Social justice is a broad ideal which encapsulates issues of equity and opportunity

Project: HDR ProjectPhD

Project Details

Description

Social justice is a broad ideal which encapsulates issues of equity and opportunity. Education is one of the means through which inequity is often transmitted and replicated. Yet, schooling provides an opportunity for challenging the status quo and promoting more just and democratic societies. This project is interested in how social justice is discussed, taught and practiced in teacher education in particular regards to inclusive education, which is not only recommended but necessary to realise the very purpose of education if students are to thrive.
Efforts to incorporate social justice principles in teacher education have been present in policy for the last 30 years on global scale. Teacher education programs at the higher education level in many countries, notably in Australia, have embraced a variety of equity issues including access, participation and curriculum. This study involves social justice teacher education practices in the Bachelor of Primary Education course at Charles Darwin University. This is a regional university where public documents explicitly state to incorporate social justice teacher philosophies their education courses.
This research is designed to provide insight into how social justice is presented, interpreted and practiced by reviewing the unit catalogue including unit descriptions and objectives, interviewing lecturers who are lecturing in the course, interviewing pre-service teachers who are enrolled in the course and analysing pre-service teachers’ assignments which is about their understandings and reflections of social justice. Text analysis of the unit outlines is done with Leximancer, to determine how these documents reflect issues of social justice. The interviews with lecturers and pre-service teachers and the text analysis of pre-service assignments explore how these stakeholders interpret social justice.
This work is not an assessment of this course specifically, but an investigation into the way ideas of social justice are translated into practice.
StatusActive
Effective start/end date4/03/19 → …

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