Social Justice Focus Research Articles

We Collect ‘Everything’: A Case Study of a Local Studies Collection in an Australian Public Library

ABSTRACT This paper describes research exploring a local studies collection in an Australian public library. It includes the current collecting practices and paradigms and their impact on what is added to this collection. This research was to discover how contemporary content, including items from rapid response collecting are incorporated in a local studies collection. It uses a social justice approach to investigate how current collecting practices represent the whole of the community in a public library local studies collection to provide multiple stories and perspectives. Ethnography was the research method used to enable in-depth understanding of the collecting practices of one public library. The results of the research show a tendency for library staff to rarely say no to unsolicited donations, as well as a focus on emotional and decision making based on relationships. This led to donations based on relationships and the risk of collecting from cliques and resulted in an increased cataloguing backlog for the local studies collection. The conclusion is that for more of the community to be represented in a public library local studies collection, changes in collecting practices need to be undertaken to include a social justice focus.

Social Justice, Community Engagement, and Undergraduate STEM Education: Participatory Science as a Teaching Tool.

Social justice is increasingly being seen as relevant to the science curriculum. We examine the intersection of participatory science, social justice, and higher education in the United States to investigate how instructors can teach about social justice and enhance collaborations to work toward enacting social justice. Participatory science approaches, like those that collect data over large geographic areas, can be particularly useful for teaching students about social justice. Conversely, local-scale approaches that integrate students into community efforts can create powerful collaborations to help facilitate social justice. We suggest a variety of large-scale databases, platforms, and portals that could be used as starting points to address a set of learning objectives about social justice. We also describe local-scale participatory science approaches with a social justice focus, developed through academic and community partnerships. Considerations for implementing participatory science with undergraduates are discussed, including cautions about the necessary time investment, cultural competence, and institutional support. These approaches are not always appropriate but can provide compelling learning experiences in the correct circumstances.

The Just Prison? Women’s Prison Reform and the Figure of the “Offender-as-Victim” in Germany

During the 1990s, the Berlin women’s prison was reformed to do justice to female inmates. This redesigning of space and programs was intended to meet women-specific conditions and needs. The present paper engages with this prison reform as transformation in the name of gender justice. Based on interviews with prison reformers, criminologists, and policymakers, as well as on the analysis of historical documents, we illuminate how a specific figure of the “criminalized woman” helps to translate the abstract notion of social justice into situated practice. From the 1970s onward, a new knowledge of women’s crime would emerge: it constituted female offenders as victims of patriarchal oppression and victimization, allowing the prison system to be criticized as androcentric and discriminatory against women. We argue that subsequent reform pursued gender justice in the form of difference-based, gender-responsive programs and spaces targeting individual inmates’ character and mindset. Thereby, the reformers’ initial critique of social justice would be unintentionally depoliticized and so gender, economic, and political inequalities remained unaddressed. Our purpose is hence twofold: first, to review the recent history of women’s incarceration in Germany, and second, to add a social justice focus to the international criminological debate on gender, prison, and reform.

Fashion and Race Database

The Fashion and Race Database (FRD) is a subscription-based website focused on centering and amplifying historical and contemporary marginalized voices within the fashion industry. Created in 2017, the database is a curated collection of unique and exclusive content in various formats highlighting the underexamined innovations, challenges, and experiences of racialized groups within fashion. The website offers a modern design, intuitive facets, and newly implemented accessibility features. Though the content is not offered with posttermination access, the overall subscription cost is reasonable, and licensing is offered under the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) Shared Electronic Resource Understanding (SERU) license. Given its diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice (DEISJ) focus, user-friendly interface, unique content, relatively manageable cost, and streamlined licensing, FRD is a strong candidate to enrich any library’s collection in the fashion discipline.

Teaching for social justice in higher education: Reflexive and critical auto-ethnographic narratives of hope, resilience, and change

Government policies increasingly call for educators to teach for social justice. This paper presents auto-ethnographic narratives about how two higher education teacher educators aspire to teach with a focus on social justice education. This paper supports the role of reflexive and critical reflections of onto-epistemological beliefs in teacher educators’ work to give meaning to the wider social contexts, including the neo-liberal hegemonic higher education agendas, influencing their work. The narratives shared in this paper demonstrate how teaching with a social justice focus in higher education is a delicate balancing act, navigating personal beliefs and understandings about justice and inclusive knowledge.

How Are Leadership Programs Empowering Our Vulnerable Children and Youth? A Scoping Review

Globally vulnerable populations are negatively impacted by policy and practice. For vulnerable youth, risks to growth, development, and a lack of participation in decisions about their lives are common. Leadership programs are frequently implemented to address the risks faced by vulnerable youth. This review sought to describe the goals, content, and outcomes of existing youth development programs to better understand if they are meeting the needs of vulnerable youth. A scoping review was conducted using the PRISMA-ScR methodology. Ten electronic databases and grey literature were searched. A total of 89 youth development programs were identified. The goals, content, and outcomes of the programs were thematically analyzed. Four foci emerged, namely, youth, relationship, community, and social justice-focused development. A youth focus was most commonly represented, and the social justice focus was the least represented. Most programs addressed only one focus area. If youth development programs are to provide youth with both the skills to engage with and opportunities to change their circumstances, then all four focus areas need to be included. Secondly, a need for the active involvement of youth in both the planning and implementation of programs was identified. Finally, safeguarding needs to be highlighted in any program working with vulnerable youth.

TRANSFORMATIONAL LEARNING: USING EQUALITY AND DIVERSITY MARKETING CLIENT BRIEFS TO FOSTER AWARENESS, APPLICATION AND ACTION

ABSTRACT This paper reports a study coauthored with second-year undergraduate students that examines student experiences of undertaking real-life, client-set marketing assessments with an equality and inclusion remit. Students were set a marketing assessment with an explicit social justice focus, thereby prompting them to reflect on their own backgrounds and unconscious biases whilst addressing issues of societal injustice. This study explores the impact on students of closely engaging with this material and how the assessment, which involved them interviewing experts and developing actionable recommendations, altered their views and career plans. Data were generated via focus groups with students who undertook the assessment, supplemented by some alumni and client interviews. The findings are presented as a “3A” framework of Awareness, Application, and Action: first, the assessment raised “Awareness” of broader societal issues and fostered transformation in terms of personal views; second, students developed core skills and networks they could “Apply” in their future careers; and third, “Action” describes the way students felt empowered to make a positive difference to their client and wider society. The 3A model provides simple design principles that educators could implement if they want to introduce transformational experiences based on social justice issues into the marketing curriculum.

Dismantling Structural Racism, Hate, and White Supremacy Through Course Assignments That Integrate Faith and Learning in Social Work Curriculum

Recently, there has been a growing interest in the nexus of faith and the triumvirate of learning, practice, and research. Social work educators have not consistently challenged social work students to consider the importance of the constructs of faith, religiosity, and spirituality in their own learning and lives. The acknowledgment of racism as an unjust social construct is the essential social justice focus of this paper. The authors present an example of a course assignment that may be used to help students explore the significance and meaning of faith, equity, and spirituality in others and in their own lives. The Critical Race Theory (CRT) is used as a theoretical framework to discuss how educators can prepare students to have a generalist perspective that is humane and social justice driven. The ethical duty to acknowledge, explore, and teach students faith in the social work curriculum is a key aspect of the biopsychosocial-spiritual assessment.

Anti-oppressive pedagogy as an opportunity for consciousness raising in the music therapy profession: A critical disability studies perspective

In pedagogic literature informed by critical disability studies, academia is widely cited as an ableist institution: the training ground for the professions of normalcy. Music therapy could readily be complicit in this normalising discourse with its potential to pathologise participants and to maintain a strict ‘normative divide’, between professionals it trains and participants who engage with its provision. Activists, advocates and disabled therapists have posed a welcome challenge to this positioning in recent publications, but the pedagogical dimensions of music therapy training in this area have received less attention. The emerging signature pedagogy of music therapy and its omissions will be considered, which may explain the need for an increased social justice focus in music therapy curricula. This article considers the potential of applying Kumashiro’s typologies of anti-oppressive education in music therapy training: problematising existing pedagogies and critically reflecting upon the potential of a social justice informed curriculum. These approaches have the potential to reframe Otherness by acknowledging expertise in lived experience. Through introducing these frameworks for socially just, anti-oppressive pedagogies, this article invites consciousness raising in music therapy pedagogy through engagement with critical disability studies theory and philosophy.

Centering trauma‐informed approaches in schools within a social justice framework

AbstractGrowing evidence establishing the prevalence and educational consequences of childhood trauma has led to a national focus on equipping schools to support the specific needs of students who have experienced trauma. Despite clear evidence of disproportionate trauma exposure among students of color, most models of trauma‐informed schools do not explicitly address the intersection of race and trauma within their system‐level efforts to help staff realize the prevalence and impact of trauma, recognize the signs of trauma exposure, or respond in ways to avoid retraumatization. This manuscript will review existing efforts to integrate a social justice focus within our ongoing work as part of the Safe Schools NOLA project. We present our conceptual framework and describe how principles relevant to social justice are intentionally integrated into strategies that support the adoption and implementation of trauma‐informed approaches in schools. We also discuss limitations in our current approach and offer suggestions to support the development of trauma‐informed schools that can advance a social justice agenda.

Teaching disability using problem-based learning in the international context: utility for social work

ABSTRACT Through their anti-oppressive professional practice and commitment to social justice and human rights, social workers can ensure people with disability exercise voice and agency and claim full citizenship in society. Yet, international research shows that ‘disability’ is often inadequately included in social work education, and that students may not graduate with the skills and knowledge needed to engage appropriately with people with disability. This article evaluates the effectiveness of using a short five-day hybrid course that integrated problem-based learning (PBL) and traditional teaching methods to deliver disability content to 42 German social work students. A qualitative SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) method was utilised. Written responses from students were collected and thematically analysed. The analysis indicated that the PBL format was well-liked by students, many of whom showed evidence of increased self-directed and deep learning, better communication skills, and synthesis of theory and practice. Importantly, students were able to internationally contextualise and challenge discourses that perpetrated stigma and discrimination, positioning them as effective advocates for people with disability. The social justice focus of social work justifies the inclusion of the critical examination of the lived experience of people with disability in social work curriculum. The research findings suggest that PBL short courses can provide an effective and flexible means of delivering disability content in social work education.

Introduction to creative and collaborative approaches to research and practice with a social and criminal justice focus

An introduction to creative and collaborative approaches to research and practice, with a social and criminal justice focus.

Disrupting the grassroots narrative of social work in Aotearoa New Zealand

INTRODUCTION: The Aotearoa New Zealand social work professionalisation project disrupted underpinning grassroots narratives of the profession and led to decades of debate and conflict. Social work emphasises egalitarian approaches and, during the 1980s and 1990s, social workers responded to internal and external challenges of elitism, racism, and sexism. However, the ongoing professionalisation project has been at times, at odds with social justice imperatives and undermined by neoliberal drivers.METHODS: This research investigated how political, sociocultural and economic dimensions impacted on the development and initial implementation of the Social Workers Registration Act (2003) and how key actors at the time were affected. A qualitative realist research methodology has been utilised, analysing qualitative interviews with 22 participants, policy documents and archival data to clarify discourses of power and capture the voices and rich stories of those involved in the debates at the time.FINDINGS: A sociological lens was utilised to focus and frame the coalescing political, socio-cultural and economic forces that contributed to the problematising of social work professionalisation and the determining of the need for registration. Insight from some key actors at the time, including educators, the profession, tangata whenua, employers, practitioners, the State, and the public were considered.CONCLUSIONS: Examining these forces behind the professionalisation project provides a platform to consider if social work in Aotearoa New Zealand has been strengthened with registration. There are ongoing challenges and threats to the independence and social justice focus of the profession that grew alongside the grassroots of social work.

More than a Slogan: Or, how we built a Social Justice Program that made our campus more Just

Today on college campuses in the U.S., “social justice” is everywhere—a bright signal of some institutional wokeness in institutions that have not always been good or awake to the needs of many in their communities. In 2014, I joined the trend, as part of a small group of faculty and staff at Portland Community College, that created a concentration of courses called the Social Justice Focus Award and, the next year, built a curriculum for a capstone class called “Social Justice: Theory & Practice” (SJ210). This article shares this experience for faculty considering building such a course, program, or major; maybe you can learn from our successes (and our mistakes).
 But in telling this story, I am also tracing the contradictions tied up in the proliferation of “social justice” on college campuses. Even as a marking strategy, for higher ed to claim it’s doing social justice sparks off massive institutional identity conflicts. Higher education’s long-term investment in (scientific) objectivity, neutrality, of teaching students ‘how to think not what to think’ stands in direct contrast to doing the work of justice. So claiming to teach social justice—to grant degrees in it!—begs important questions about the kinds of promises we’re making to our students and our communities, to say nothing of our conception of who we are as institutions.
 I’ll argue here that if we teach social justice in the framework dictated by traditional higher ed commitments, we probably do a bad job. But we can make good on the promise of social justice if our courses and programs are (1) centered on a student-led, class-defined, campus-based project that (2) involves collective action. That work must be grounded in a classroom that is (3) explicitly not neutral. In our program, we don’t aim at global justice; we aim at making the changes we can make on campus. And what we’ve learned is that by starting there, our students are actually making the world more just. As our students learn to identify injustice, talk about it with others, and enact strategies for change, they are meeting the course’s learning outcomes while improving life for many on campus, including undocumented students, nonbinary students, and students living without housing. Their work has made “social justice” more than a slogan on our campus.

Regulation of Illegal Drugs: State Control and Fragile Institutional Capacity

This policy comment analyzes the risks and issues that might arise from the legal regulation of illegal narcotic and psychotropic products or substances with risks to the health or safety of citizens. We focus on reducing these risks by providing existing examples through existing state-based control mechanisms, with a focus on developing economies with fragile or corruption-sensitive institutions. We discuss the need to implement regulatory models that minimize the risk of diversion and corruption from the legal to the illegal market within a regulated framework. The primary concern is to establish legal and regulatory frameworks and policies with sufficient resilience to mitigate and reduce the risks, and that are inclusive of broad regulation stakeholders and the influence of their interactions on regulation outcomes. Importantly, we look at the integration of current players of the illegal market into the legal one in order to enhance the social, economic and legal benefits of regulation towards the most vulnerable, while at the same time undermining the illegal market. We find that state institutions, including those of LMICs, have varying institutional capacity to regulate currently prohibited drugs, with the existence of regulation frameworks of legal drugs or hazardous and controlled goods. While the technical health and judiciary mechanisms exist to allow for more effective controls of drugs through legal regulation, political will is still lacking. We reviewed regulation models using a social justice focus, thereby allowing countries to establish frameworks for the inclusion of the populations most-affected by prohibition and depriving criminal organizations of local networks of trafficking

Revealing the Resistant Capital of Cambodian Youth: Using Photovoice as a Tool for Advocacy and Policy Change

This paper explores the use of Photovoice as a tool for uncovering or developing resistant capital (Yosso, 2005) with youth for language education policy change. Using data from a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) study on the relationships and tensions among the home, community, and school linguistic and social practices of emergent bilingual Cambodian youth in an urban district in the northeastern U.S., I argue that the development of resistant capital depends on various contextual and demographic factors. The Cambodian youth, who have been educated in a recursive bilingual environment (García, 2009) and are involved in a youth-led community organization with a social justice focus demonstrate resistant capital, which was likely fortified through their work there. Suggestions are made for using Photovoice in schools to develop resistant capital for policy change with language-minoritized youth.

Being in Tension: Faculty Explorations of the Meaning of Social Justice in Teacher Education

This study explores faculty perspectives of social justice in teacher education within one New York institution with a social justice focus. Grounded in the institution’s self-study process for accreditation, the researchers were a part of a team that collected data from structured interviews, including a card sort, of 42 full time teacher educators across 16 programs in the institution. Informed by sociocultural theories (Vygotsky, 1978; Wertsch, 1991), a content analysis revealed the language selected by faculty as well as their meaning-making process and describes how individuals contextualized those meanings. Findings demonstrated a range of meanings and lack of a shared understanding about social justice. Even where apparent consensus existed around particular terminology, the content analysis revealed that individual meanings were deeply contextualized within disciplines and, thereby, were quite distinct. We raise questions regarding how to use dialogue as a meaning making process, the possibilities for a range of meanings, and the significance of contextualizing social justice. The study suggests that significant tensions remain but that “being in tension” is a critical position and potentially informative to faculty who might consider using a framework that invites more diverse perspective rather than embrace a unitary meaning of the term.

Graduate Students, Community Partner, and Faculty Reflect on Critical Community Engaged Scholarship and Gender Based Violence

This article reflects on the challenges and opportunities associated with community engaged learning at the graduate level, and challenges higher education to do more to support the teaching–research–service nexus. The community university partnership involved a graduate student class, a faculty member, and a community member from a provincial not for profit association. We examined our principled and collaborative process of critical community engaged scholarship geared toward addressing violence against women, and more specifically, femicide. Our research resulted in knowledge mobilization tools that could be used to inform various audiences (e.g., women’s shelter staff, the public, government, and journalists) about how mainstream media sources report and portray the issue of femicide. Our work had an explicit social justice focus with aims to generate a better understanding of the structural causes of violence against women and historically-created gendered hierarchy and its ongoing impacts. This paper offers insights for others interested in pursuing community engaged research within a community engaged learning environment.

Being in Tension: Faculty Explorations of the Meaning of Social Justice in Teacher Education

This study explores faculty perspectives of social justice in teacher education within one New York institution with a social justice focus. Grounded in the institution’s self-study process for accreditation, the researchers were a part of a team that collected data from structured interviews, including a card sort, of 42 full time teacher educators across 16 programs in the institution. Informed by sociocultural theories (Vygotsky, 1978, Wertsch, 1991), a content analysis revealed the language selected by faculty as well as their meaning-making process and describes how individuals contextualized those meanings. Findings demonstrated a range of meanings and lack of a shared understanding about social justice. Even where apparent consensus existed around particular terminology, the content analysis revealed that individual meanings were deeply contextualized within disciplines and, thereby, were quite distinct. We raise questions regarding how to use dialogue as a meaning making process, the possibilities for a range of meanings, and the significance of contextualizing social justice. The study suggests that significant tensions remain but that “being in tension” is a critical position and potentially informative to faculty who might consider using a framework that invites more diverse perspective rather than embrace a unitary meaning of the term.

Research as freedom: Using a continuum of interactive, participatory and emancipatory methods for addressing youth marginality

This article offers an analysis of a continuum along which interactive, participatory and emancipatory inquiries may be placed in critical qualitative research with a social justice focus. It draws on critical distinctions to make the argument that labelling research ‘participatory’ hides both interactive approaches and those that might be seen to be emancipatory in the vein of Paolo Freire and Stanley Biggs. To support the argument for a continuum of engaged research, four recent research studies from South Africa, Cameroon, Nigeria and Sierra Leone that address youth marginality and views on an array of topics are discussed with a view to articulating divergences and convergences in approaches. Included are considerations around adapting research for specific audiences and participants, the location of power, research ethics, as well as the demystification and democratisation of knowledge ownership and generation, and the nature of collaboration. The article offers tentative criteria by which research may be located along the suggested continuum and argues that an emancipatory approach, whilst being key to bringing about change or freedom, is a difficult but not impossible aim to achieve in research.