Considering social justice: Lived experiences of education students during the first course year

Conceptualising social justice

Coming up with a definition of social justice is problematic and complex and depends on political ideology or the context in which it is applied (Smith, 2018). As a case in point, in a study of teacher-educators in New Zealand, Sandretto et al. (2007: 307) liken the pinning down of a definition to ‘nailing jello to the wall’. Smith illustrates this complexity using the three principles suggested by Ruitenberg and Vokey (2010) to explore how we decide what is fair as one means of conceptualising social justice. First, she considers ‘justice as harmony’ where people have different talents which when put together strengthen the community as well as society. Education should support and develop such talents so that everyone can reach their (different) potentials. Next Smith (2018) highlights ‘justice as equity’, where the key aim is to reduce inequalities. For example, not all pupils are the same so the teacher should treat pupils differently in order that opportunities for success become more equal. Finally, Smith (2018) highlights ‘justice as equality’ where people are not the same but are equally deserving. Smith suggests that although schools and therefore teachers/educators are key agents of social justice she reminds us that remedying society’s injustices is not simply the responsibility of teachers and other educators but extends beyond the school gates (Smith, 2018: 21).

Florian and Black-Hawkins (2011) and Pantić and Florian (2015) argue that teachers can contribute to a social justice agenda by working in ways that help to mitigate the external causes of educational inequality. They suggest this can be achieved by ‘extending what is ordinarily available as opposed to doing something additional or different’ (Florian and Black-Hawkins, 2011: 815). This requires a shift in thinking away from commonly accepted ways of providing for everyone by differentiating for some. It is distinctive in that it accepts the notion of individual differences between learners without relying predominately on individualised approaches for responding to such differences (Pantić and Florian, 2015). However, multiple interpretations of terms such as ‘educational inequality’, ‘social justice’ and ‘change agency’ means that there are different approaches to thinking about such ways of working and how these might be developed, for example, through initial teacher education.

Nonetheless, a keen focus on social justice remains at the heart of education degrees. In this vein, Cochran-Smith (2004) argues that we need to keep social justice issues at the forefront and centre of our considerations and not define successful outcomes of teacher education just in terms of competencies and the number of pupils achieving high grades in subject assessments. She argues that we should recognise that competent teaching and learning is much more complex and goes far beyond this and should include ‘a place for critique in the face of consensus’. In other words, Cochran-Smith (2004) argues that teacher education programmes (and we would argue all education programmes) should provide space where Education students can reflect on their own experiences and challenge assumptions especially ‘questions related to diversity, equity, access and racism’ as well as professional issues (p. 208). For example, she argues that teachers, teacher educators, researchers and policy makers committed to a democratic vision of society and to the vital role that teachers and teacher educators play in that vision should take control of framing the outcomes of teacher education’, (Cochran-Smith, 2004: 208). Examining Education students’ emerging understandings of social justice in educational settings was one aim of the current study.

Research in this area has already looked at probationary teachers’ understandings of social justice. In New York, Sonu et al. (2012) report a case study of three new primary school teachers. They found that responsibility to teach for social justice often fell to those who were perceived to have had personal experiences with injustice. In a qualitative study in Canada, Philpott and Dagenais (2012) examined, using semi-structured interviews, 27 new teachers’ reflections on practice of social justice in the classroom. They found that, on the ground, the practicalities of delivering teaching, within curriculum constraints and varying professional support meant that new teachers were able to enact their beliefs where the context in which they were teaching permitted them to do so. To our knowledge, in depth exploration of Education students’ beliefs around social justice and how these emerge and develop as they become teachers has yet to be researched in the Scottish context and it is this gap which is the primary focus of this paper.

The Scottish context

There is an ever-growing need to prepare Education students, including student teachers, to become socially aware, reflective and skilled professionals capable of promoting positive role models in educational settings where everyone is treated with respect and individual differences are valued. In Scotland, like other ‘developed’ countries, there is a strong correlation between children’s educational outcomes and their social context (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2021) and therefore for professional educators to develop a sound understanding of the key manifestations of social (in)justice at all levels in society. It is not surprising then that in Scotland, social justice concerns have been a key ingredient of educational policy (Riddell, 2009; Riddell and Weedon, 2017). The Scottish Government’s National Improvement Framework (NIF) and Improvement Plan (Scottish Government, 2019) align with the three supporting pillars of Scottish Education namely the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence (CfE), Getting it Right for Every Child (GIRFEC) the national approach in Scotland to improving outcomes and supporting the wellbeing of our children and young people, which also has wellbeing at its core, and Developing the Young Workforce (DYW). The NIF sets out the vision and priorities for Scottish education agreed across the system, and the national improvement activity that needs to be undertaken to help deliver those key priorities. It highlights the importance of ensuring that every child achieves the highest standards in literacy and numeracy and that ‘every child has the same opportunity to succeed’ (Scottish Government, 2019). This integrated approach positions children at the centre, emphasising parental involvement and interagency working to identify children at risk and support children and young people dealing with adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) (Davidson and Wright, 2020). Furthermore, the recent Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated poverty for many families. The British Psychological Society (2020) highlights that child poverty in the UK has increased by 2.8% in the last 4 years and is predicted to increase to 5.2 million children by 2022. In sum, in Scotland, recent consultation and position papers, reports and policies serve to underline the importance of providing a broad-based education studies programme inviting Education students to consider wider conceptions of what it means to be educated regardless of race, class and gender and including social, political and economic factors affecting diversity, poverty and social mobility. At the same time, it is also important that Education students explore issues in terms of race class and gender and how they inform an understanding of social justice, in terms of equity and equality right from the start of their programme (General Teaching Council Scotland [GTCS], 2021a). In particular, the GTCS’ (2021a) definition of social justice in relation to professional values is ‘that everyone deserves equal economic, political and social rights’. It is therefore important that education students explore their understandings of equity and equality as ‘professional values’ (GTCS, 2021a); whilst student teachers are required to demonstrate their ‘enactment’ of personal and professional values in the form of ‘professional actions’. Teacher agency is required to be demonstrated in the classroom context (GTCS, 2021b) in order for student teachers to demonstrate competence against the GTCS Standard for Provisional Registration GTCS, 2021b).

However, Scotland like the rest of the UK struggles to attract a diverse range of students to university and particularly to teacher education courses (Education Policy Institute, 2020; Scottish Government, 2018; UK Government, 2021). Despite an emphasis on attracting students through widening participation programmes to Higher Education such as the Lothians Equal Access Programme for Schools (LEAPS) and the Scottish Wider Access Programme (SWAP), cohorts of students remain predominantly white female and from middle class sectors of society. Thus, it could be argued that there is a greater need to challenge pre-existing values and assumptions and to experience or have heightened awareness of social (in)justices in society at all levels in order to learn how these can negatively influence or impact on life chances for children and young adults from different social classes, ethnic groups or gender.

Theoretical context

As highlighted above, given the complexity of social justice as a phenomenon, we wanted to explore its complexity in our students’ understandings. Bronfenbrenner and Ceci’s (1994) ecological Systems Model allowed us to explore the multiple levels at which Education students could explore the concept of social justice. Indeed, Bronfenbrenner and Ceci (1994) developed the ecological systems theory precisely to illustrate the complexity of child development. The theory proposed that a child’s development is affected by the surrounding environment at different levels including immediate settings such as the family and school as well as broader cultural values, policies and customs. Bronfenbrenner suggests we can only really understand child development if we study the interaction between a child’s immediate and wider environment. To help us do this Bronfenbrenner identified five different systems at play within a child’s environment, the microsystem (most immediate environmental setting) the mesosystem (comprising interactions between different immediate environments) the exo-system (other formal and informal social structures such as a parent’s workplace, the mass media, the neighbourhood) the macro system (the established society and culture in which the child lives) and the chronosystem (life transitions and historical events).

Adapting Bronfenbrenner’s model, to explore Education students’ lived experiences of social justice suggests the importance of considering how social justice, in terms of our Education students’ experiences, is manifested and interlinked across all levels through activities, routines and practices and through a language mediated meaning making system. More specifically, we are interested in Education students’ lived experiences of social justice during their first year of study and how their class, gender and ethnicity might influence interpretation of their lived experiences. We are aware that we cannot study the Education students or the course in isolation but acknowledge that individual Education student views and dispositions of social justice are shaped at the micro level in terms of their class, race, and gender as well as in their previous and current interactions with each other, peers, their families, at schools, religious institutions and work. Whilst the university is another institution added into Education student interactions (microsystem); we acknowledge that the University is also part of the macro system. At the same time, we acknowledge that within the mesosystem the connections or (dis)connections between such settings also mediate and shape dispositions towards social justice (e.g. the interconnection between the family and the school, or the family and work, or the family and peers, or peers and the university).

We also acknowledge that aspects of social justice will also be evident within the exosystem, between social settings in which Education students participate and where they don’t have an active role (community-based experience, school placements, university) and their immediate context. For example, the recent pandemic affected the way university, schools and community placements could operate and although Education students were not active participants in terms of subsequent decision making and crisis planning, their views of social justice may have been indirectly affected by these wider events which resulted in the move to predominantly online learning at university and limited or no access to school and community placements.

In a similar vein, Education student beliefs and actions regarding social justice are influenced by the macrosystem, the wider social context of culture, society, community (e.g., cultural norms, societal belief systems, ideologies, government policies and laws, globalisation). These may indirectly influence Education student dispositions towards social justice. We suggest that these four levels map onto the structure and methodology of the overall cohort study research but also can be used to structure the analysis of the qualitative data from the first year of the study presented below. Onwuegbuzie et al. (2013) argue that, in this way, and using qualitative research data, Bronfenbrenner and Ceci’s (1994) theoretical framework allows us to explore the messiness of becoming a professional educator through the lens of social justice, increasing current knowledge, and understanding of how social justice is constructed and experienced by Education students in different environments and the consequences/implications of this for their professional practice.

The University context

The Education Studies Programmes, in line with Scottish policy, at the University aim to take a fresh, contemporary, and ambitious approach with a commitment to widening access and engaging Education students with the concept of social justice, the wider socio-political issues that affect education on every level, and how this in turn influences educational outcomes for children and young people. It aims to be a ‘transformative’ approach (cf. Mezirow, 2003) to professional education where the ethos of social justice runs through the core of each programme.

The overarching aim of the Education programmes is to produce socially aware, reflective, skilled educators including teachers who can engage in inter-agency collaborations to the benefit of a child’s holistic health and wellbeing experience of education within their community contexts (Forbes and Watson, 2011). The three Education programmes share a common ethos and approach, with a focus on wellbeing, resilience, child welfare and inequality. The Education programmes at the University align closely with the Scottish Curriculum and aim to embed Health and Wellbeing, Literacy (including digital and data literacy) and Numeracy across learning. A second core component of the Education Programmes is getting it right for every child (GIRFEC). Our programmes are built to embed its values and principles while ensuring these are clearly recognised by the Education students but not ‘so well embedded they are invisible’. Thus, the programmes aim to model with Education students the practices, attitudes and approaches we wish them to use in their own work and avoid deficit language and assumptions of ‘normality’ in our exchanges, teaching, material, teaching resources, and marketing material.

A strong emphasis is placed on the understanding of the principles of social justice, wellbeing, diversity, and inclusion, including a critical view of society’s barriers and enablers to learning to read and write, many of which are deeply entrenched. In the first year of the undergraduate programmes (education studies and education studies (primary)) students take the same six, 20 credit modules. One of these modules includes a community-based education experience (CBE) of 5 days or 30 hours. The other five modules are taught on the university campus. The year long, postgraduate PGDE education programme is divided between 18 weeks of school experience spread over the year and carried out within two different schools and 18 weeks of campus-based teaching input. On this programme student teachers progressively take greater responsibility for teaching a range of secondary Home Economics classes.

Present study

Taking account of the arguments presented above, we examined our first year Education students’ conceptions of social justice in qualitative surveys at the beginning and end of the year, and via a series of focus groups. We report here a qualitative analysis of our first year Education students’ understanding of social justice, across our degree programmes. We use Bronfenbrenner’s framework to contrast their definitions of social justice at the beginning and end of the year, whether they can be attributed to a micro, meso-, exo- or macro-system of understanding of social justice. We consider the definitions alongside the examples of social justice in action that were given in the second survey, and in the focus groups.

Method

Results

The findings here relate to the qualitative data from the Phase 1 and Phase 2 surveys and focus groups. Recognising the uniqueness of the study and the complex phenomena in the data, we applied two coding methods and two different analytical approaches to enhance concurrence accountability as well as the depth and breadth of findings (Saldaña, 2009, citing Coffey and Atkinson, 2006; Onwuegbuzie and Leech, 2005; Mello, 2002).

Discussion

The aim of the phases of the present study reported here was to examine Education students’ reflections on social justice. We did this by examining how their definitions of social change differed from the beginning to the end of their first course year, and through focus groups with a smaller number of participants to explore these definitions further. Education students provided a range of definitions reflecting their personal, lived experiences from the first year. They identify many examples of social (in)justice as well as examples of social justice and many of these came from focus group interviews where students gave examples from their personal experiences. Using Bronfenbrenner and Ceci’s (1994) ecological framework, it was evident that Education students were mostly reporting social in/justice at the micro (individual) level in terms of the pupils’ or their own experience and sometimes at the ‘exo’ level where systems such as home life, school and university were influencing each other. There were examples of how social justice was being enacted whereEducation students had been on placement (school or in community-based placements; CBE). There were fewer examples of social justice being reported at the ‘meso’, or ‘macro’ level other than through reflection with reference to key words such as ‘race’ and ‘universal credit’.

To consider themes more specifically, regarding inclusion and prejudice, it was evident that Education students had reflected on the practice of inclusion in terms of the protected characteristics, and upon their personal experiences of prejudice in their own lives as well as examples in the classroom and the value of a place on the University’s Education courses for examining one’s own prejudices. This dovetails with our quantitative findings (not reported in this paper), showing that there was a negative association between self-transcendence and social justice beliefs for those with a high social dominance orientation and a non-widening participation background. It is also important given the work of Abacioglu et al. (2019) who showed that for teachers who reported more positive multicultural attitudes, prejudice reduction in their classroom was positively linked with pupil engagement.

With regards to the theme of culture, there was some evidence that the university courses could be raising greater awareness of cultural issues particularly in terms of beliefs and values around ethnicity and religion in relation to social in/justice. However, there was also evidence that prior experience also shaped and influenced reflections. Education students were developing their own ideas and beliefs about culture whilst at the same time recognising that their pedagogies could influence children in a positive way with regards to developing knowledge of cultural diversity through world food lessons in the Home Economics classrooms. They were also becoming increasingly aware of the importance of developing a sympathetic understanding of children’s own cultures through their conversations about practical cookery classes and the language they use with the pupils. Yet, at the same time, students were becoming aware of and mediating the tensions between different cultures. It was evident that some Education students were demonstrating how they were building up a wider understanding of cultural diversity and its importance as they developed their identities as professional educators. This would support Vélez-Agosto et al.’s (2017) argument that aspects of culture and cultural values are constructed through language meaning making systems.

In terms of the broader policy theme, responses from some Education students demonstrate how at an early stage in their course some were becoming aware of policy causes and effects and how this influences perceptions and experiences of social justice including examples of poverty, deprivation, and neglect. For example, a possible awareness of the effects of social in/justice being more evident where children grow up within the care system and how this might result in disengagement within education. The data would suggest a gradual awareness of a sense of agency in the way that some Education students were becoming aware of how they could adapt the curriculum and teaching approaches in order to take account of children’s physical and social needs as well as taking account of cultural and religious differences. It could be that some students were also developing a sense of agency in the way that they drew upon their personal experiences to make sense of how social injustice can be manifested within the micro and exo-system. However, our findings suggested at this stage in their programme, most Education students are not overtly aware of how policy at the macro level can have a in/direct influence on practice in the micro-, exo- and mesosystems. This could reflect the nature of the cohort (out of 133 participants 120 were female and 101 identified as white British). Where focus groups contained a majority of widening participation students it was notable students made references to their own experiences of social injustices as well as those of others. Whilst a minority of the cohort have entered university as widening participation routes and it may well be that these students are more sensitive to social injustices and barriers to education. It can also be argued that it is even more important for those who identify themselves as white British to be exposed to situations out of their comfort zones to disrupt and challenge deep seated beliefs and assumptions.

With regards to the professional identity theme the data suggests Education students were beginning to relate their experiences to their emerging professional identities. Cochran-Smith (2020: 454) acknowledges the centrality of identity in her three-part theoretical framework for social justice teacher education, noting one key idea being respect for ‘all social/racial/cultural groups’. She offers several interpretive lenses to support her framework, including that ‘all persons have multiple identities’ (Cochran-Smith, 2010: 456, emphasis added), suggesting that it is not just Education students’ personal identities we need to attend to but their emerging professional identities and values as well in order to develop sense of agency in the way they recognise the needs of children and young people with a diverse range of needs. These arguments underscore the importance of teacher agency in ‘Being a Teacher in Scotland’ (GTCS, 2021b) in relationship to social justice in teacher education. However, the empirical social justice literature has not been probed in terms of how it treats the question of social identity, and in particular Education students’ multiple identities (Pugach et al., 2019, see also Cochran-Smith, 2020, Cochran-Smith et al., 2016).

Conclusion

Our initial findings from the first year of the programmes would suggest that students’ definitions of social justice are varied. Education students lived experiences of social justice are strongly influenced by what they have experienced on placement and how they constructed their understandings in relation to their individual reflections and relations as well as their connections experienced within local cultural settings. This would imply that after the first year of the education programmes the micro and to a certain extent the exo-system has a stronger influence on Education student conceptions of social justice. Definitions and examples of social justice are centred predominantly on children (micro) and particular actions in educational settings (exo). There were fewer examples of how policies and structures in the macro- and mesosystems might determine experiences of social (in)justice at the exo-, meso- and microlevels. Fewer examples were given of social justice from modules which were university based. Wider implications arising from this are around how Education students are constructing their own professional identities and agency as they engage with the programme as well as considering the identities of their own peers and pupils.