Keywords

If some individuals still believe that teacher education for social justice is a fuzzy term lacking conceptual clarity, that includes all manner of touchy-feely processes but ignores the role of knowledge in education, they haven’t been paying attention to the substantial and growing body of literature in the field (Cochran-Smith et al. 2009). Since the term “social justice” came to be widely applied in teacher education over the past two decades, much progress has been made in answering the above critiques. We have theoretical tools, conceptual frameworks, concise definitions, case studies of social justice teacher education programs and courses, empirical evidence of practices that are effective in educating teachers for social justice, and thick descriptions of what social justice teaching looks like in k-12 classrooms. Much has been accomplished, but much remains to be done by those who support teacher education for social justice. In this paper, I will review those accomplishments, point out questions that remain to be answered, voice some concerns about, and make suggestions for the future of teacher education for social justice in the United States and elsewhere.

1 The Tools We Have

The literature suggests that there is general (although certainly not unanimous) consensus around a definition of social justice as it applies to teacher education. The definition is bifurcate. The first part views teachers as agents of social justice who teach so that all learners, especially those least well served by schools, can achieve. Thus, marginalized communities will be equipped with “strong future leaders,” who will be prepared to succeed, thereby correcting “current inequalities” (Westheimer and suurtaam 2009, p. 590). The second part views students themselves as agents of social change. The teacher’s role is to provide students with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions they will need to bring a more just society into being. Westheimer and suurtamm (2009) argue that both parts of the definition are needed for a teacher education program that enables candidates to teach both for and about social justice (p. 590).

Social justice teacher education aims to prepare teachers to recognize, name, and combat inequity in schools and society. This aim is generally shared among educators and researchers in a variety of fields, including critical race theory (Ladson-Billings and Tate 1995; Milner 2008), whiteness studies (Leonardo 2009), anti-oppressive education (Kumashiro 2004), culturally responsive teaching (Gay 2002), culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings 1992), feminisms (North 2008), and lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender (LGBT) education (Sears 2005). All these fields provide powerful tools for bringing about social justice by striking blows against racism, ableism, sexism, and the other ideologies that marginalize students in schools. Inequitable treatment of students is compounded by social class (Anyon 1981; Oakes 1985) and poverty, which Hodginkson (2002) has called the “universally handicapping condition” (p. 103).

The rationale for social justice in teacher education in the U.S. is grounded in what is commonly called the “demographic imperative” (e.g., Cochran-Smith 2004; McDonald 2007; Zeichner 2009). In the United States, the demographic imperative refers to (1) a swelling student population taught by a shrinking teaching force, resulting in teacher shortages in some areas, such as math, science, ESL and special education and in questionable staffing practices in some schools; (2) the growing disparity between mostly White, monolingual, English-speaking, middle class teachers and teacher educators and the k-12 students who differ from them in race/ethnicity, language, social class, and other dimensions of identity (Zeichner 2009). These facts have contributed to both a gap in the quality of education students in the most needy schools—primarily urban and rural—receive and a gap between the achievement of these students and White, middle class students in more affluent schools. Advocates of a social justice agenda for teacher education argue that schooling and teachers can and should play a major role in bringing about a more just society (Zeichner 2009).

Several scholars have offered conceptual frameworks upon which to design teacher education programs for social justice. McDonald (2005), for example, synthesized sociocultural theory, social justice theory, the recommendations of multicultural education scholars over the past two decades, together with her study of two teacher education programs with a commitment to social justice in order to create a framework that allows teacher educators to raise questions about the extent to which their programs address social justice. Chubbuck (2010) has proposed an individual and a structural framework “to inform the content and teaching strategies teacher educators use to instruct preservice teachers in socially just education” (p. 197). We have explicit descriptions of what White teachers need to know in order to accomplish equity goals (although what teachers of color may need to know has been less clearly limned) (Richert et al. 2009; Sleeter 2001). Promising practices for educating preservice and inservice teachers in social justice have been identified and programs that implement these practices portrayed in case studies (Mirra and Morrell 2011; Skinner et al. 2011; Zeichner & Flessner 2009). Social justice teacher educators have risen to the challenge of fleshing out their vision of teacher education for social justice. Yet, as Carl Grant (2009) has pointedly asked, “Where are the teachers?…Teachers (and here I am including teacher educators), with a few exceptions do not seem fully engaged in the active struggle for social justice” (p. 654). In the next section, I examine some recent empirical studies that have attempted to answer Grant’s question and suggest how these studies have contributed to our knowledge of social justice in teacher education.

2 Studies of U.S. Preservice and Inservice Teachers Teaching for Social Justice

A recent issue of the Journal of Teacher Education (Volume 61, Number 3) was dedicated to the theme of social justice and teacher education. This theme was not one identified by the editorial team in a call for manuscripts. Rather, it emerged from the manuscripts that were submitted to the journal for review. It was clear to the editorial team (of which I was a member) that researchers/teacher educators in the field were engaged in studies of social justice in teacher education. The articles that appeared in that issue are representative of the promising directions research on teacher education for social justice has taken as well as challenges that research still needs to address.

Pollock, Deckman, Mira, and Shalaby (2010) described their work with preservice teachers, who wondered whether simply teaching their subjects well was adequate anti-racist work, whether everyday acts really do combat racism, and whether the problem of racism is so big that nothing can be done. Pollock and her colleagues showed how teacher educators could pose a single question with three different inflections (What can I do? What can I do? What can I do?) in order to use productively the tensions inherent in anti-racist teaching and to launch teachers into ongoing inquiry into their practice. The study is noteworthy for providing a window into preservice teachers’ thinking about race and racism, and for positing the idea that “core tensions…on race…are here to stay….[and] may be necessary tensions that require explicit and ongoing attention in [professional development]” (p. 221).

Agarwal, Epstein, Oppenheim, Oyler, and Sonu (2010) followed elementary preservice teachers who graduated from a social justice-oriented program into their beginning teaching placements and examined the ways in which they enacted social justice curricula. The authors described the three novice teachers’ attempts to put conceptions of social justice into practice as an “uncertain journey” (p. 237). While avowing a commitment to teaching for social justice, the teachers operationalized that commitment quite differently, often struggling with contextual issues and their own self-confidence for teaching. This study highlighted the need for teacher educators to treat learning theories of social justice and the development of the practice of teaching for social justice as concomitant activities. Furthermore, the study made very clear the need for a support system for teachers, especially novice teachers, attempting to “pursue their justice-oriented ideals in the classroom” (p. 246).

Young (2010) provided additional evidence of how complicated learning to teach for social justice can be in school settings, even when a support group is in place. She described the workings of an inquiry group, composed of teachers, administrators, and researchers in an urban school setting committed to understanding and implementing culturally relevant pedagogy. Classroom observations of the teachers teaching what they perceived to be culturally relevant lessons highlighted the dissonance between a theory as it is outlined in the literature and as it is applied in the classroom. Young noted that culturally relevant pedagogy is theorized as a tool to empower students intellectually, socially, emotionally, and politically; however, she found underdeveloped understanding, confusion, and frustration at the district, school, and classroom levels as teachers attempted to use it. She concluded, “Raising educators’ race consciousness is not something that can be done in one college course, in a professional development seminar, or, in this case, in 8 weeks of inquiry group sessions over the course of 3 months” (p. 258).

McPherson’s (2010) study of web-based communication among preservice teachers from a single teacher education program, their university-based teacher educators, and inservice teachers from a variety of school settings with diverse student populations in Winnipeg, Canada had the advantage of bringing together a variety of participants from multiple contexts through online conversations about “critical intercultural incidents identified by the teacher candidates[s] during their practicum experiences” (p. 274). Inductive analysis of the data produced a framework for intercultural teaching coursework with field experience components.

Finally, Galman, Pica-Smith, and Rosenberger (2010), three White female teacher educators, combined focus group data and self-study data to shed light on the effectiveness of fostering antiracist teaching among participants in and graduates of a teacher education program not explicitly focused on social justice. They candidly concluded, “Fundamentally, it is hard for us to help students do the difficult work of interrogating race and power when we collectively have so much of our own work to do as white teacher educators” (234). The authors developed a reflection and action plan for themselves, but were realistic about the institutional constraints (e.g., activities valued for tenure and promotion) that prevent faculty from engaging in authentic race work and dialogue.

The studies described above represent only a limited sampling of recently published empirical studies of socially just teaching (e.g., Bender-Slack 2010; Chubbuck and Zembylas 2008; Fitts and Weisman 2010; Frederick et al. 2010; Olafson et al. 2011; Ukpokodu 2010). They are, however, illustrative of the strengths and challenges of the emerging body of empirical research on social justice teacher education.

An obvious strength is that so many researchers are answering the call to develop a “diversified and rigorous program of empirical research regarding teacher education that rationalizes and operationalizes social justice as an outcome” (Cochran-Smith 2004, p. 163). The studies included in Volume 61(3) of the Journal of Teacher Education provided thick descriptions of teachers and teaching in a variety of settings at a variety of career stages, preservice and inservice. The authors described an array of practices and methods that are effective in educating preservice teachers about social justice. They acknowledged the discomfort of confronting one’s own prejudices and privilege, and the complexity of teaching for social justice both at the university and the k-12 level, yet they are cautiously optimistic about their own and their students’ abilities and dispositions to implement antiracist, culturally relevant, and intercultural teaching.

At the same time, these studies exemplified challenges of the rigorous research program Cochran-Smith and others advocate. Courses, seminars, and short-term projects are the ubiquitous settings for teacher education research. Research on teacher education for social justice needs to transcend these settings with longitudinal, multi-context studies that follow teachers through preservice programs, the novice years, and beyond. Research conducted in single courses do not yield much insight into how such courses fit into larger programs or how other program components might influence teachers in a single course. Reports of change in dispositions and beliefs as a result of course or field experiences do not provide insight into what happens when a teacher actually enters the profession. Case studies of classroom teachers teaching for social justice should include description of how those teachers’ beliefs developed and their perceptions of the influence of their teacher education programs on their beliefs.

Cochran-Smith (2004) has called for “studies that map forward from teacher preparation to pupils’ outcomes as well as those that map backward from successful outcomes for pupils to quality and kind of teacher preparation” (164). Only through such studies can we gain a clear understanding of how a commitment to social justice teaching develops and is sustained. This kind of research will become even more critical as the national agenda for linking teacher performance to student outcomes and for identifying “measurably effective” teaching moves forward.

3 Teacher Education for Social Justice: Beyond U.S. Borders

The struggle for social justice in not confined within the borders of the United States. U. S. research on teacher education for social justice has built upon and benefitted from the work of scholars in other nations, particularly Canada, Great Britain, and Australia. Especially influential have been action research studies for social justice (Atweh et al. 1998) and self-study as a method of transforming teacher education practice and programs (Loughran 2006). Like the United States, the general focus of studies of teacher education for social justice in countries such as Canada (e.g., MacPherson 2010), England (e.g., Farnsworth 2010), and Australia (Butcher et al. 2003; Hatton 1998; Mills 2009) has been on influencing the beliefs and practices of preservice and inservice teachers regarding students with diverse backgrounds. However, as we move into the second decade of the twenty-first century the need for a global perspective on social justice and teacher education has become apparent (Apple et al. 2005; Ball and Tyson 2011). As Apple (2011) recently argued

It has become ever more clear that education cannot be understood without recognizing that nearly all educational policies and practices are strongly influenced by an increasingly integrated international economy that is subject to severe crises; that reforms and crises in one country have significant effects in others; and that immigration and population flows from one nation or area to another have tremendous impacts on what counts as official knowledge,…as a responsive and effective education, …as appropriate teaching (222–223).

Furthermore, Ball and Tyson (2011) have pointed out that from a global perspective “poor students, students of color, and underserved students are viewed as the majority population rather than as ‘minorities’” (411). Finally, current US educational policy is being driven by the perceived need for our students to equal or surpass the educational achievements of students in other countries so that they will possess the knowledge, skills, and abilities to succeed in a global economy (Zhao 2010). U. S. social justice teacher educators need to keep a watchful eye on government policies geared toward enhancing students’ global competitiveness so that “should they decide that the government policies and mandates are in fact detrimental to the education of their students, …[they will] have the courage and ability to speak up and defend their students’ future” (Zhao 2010, p. 426).

All these developments call for transnational collaborations among social-justice oriented researchers and teacher educators. For example, Gandin and Apple (2004) described the work of the Citizen School in Porto Alegre, Brazil and identified the implications of this project for a “more socially conscious model of teacher education” (p. 176). Such teacher education would foster the growth of teachers with commitments to: (1) critical understanding of who benefits from the ways our societies are organized now; (2) negotiation between local needs and the larger “democratically arrived at” goals of a society; (3) communities, especially oppressed ones; (4) the community’s critical scrutiny of their teaching practice; (5) ongoing reflection and the teaching of teachers by teachers (p. 196).

We need more comparative studies of how social justice teacher education is carried out in various countries. For example, Cook-Sather and Youens (2007) compared and contrasted the ways in which their teacher education programs, one in the US and one in England, enacted and supported teaching social justice. Their study revealed both common commitments and challenges, as both programs were embedded in national policy contexts of increasing prescription and standardization.

Finally, more collaborative studies of common problems arising from globalization, such as urbanization, immigration, technology integration, and language minority students, are needed (Ball and Tyson 2011). For example, He, Chan, & Phillion (2008) compared the schooling experiences of Asian American and Asian Canadian immigrants, presenting a more nuanced picture of the interaction of culture, language, identity, and power in two different national contexts.

4 Movements for and Challenges to Social Justice Teacher Education at Home

Grant (2009) had good reason to ask where the social justice teachers and teacher educators are. “Teaching against the grain” (Cochran-Smith 1991) requires a level of energy and commitment that the majority of teachers and teacher educators are not likely to be able or willing to sustain over the long haul. Nevertheless, there are plenty of indications that the teachers are out there.

In July 2011, several thousand teachers, parents, school administrators, policy makers and educational activists assembled in Washington, DC for the Save Our Schools March. The purpose of the march was to protest the test-centric nature of the Obama administration educational initiative, Race to the Top (Strauss 2011). Diane Ravitch, Deborah Meier, and actor Matt Damon were among the speakers who critiqued the punitive measures that scapegoat teachers for society’s failures.

More and more bloggers are speaking out and being heard on issues of educational equity and justice. Susan Ohanian (www.susanohanian.org) has been publicly critiquing educational injustice for most of the twenty-first century. Her blog informs that she has 1768 followers on Twitter and 318 fans on Facebook. Facebook allows teachers and teacher educators committed to social justice to quickly publicize events of concern and to network with like-minded friends. Nings also allow social justice teachers and teacher educators to share common cause. Jim Burke’s English Companion Ning (www.englishcompanion.ning.com) has over 30,000 members with groups constantly evolving. The Social Justice group currently has 276 members, and other groups, such as LBGT Literature also discuss how to address social justice issues in k-12 classrooms. The National Writing Project (NWP), one of the largest and longest-running professional development networks in the United States, supports teacher inquiry projects in urban and rural schools and in support of English language learners. NWP teacher inquiry projects often focus on barriers to equitable teaching and learning in school.

Organizations such as Rethinking Schools (www.rethinkingschools.org), the Southern Poverty Law Center (www.splcenter.org), and the AntiDefamation League (www.adl.org) offer curricular and professional development materials for social justice teachers. Professional journals such as Multicultural Education publish articles by and for practitioners of social justice education. Academic centers and institutes, such as the Penn GSE Center for Urban Ethnography, support practitioner research on social justice issues.

It is clear that many support networks and curricular materials have become available to support social justice teaching and teachers in the twenty-first century. Yet serious challenges to a social justice agenda in teacher education remain and may be growing, perhaps the most worrisome of which is the current generation of preservice teachers entering the profession and the climate in which they are learning to teach.

Since the mid 1990s standardized testing has increasingly influenced what goes on in k-12 classrooms. Thus, it is likely that many if not most individuals entering teaching in 2011 have spent their entire k-12 experience in high-stakes classrooms. Today’s apprenticeship of observation (Lortie 1975) includes an unhealthy dose of test preparation and test taking. Brown (2010) studied the impact of these experiences (in Texas, a state with a long history of high stakes testing) on preservice teachers’ conceptions of teaching and learning. He found that test preparation had loomed large in the preservice teachers’ own educational experiences, and they questioned whether they would be capable of preparing their own students to do more than pass tests. Brown suggested strategies that teacher educators might use to enable preservice teachers with similar backgrounds to work within contextual constraints but warned that such educational histories might limit preservice teachers’ ability to “believe that they can or even need to engage in instructional strategies that help their students become…‘critically’ aware citizens” (488). Given the enduring finding that the long-term influence of teacher education on preservice teachers’ beliefs about diversity is minimal (e.g., Irvine 2003), this situation is especially disturbing. The gap between how teacher educators for social justice (many of whom came of age in the 1960s, an era of social activism in the U.S.) define learning and preservice teachers’ beliefs and dispositions about teaching may be widening.

At my institution I work with Teach for America (TFA) English language arts teachers who have been assigned to the neediest (i.e., lowest performing on test scores) middle and high schools in Las Vegas, the fifth largest school district in the U.S. with a “minority majority” school population. These idealistic yet inexperienced teachers espouse the first part of the two part definition of social justice education cited above: they view themselves as agents of social justice who teach so that all learners, especially those least well-served by schools, can achieve. Their mission, as they understand it and as I interpret it from our discussions, is to help their students exceed whatever standards are set by the local school district. The teachers’ success will be evident in the rising test scores of their students. These young teachers are intelligent and courageous but, most, coming from privileged backgrounds and graduating from elite colleges and universities, lack knowledge of the communities in which their students live and the cultures, languages, and identities they bring to school. In their zeal to improve the life chances of their students, they emphasize the importance of individual character and “grit” (see Tough 2011), while perhaps underestimating the power of the home cultures of students and the insidious forces of racism. And, sadly, because they, like so many teachers, believe that the key to test success is practice, practice, practice, they perceive they do not have time to help students write to authentic audiences for authentic purposes, such as expressing their opinions to public officials on issues like immigration, or to conduct inquiries into topics that affect their lives in the here and now. Teach for America is only one of a proliferating number of alternative route programs that aim to “fast-track” individuals with varying academic and professional backgrounds into high-need classrooms. Many alternative route teachers have never been formally introduced to the ideas and issues taken up in social justice teacher education nor do many stay in the classroom long enough to make a lasting impact in their schools or communities.

Even when preservice and inservice teachers are disposed to teach for social justice, teaching against the “(new) grain of standardized practices that treat teachers as interchangeable parts and—worse—reinscribe societal inequities” (Cochran-Smith 2001, p. 4) may be more difficult than ever before. It does not take long for the contexts of the school, community, and the culture at large to destabilize even a robust commitment to social justice. Often, when teacher educators are successful in preparing teachers to teach for social justice, teachers’ efforts at social activism may get them into trouble. On November 1, 2011, Westboro Baptist Church, renowned for its members’ rabid homophobia, is scheduled to picket Clark High School in Las Vegas (http://www.godhatesfags.com/schedule.html), where a former student of mine who is chair of the English Department sponsors a Gay Straight Alliance group. Recently, members of the community of another local high school nationally recognized for excellence attempted to block the school’s production of the award-winning plays Rent and The Laramie Project because they require students to play gay characters. These are local examples of the disconnect between the profession’s and the public’s visions for education. As U. S. society becomes more socially conservative, how can teacher educators respect community values as they work toward social justice and contribute to the inclusion rather than the alienation of the public at large?

Whiteness remains an “overwhelming presence” in teacher education (Sleeter 2001, p. 102) and one of the challenges to learning to teach for social justice. Preparing predominantly white teacher candidates to teach an increasingly diverse student population involves more than simply equipping them with neutral pedagogical knowledge and skills. And despite strenuous efforts to recruit and retain teachers and teacher educators who reflect more closely the demographics of school populations, their numbers have not increased significantly. This is true, at least in part, because while K-12 students have no choice but to attend school, their teachers elect to be there.

The disincentives to enter and stay in the profession continue to mount as its substantive rewards continue to dwindle in comparison to other professions. The situation is exacerbated because evidence suggests that prospective teachers of color may be even more motivated by altruism than by a desire for money or prestige (Nieto 2005). Yet, the current constraints of schooling—pacing guides, scrimmage tests, real tests, adequate yearly progress (AYP), scripted curricula—work against teachers’ needs to establish caring relationships with their students and limit their creativity, responsiveness, and intellectual curiosity.

The increasing rigidity of schooling and a narrow definition of accountability as test scores do not make teaching an attractive career choice for idealists committed to social change. This is ironic in light of the fact that many would claim that the standards and accountability movement was established precisely to bring about social justice by leveling the playing field for students of color and low socioeconomic status. I am not nostalgic for some “good old days” of teaching that never were: There have always been competent and incompetent teachers and educational environments that are more and less restrictive. Nevertheless, it seems that economic, political, social, and demographic factors are converging to turn teachers into “widgets”(Weisberg et al. 2009).

5 What’s Ahead for Social Justice in Teacher Education?

Recently, advocates of teacher education for social justice have expressed concern that social justice teacher education is in danger of becoming a mere slogan that teacher education programs apply to existing practices that do not really challenge the status quo (Cochran-Smith et al. 2009; McDonald and Zeichner 2009). Given the current political climate in the U. S. and twenty-first century educational policies so far, social justice teacher educators should perhaps be more concerned about becoming irrelevant.

The most recent edition of the InTASC Model Core Teaching Standards (2011) states that while knowledge and dispositions are still important to effective teaching, performance is foremost: “The next step of the work is to take these standards and translate them into a developmental continuum and performance rubrics that can be used to assess performance at key points along the teacher’s career. Simultaneously, we must build the infrastructure of accountability and support to match the new vision of teaching” (p. 7). By contrast, the 1992 version of these standards was prefaced by a rousing preamble proclaiming the document’s support for “a learning environment in which all children can learn and achieve their own kind of individually configured excellence – an environment that nurtures their unique talents and creativity; understands, respects, and incorporates the diversity of their experiences into the learning process; and cultivates their personal commitment to enduring habits of life-long learning” (CCSSO 1992, p. 12). This document featured knowledge first, dispositions second, and performance third. Clearly, the message of what is valued in teaching has changed and is changing still.

It is perhaps unrealistic to expect that the majority of teachers or even of teacher educators will join the struggle for social justice. However, it might be possible to do a better job of convincing preservice and inservice teachers that teaching for social justice is, as Ladson-Billings (1995) has said of culturally relevant teaching, “just good teaching.”

In our current climate of political scandal and economic deceitfulness, perhaps the term “integrity” may resonate more with the public and the educational establishment than “social justice.” Ball and Wilson (1996) called “integrity” in teaching the intersection “between the knowledge and moral dimensions of practice” (p. 185). In this article, the authors modeled using two lenses to examine their teaching practice in elementary mathematics and in U. S. history. The lenses were: (1) teaching as the application of pedagogical content knowledge; (2) teaching as moral work. They concluded that “in teaching, concerns for the intellectual and the moral are ultimately inseparable” (p. 155). This suggests a method and a message that might be palatable to the public and compatible with the characteristics of preservice teachers, who generally bring little understanding of racism, discrimination or social injustice into teacher education programs (Sleeter 2001; Zeichner 2006) and often exit multicultural education courses having learned to avoid those topics while speaking with political correctness. Perhaps building on the concept of integrity, which brings together preservice teachers’ deep interest in teaching content with their feelings of altruism would be a beneficial approach (Brookhart and Freeman 1992; Nieto 2005; Zumwalt and Craig 2005). DeFreitas and Zolkower (2009), for example, have described how they integrate discussion of content with moral issues in their mathematics teaching methods courses to show preservice teachers the relationships between mathematics and social justice.

People enter teaching because they care. Like “integrity,” perhaps “caring” is a concept that may have more appeal to the public and to our clientele. A predisposition to care might serve as a foundation for building a commitment to teaching for social justice. In a review of the literature on teacher preparation, social justice and equity, Wiedeman (2002) identified seven key themes that contribute to conceptions of learning to teach for social justice. One of these is care theory. As Noddings (1988) has defined it, an ethic of caring is built upon interpersonal relationships, and a school system founded upon an ethic of caring would look very different from the existing system. Caring is critical to effective teaching: “…[S] tudents need and want teachers to care for them as persons and to convey this care through listening and responding to their expressions of concern…. It matters to students whether or not they like and are liked by their teachers” (Noddings 2003, p. 244). Caring teaching is multidimensional. It includes pedagogical, moral, and cultural caring, which necessitates understanding students who are, more often than not, culturally different from their teachers (Isenbarger and Zembylas 2006). This requires teachers to display respect and responsiveness to students’ needs and capabilities, encourage discussion and self-reflection, and engage students in meaningful learning situations (Rogers and Webb 1991).

Ball and colleagues (2009) have suggested that teachers need access to practices that can be rehearsed and developed in the field and subsequently assessed and refined over time. Just as in the practice of teaching a subject such as mathematics, learning to teach for social justice needs to become part of “a reliable system of preparing many ordinary people for expert practice” (Ball 2008, p. 43). This would entail theorizing learning to teach for social justice grounded in beliefs and backgrounds while making operational strategies to be practiced and implemented in the field. Integrity and care could provide a solid foundation for building such a system.

NOTE: An earlier version of this article was previously published as an editorial in The Journal of Teacher Education 61(3).