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Constructing Social Justice in Education: The Current Context

Constructing Social Justice in Education: The Current Context
June 2015
Tiffany S. Kyser, Rodney S. Whiteman, Sara Bangert, Seena M. Skelton, Kathleen King Thorius

This edition of the Equity Dispatch explores how educators can create spaces in order to grapple with and define what social justice means in their context(s) during professional development, committee work, teaching, strategic planning, and collaboratively reflecting, and interfacing with parents/caregivers and community partners. Discussions of social justice in education must move beyond the misperceived barrier that pressures of academic achievement are at direct odds with curriculum and practices which focus on social justice. Definitions of social justice must move beyond work force oriented perspectives on schooling, which stresses education for jobs, to one where the traditional model of schooling becomes a pathway in developing agency and learning toward self-determination. There exists a great opportunity in see[ing] educational practice as sites of justice [and] not merely injustice. By viewing students as well as educators as equal participants, students are afforded the opportunity to be active global citizens and persistent critical thinkers.

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