Social Justice Themes Research Articles

Developing Critical Communities for Critical Conversations in K-12 Classrooms

As marginalized identities are still largely denied representation in society and students from dominant groups lack sociocultural knowledge to live in a multicultural democracy, books are a powerful tool to address injustices. This article provides teacher candidates as well as practicing teachers with tools to address social justice topics in their classes by building critical communities to support critical conversations and subsequently using texts as tools for teaching in socially just ways. We offer a three part framework including 1) How teachers can begin to prepare to engage in critical conversations with students; 2) Laying out necessary steps for structuring classrooms to cultivate critical conversations; and 3) Illuminating how young adult and children’s literature can be leveraged to serve these broader goals. Our hope is to contribute actionable steps to educators who want to engage in critical conversations with their students by providing an entry point for critical teaching practices.

Investigating Social Justice Topics in Reading Texts of English Textbooks Used in China and Germany

English language teaching (ELT) plays a vital role in promoting social equality and societal transformation. Thus, social justice education has been given attention as one of ELT purposes. Textbooks, as the most significant teaching materials of English teachers, pose significant effects on English learners’ awareness of social justice issues that touch upon their daily lives. However, there is little empirical research investigating integrated social justice topics in ELT textbooks. This study addressed the gap through identifying and comparing social justice topics of grade 10 English textbooks used in Chinese and German high school classrooms. Results of this study revealed that German English textbooks encompassed a much more diversity of social justice topics than Chinese English textbooks. Besides, this study offered a significant capacity for English textbooks to stimulate English learners’ social responsibility and awareness of social justice. This study has implications for improving social justice education in the ELT classroom.

Revisiting "Tommy": Further Considerations of Best Practices for Addressing Inflexibly Enacted Traditional Masculinity Norms (IE-TMNs) with Boys and Men in Therapy

In this article, I respond to the thoughtful commentaries and critiques offered by James Mahalik (2020), Ethan Hoffman and Michael Addis (2020), and Ginelle Wolfe and Ron Levant (2020) on my hybrid case study of "Tommy" (Dewey, 2020), a college freshman exhibiting symptoms of depression, alcohol use concerns, and inflexibly enacted traditional masculinity norms (IE-TMNs) during a time of difficult transitions and loss in his life. These commentaries have reaffirmed many of my beliefs about best practices for working with boys and men in therapy, while also expanding my knowledge of the psychology of men and masculinities (PMM) and introducing me to conceptual frameworks and therapeutic goals not directly explored in my original case study. Additionally, these three commentaries underscored areas of particular importance that I would like to discuss in further detail, including, (a) Hoffman and Addis’s differentiation between reconstructing and deconstructing masculinity as treatment aims when working with boys and men in therapy; (b) the benefits of employing Interpersonal Theory to better conceptualize presenting concerns related to traditional masculinity norms as highlighted by Mahalik; (c) constructive criticism from Wolfe and Levant and from Addis and Hoffman about the need for closer examination of social justice themes that arise when addressing masculinity in treatment; and (d) concerns about the generalizability of the case study raised by all three commentaries.

Bringing Social Justice into the Statistics Classroom

Social justice is an American Psychological Association (APA) ethical principal which is often taught in content courses (e.g. social psychology, developmental psychology, introductory psychology) but rarely covered in psychological statistics courses. This is problematic, as psychology students may assume that bias is not an issue when implementing statistical tests and interpreting their results if social justice topics are not incorporated into statistics classrooms. The current study evaluated student’s attitudes toward a social justice lecture in a statistics classroom ( N = 100 students). Results show students had more favorable attitudes toward social justice and agreed it was important to cover in statistics classrooms. Future research should extend this work by seeking to replicate these findings and evaluating additional pedagogical tools to incorporate social justice into the statistics classroom.

Integrating environmental justice into applied ecology research: Somebody else's problem?

Environmental injustice can be expressed through lack of access to resources, unequal exposure to toxins, and limited access to knowledge about the unsustainable environmental practices that impact communities (Bullard 2018). The ecological processes that contribute to the "perfect storm" of conditions that create environmental injustices are well documented in applied ecology scholarship; yet the human dimension or the co-production of research on those impacts seem to fall into the range of "somebody else's problem." In a literature review of the last 15 years of research published in the Ecological Society of America's family of journals, we explored the intersections of environmental processes and social justice issues, searching for themes, gaps, and opportunities. The resultant is a collection of articles on environmental justice topics that includes issues on access to resources and unequal exposure to environmental hazards and pollutants. This collection highlights gaps in the integration of natural science with social justice topics along with the need for stronger integration of interdisciplinary knowledge that is co-produced with community stakeholders and researchers to build a robust interdisciplinary field of climate justice and global environmental sustainability.

Beyond the Personal: The Systemic Critique of German Graphic Medicine

Auto/biographical narratives and the authority of lived experience have shaped the field of graphic medicine and the focus of related scholarship. Following a brief introduction to the growing and diversifying field of German-language graphic medicine, this article puts an emphasis on the analysis of two fictional examples of the genre, comparing Elke Renate Steiner’s Risiken und Nebenwirkungen (2010), which deals with the widespread misuse of prescription drugs, and Marijpol’s Eremit (2013), which envisions a world in which children are a rarity and the elderly plan their deaths proactively, booking themselves on final journeys. These two comics could not be more different in their story or plot, tone, or style yet turn out to share common ground in their politics as they tackle similar social justice themes (such as the effect of contemporary working conditions on people’s health, dignity in aging and dying, and the commodification of care work). The aim of the article is to highlight the socio-critical dimensions that fictional graphic medicine, too, possesses and to begin exploring the particular means it has to speak beyond the personal, proffering systemic critique.

Using social justice graphic novels in the ELL classroom

AbstractGraphic novels are a form of authentic text that have started to gain widespread acceptance in the English language arts field and have been shown to increase students’ motivation to read and engage deeply with texts. By integrating text with pictures, graphic novels have the advantage of requiring a lighter cognitive load than traditional full‐text novels and can be more visually and emotionally impactful. This article discusses the need for graphic novels in the English language learner (ELL) classroom and their benefits as authentic, multimodal texts that lower the obstacles to engaging with challenging social justice issues. The article provides a sample unit plan that takes an in‐depth look at the graphic novel trilogyMarchby John Lewis, which provides a firsthand account of the U.S. civil rights movement. The unit plan and supplementary resources can be adapted to facilitate discussion in ELL classrooms worldwide regarding a variety of equity‐oriented issues. The article explores how graphic novel texts can engage students in deeper thinking about difficult issues through readings, discussions, journaling, and completing research projects on social justice themes worldwide.

Beyond Green Chemistry: Teaching Social Justice in Organic Chemistry

A strategy for incorporating social justice themes into an introductory organic chemistry curriculum is described. We have deliberately infused social justice themes into the standard organic chemistry curriculum by discussing the history and social impact of key compounds. Using these key compounds that have had significant social, cultural, and environmental impacts, students practiced arrow-pushing mechanisms, predicted products, and identified pKa values and functional groups. We believe this approach helps make the material more relevant to students, keep students engaged, and emphasize the real-world applications of the concepts and compounds that they are learning about. Details on the implementation and the evaluation of this work are discussed.

Engineering Education and the Drive for Social Justice in Africa

Engineering social justice education (ESJ) is an emerging core subject in engineering education (EE)and profession. However, several EE institutions are yet to incorporate social justice (SJ) into engineering courses, leading to strong advocacy for EE review of programmes. This paradigm shift is align with ESJ revised curricula to increase the power of engineering knowledge integrated with SJ, which explicitly harnessed in serving vulnerable society, thereby addressing injustices and inequalities; hence the crux of this paper. This paper was guided by Nancy Fraser’s theory of SJ that elucidates that a more equitable distribution of resources is interrelated with equal recognition of different identities/groups within a society. This theory looks at how individuals are prevented from participating as equals by denying them of available resources to do so. This paper takes a broad look at the impact of integrating SJ in EE in Africa, while examining the extent EE has addressed numerous inequalities and, exploring how engineering practitioners can work towards a more just and equitable society. The significance of SJ in EE in the 21st century were discussed among others. Thus, to address social justice in EE, collaboration amongst educational sector and engineering industrialists are central in building and revising EE curriculum inclusive of SJ themes to consolidate engineering professional ethics. This will transform the way educators think about ESJ through creating or converting existing core curriculum courses to attract, retain, and motivate engineering students to become professionals to enact SJ in engineering field.

“I Know It When I See It”: Constructing Emotion and Emotional Labor in Social Justice News

ABSTRACT This exploratory study examines the roles journalists rely on when covering social justice topics and what these role conceptions reveal about emotion and self expression values in news production. This article builds on Herbert Gans’ definition of what news is, discursive understandings of journalistic performance, and emotion in news to understand and operationalize journalists’ understandings of how their roles and reporting practices shape news coverage of social justice topics. Findings from qualitative interviews with journalists suggest that journalists that cover social justice topics seek to guide, motivate, and inspire audiences by utilizing emotion in the stories they choose to cover. Interview data shows that emotion and emotional labor are important components of the production of social justice news. This article adds to theoretical and practical understandings of how journalists who cover social justice topics discursively construct their professional roles, and how emotions contribute to a contemporary understanding of journalism and news.

“We All Have a Little More Homework to Do:”: A Constructivist Grounded Theory of Transformative Learning Processes for Practicing Music Teachers Encountering Social Justice

The purpose of this study was to investigate processes that led practicing music educators in a graduate course to examine their beliefs and practices regarding inclusion, responsiveness, equity, and justice. Using Charmaz’s constructivist approach to grounded theory, we interviewed 22 participants from MUS 8XX: Philosophy of Music Education. Constant comparative analysis yielded an explanatory framework, which we presented as a model and named “transformative learning processes (TLP) for practicing music teachers encountering social justice.” TLP comprises four interrelated components: “building Gemütlichkeit,” “grappling with difficult material,” “emotional intensity,” and “course structures,” with “stories” acting as a hub for each of the interconnected categories. By describing processes that led practicing teachers to examine their mindsets and plan to change their practices, TLP could provide guidance for music teacher educators at the graduate level regarding how to approach social justice topics in their teaching.

Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah’s critique of the Danziger Bridge shootings

Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah is an African American trumpeter, composer and producerfrom New Orleans, Louisiana. He has written compositions and performed improvisationscommitted to social justice themes. His cultural work is a natural extensionof his community service training directed by his grandfather Donald Harrison Sr. Hiscomposition 'Danziger' (2012) gives voice to the unarmed citizens injured and killed bypolice as they crossed the Danziger Bridge in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. 'Danziger'extends from his stretch music theory which aTunde Adjuah describes as disassemblingand reassembling musical ideas so that his compositions and improvisations canbe understood holistically. While aTunde Adjuah's interpretation of the Danziger Bridgeshootings is funneled through the ontological cornucopia of his trumpet and referenceshis particular community, the message he sends out through his custom-made trumpetbell is universal because his critique supports everyday human rights.

Rapid transition of a preclinical health systems science and social justice course to remote learning in the time of coronavirus

ABSTRACT As the coronavirus pandemic started, we rapidly transitioned a preclinical social justice and health systems sciences course at our medical school to asynchronous, remote learning. We describe processes, curricular innovations, and lessons learned. Small groups were converted into independent learning modules and lectures were given live via videoconferencing technology. We started with a simplified approach and then built technological capabilities over time. Current events were incorporated into curriculum and assessment. Our course ran from 16 March–3 April 2020 for the 155-person first-year class. Student attendance for optional, synchronous remote sessions was higher than in-person attendance in previous years. Completion rates for assignments were high but with minimal student collaboration. Faculty office hours were underutilized. Focus group and formal evaluations were largely positive, with numerical ratings for quality of the course and faculty teaching higher than the 2 years prior. Student engagement with social justice topics in aremote format was successful through modifications to small groups and lecture structure. Students, faculty, and administrative staff appreciated the consistency of session format throughout the course. Students exam performance was similar to prior years. Attention should be paid to what can be learned via self-study as opposed to small group learning. Better methods of soliciting real-time student feedback, and encouraging engagement with each other and with faculty in aremote environment are needed.

Confrontation in Idyllia: The Country Estate as Moral Space in Russian Literature

The Latin phrase “Et in Arcadia ego” has been interpreted as referring both to the presence of man in an idyllic place and to the presence of death in that same space. The article applies this ambiguous treatment to the Russian country estate as a place of moral conflict in the novel Hard Times by V. A. Sleptsov and I. S. Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons. Their interpretation requires an understanding of both the setting of the estate within the natural environment and its socio-cultural status linked to the theme of social justice in Russian during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The article demonstrates that a crucial function of the Russian country estate as a literary topos is the creation of a moral space (moralis locus) within which profound existential questions are posed and discussed. The stage-like spatiality of the country estate — enclosed yet inproximity to the natural environment — provides an ideal setting not only for gathering the verbal antagonists but also for establishing their identity as a function of their attitude toward the presence of nature. This latter element —the presence of nature —in turn summons the question of the characters’ (and writers’) relationship to Romanticism in 19th-century literature. It was Romanticism which elevated the human perception of Nature’s transcendent harmony as a fundamental literary trope. At the same time, the immediate presence of nature as a productive, life-nourishing land situated the usad’ba in the midst of the intractable social problems of the peasantry and its economic plight, before and after the emancipation in 1861.

Dorothea Lange

Purpose Dorothea Lange was one of the first US documentary photographers, and she was empowered by the belief that seeing the effects of injustice, in photographs, could elicit social and political reform. She famously documented the plight of Dust Bowl migrants during the US. Great Depression and harsh difficulties endured by incarcerated Japanese Americans during the Second World War. Lange’s photographs brought suppressed issues of class and race to the surface, depicting those impacted by national tragedies into recognizable, honorable, determined individuals. By showing Americans how suffering and injustice look in real life, she stimulated empathy and compassion. This inquiry is not particularly about the Great Depression or Japanese Internment, though disciplinary concept lessons would certainly support students’ prior knowledge. This lesson focuses students’ attention on broader ideas regarding social justice and how social and political documentary photography transform people’s views about distressing problems, even today. Supporting questions are: How can deep analysis of photographs affect our thoughts and emotions about social issues? What is empathy? How can social documentary photography affect people’s emotions? Supporting questions guide students to answer the greater compelling question, How can visuals, such as photographs, impact social change? The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach This is an inquiry lesson plan based on a National Council for the Social Studies Notable Trade book for Young People award winner, Dorothea’s Eyes, written by Barb Rosenstock. Findings The paper is a lesson plan, which incorporates students’ analyses of primary sources and other research methods to engage the learner in understanding how Dorothea Lange helped change perspectives regarding the need for social and political reform. Though the story is historic, similar social justice topics still persist, worldwide, today. Originality/value Through inquiry and research, students begin to learn how social and political documentary photography began in the USA, and students create their own social documentaries. Though the US Great Depression and Japanese Internment are highly relevant within this lesson, the overall, greater message is about class, race, suffering and how to inspire empathy.

Examining the Intersection of Social Justice and State Standards with Elementary Preservice Teachers

ABSTRACT This investigation considered the social justice perspectives and coursework of 19 preservice teachers enrolled in an elementary education program. An elementary education course required students to complete a social justice project on a current issue in education and design a lesson for their future classrooms that met a state standard. Upon completion of the project, students completed a personal reflection and engaged in a class discussion on social justice education. Three categories of projects were identified through an inductive and deductive thematic analysis. Some participants created lesson plans on their topic but ignored social justice; some participants created lesson plans infused with social justice that contradicted their personal views, and some participants created social justice lesson plans that aligned with their personal views. The analysis exposed gaps between participants’ perceptions of themselves and how they would integrate social justice topics into their classrooms. Most participants viewed themselves as social justice educators, but their social justice values did not translate into anticipated actions. Implications for teacher education are discussed.

Empowering Youth to Become Global Citizens through Graphic Novels:

How we teach youth about social justice issues, and promote diversity in books, is crucial to supporting global citizenship and building cultural empathy. This research posits that graphic novels are useful tools to teach social justice topics given the duality of text and illustrations and the focus of diversity and social justice issues of many graphic novel titles. Using a critical content analysis approach, researchers examine examples of graphic novels giving marginalized communities a voice and targeting social justice topics and explore best practices in using graphic novels to empower youth to become global citizens. Preliminary findings are presented.

TWLF Images

Jesús Barraza is an interdisciplinary artist whose work centers on social justice themes. Jesús provides a brief introduction to his artwork, focusing on posters he created that reflect different anniversary years of the Third World Liberation Front and Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley.

Silencing Palestine: Limitations on free speech within mental health organizations

AbstractThe authors report on episodes in which five professional mental health organizations—for the most part associations for psychoanalysis and psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy—have covertly tried to silence members who bring attention to the issue of human rights abuses inflicted by the Israeli occupation of Palestine. These various vignettes illustrate how the leadership of these organizations systematically attempts to limit the activism of their members, even in their “free time,” and to forbid the introduction of discussion of Israel/Palestine into their newsletters, meetings, chatrooms, and other organizational venues—despite the fact that these organizations profess their commitment to exploring themes of social justice and to the principle of open dialogue. Implications and recommendations are discussed, particularly the practical need for transparency on the part of our organizations and the intellectual need for a more complete theoretical understanding of the roles of history, ideology, and collective meaning within mental life.

Teaching and learning social justice in human resource development graduate programs: Preparation for research and practice

Despite calls for research into how critical and social justice themes are taught in HRD programs (Byrd, 2015), the current literature tells us little about how future scholars and practitioners are being prepared to face workplace injustice. Recent curricular research examining published curriculum lists and course descriptions have reported no evidence of critical or social justice approaches to HRD being taught (Lim & Rager, 2015; Lim, Song, Choi, & Kim, 2013; Zachmeier, Cho, & Kim, 2014). This project uses qualitative survey methodology informed by critical race theory to critically interrogate HRD curricula. The purpose of this article is to present findings from a study designed to assess how—or if—social justice perspectives are being taught in HRD graduate programs.