Social Justice In Higher Education Research Articles

Connecting the dots: a systematic review of explanatory factors linking contextual indicators, institutional culture and degree awarding gaps

PurposeThe primary aim of this paper is to illuminate the critical issue of the degree awarding gap in the UK, which significantly impacts students from lower socio-economic backgrounds and minority groups. By conducting a systematic review of existing literature following the PRISMA protocol, this study seeks to uncover the complex web of explanatory factors that mediate the relationship between contextual indicators, institutional culture, and degree awarding disparities. Addressing this gap is vital for promoting social justice, enhancing the economy, safeguarding the reputation of UK universities, and adhering to legal responsibilities. This paper endeavours to provide a comprehensive understanding of the underlying causes of degree awarding gaps and offer evidence-based recommendations for the higher education sector to mitigate these disparities.Design/methodology/approachThis study employs a systematic review design, adhering to the PRISMA protocol, to meticulously analyse the existing body of literature concerning the degree awarding gap in UK higher education. By systematically gathering, evaluating, and synthesizing relevant studies, the review aims to identify and understand the multifaceted factors mediating the link between contextual indicators, institutional culture, and the disparities observed in degree awarding. This methodological approach ensures a rigorous and transparent examination of the literature, enabling the identification of both the breadth and depth of research on the topic. Through this design, the paper aspires to uncover nuanced insights into the mechanisms driving degree awarding gaps.FindingsThe review’s findings reveal that degree awarding gaps in UK universities are influenced by a constellation of factors, highlighting the complexity of this issue. Key among these are unconscious bias, limited student engagement opportunities with academic staff, institutional racism, inadequate support systems, and a scarcity of social and cultural capital. These factors collectively contribute to significant disparities in degree outcomes, disproportionately disadvantaging students from lower socio-economic backgrounds and minority groups. The evidence suggests that institutional practices and culture play a pivotal role in either exacerbating or alleviating these disparities, indicating the need for targeted interventions to address the root causes of degree awarding gaps.Research limitations/implicationsOne strength of conducting a systematic review is its rigorous and meticulous nature, which ensures that the process is carefully planned and executed. This comprehensive approach allows for the elimination of biases, as the review systematically gathers and analyses existing literature on the topic. By adhering to a structured methodology, the systematic review enhances the validity and reliability of the findings, providing a robust and unbiased synthesis of the available evidence. This strength lends credibility to the research and reinforces the confidence in the conclusions drawn from the review.Practical implicationsThe practical implications arising from this information indicate that universities need to address the identified issues directly by implementing supportive strategies and interventions. By doing so, they can create a learning environment that is more inclusive and equitable, allowing all students to unlock their full potential. This may involve measures such as raising awareness about unconscious bias, promoting engagement between academic staff and students, implementing anti-racist policies, establishing comprehensive support systems, and actively fostering social and cultural capital. Such practical actions will contribute to reducing the degree awarding gaps and promoting equal opportunities for all students, ultimately leading to a more equitable and successful educational experience.Social implicationsThe social implications derived from this information are significant. By implementing supportive strategies and interventions to address the identified issues, universities can contribute to creating a more inclusive and equitable learning environment. This has the potential to have a transformative impact on society by providing equal opportunities for all students to unlock their full potential. By raising awareness about unconscious bias and implementing anti-racist policies, universities can foster a more diverse and inclusive community. Promoting engagement between academic staff and students and establishing comprehensive support systems can enhance social cohesion and create a sense of belonging. Ultimately, these efforts can lead to reduced degree awarding gaps and contribute to a more equitable and successful educational experience, positively influencing broader social equality and cohesion.Originality/valueThis paper contributes significantly to the literature by offering a comprehensive, systematic review of the factors contributing to the degree awarding gap in UK higher education, highlighting its originality and value. By focusing on the interplay between contextual indicators, institutional culture, and degree awarding disparities, the study provides novel insights into how these dynamics contribute to educational inequities. Furthermore, the evidence-based recommendations for institutional interventions presented in this paper furnish the higher education sector with actionable strategies to foster a more inclusive and equitable learning environment. This work not only advances academic understanding of degree awarding gaps but also offers practical value to policymakers and educational institutions aiming to enhance social justice in higher education.

Social Justice Profiles: An Exploratory Study towards an Empirically Based Multi-Dimensional Classification of Countries Regarding Fairness of Participation in Higher Education

The aim of this article is to suggest a better—theoretically and empirically grounded—understanding of the complex character of social justice in higher education. Theoretically, this article conceptualises social justice in higher education as mediating participation in, completion of and outcomes from higher education. It introduces the concept of composite capability for achieving higher education that captures capabilities to participate in, complete and gain outcomes from higher education. This study also develops a methodology for building an empirically based classification of countries regarding social justice in participation in higher education, taking into account the assessed inequality in students’ pathways to higher education as well as inequality in their social conditions, associated with students’ social origin. In so doing, it develops three indices: the index of inequalities in students’ pathways, the index of inequalities in students’ social conditions and the index of participation in higher education. Using microdata from the EUROSTUDENT VII survey (2019–2021) for 12 European countries, it applies the developed methodology to classify countries, for which data are available, by the degree of fairness in participation in higher education. This study’s results demonstrate the social embeddedness of social justice in higher education in different economic and political contexts.

Learning along the Way

The development of open educational resources (OER) plays a key role in addressing the challenge of access to affordable, appropriate, high-quality teaching and learning materials. This is particularly the case in health sciences in South Africa, where there is a strong imperative around local production of contextually appropriate resources that can be openly accessible within institutions and in practice. This case study details the creation and iterative review approaches undertaken by undergraduate medical students in a study module focused on creating chapters for an orthopaedics open textbook through the use of ChatGPT. It also explores the nuances of the lecturer’s process, particularly as relates to assessment, quality, and his ambitions to promote student voice through co-creation. The findings demonstrate that ChatGPT has the potential to be the game changer needed to help build OER production in the Global South, particularly in terms of the speeding up of the process. They also suggest that processes of this kind have a role to play in building students’ critical artificial intelligence (AI) digital literacy skills and in boosting their sense of agency. This work stands to make an important contribution in terms of profiling institutional cases where AI is being used in an innovative, responsible manner in the classroom. It also aims to make a unique Global South contribution to the rapidly emerging global discourse around the use of AI in teaching and learning, and the use of collaborative content development approaches to promote student voice and social justice in higher education.

Social justice in higher education: The forgotten needs of students with visual impairments in Bangladesh

Students with disabilities face myriad barriers and hurdles to success in higher education settings. Institutions in developing nations often lack the necessary resources to provide accessible instruction, and the absence of clearly defined policies further impedes upholding the educational rights of such a special population. The purpose of this study was to examine how undergraduate students with visual impairments in Bangladesh felt about their experiences related to social justice and challenges in learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. A convenience sample of 133 students was recruited from two public universities. The authors developed two instruments, namely, the Social Justice Experiences in Higher Education Scale and the Social Justice Challenges in Higher Education Scale, to measure how the participants felt. The results showed that most of the participants experienced some sort of difficulty in receiving social justice in higher education. However, the differences in the group mean score on social justice experiences and challenges in higher education were not statistically significant between the male and female participants of this study. The outcomes of the study and their implications for rehabilitation research and practice have also been addressed in this paper.

Expanding Access to Higher Education: The Case for Using Minority Quotas or Reserves to Increase Diversity

This project report aims to explore the use of minority quotas or minority reserves as a means of increasing diversity in university admissions and widening access. The report provides a critical review of the literature on this topic, outlines the benefits and drawbacks of using quotas and reserves, and presents a mathematical model which introduces a fairness constraint to the Men-proposing Deferred Acceptance (DA) Algorithm to address the issues of underrepresented minority groups and promote diversity in the college admissions process. The model is used to match students and schools in a way that maximizes diversity while maintaining fairness and efficiency. This report provides proof and computational results to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach. The report draws on Alvin E. Roth's The Art of Designing Markets to underscore the importance of designing effective market mechanisms that address the challenges of diversity and equity in university admissions. The report concludes that minority quotas and reserves can be effective tools for promoting diversity and social justice in higher education, but that they must be implemented carefully and in conjunction with other policies aimed at addressing structural inequalities.

Environmental sustainability and social justice in Higher Education: a critical (eco)feminist service-learning approach in sports sciences

ABSTRACT Education for environmental and social sustainability in Higher Education requires a new approach that encompasses both care for nature and social inclusion. Ecopedagogy offers a critical framework within which to provide specific teaching and learning initiatives. In particular, this article aims to explore the effects of a critical (eco)feminist approach implemented through a critical feminist service-learning program. We use a qualitative study with an ethnographic-interpretative approach. The results show an increase in awareness and sensitivity towards environmental education and social justice in the students’ understanding, attitude, and commitment to sustainability. Institutional limitations were also detected, leading to a reduction in the opportunities for achieving optimal results that would create a global meaning and a real application of the teachings for sustainability and social justice.

Gender-Based Salary Differentials Among Administrators in Arizona Community Colleges

Objective: This research study examined gender wage equality among administrators across Arizona’s ten community college districts comprising 19 colleges. Method: Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze salary data. Results: All 19 college campuses evidenced differences in median income between 12-month, full-time women and men. However, when disaggregated by job category, median income of women and men was equal in a number of job categories in several institutions, illustrating the complexity of measuring gender wage equality using descriptive statistics. A multiple regression analysis revealed that only three of the 19 community colleges had gender-based salary differentials. Thus, gender wage equality prevails in most Arizona community colleges despite inconsistent salary schedules among the college districts and no state-level oversight. Contributions: Community colleges provide learning opportunities to a heterogeneous population of 5.4 million students annually. Understanding gender-based salary differentials among community college administrators can provide insights into diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice in higher education.

Enhancing powerful knowledge in undergraduate science curriculum for social good

ABSTRACT Social realist theorising about curriculum and social justice in higher education has emphasised the importance of providing equity of epistemic access to powerful knowledge. However, there has been little discussion about what constitutes powerful knowledge and how students can use it for social good. In the science disciplines, the traditional undergraduate curriculum is shaped by economic agendas and by perceptions of its purpose to train future scientists. This has resulted in a curriculum focused on the learning of scientific facts rather than on how scientific knowledge is created, validated and critiqued, overshadowing the potential for the curriculum to simultaneously empower learners to develop critical scientific literacy to productively engage with urgent socio-scientific issues such as climate change. In this paper, I argue that social good can be better served by engaging students with powerful knowledge of the epistemology of science through including ‘Nature of Science’ (NOS) in the curriculum.

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.

From awareness to activism: Understanding commitment to social justice in higher education

In this study, we examine the concept of social justice to provide greater clarity about how higher education might help students achieve more understanding about social justice and develop behaviors consistent with social change. We measured three dimensions of social justice: students’ recognition that inequality exists, their determination to do something, and their willingness to engage in actions that reduce inequality. Mean differences in scales tapping these views between students in introductory and capstone courses in six liberal arts disciplines—social work, sociology, psychology, criminal justice, gender studies, and communication—suggest variations in how students in these programs commit to social change. Capstone students consistently showed greater commitment to social justice compared to freshmen students. The most significant differences occurred in their willingness to take action. Patterns differed significantly within the six disciplines, and consideration is given to the emphasis placed on social justice within the six disciplines, as partially explaining the differences. These results suggest some modification to the notion in the literature that a ‘principal-implementation’ gap exists among adults in their commitment to social justice that tends to increase with maturation.

Not in the Greater Good: Academic Capitalism and Faculty Labor in Higher Education

American public universities have assumed business-minded practices and norms that more closely align with the goals and values of corporations than social institutions charged with creating and disseminating knowledge. One consistent strategy to lower costs involves faculty labor. Institutions have outsourced educational missions to a largely contingent workforce to decrease instructional costs; over the last two decades, the number of adjunct or part-time faculty now comprises 70% of all faculty. As a result, policies have decreased instructional costs and provided administrators with increased flexibility to respond to student demands. However, research indicates compromised student outcomes, less shared governance, and faculty work–life pressures that can undermine commitment, motivation, and professional identity. The following literature review examines the locus of academic capitalism and faculty labor, theorizing how faculty labor policies infer consequences for equity, inclusion, and social justice in higher education.

Introduction Video to Volume 1 of the International Journal of Equity and Social Justice in Higher Education

Introduction Video to Volume 1 of the International Journal of Equity and Social Justice in Higher Education

Social Justice in Higher Education: Revisited, Practices, and Grievances

Social justice is a fundamental concern for ideal social structure and human rights. To develop social order and philosophical discourses, higher education is one of the holistic approaches to educating it. It elevates the level of idealized modern state formation among students. The present study was designed to examine the contexts of students about practices and malpractices of social justice in higher education. The quantitative approach was adopted to gather the data from 630 university graduates. All the data were gathered through a self-made questionnaire. The findings of the study explained that the participants were not satisfied with practices of social justice in higher education. Most of the participants expressed malpractices of social norms.Especially female students claimed their injustice experiences in higher education. The researcher recommended bold recommendations to uphold the social justice in higher education departments

“We Really Have to Come Together”: Understanding the Role of Solidarity in Asian American College Students’ Social Justice Activism and Advocacy

Structural oppression continues to be one of the most pressing problems in U.S. society, and college students have always played a major role in addressing systemic inequities. Yet, much remains to be learned about the experiences of students advocating social justice in higher education, and there is a paucity of research on Asian American students involved in such efforts. This study sought to understand how Asian American undergraduates understand the role of solidarity in social justice work. The authors analyzed interviews with Asian American students engaged in social justice activism and advocacy in the Midwest. Findings show that participants recognized interconnected realities among oppressed communities, centered solidarity in social justice work because of this recognition, and utilized intersectional approaches to integrate solidarity into social justice activism and advocacy. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.

Inequitable rewards: experiences of faculty of color mentoring students of color

ABSTRACT Employing the analytical lens of Critical Race Theory, I explored how faculty of color view their mentorship of students of color at predominantly White colleges and universities. The research was conducted through an anonymous online questionnaire shared with faculty of color at 136 predominantly White institutions. Three main themes emerge and show that faculty of color feel: (a) a sense of social responsibility to their communities of color; (b) that this demanding and often specialized work comes at a cost to their professional careers, and; (c) that shared marginalized identities create unique mentorship responsibilities and demands. I then discuss the implications for social justice in higher education.

Medical Dominance in Nursing Education: Qualitative content analysis

Background: Training specialist manpower requires social justice in higher education and inequality leads to the emergence of hierarchies of power and types of dominant or dominated groups. Aim: The aim of the present study was to explain the perceptions and experiences of the heads of nursing departments of Iranian nursing schools regarding medical dominance in nursing education. Methods: The present study was a conventional content analysis. Data collection was carried out using purposeful sampling and in-depth semi-structured interviews with 24 participants. The data analysis process was performed according to Graneheim and Lundman’s qualitative content analysis (2004). Findings: Data analysis led to the emergence of the theme of "Medical dominance in nursing education" and the three main categories of “physician-centered university education", "weakened educational status", and "belittling nursing education in medical system”. Conclusion: The findings of the present study indicated that physicians enjoy special and superior position in the structure of the Ministry of Health and Medical Education of Iran. Physicians manage the entire system including medical education due to their greater power in managing the system at all micro and macro levels. Thus, other disciplines including nursing education, which are closely related to medicine, are highly ignored.

Affective assemblages matter in socially just pedagogies

Social justice in higher education is a core concern in South Africa. It involves matters of pedagogy, curriculum, recognition, as well as access to tertiary institutions. In light of the massification of higher education, the question that vexes many educators is how to promote student learning through pedagogical practices that are socially just in themselves and that can also promote social justice. A focus on, and sensitivity to, affect provides a way of addressing this concern. We open up our experiences as educators in different professional fields by using an ethico-onto-epistemological methodology, describing relationships that emerged from our classroom engagements. Affective forces and intensities materialising in our teaching and learning assemblages provide a novel relational approach to enacting social justice. We suggest that an attunement to the affective forces circulating in pedagogical practices has the potential to transform conventional teaching habits thereby promoting socially just teaching.

The Social Justice Syllabus Design Tool: A First Step in Doing Social Justice Pedagogy

Despite increased attention on social justice in higher education, underrepresented students often experience the classroom as unwelcoming and even hostile. Although theoretical and pedagogical research exists, what appears to be lacking are examples of concrete social justice pedagogy strategies that can be implemented in the classroom setting. This article describes the Social Justice Syllabus Design Tool (SJSDT) created to facilitate a greater emphasis on social justice in courses. Using an integrative framework and highlighting the focus areas of relationship, community, and process, the SJSDT offers a systematic approach to course re-design by which instructors can assess their classroom environment and course content. A syllabus that signals belongingness, growth mindset, communal goals, clear and positive expectations, and success-orientation assists in setting a welcoming tone that leads to greater student achievement and engagement. Such a syllabus may also help reduce the potential for triggering stereotype threat or other forms of alienation that affect student success among women and students of color in STEM programs. Feedback received from faculty who utilized the tool to revise their course syllabi are discussed, in addition to limitations and recommendations for future practice.

The Unfinished Business of Social Justice in Christian Higher Education

In this essay, we contend that there is much unfinished business ahead for Christian higher education. Our argument is grounded in the cumulative impact of long-standing frameworks and an expanding knowledge base on diversity and social justice in higher education. In 2013, we edited a special volume of this journal calling for focused work on faith, diversity, and social justice within Christian higher education. Since then, we feel heavily influenced by racialized events in the United States and our concern as educators regarding the role and responsibility of Christian higher education in educating its students. The purpose of the article is to challenge and extend the conversation on diversity and social justice in Christian higher education. To that end, we suggest questions that Christian higher education leaders should be asking of themselves. We emphasize how Christian higher education can take the lead in advancing social justice as part of its mission. We explore definitions and old paradigms and discuss the significance of current events and cultural thinking. We then outline actionable institutional frameworks and initiatives that can move Christian higher education forward.

What Have We Learned from Critical Qualitative Inquiry about Race Equity and Social Justice? An Interview with Pioneering Scholar Yvonna Lincoln

In this article, two Black women scholars in higher education share a conversation with our distinguished senior colleague, Yvonna Lincoln, a pioneering scholar of qualitative research methodology about what we have learned from her, and more specifically, how this research paradigm has been used to advance racial equity and social justice in higher education. The readers will learn, through her lens, about issues that emerged over the years and what she envisions for the future of higher education and qualitative research. This article presents implications for higher education, including faculty, students, and administrators working in higher education institutions.