Virtually Connecting,” and I will explore a notion of entangled openness whereby open practices require a complex interplay between open attitudes, social justice praxis, and digital literacies within a team.

The Impact of COVID-19, Mental Health Distress, and School-Based Sociocultural Protective Factors among Elementary-Aged Children and their Caregivers.

Given the individual and systemic stress endured by children and families during the COVID-19 pandemic, research examining culturally responsive school experiences and supports to enhance resilience is critical. This study examined the relationship between caregivers’ perceptions of COVID-19 impact, mental health distress among children and caregivers, and school-based sociocultural protective factors, including culturally responsive practices in schools and the relationships between teachers and caregivers, concurrently and longitudinally. Data were collected from caregivers of elementary-aged children at two-time points from March to April 2020 (N = 174) and one year later in 2021 (N = 114). Regression analyses revealed that COVID-19 impact positively predicted and parent-teacher joining negatively predicted mental health concerns among children and families, concurrently and longitudinally. Furthermore, there was a positive relationship between caregivers’ perceptions of teachers’ social awareness and justice practices and mental health symptoms for children in 2020. Parent-teacher joining longitudinally moderated the relationship between COVID-19 impact and caregivers’ mental health concerns. This study provides implications regarding sociocultural resilience factors that should be considered in schools amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

On the methodological and epistemological power of epistemic (de)centering as a reflexive praxis of resistance toward disability justice

PurposeLeveraging autoethnography and conceptual syntheses, the author stake the claim that supporting people to empower themselves in the naming and description of their lived realities beyond assumed incompleteness constitutes a resistant form of critical praxis the author name as epistemic (de)centering. Through these engagements of varying proximity with the other, meaning those Lives-Hopes-Dreams often outside researchers' personal and professional standpoints, the author aims to argue that critical, reflexive praxes where historically marginalized people, including those living/surviving/thriving with impairments-disabilities, can be afforded place, space, time and respect to visibilize their experiences.Design/methodology/approachIn this paper, the author dreams of radical possibilities afforded by epistemic disobedience to value those Body-Mind-Spirits often elided among social justice work. Interrogating nuances among pieces in a recently published special issue named as “Disability Justice,” the author rearticulates a reality of possibility where the rhetoric that sustains invisibilizations of disabled people via racial-capitalist-ableist-coloniality is disrupted to explicitly position these identities as valuable to inform how to transform society in more just ways.FindingsAnalyses from this work further conversations on disabled subjectivities, post-oppositional logics of centers-margins, and resistant knowledge projects to illuminate how to approach the questions of who gets to decide when justice is achieved, and how abled Body-Mind-Spirits can meet their commitments to justice, especially among those that work in social justice circles.Originality/valueInfusing across this work the voices of multiply marginalized, and disabled, folks provides a cognitive-systemic architecture where research moves from “what if” as abstraction to engage with “how to” center disability justice in education (DJE). In doing so, this research pushes our approaches to social justice praxis, in education and beyond, to think about our individual and collective proximities to self and other, and more specifically disabled Lives-Hopes-Dreams.

A Phenomenon-Based Learning Enquiry: University Students’ Self-Leadership Actions on the Social Impact of Covid-19

The aim of this paper was to gain deeper insight into Bachelor of Education Honors (B.Ed. Hons) students’ self-leadership actions in response to the social impact of COVID-19 on their academic lives. Notwithstanding the growing body of literature showing the impact of COVID-19 on education, the social influence of the pandemic on the academic lives of students in higher education institutions (HEIs) remains contentious. Since the implementation of lockdowns and social isolation internationally, COVID-19, as a social phenomenon, has required creative responses from students in HEIs to advance academically. Through a phenomenon-based learning (PhenoBL) enquiry and applying narrative methodology, students’ responses were analyzed by means of McCormack’s (2000) four lenses, namely the lens of language, the lens of narrative processed, the lens of context and the lens of moments. Emails were sent to all B.Ed. Hons students to express their views and understanding of the influence of COVID-19 on their academic lives as postgraduate students. Five students responded and were afforded the opportunity to provide their insights and understanding of the phenomenon whilst exploring self-leadership actions for change toward transformative practices in their learning spaces. The results revealed that, through engaging in PhenoBL activities, students were able to employ adaptive practices and inquiry-based activities to enhance self-leadership abilities through self-influence and self-trust. The paper recommends that HEIs should consider PhenoBL activities for self-leadership as transformative practices of social justice to address the social complexities of the COVID-19 pandemic and its influence on the academic lives of university students.

The how of social justice education in social work: Decentering colonial whiteness and building relational reflexivity through circle pedagogy and Image Theatre

ABSTRACT Teaching courses on social justice are mainstays of social work education and are considered imperative for ethically responsible social work practice. Social justice education comes with many challenges, including white settler student resistance and difficulties translating social justice content into social work practice. We suggest a move from viewing social justice practice as a value or skill set - as part of the ‘professional self’ – to one that understands social justice as relational and as a politics of being and acting. In this article, we discuss methods for decentering colonial whiteness in the social work classroom by adopting relational reflexive pedagogies more congruent with social justice content. The first half of the article focuses on the white and colonial epistemological foundations of social justice education in social work and notions of the social worker subjectivity as ‘good’ and ‘moral’. In the second half of the article, we invite social work educators to reflect on congruency between social justice theories discussed in the classroom and the practice of how we teach these concepts. We then offer circle pedagogy and Image Theatre exercises as examples of practicing a relational ethic and politic of social justice in the process of teaching.