Social Justice and Teacher Education: Context, Theory, and Practice

Abstract

Teacher education focused on social justice does not exist in a vacuum. Its theory and practice reside in a global context that can exert considerable influence on its formulation and expression, even as those very contexts also can be influenced by theory and practice as those develop over time. Examining the contextualization of teacher education for social justice with a delineation of its theory and practice is important to advance the field. With that goal in mind, this chapter examines relatively recent scholarship—theoretical and empirical—on the context, theory, and practice of teacher education informed by goals of social justice.

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Teacher education focused on social justice does not exist in a vacuum. Its theory and practice reside in a global context that can exert considerable influence on its formulation and expression, even as those very contexts also can be influenced by theory and practice as those develop over time. Examining the contextualization of teacher education for social justice with a delineation of its theory and practice is important to advance the field. With that goal in mind, this chapter examines relatively recent scholarship—theoretical and empirical —on the context, theory, and practice of teacher education informed by goals of social justice.

The timeliness of this review is clear. According to many educational theorists and researchers , primarily from 2008 to 2011 when publications peaked, the term ‘social justice’ is used generously throughout teacher education programmes, at least in the United States, with ill-defined meaning, often functioning more as emotionally evocative slogan than substantive guide (Carlisle, Jackson, & George, 2006; Chubbuck & Zembylas, 2008; Cochran-Smith , 2010; Dover, 2009; Grant & Agosto, 2008; McDonald & Zeichner, 2009; North, 2006, 2008; Reynolds & Brown, 2010; Zeichner, 2009a). The practices of teacher education with a social justice orientation and its study both have been accused of insufficient theoretical grounding and a lack of coherence (Grant & Agosto, 2008; McDonald & Zeichner, 2009). Much of the research is methodologically limited, focusing on single courses—methods or multicultural education—often as small-scale self-studies by course instructors, with little research on programmes with social justice embedded throughout. More focused, synthesized attention to the topic clearly is needed. This chapter offers that attention.

We do not, however, provide an exhaustive review of all relevant literature. The topic is enormous. For example, an ERIC search of peer reviewed scholarly articles, dated 2000–2014, with ‘teacher education ’ and ‘social justice’ as subject descriptors, produced approximately 700 articles with approximately 25 % including the descriptor ‘foreign country’, implying that 75 % originated in the United States (See Fig. 28.1).

Fig. 28.1

Rate of ‘social justice’ ‘teacher education ’ publication per year

Narrowing the search to 2010–2014 produced over 250 articles over half of which were theoretical/descriptive, a cursory examination of which confirmed the above methodological concerns. Based on this initial search, we selected work of theorists and researchers from multiple international contexts (though significantly skewed towards American authors), with three areas of focus. First, we selected reviews of literature related to social justice in teacher education , most occurring between 2000 and 2009. Second, we examined work, regardless of publication date, done by scholars, whose names occurred repeatedly, suggesting widespread recognition. And finally, we included selected individual research articles from 2010 to 2014 representing multiple international perspectives .

This chapter, then, provides a cartography of the landscape of socially just teacher education . We first contextualize the topic in current global trends, as described by educational scholars, using broader summaries from various sources. This is followed by a presentation of possible theoretical foundations. We then focus on the practices of socially just teacher education with more detailed descriptions of selected studies to illustrate our points, including definitions of socially just teaching ; research on the development of elements of socially just teaching; the role of field placements; outcomes in graduates in the field; and programmes with holistic embedding of social justice. We end the chapter with a summary/synthesis of our recommendations, with the hope that this overview of teacher education informed by social justice—contextually, theoretically, and practically—will move us forward productively.

Context of Socially Just Teacher Education

Education, and by extension, teacher education are contextualized in an increasingly globalized world with both economic and cultural effects. This context produces consequences in education that proceed in a domino effect.

Economic Effects

Increased globalization has forced nations to become more economically competitive (Tatto, 2006)—framed as benefitting economic opportunity through increased trade across national borders with less restriction, but often producing more inequities than benefits (Apple, 2010). The result, known as ‘neoliberalism,’ is characterized by free markets, privatization, and increased national and individual competition—a social Darwinist, individualistic rather than collective approach (Apple, 2010; Bates, 2006, 2010; Dahlstrom, 2007; Kumashiro, 2010; Schafer & Wilmot, 2012; Sleeter, 2008, 2009; Smyth, 2006, 2013; Tatto, 2006; Zeichner, 2009a). This movement, prevalent in ‘Western’ countries since the 1980s—Australia, New Zealand , South Africa , the United Kingdom, and the United States (Apple, 2010) —is being imported into ‘third world’ and rising nations such as Ethiopia and Brazil, with destructive effects (Dahlstrom, 2007; Hypolito, 2004). The movement is reaching a level of unquestioned ‘common sense,’ where policies and practices driven by the demands of money and markets seem “natural” (Kumashiro, 2010).

In this free market, economically competitive context , schools often are expected to provide students with the necessary skills to further their country’s economic competitive edge (Schafer & Wilmot, 2012; Tatto, 2006). Indeed, when economic stability is shaken, accompanied by a perceived threat to national security, as occurred during the economic upheaval in the 1980s, schools, teachers, and teacher educators are often seen as both the cause of economic diminishment and the potential solution (Klein & Rice, 2012; Ravitch, 2010; Sarason, 1990). For, example, the 1983 government document ‘A Nation at Risk’ (1983) claimed that a ‘rising tide of mediocrity’ in US schools threatened national security, with then President Reagan positing that the Civil Rights Movement’s push for greater educational equity had been too challenging, thus compromising the supposed historic quality of US schools. Similarly, following the 2008 international recession, Klein and Rice (2012) reported an ‘increasing’ failure in the American public education al system, citing these weaknesses as threats to the country’s national security and economic growth and competitiveness.

Though ‘golden age’ of quality American education never existed, with education doled out differentially based on students ’ race, class, and gender (Kantor & Lowe, 2004), some believe such fearmongering reports prompt current reforms marked by neo-liberal free market ideology (Ravitch, 2010). Free market competition has produced stringent, punitive accountability in public systems, evidenced in public posting of failing schools under the US No Child Left Behind law and school rankings in international league tables (Smyth, 2006). Additionally, rising competition has increased choice, seen in growing numbers of charter and voucher funded private schools in the US and the ‘assisted places scheme’ in the UK, with public funding funneled to private schools and/or schools with considerably less government regulation (George & Clay, 2008; Ravitch, 2010). Some fear this focus on competition and choice may open the door to privatization and education for profit (Ravitch, 2010; Smyth, 2006; Tatto, 2006; Zeichner, 2010). Additionally, it may, “transform public education from a public good to a private consumer item” (Zeichner, 2010, p. 1556), where education is a commodity (Dahlstrom, 2007; George & Clay, 2008), with parents as private consumers individualistically competing for the best education for their children, rather than as participatory citizens protecting quality education for all. This individualistic, competitive focus on school and student performance decreases attention to equity issues that limit access to quality education, such as funding discrepancies between poor and wealthy districts, potentially reducing society’s sense of responsibility to address this societal level inequities (Ravitch, 2010; Reckhow & Snyder, 2014; Smyth, 2006).

Cultural Effects

Along with the emphasis on free market principles , globalization has produced more fluid, widespread immigrant movement across national borders (Bates, 2010), resulting in cultural tensions (Tatto, 2006). With rising racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity, traditionally dominant groups push for protection and (re)ascendance of national ‘identity’ and traditional knowledge , norms, and behaviors (Bates, 2010), even as indigenous groups and newly arrived, even long-time members of diverse cultural groups find themselves struggling against marginalization or pressures of assimilation. Frequently in this tension , policies and practices protecting tradition and nationalistic loyalty remain relatively unquestioned (Kumashiro, 2010). For example, in the United States opposition to incoming and long-term undocumented Hispanic immigrants is producing calls for sweeping deportation efforts.

In education, this cultural tension produces resistance to multicultural focus. For example, similar to the response evoked in the US during the 1980s economic downturn, educational systems in the UK were criticized for ‘wooly’ ideas of multiculturalism that supposedly compromised the rigor of the national public education system (George & Clay, 2008). In the USA in 2010, the Arizona legislature banned a successful Chicano/Chicana history curriculum for promoting ‘racial solidarity’ and ‘anti-Americanism’ (See Precious Knowledge, http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/precious-knowledge /film.html). The term ‘social justice,’ linked to issues of inequity in multicultural contexts, is indicted by association. In 2006, facing conservative strong critique, the US teacher education accrediting body (NCATE) removed the term ‘social justice’ from their official documents; in the UK, the term was similarly removed from the national Professional Standards for Teachers in 2007 (Chubbuck , 2010; George & Clay, 2008; Heybach, 2009; Philpott & Dagenias, 2012). The result can be curricula narrowed to monolithic, nationalistic content , non-critical analysis, and policies that, at best ignore, and at worst, continue marginalization—in other words, reduced recognition, redistribution, and representation for specific racial/cultural groups (Kumashiro, 2010).

Combined Effects

These combined ideological forces—free market principles with individualistically driven competition and rising cultural/nationalistic tensions—are believed to profoundly influence education and, by extension, teacher education . Some argue that these competitive, privatized models disproportionately harm racially/economically disadvantaged group, maintaining hierarchies of privilege (Kumashiro, 2010), while diminishing a sense of social connection and shared responsibility for the suffering of others, what Young (2011) calls a ‘Social Connection Model of Responsibility.’ The purpose of education shifts, from developing citizens, capable of functioning equally in society, to the production of workers who can fill slots in the national/transnational competitive economic machine (Bates, 2010; George & Clay, 2008; Schafer & Wilmot, 2012. Curriculum shifts from broad exposure to liberal arts and sciences, where students are encouraged to grapple with multiple perspectives and critical analyses, to ‘productive’ knowledge —skills and discrete information, at times even scripted—that produces higher test scores and meets competitive demands (Bates, 2010; Ravitch, 2010); Schafer & Wilmot, 2012; Sleeter, 2009). Pedagogy shifts from constructivist, student centered methods to didactic, authoritarian approaches designed to raise scores and, often, teach compliance (Bates, 2010; Chubbuck & Buck, 2015; Smyth, 2013). Education can become a utilitarian tool serving economic forces and competing cultural narratives, with the teacher and teacher educator reduced to monitoring and facilitating the system (Apple, 2010, 2011; Bates, 2006, Bates, 2010; Dahlstrom, 2007; Kumashiro, 2010; Zeichner, 2010). This milieu presents a contested and dangerous context , antithetical to teacher education for social justice and calling for thoughtfully reasoned, well-articulated theoretical foundations.

An Articulated Theory of Social Justice for Teacher Education

As Marilyn Cochran-Smith (2010) has argued, “References to or discussions of teacher education for social justice,” with very few exceptions, “have not been grounded in an articulated theory of justice” (p. 449). She identifies this ‘ambiguity’ as a valid critique, coming from both inside and outside the field of education (Cochran-Smith , Barnatt, Lahann, Shakman, & Terrell, 2009). Similarly, Gewirtz (1998) and North (2006) agree that ‘social justice’ in education has been an under theorized concept. Our review in preparing to write this chapter has largely confirmed these concerns. Here we provide some possible causes and encouraging remedies to this critique.

Streams of Theory Informing Social Justice Teacher Education

One way of understanding incoherent theory is to recognize the multiplicity of theoretical streams that have informed both understanding and practice of social justice in education, and by extension, in teacher education (see Cochran-Smith et al., 2009; Dover, 2009; Grant & Agosto, 2008; Wiedeman, 2002). Foundational thinking and research are usually grounded in one of the theoretical strands. Though overlapping, each has a different, though overlapping focus, with different, intertwined implications , an understandable circumstance given the complexity and nuance of justice operationalized. Education has historically drawn from within its own discipline rather than others such as political philosophy , etc. The focus of each theory has then been reciprocally influenced by the others. Grappling with this dialectical tension has created a convergence with more complex understanding of social justice in education and more nuanced, informed practice.

For example, the theory of multiculturalism, significantly sparked by the USA Civil Rights Movement, initially influenced social justice in education in the USA (Sleeter & Grant, 1992). The theory was challenged and expanded, however, in Nieto’s (2000) strong call to put equity “front and center” (p. 180) in teacher education , essentially critiquing multiculturalism as a celebratory acknowledgement of different cultural groups with insufficient attention to the structural inequities shaping their access to quality education. Multiculturalism then included social reconstructionism (Banks 2007a, 2007b; Sleeter & Grant, 1992), borrowing from critical pedagogy which calls for recognition, interrogation, and transformation of inequitable structures (Darder, Baltodano, & Torres, 2003; Kincheloe, 2005; O’Donnell, Chávez Chávez, & Pruyn, 2004; Schafer & Wilmot, 2012). Culturally relevant/responsive pedagogy (Gay, 2000; Irvine, 2003; Ladson-Billings , 1994a, 1995; Villegas & Lucas, 2002), with its emphasis on academic excellence, cultural competence , and critical analysis of social issues, continues to be influential in the identification/refinement of socially just pedagogies (Ladson-Billings, 2014; Paris, 2014; Paris & Alim, 2014) that, “perpetuate and foster—…sustain—linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of the democratic project of schooling” (Paris, 2014, p. 93). Noddings’ (1984) influential theories on the centrality of teachers’ care for students in the learning process have been critiqued as narrowly identified with white feminists (Thompson, 1998) and lacking the criticality needed to challenge inequitable power relations, so that now expressions of care include a wider range of racial perspectives and a higher level of criticality (Rolon-Dow, 2005; Thompson, 1998; Valenzuela, 1999). Social justice as expressed in participatory, experiential democratic education, fostering students to be engaged citizens (Garratt & Piper, 2010; Guttman, cited in Cochran-Smith , 2004; Michelli & Keiser, 2005; Philpott & Dagenias, 2012) has benefitted from Westheimer and Kahne’s (2004) nuanced distinctions between responsible (informed, voting, etc.), participatory (service, alleviating need, etc.), and justice-oriented citizenship (critiquing/transforming policy), with the last representing activist citizens who address structural inequities. And anti-racism/anti-oppression education (Au, 2009; Calgary Anti-Racism Education, n.d.; Derman-Sparks & Phillips, 1997; Kumashiro, 2000; Kumashiro, Baber, Richardson , Ricker-Wilson, & Wong, 2007; Tatum, 1994), challenged for a relatively exclusive focus on race, is now often complemented by more focus on intersectionality of race, class, gender, etc. (Kaur, 2012). In this cycle of mutual influence, understanding and practice of social justice education, and by extension, social justice teacher education, has evolved. Without knowledge of these theoretical streams, teacher educators would have limited understanding of the complexities of social justice both in the wider social context and in education, with limited educational practice, as well.

Grappling with these tensions and negotiating the evolving complexity can be quite productive for teacher educators and needs to occur more, not less (Cochran-Smith , 2004; McDonald & Zeichner, 2009; North, 2006). Cochran-Smith (2010) demonstrates evidence of that negotiation in her holistic theory of teacher education for social justice. Drawing from a variety of theorists in political philosophy , she identified four points, in mutual tension —autonomy and identity, distribution and recognition—and then contextualizes them in concepts reflecting educational theoretical strands, described above: democratic, anti-oppressive, critical, and multi-perspectival. More teacher educators need to engage in theoretical discussions and processes like these, exploring the tensions among theories of justice, incorporating both education and disciplines such as philosophy or political science (Zeichner, 2009a), to provide deeply explicated, nuanced theory/ies complex enough to ‘house’ the diverse theoretical strands, in mutually informing tension. Grappling with complex and often contradictory theories will be more valuable, however, if we identify the theoretical terms within and against which we can position our dialogue . To that end, we list different models for social justice, suggesting how they may support enriching conversations about social justice teacher education.

Nancy Fraser’s Model for Social Justice and Education/Teacher Education

In the past decade or so, theories of justice from moral and political philosophy (e.g., Rawls, 1972, 1999) have been introduced into the discussion of social justice in education. Many education scholars (e.g., Bates, 2006; Boylan & Woolsey, 2015; Cochran-Smith , 2010; Garratt & Piper, 2010; James-Wilson, 2007; Kaur, 2012; Lopes Cordozo, 2012, 2013; Lynch & Baker, 2005; North, 2006, 2008; Reynolds & Brown, 2010; Smyth, 2006, 2013; Westheimer & Suurtamm, 2009; Zeichner, 2009a) have built on Nancy Fraser’s theory of justice—both her initial theorization (Fraser, 1997; Fraser, 2003) and her recent reframing (Fraser 2005a, 2005b, 2008, 2009, 2012). We suggest that Fraser’s theory may provide a theoretical starting point sufficiently inclusive to house the various theoretical strands and support needed dialogue . Consequently, we briefly introduce Fraser’s theory here, making links to education/teacher education in current practice, introducing further theories to complement her work, and drawing implication/recommendations for future work, as a point from which further dialogue can evolve.

In Fraser’s view (2012), a definition or ideal of social justice is not possible; however, we do experience injustice, and thus, we can form an idea of justice. Fraser (2008, 2009) suggests the notion of participatory parity, that is, the ability of all people to participate on a par with one another, as equals in social interaction, as the central norm—the ideal—against which to evaluate social justice claims and address injustice. Participatory parity serves as an adjudicatory plumb line, if you will, to determine how ‘straight and level’ our ‘buildings’ are. We can determine that social arrangements are just if they promote participatory parity in all aspects of social life; we can determine that they are unjust if they create obstacles to participatory parity. Overcoming injustice, then, means dismantling the obstacles that “prevent people from participating on a par with others, as full partners of social interactions” (Fraser, 2008, p. 60).

In contrast to prominent previous conceptualizations of social justice after World War II, aimed at defining universal principles of fairness and equality (Rawls, 1972), Fraser complicates social justice theories by exploring the characteristics and the interaction of two dimensions of (in)justice—redistribution/maldistribution of rights, opportunities and resources (economic) and recognition/misrecognition (cultural)—and by recently adding a third dimension, representation/misrepresentation (political) (Fraser, 2009). In this, Fraser’s body of work (1997, 2003, 2005a, 2005b, 2008, 2009, 2012) highlights the multidimensionality of injustice and the multiple complexities in achieving participatory parity by analytically distinguishing these three types of structural inequality. Fraser suggests that we need this analytical distinction if we are to understand how different dimensions of injustice operate alone and reciprocally and how they match (or mismatch), thus masking different roots of injustice. Fraser regards these dimensions as distinct—for which she has been criticized (e.g. see Young, 2008). She does acknowledge that these different injustices rarely exist in ‘pure’ form, but she uses them as heuristic tools to theorize the different domains of injustice. Their analytic distinction does not imply that they are not interrelated; on the contrary, we need to understand both their distinction and their interrelatedness, if we are to develop appropriate strategies to address injustices.

The Economic Dimension

First, the economic dimension of social justice concerns the (mal)distribution of resources , rights, and opportunities (Fraser, 1997, 2008). Thus, participatory parity would be prevented by economic structures that constrain the distribution of resources or involve exploitation (e.g. when one’s labor is being exploited for others’ benefit), economic marginalization (e.g. when one is confined to poorly paid work or has no access to work), and deprivation (e.g. when one is denied an adequate standard of living). These economic injustices prevent people from interacting with each other on a par in social life; thus a politics of redistribution is required, suggests Fraser, to reduce the obstacles that prevent participatory parity.

In relation to education/teacher education , distribution/redistribution issues are seen in those policies and practices that exploit, marginalize, and deprive groups of students of access to quality education, which is the means to equal economic participation (e.g. see Boylan & Woolsey, 2015; Cochran-Smith , 2010; North, 2006, 2008; Reynolds & Brown, 2010). This economic dimension is illustrated by segregated schools and tracked/streamed schools/classrooms that differ radically in curricular, pedagogical, and resource quality: ‘de facto’ resegregation in the USA, apartheid in South Africa and its lasting effect on school segregation, apartheid era remnant of racial divisions in Australia, vestiges of colonialization in Bolivia and others, and class divisions in virtually every nation (see Bates, 2006; George & Clay, 2008; Lopes Cordozo, 2013; Nieto, 2000; Schafer & Wilmot, 2012; Smyth, 2013; Wang & Gao, 2013). Similarly, these studies describe the vast inequalities in the distribution of funding in schools within a country and the failure of many educational systems around the world to develop policies and practices that guarantee access to quality education all perpetuating an already inequitable system of schooling. Corresponding theories of social justice in education/teacher education that address these inequities include equity/equity pedagogy (Banks, 2007a; Nieto, 2000), critical pedagogy (Darder et al., 2003; Kincheloe, 2005; McLaren, 2003), and social reconstructionist multiculturalism (Sleeter & Grant, 1992)—all with the goal of preparing teachers to recognize, interrogate, and challenge structures and practices that create inequitable distribution of resources , at classroom , school, and societal levels.

The Cultural Dimension

Second, the cultural dimension of social justice refers to the ways people’s attributes are valued or devalued—how these attributes are (mis)recognized (Fraser, 1997, 2008). Social arrangements and institutionalized patterns that depreciate certain attributes associated with people (e.g., along lines of gender and race) prevent participatory parity. Cultural injustices involve cultural domination by one cultural group over another group which is seen as ‘different’ and, therefore, threatening or inferior; non-recognition by means of authoritative, silencing practices; and disrespect when one is routinely portrayed in stereotypical public and everyday life representations.

In education/teacher education , this dimension of (mis)recognition clearly aligns with theories of multiculturalism (Banks, 2007a; Sleeter & Grant, 1992), culturally relevant/responsive pedagogy (Gay, 2000; Ladson-Billings , 1994a, 1994b; Ladson-Billings, 1995, 2014), and theories of care/critical care (Noddings, 1984; Rolon-Dow, 2005; Thompson, 1998; Valenzuela, 1999). When students ’ voices, histories, faces and norms are omitted from curricular materials and pedagogical choices (Banks, 2007a), (mis)recognition is evident in depreciation through silencing. Resegregated schools imply a similar invisibility, perpetuating a deficit view of the ‘other’ (Lopes Cordozo, 2012, 2013; Schafer & Wilmot, 2012; Wang & Gao, 2013).

The Political Dimension

In her more recent theorization (2005a, 2005b, 2008, 2009, 2012), Fraser developed a third, political dimension of social justice: representation/misrepresentation. She writes, “… [J]ustice requires social arrangements that permit all to participate as peers in social life” (2005b, p. 73, added emphasis). In other words, the political sphere should enable all people to have a political voice and to participate as equals in decisions that influence them—adjudicating justice claims , formulating remedies to injustice, disrupting what Giroux has called “iniquitous relations of power” (1997, p. 313). This political dimension is particularly valuable in the context of globalization. Typically, matters of (in)justice, whether for adjudication or redress, have been framed as domestic matters, belonging in the confines of Keynesian-Westphalian nation states. The effects of globalization, however, have rendered that framing insufficient, as transnational realities—economic, cultural, and political—interact within and across traditional national boundaries, producing effects that are just/unjust to peoples within and across nation states. Fraser calls for a post-Westphalian framing of (in)justice as situated in both nation states and globalized, transnational contexts. This suggestion implies that nation-states around the world cannot simply develop policies and plans on the basis of domestic matters while ignoring globalization trends and transnational realities; in practice, for example, they must collaborate more closely if they want their policies (e.g., against poverty and injustice) to be successful (Bates, 2010).

In education/teacher education , the political dimension of representation is less explicitly referenced in the work of educational scholars in the USA, but is frequently included in the work of educational researcher s and theorists in Australia, Europe , and South America (e.g., Bates, 2006; Boylan & Woolsey, 2015; Lopes Cordozo, 2013; Reynolds & Brown, 2010). Injustices in this dimension, where actions are being taken without sufficient inclusion of the voices of those directly affected, are evident in multiple arenas, from policy formation, such as testing, accountability, and international comparisons/league tables (Schafer & Wilmot, 2012; Zeichner, 2009a); to curriculum /pedagogical redefining, such as focusing on ‘productive’ knowledge and didactic methods to support global economic competitiveness (Bates, 2006, 2010; Dahlstrom 2006, 2007; Dahlstrom, Swarts, & Zeichner, 1999; Smyth, 2006, 2013); to classroom level inclusion of all voices (Applebaum, 2014; Ayers, 2014; Peterson, 2014; Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2014). Even more, simplistic exposure to multiculturalism can allow pre-service teachers’ beliefs about ‘diversity’ to frame some groups that are included and participating (race, class, gender) and others that are ‘invisible’ and thus not represented (sexual orientation or religion), affecting the level/type of care, the sense of personal responsibility they believe is warranted, and the inclusion of voice and participation for the different groups (Silverman, 2010).

Thus, Fraser joins other political theorists (e.g., Young, 2007, 2011) in extending the scope of justice beyond its traditional confines and dilemmas by adding representation to redistribution and recognition as important dimensions of justice. All three complement the idea of participatory parity; as Fraser argues, all are necessary, but none alone is sufficient for social arrangements/interactions to be just. All three are mutually intertwined and reciprocally complicate each other in forming or thwarting participatory parity and, thus, social justice.

Implications and Recommendations for Teacher Education

Even though none of Fraser’s perspectives addresses teaching or teacher education directly, as Cochran-Smith (2010) points out, they are valuable for theorizing teacher education, as indicated in our references to relevant literature. First, Fraser’s work is of primary value because it provides descriptive categories —names—for the conditions and interactions we see happening around us continuously, as well as a congruent theoretical framework within and against which we can position our dialogue . This frame subsumes most if not all of the varied theoretical streams that have informed social justice in education, allowing us to ‘grapple’ with theory as has been recommended by so many (Cochran-Smith, 2010; Grant & Agosto, 2008; McDonald & Zeichner, 2009; North, 2006, 2008; Reynolds & Brown, 2010; Villegas & Lucas, 2002; Zeichner, 2009a).

The second benefit is that Fraser’s work establishes a warrant for the political stance that working for greater social justice demands. Social justice teacher education has been critiqued as too political, too ideological (Cochran-Smith , Barnatt, Lahann, Shakman, & Terrell, 2009). Yet, the pursuit of justice in education is inherently both political and ethical (Burant, Chubbuck , & Whipp, 2007; Cochran-Smith, 2010; Dover, 2009; Howell, Thomas, & Kapustka, 2010; Westheimer & Suurtamm, 2009; Zeichner, 2009a). When dealing with access to resources , respect, and voice in education, and society at large, political neutrality is nearly impossible. Fraser’s theories of justice help clarify and warrant that argument.

As a third benefit, teacher educators can use Fraser’s dimensions of social justice and participatory parity as adjudicatory/evaluative lenses to interrogate their own practices and policies and to ultimately struggle to reimagine and to create teacher education as a site for transformation along the three dimensions she suggests (see Fraser, 2008). When we link the development of teacher capacity—knowledge , skills, and dispositions —to a deeper theoretical understanding of social justice (Cochran-Smith , Barnatt, Lahann, Shakman, & Terrell, 2009; Grant & Agosto, 2008), teacher educators can examine curriculum , pedagogy, and policies for overt and covert messages that include/exclude (redistribution), devalue (recognition), or silence (representation) groups of people (Quartz, Priselac, & Franke, 2009; Villegas & Lucas, 2002; Zeichner, 2009a). For example, we need to interrogate admission policies to determine if certain groups are ‘misframed’ (to use Fraser’s term), that is, systematically excluded from a teacher education programme. If policies (de jure or de facto) are judged as unjustly determining who is/who is not eligible for programme admission, revision of those policies is morally and ethically warranted. This example is clearly seen in the policies and practices to support recruiting and retaining a more diverse teaching population (Cochran-Smith, 2010; Dover, 2009; Quartz et al., 2009; Schafer & Wilmot, 2012; Villegas & Lucas, 2002; Wang & Gao, 2013; Zeichner, 2009a; Zeichner & Flessner, 2009). Failure to recruit more diverse populations both misframes possible candidates who are excluded from teacher education programmes and misframes the future education of children and youth. The continuing low, even decreasing number of racially diverse educators will have serious implications on the education of future generations, because it will limit children’s opportunity to be educated by teachers from a wide variety of social and cultural perspectives (Cochran-Smith, 2010).

One last benefit of Fraser’s theoretical model is that her complex explication of the interrelations between the different forms of (in)justice and the tensions among them widens the framework of understanding and application in socially just teacher education . A theory of social justice in teacher education needs to be comprehensive enough to acknowledge tensions of competing theories and to translate them into effective counter-discourses and counter-practices in the conceptualization of teaching and learning practices. A significant example of this is the insufficiency of primarily focusing on multiculturalism as simplistic celebrations of cultural difference, mentioned earlier. As both members of cultural groups and potential political agents, teachers and students are intertwined with political matters that go beyond the recognition and respect of identity. Rather than framing aspects of cultural identity as sufficient expressions of equality, we consistently need to widen the frame of discursive resources found in current understandings of social justice in teacher education to include a greater receptiveness towards political modes of expression. Fraser’s theory opens this possibility.

While other theories of justice could also serve the needs of teacher education , we believe much of Fraser’s work is particularly well suited to this needed dialogue and we recommend teacher educators strongly engage with her theories. In addition, we recommend an additional dimension for theorizing social justice—Iris Marion Young’s (2011) Social Connection Model of Responsibility. We argue that a theory of social justice for teacher education first needs to explicitly account for the multidimensionality of injustice (Fraser’s major contribution), and second, needs to be supplemented with the notion of responsibility —its conditions, related barriers , and association with structural injustice—so that teacher education can support present and future teachers in a sustained commitment to activism against societal injustice.

Iris Marion Young’s Social Connection Model of Responsibility

The last two decades produced a plethora of writings (in various disciplines) on responsibility , with endless debates on its conditions, related barriers , and links to matters of structural justice (e.g., Freeman, 2007; Kymlicka, 2002; Rawls, 1999; Scheffler, 2001; Young, 2011). While it is beyond the scope of this chapter to revisit all of these debates, we believe Young’s Social Connection Model of Responsibility offers a promising approach for linking personal responsibility with structural injustice.

Young argues that, while individuals clearly need to take responsibility for their personal wrong actions—responsibility grounded in individual rational and moral agency —they also need to take responsibility for their complicity in structural injustice—responsibility that is collective or relational. As she explains, “We need a conception of responsibility different from the standard conception, which focuses on individual action and its unique relation to harm” (2011, p. 96, italics added). This standard conception, which Young calls the ‘Liability Model,’ has three characteristics: it assigns blame; it emphasizes that acts count as wrong because they deviate from acceptable norms; and it assumes an atomistic view where determining who is responsible for harm focuses on isolated individual actions or events. This conception does not illuminate individual complicity in structural injustice.

For example, teacher educators have struggled for decades to help individual pre-service teachers from the dominant culture develop justice oriented dispositions (empathy, critical consciousness of privilege, sense of responsibility to address injustice, etc.) (Kaur, 2012). The pre-service teachers typically have resisted any suggestion that they hold personal responsibility to address structurally produced inequities that affect their lives and their students ’ lives, since those structures are seen as far removed, either in time or space. They claim they are not complicit, since they have not personally committed an unjust action—they cannot be blamed, they are not responsible.

Young (2011) offers a different conception, a Social Connection Model of Responsibility, which holds that all individuals contribute by their actions to structural injustice. Assigning blame (as a warrant for responsibility ) is not always adequate for addressing injustice since it produces no material benefit (though the injured party may gain emotional, psychological benefit from naming the offender). Rather than blaming, we need to see the link between the individual and structural injustice. For example, individuals buy products made in sweatshops where children are oppressed or participate in housing markets that exclude vulnerable people. As Young explains, “… The specific actions of each [individual] cannot be casually disentangled from structural processes to trace a specific aspect of the outcome” (p. 100). Structural injustice, then, occurs because many individuals and institutions pursue their interests, often with several degrees of separation from those who are harmed in the process; thus, all the individuals who participate in these schemes are responsible—not in the sense of direct responsibility, but in the sense of being part of the processes that cause and perpetuate structural injustice. This is true in modern situations; it is also true in relation to historical structural injustice since the benefits/harm accrued continue to shape people’s experience generationally. We are part of a societal collective; our individual actions, no matter how distant from the outcome, are intertwined in the lives of those who suffer the structural injustice. Young’s model essentially redefines the notion of responsibility as response-ability (Oliver, 2001), that is, as a form of collective witnessing to the Other’s suffering.

The social connection model’s merger of collective and individual responsibility may prove valuable in teacher educators ’ struggle to help pre-service teachers change dispositions and criticality, adopt structural understanding of injustice, and, most importantly, embrace responsibility to act. As Young says, social changes require specific actions that

make a break in the process, by engaging in public discussions that reflect on their workings, publicizing the harms that come to persons who are disadvantaged by them, and criticizing powerful agents who encourage the injustices or at least allow them to happen. (2011, p. 150)

Individuals must offer “vocal criticism, organized contestations, a measure of indignation, and concerted public pressure” (p. 151). In so doing, they become ‘response-able’, capable of making the future less unjust—both morally and practically.

Summary of Theoretical Recommendations

In sum, we value Fraser’s work because she offers a sufficiently complex description of the reciprocal and multidimensional nature of (in)justice—redistribution, recognition, and representation—which can both house the multiple streams of theory that have fed into socially just teacher education as well as support on-going interrogation and reform of public institutions and teacher education programmes for greater equity. We recommend that teacher educators grapple with this theory and its complexity to reach deeper, shared understandings that they can use to inform their teacher education programmes. We also recommend adding Young’s (2011) Social Connection Model of Responsibility as an additional theoretical perspective with a political and forward-looking view of responsibility based on capacities rather than blame. We recommend that teacher educators come to sufficient agreement to provide a warrant for the elements of social justice in education and to inform the creation of coherent programmes. When those points of agreement are reached, locally, we encourage widespread sharing of both the process and the thinking that emerged. These two political philosophers are not the only or perhaps even the best theories to consider, but they offer promising possibilities for dialogue and application to create sound theoretical grounding, which the field of teacher education has been accurately criticized for lacking, to warrant and inform our practice. We now turn to research on that actual practice of teacher education to prepare socially just teachers.

An Empirically Grounded Practice of Teacher Education for Social Justice

In 1990, Grant and Secada (cited in Hollins & Guzman, 2006) described a paucity of research related to teaching diverse students (social justice not explicitly named but strongly indicated). In 2006, Hollins and Guzman described the emerging uptick in published empirical work, but they decried the methodological problems and the atomistic, non-generalizable approach of the majority of the studies. Our examination of the literature, almost a decade later, indicates some but still insufficient improvement. The large-scale review of teacher education research conducted by Cochran-Smith et al. (2015) confirms our analysis that stronger work and more work is needed.

Interestingly, however, the field seems to embrace a fairly common description of what socially just teaching looks like (described earlier in ‘Streams of Theory Informing Social Justice Teacher Education’). Cochran-Smith ’s (1999) early definition of socially just teaching—“improving the learning and life opportunities of all students ”— aligns with most educators ’, theorists’, and researchers ’ formulations, with varying degrees of emphasis (e.g. Chubbuck & Zembylas, 2008; Irvine, 2003; Ladson-Billings , 1994a; Reynolds & Brown, 2010; Smyth, 2013), and delineates practices that encompass Fraser’s dimensions of justice: recognition, redistribution, and representation.

• 1. Significant academic work for all

• 2. Curriculum and instruction built on students ’ cultural experience

• 3. Skills instruction to bridge gaps in students ’ learning

• 4. Collaboration (with colleagues, families, and communities)

• 5. Diversity of assessments , critique of standardized assessment practices

• 6. Explicit focus on power/inequity issues with accompanying activism

With that type of teacher in mind, teacher education programmes then try to develop the dispositions , knowledge , and skills needed by their pre-service teachers to carry out these practices. In this section, we identify five areas of scholarship related to that development. First, we discuss the development of dispositions and interpretative frameworks . We then examine research on knowledge and skill development related to pedagogy, multicultural/critical curriculum , and activism/advocacy. The third section reports on the role of field placements. The fourth section examines programme graduates’ initial efforts to implement socially just teaching . We end with descriptions of some programmes that holistically attempt to develop socially just teachers, followed by a summary of our recommendations.

Dispositions/Interpretive Frameworks

Given the demographic imperative, in the USA and elsewhere (e.g. Canada , Europe , Australia) of an overwhelmingly white, middle class teaching force and an increasingly diverse student population (Goodwin et al., 2014), teachers’ dispositional development—cultural consciousness, critical care, asset perspective of students , etc.—is essential (see Table 28.1 for a synthesis of the types of dispositions identified as needed in socially just teachers).

Table 28.1 Dispositions associated with socially just teaching

In addition to these dispositions , socially just teachers use a structural rather than an exclusively individualistic/meritocratic interpretative framework to understand students ’ experiences and to critically analyze institutional/societal inequities (Chubbuck , 2010; Cochran-Smith , 2004; Villegas & Lucas, 2002; Whipp, 2013; Wiedeman, 2002). Members of dominant groups—by race, class, ethnicity, gender, language, religion, or sexual orientation —are typically blind to institutionalized privileges; an individualistic/meritocratic interpretive framework sustains this oblivion (Castro, 2010; Chubbuck, 2010; Sleeter, 2001). For example, inequitable experiences can be interpreted as just, legitimate consequences of individual merit, while the accumulated effects of structural injustice on students’ learning are minimized, with the student and family targeted for blame—they just don’t care about education (Valenzuela, 1999). In contrast, socially just teachers see their students as individuals, but their structural interpretive framework also allows them to see students as members of socio-cultural groups, who experience structural privilege/disadvantage that shapes their learning.

Research on Development of Dispositions/Interpretative Frameworks

The overwhelming majority of research on social justice oriented teacher education has long focused on this topic, studying individual courses/field contexts, researched by the instructor, with small samples and qualitative methodologies that are hard to generalize (Cochran-Smith , 2010; Cochran-Smith et al., 2015; Hollins & Guzman, 2006; McDonald & Zeichner, 2009). Kaur’s (2012) review of 30 years of relevant articles in Teaching and Teacher Education illustrated this focus in the proliferation of research on addressing deficit views and consequent differential treatment of K-12 students . Similarly, Hollins and Guzman’s (2006) synthesis of research showed a pattern of pre-service teachers, enrolled in teachers education programmes with some attention to social justice, who didn’t feel confident in their ability to work with diverse students; who were open to diversity but tended to stop at the point of discomfort, particularly around the topic of race; and who showed sympathy rather than respect for the Other. Only about 50 % reported a willingness to teach in urban areas (Hollins & Guzman, 2006).

Developing these requisite dispositions can be an emotional, even painful/discomforting task for dominant culture pre-service teachers (Boylan & Woolsey, 2015; Brooks, 2011; Chubbuck , 2004, 2008; Chubbuck & Zembylas, 2008; Darling-Hammond , 2004; Kumashiro, 2000) often requiring a “life-long journey of transformation ” (Nieto, 2000, p. 183). The need for this transformation continues in the millennial generation. For example, Castro’s (2010) review of studies of incoming pre-service teachers’ dispositions, revealed that, even though the millennial generation has had more exposure to racial/cultural diversity, they still held a generic, celebratory view of multicultural education, showed little understanding of institutionalized racism, maintained significant deficit views of students of color, and believed in individualistic meritocracy with an inverse correlation with critical awareness of structural inequity.

Recent studies of interventions to develop social justice dispositions continue to show mixed results. For example, Boylan and Woosley (2015) reported on four beginning pre-service teachers’ response to discussions of educational inequity. Based on the pre-service teachers’ struggles seen in the discussions, they recommended teacher educators employ a balance between an inquiring, discomforting pedagogy and a compassionate, empathetic pedagogy to support their struggle in identity work, stating that they hope their graduates will provide similar challenge and compassion for their future students . Silverman’s (2010) survey of 69 pre-service teachers from various locations in their teacher education programme showed that they identified certain groups (such as race and class) under the umbrella term ‘diversity,’ with a corresponding sense of responsibility for those students’ success, while they failed to include other groups (such as sexual orientation and religion), with a corresponding lack of sensed responsibility for the well-being of those students. And finally, Mills’ (2009) study of four pre-service teachers nearing the end of their programme found that two held fairly strong deficit views of diverse students and two held positive views, in spite of being in the same programmes. Mills speculated that the pre-service teachers’ dispositions upon entering the programme may be more powerful than any interventions done during their course of study.

Similar ambiguity emerges around adoption of a structural interpretative framework. Tinkler, Hannah, and Tinkler’s (2014) exploration of the effect of service learning on students ’ views of inequity showed that some embraced a more structural, justice oriented approach to issues while others maintained an individualistic interpretation, seeing themselves as extending ‘charity’ to those in need. Pollack, Deckman, Mira, and Shalaby (2010) studied data from pre-service teachers’ class discussion on racism, informal conversation, and journal entries, finding that some were able to adopt a structural understanding while others maintained an individualistic understanding of racial privilege and inequity. Salinas and Blevins (2013) utilized a historical lens to help students reflect on their own intellectual biography , including cultural experience . They presented three pre-service teachers who showed positive dispositional and interpretive framework results, but they expressed a hope, suggesting uncertainty, regarding long-term effects of the results: “It is our hope that the process of reflection and growth these future teachers were engaged in during their pre-service years will sustain a [future] focus on critical pedagogy and social justice” (p. 24).

Top-down national initiatives to foster justice oriented dispositions in teachers, without sufficient attention to development, appear unproductive. Wang and Gao (2013) described how a national effort in China , to recruit and train teachers from metropolitan areas to work in less-resourced, lower quality rural schools, faced opposition as pre-service teachers refused the rural jobs, fearing their personal loss of social mobility if they worked in the poorer communities. Wang and Gao recommended more explicit interventions to developed dispositions to motivate teachers to serve the poor and more careful recruiting of pre-service teachers with justice orientations already in place. Similarly, Lopes Cordozo (2012, 2013) described how the national Bolivian initiative to position teachers as agents of decolonization, inter-/intra-culturalism, and social justice –‘vivir bien’—was met with opposition from the many traditional normales— teacher education programmes—that resisted the initiative as top-down, unsupported, and externally driven. Studies from international settings, such as these, show both the similar struggle to develop social justice oriented dispositions as well as how the meaning associated in one place may be totally different from another.

One positive finding highlights the success of more holistic , programme-wide attention to the development of dispositions aligned with socially just teaching . Collopy, Bowman, and Taylor (2012) studied the dispositional development of pre-service teachers participating in both experiential and theoretical discussion of social justice perspectives embedded across multiple sites, over time. Three initiatives over 3 years positively affected 12 pre-service teachers’ dispositions: first, observation/tutoring/volunteering in an urban, majority African American professional development school, where university professors and 7–12 educators collaborated to address the achievement gap; second, a course prompting critical cultural consciousness, combined with additional field hours at the school; and third, clinical rounds at the school collaborating with 7–12 teachers and university instructors in pedagogical decision-making. Findings showed significant increase in positive attitudes towards low socio-economic students of color, with 75 % of the pre-service teachers accepting positions in urban schools upon graduation.

Recommendations for Developing Dispositions/Interpretive Frameworks

In summary, the more recent research, on the whole, has lacked sufficient description of the larger teacher education programmes to allow readers to determine if the effect is actually the result of the specific course being studied or other factors. Findings have been ambiguous, some successes, some failures. Findings describing success primarily reflect short-term changes, with few follow up studies to determine their ‘staying power’ once the course ends or their effect of changed dispositions on practice in their future classrooms. In addition, most of the pedagogical interventions to produce dispositional development are not sufficiently described to allow the reader to actually ‘see’ the practice (readings, discussion, journaling), and even when they are described, many simply employ practices that have been used over the past several years (autobiographical analysis, reflective journaling, etc.). Teacher educators ’ interventions for dispositional development seem to vary only slightly over time, producing similarly slight variation in outcomes. Emerging themes indicate that multiple, varied, and collaborative sources of input are more effective than single-type interventions; also, it seems that changing personal dispositions may be easier to do than shifting interpretive frameworks .

The relatively atomistic self-studies do serve educational research by shifting the production of knowledge to those who ‘live’ the experience and by offering specific suggestions to improve our practice locally (Carr & Kemmis , 2004; Cochran-Smith et al., 2015; Zeichner, 2009a). Though recommendations beyond local/specialized application are challenging, a few recommendations appear warranted. First, research demands careful methodological rigor to increase validity /transferability of findings. Second, we need to study more collaborative , multi-sourced, and innovative interventions where field experiences and coursework mutually support development. Third, current research requires additional larger, longitudinal , multi-site research and follow-up studies of graduates now in the field, to inform our practice, focus continued research, and guide policy. Without these changes, we run the risk recycling techniques, contexts, and ‘insights’ through years of research, with limited progress and insufficient effect on the larger arenas of educational practice and policy formation. Fourth, as quality research progresses, we need to compile and share a detailed compendium of effective ‘best’ practices/programmes—not to create identical programmes but to spark ideas around concrete practices which can then be operationalized in local contexts. And finally, given the struggle to develop the necessary dispositions /interpretive frameworks , we reinforce the need to recruit and retain a more diverse teaching force (racial, linguistic, life experience, etc.) whose background may already support the dispositions and structural interpretive framework needed (McDonald & Zeichner, 2009; Villegas & Lucas, 2002; Wang & Gao, 2013; Zeichner, 2009a). As Haberman (1991) suggested years ago, it may be easier to pick the right people rather than try to change the wrong ones.

Pedagogy, Curriculum, Activism/Advocacy

Socially just teachers craft and practice pedagogy, curriculum , and activism/advocacy with a social justice focus. These elements can be loosely, though not perfectly, housed in the elements of ‘culturally relevant pedagogy’—academic excellence, cultural competence , critical analysis and activism (Ladson-Billings , 1994a). These elements are also seen in work of other scholars of socially just teacher education (see Bates, 2006, 2010; Dahlstrom, 2007; Dover, 2009; Gay, 2000, Gray, 2010; Hackman, 2005; Irvine, 2003; Reynolds & Brown, 2010); Schafer & Wilmot, 2012; Wang & Gao, 2013; Westheimer & Kahn, 1998; Westheimer & Suurtamm, 2009; Whipp, 2013; Zeichner, 2009a). First, socially just pedagogy requires ‘best practices ’ that support academic excellence—efficacious teaching , rigorous and expansive curricula, and adaptations that support all students ’ learning—since a social justice focus without supporting children’s acquisition of high status knowledge and skills is inherently unjust (Chubbuck , 2010; Cochran-Smith , Barnatt, Lahann, Shakman, & Terrell, 2009). Though not exclusively, this pedagogy is often described as constructivist, with a sociocultural orientation . Cultural competence is seen in the pedagogical/curricular incorporation of students’/communities’ cultural knowledge. And finally, socially just teaching includes curriculum marked by critical analysis of justice issues and, ideally, action to redress those injustices (Ladson-Billings, 1994a, 1994b) (See Table 28.2.)

Table 28.2 Pedagogy, curriculum , activism associated with socially just teaching

Research on Development of Socially Just Pedagogy, Curriculum, and Activism

Early on, little research focused on developing pre-service teachers’ pedagogy, curriculum , and activism/advocacy explicitly linked to social justice; research that did showed the same methodological concerns mentioned earlier. Our investigation and others show that this pattern continues (Cochran-Smith et al., 2015; Hollins & Guzman, 2006). For example, on one hand, research/theorizing of constructivist pedagogy with a sociocultural orientation is prevalent throughout teacher education research. Additionally, research/theorizing of this pedagogical approach, with a specific linked to social justice, shows success in supporting student learning of content and skills in various disciplines (e.g. in science see Bianchini, Akerson, Barton, Lee, & Rodriguez, 2012; Tan & Calabrese Barton, 2012; Zozakiewicz & Rodriguez, 2007; in math see Gutierrez, 2013; Gutstein, 2006; Gutstein & Peterson, 2005; in literacy see Christensen, 2000, 2009; Lee, 2007; Lewis, Encisco, & Moje, 2007; Moje & Lewis, 2007). What seems to be missing, however, is an examination of how teacher education programmes help pre-service teachers conceptualize those pedagogies as explicitly linked to social justice goals and what effect that linkage has on their learning and future practice. While this may seem like a slight distinction, we believe the goal of developing teachers committed to social justice and its accompanying pedagogies would be strengthened if that link were made explicit. This absence reflects how teacher education programmes can marginalize concepts of social justice to stand-alone classes, separating socially just dispositions from pedagogy (Cochran-Smith et al., 2015; Hollins & Guzman, 2006). This is often the case, reflected in the paucity of holistic programmes where themes of social justice are embedded throughout. The importance of explicitly linking social justice to pedagogical choices emerged in Clarke and Drudy’s (2006) mixed methods study examining pre-service student teachers’ attitudes/dispositions towards diversity and preferred teaching style. Findings showed that pre-service teachers expressed tolerance to diversity, but that tolerance decreased the more preservice teachers perceived the diverse (immigrant) populations impinging on Irish society (perception that the immigrants took local jobs, abused welfare systems, etc.). These attitudes then slightly correlated with the pre-service teachers’ choice of conservative, traditional pedagogies, with less differentiation, suggesting a need to explicitly connect examination of dispositions and pedagogy.

Research on developing pedagogies , critical curricula, and activism in specific content areas is somewhat more prevalent, though at times, it defaults to dispositions rather than content pedagogy/curricula. For example, Johnson’s (2012) critical ethnographic study of two pre-service secondary English language arts teachers’ implementation of social justice commitment during student teaching revealed that, while they demonstrated a ‘literacy ’ of resisting deficit views of students , they struggled to express either a critical perspective or activism amid the stresses of the high poverty school context . Johnson speculates that she (and her programme) ill-prepared them to address the disconnect between serving their students’ individual needs and transforming the inequities of the system in which they resided, referencing how content, foundations, and methods classes are often disjointed.

Some positive outcomes in the development of socially just pedagogy and curriculum are seen in the use of concrete versus theoretical examples in methods courses as well as collaboration between theoretical classes and field based practice, but development of critical curricular analysis and activism are much less positive. In mathematics education, Leonard and Moore (2014) studied their own mathematics methods course, drawing on recommendations from a synthesis of culturally relevant mathematics methods (Leonard, Brooks, Barnes-Johnson, & Berry , 2010) to include concrete examples of culturally relevant mathematics lessons (i.e., curriculum based on students ’ lives), cultural knowledge (of themselves and their students), and strong mathematics content . They found that 88 % of their pre-service teachers produced lesson plans with academic rigor, culturally based curriculum, and connections to families, but their lesson plans did not include critical analysis of justice related issues or discussion of activism/advocacy. Aguirre, Zavala, and Katanyoutanant (2012) mirrored these findings. Their study of the effects of paring pedagogical content knowledge with culturally relevant mathematics teaching in their methods course found that pre-service teachers’ lesson plans incorporated students’ home languages and community funds of knowledge, but largely omitted a critical justice focus. They speculated that this absence reflected a lack of knowledge of how to include a more critical focus rather than ideological opposition. In science education, McCollough and Ramirez (2012) described how pre-service teachers’ participation in ‘family science learning events,’ paired with coursework on culturally relevant pedagogy, additive approaches (Ladson-Billings , 1994a; Valenzuela, 1999), reduced pre-service teachers’ deficit views and increased reported self-efficacy for teaching science to diverse students, but no mention was made of increased critical societal analysis or activism.

This struggle to help preservice teachers develop the ability (and willingness) to critically analyze justice issues is challenging. Research by Bhopal and Rhamie (2014) and Garratt and Piper (2010) suggested all pre-service teachers need stronger foundational grounding (sociology, history, civic education, philosophy and political science) to gain the necessary conceptual tools to support discussion of controversial justice issues with their future students . This struggle among teacher educators is also implicated. Sensoy and DiAngelo (2014) argued that the typical guidelines for safe discussions—‘respect differences’ and ‘everyone’s opinion matters’—obscure power relations and allow white/dominant perspectives to ascend. Instead, grappling with conflicting ideas; analyzing personal defensiveness; recognizing/interrogating personal social positionality; differentiating between safety and comfort can help pre-service teachers, “lean into rather than away from difficult content ” (p. 8). Cohen et al. (2013) similarly recommended adequate attention to the complexity of reproducing binary identities that ignore intersectionality among both instructors and pre-service teachers. Similarly, Galman, Pica-Smith, and Rosenberg (2010) described instructors’ ‘pedagogy of niceness’ that protected dominant privilege, and Philip and Benin’s (2014) study revealed how whiteness was instantiated in the instructors’ discourse at programme level, with both silencing rather than supporting critical analysis.

Research on how pre-service teachers eventually function as advocates and activists in their K-12 classrooms was almost non-existent. This is certainly reasonable since student teachers typically are not positioned to safely express activism or advocacy beyond the level demonstrated by their cooperating teachers, a circumstance that further complicates the struggle to develop socially just teachers. Consequently, we will report research on activism later, as seen in the first years of practice.

Recommendations for Pedagogy, Curriculum, Advocacy/Activism

Recommendations for developing socially just pedagogy, curriculum , and activism include increased levels of research, with the same recommendations of more rigorous, larger, multi-site studies over time. Second, since the goals of culturally relevant pedagogy—academic excellence, cultural competence , and critical analysis/activism—at least partially align with recognition, redistribution, and representation (Fraser, 1997, 2008, 2012), we recommend incorporating this theoretical understanding into our pre-service teachers’ knowledge base , to provide a framework within which pedagogy, curriculum, and activism can be both warranted and informed. Third, we recommend closer links between coursework and fieldwork to provide both multiple exposures and opportunities to witness concrete examples of collaboratively developed and implemented culturally relevant pedagogy and curriculum. This collaboration will also give opportunities for pre-service teachers to see and normalize the real life challenges of socially just teaching inherent in teachers’ everyday work. And to undergird all of this, we recommend that teacher educators do the same work—critical reflection ; collaborative critique, creation, and implementation of culturally relevant methods and curricula; and advocacy/activism in the larger field of education—that they ask of their pre-service teachers.

Field Placements and Developing Socially Just Educators

The role of field placements is critical in all pre-service teachers’ development, and particularly for teachers with a social justice focus (Whipp, 2013). To reach this goal, many teacher preparation programmes have constructed field placements in more diverse contexts (Hollins & Guzman, 2006). While the research on this topic suffers from the same methodological critiques raised at previous point, some promising practices appear in community engagement (community-based inquiry, community immersion, etc.) and practitioner inquiry stances (e.g. action research , critical practitioner inquiry, etc.) (Cochran-Smith et al., 2015).

Community Engagement

Ladson-Billings (2001) recommended early significant community engagement for pre-service teachers in order to support dispositional and pedagogical development to work effectively with racially diverse students . Even in lesser amounts, community engagement supports this development. For example, Farnsworth (2010) reported on three pre-service teachers’ work in community based inquiry projects who displayed varied discursive identities/foci: ‘academic’ (integrating community experiences for good teaching ); ‘community’ (engaging in community activism); and a synthesis of the two, more aligned with socially just teaching . Though the three had different prior experiences with diversity, Farnsworth maintained that community based inquiry can help support development of the synthesized identity. Handa and Tippins (2013) described how two pre-service teachers’ extended community immersion in the Philippines created a ‘third space’ between centuries-old indigenous farming practices and the colonial influence of Western technology. With their host families, they located typically decontextualized science facts in community life and critically challenged assumptions in mainstream science education. McDonald, Bowman, and Brayko (2013) described how two pre-service teachers’ pre-student teaching community-based placements (YMCA, Boys and Girls Clubs, etc.) supported deeper understanding of their future students, more complex conceptions of diversity, and an alternative perspective for analyzing schooling. Regarding pedagogy, Beiler (2012) studied 79 English methods preservice teachers as they analyzed their field placement communities and then constructed lesson plans which were evaluated for meeting both accreditation standards and the social justice goal, ‘respect for all social groups’ (Cochran-Smith , 2010). Lesson plans with standards criteria scores also contained more content and community knowledge connections, implicating the power of community experience to support both good teaching and socially just teaching, while simultaneously demonstrating that they are synonymous (Cochran-Smith, Barnatt, Lahann, Shakman, & Terrell, 2009; Dover, 2009; Westheimer & Suurtamm, 2009).

Practitioner Inquiry

The role of practitioner inquiry/action research in teaching and teacher education has a long, rich history, with potential to create a more socially just educational system and society as a whole (Carr & Kemmis , 2004; Cochran-Smith , 1999; Zeichner, 2009a). Grounded in the ‘concerns and practices of teachers’ and teacher educators , this methodology can produce research for education, rather than research about education (Carr & Kemmis, 2004, pp. 4–5). Studies using practitioner research highlight the importance of shifting knowledge production to those working in the field (Carr & Kemmis, 2004; Dahlstrom, 2006, 2007; Zeichner, 2009a, 2009b); the need for critical research that challenges inequities at both micro- and macro-levels; and the value of meaningful, supportive collaboration among multiple stakeholders . Pre-service teachers’ use of practitioner research, then, makes sense and is widely recommended (Bates, 2010; Cochran-Smith, 2010; Smyth, 2006, 2013; Zeichner, 2009b). The studies reviewed below illustrate this potential in developing socially just teachers.

Furman, Barton, and Muir (2012) described how an urban middle school student teacher collaborated with his cooperating teacher on a transformative action research project, taking pedagogical risks and studying the resultant student learning. Findings showed the preservice teacher shifted from deficit views of his students to an asset perspective, with himself serving as co-constructor with them, rather than direct provider, of knowledge /relevance. Follow-up interviews 4 years later, however, showed his asset view decreasing and his role as direct provider of knowledge/relevance increasing. The challenge of actual teaching diminished the positive effects, raising questions about the need for on-going support.

An inquiry stance can empower preservice teachers to adopt social justice identities, as well. In 1993, shortly after gaining independence from South Africa (Dahlstrom, 2006), teacher educators in Namibia introduced their pre-service teachers to Critical Practitioner Inquiry (CPI), thus shifting interpretation of educational experience s from the colonizing ‘north’ to the local practitioners (Dahlstrom, 2006; Dahlstrom et al., 1999). Zeichner (2009a) described how a Namibian female student teacher studied six female students ’ lack of participation in her science class; she changed her practice and elicited increased participation. While it may seem small, this example, in a nation newly released from decades of colonial subjugation, represents a shift in ‘social capital’ from dominant forces into the hands of the formerly oppressed (Dahlstrom, 2006; Zeichner, 2009a). Dahlstrom (2007) described a similar emancipatory effect of CPI among pre-service teachers in Ethiopia where 9–12 grade students were being taught by televised South African teachers, with local Ethiopian teachers serving as technicians—monitoring, summarizing, and delivering education as a commodity in a global market. Pre-service teachers used CPI to examine, interrogate and expose these practices. In one student’s words, “CPI gave me the confidence and the critical eyes to look at things around me” (p. 63) and “I critically started to think about … education for social justice. I was reborn after taking this course” (p. 64).

Recommendations for Field Placements

The potential of field placements to develop socially just dispositions , pedagogical/curricula skills, and, to some extent, activism through community engagement and practitioner inquiry is multilayered and warrants further attention. By foregrounding the experience of marginalized communities, community engagement positions communities and pre-service teachers as collaborative constructors of knowledge and agents of change, sparking greater responsibility as pre-service teachers witness their students ’/communities’ experiences of inequity apart from schools. Practitioner research can provide pre-service teachers a critical inquiry lens to analyze educational injustice and to empower them to see themselves as agents of change. Recommendations for field placements, then, first include continuing to provide and study the effects of both community engagement and practitioner inquiry. This research needs to tease out how pre-service teachers’ racial/cultural identity, prior experiences with diversity, and experience with other coursework also may influence the outcomes reported. This emphasis implicates a range of important scholarship, not always applied to social justice goals, including teacher identity , practical knowledge, teacher beliefs etc., which are beyond the scope of this chapter (see Beauchamp & Thomas, 2011; Beijaard, Meijer, & Verloop, 2004; Fives & Buehl, 2012; Gay, 2015; Zembylas & Chubbuck , 2015). Second, follow-up studies are needed to examine whether or not these effects extend into the field. Third, we need to collect findings of effective practices and share them with social justice teacher educators in different contexts. And a fifth recommendation calls for teacher educators and practicing teachers to critically challenge the increase in externally imposed accountability measures, for student teachers (in the USA, see edTPA, n.d.), practicing teachers, and teacher educators, which cannibalizes the time needed for studying their own practice/context (Zeichner, 2009a). While accountability for quality teacher education is legitimate, some argue that redefining teachers from decision-making professionals and organic intellectuals (Giroux, 1988) to technicians who meet externally imposed benchmarks diminishes professionalism with negative effects (Cochran-Smith , 2010; Zeichner, 2009b). Practitioner inquiry by definition counters that deprofessionalizing, positioning pre-service teachers as intellectual producers of knowledge and practice; thus, efforts to guard the use of action research in social justice teacher education are appropriate (Bates, 2010; Cochran-Smith, 2010; Smyth, 2006, 2013; Zeichner, 2009b).

Evidence of Teaching Practice of Programme Graduates

The field needs to attend to how well the social justice education of our programmes translates into beginning teachers ’ actual practice. If positive changes to dispositions , pedagogy, curriculum , and activism occur, do they last and with what effect? This question is seriously under-researched, with existing studies showing the early career teachers’ difficulty with this next step.

Research on Socially Just Practice in the Field

Picower (2011) studied the formation of a Critical Inquiry Project (CIP) with six first year urban teachers, graduates of her teacher education programme. Their collaborative discussions about embedding social justice pedagogy into their practice and the issues they encountered provided a ‘safe haven’ of insights, encouragement, and support, much needed in schools marked by climates of fear and pressure to conform. The CIP helped them operate ‘under the radar’ in pedagogical and curricular support to develop students ’ critical/activist perspectives . Their own activism to challenge their school environments, however, was slight.

Agarwal, Epstein, Oppenheim, Oyler, and Sonu (2010) studied three recent graduates, (Black-Haitian, multiracial, and white), who engaged their students in dialogue around inequitable social hierarchies. Participants expressed feelings of personal inadequacy, disconnect between preparation and actual teaching , and uncertainty about young students’ capability to engage social justice topics. The authors recommended that teacher educators explicitly normalize such challenges in teacher education programmes, providing examples of struggling social justice teachers, to disperse any idealized, unrealistic expectations.

Similarly, Kelly and Brandes (2010) studied 20 programme graduates’ (mixed age and race) description of how their commitment to social justice evolved in their early years of teaching (1–6 years). Though their vision of socially just education had not significantly changed, their sense of the possible was diminished, due to job demands; resistance from students , colleagues and administrators ; pressures of externally imposed accountability/assessments ; and difficulty translating anti-oppression education theory into practice. The authors recommended critical, transformative practitioner inquiry throughout the teacher education programme; reflection on personal social identities; on-going communities to support inquiry and action; and clearly articulated warrants—that is, “institutional backup” (p. 400)—to support anti-oppressive teaching in the face of local opposition.

And finally, Cochran-Smith et al. (2009) tracked 12 graduates from their programme into their second year of teaching . Data showed the teachers strongly emphasized student mastery of rigorous content , respectful relationships with students and families, and differentiation to address individual students’ learning struggles. Teachers did not, however, focus on structurally produced inequities and activism to address such. Cochran-Smith and colleagues asserted that socially just teaching does produce quality learning, countering critiques leveled against it (Cochran-Smith et al., 2009), but they questioned how realistic structural analysis and activism will be early in a teacher ’s career .

Recommendations for Beginning Teachers’ Socially Just Practice

The themes of unsupportive context of the schools and the level of challenge /support provided in the field suggest recommendations for moving forward. First, we need to normalize the challenges of enacting social justice teaching , with examples, to disperse potentially disillusioning, idealized thoughts that success will come easily. Second, we need critical, transformative practitioner inquiry throughout programmes followed by opportunities for collaborative practitioner inquiry when graduates enter the field. And third, we need to create on-going collaboration/practitioner inquiry to support critical reflection into social/cultural identities, to ask questions and create a sense of belonging, and to suggest and support criticality and activism. Thinking that our graduates will leave our programmes and seamlessly, effectively practice all aspects of socially just teaching is naïve. Clearly, we need to extend our support of them into the field.

Holistic Teacher Education Programmes

Finally, holistic teacher education programmes, where knowledge , skills, and dispositions related to socially just teaching are coherently embedded, are much needed. A string of unrelated courses in teacher education, in general, is not effective in preparing successful teachers (Hammerness, Darling-Hammond , Grossman , Rust, & Shulman , 2005). The added challenge of preparing socially just teachers heightens the need for programme coherence—a holistic, ubiquitous embedding of equity that has been long demanded (Cochran-Smith , 2010; Nieto, 2000; Zeichner, 2009a). Yet such programmes are few as most confine justice issues/diversity issues to a single, add-on course, with insufficient larger programmatic change (Cochran-Smith et al., 2015; Hollins & Guzman, 2006). The current number of holistic programmes, though still quite small, has grown since 2000 and can be found existing across national contexts, with common themes: (1) explicit focus on some aspect of social justice; (2) emphasis on diversity/cultural awareness; (3) inquiry/action research projects frequently including activism/advocacy; and, (4) collaboration among teacher candidates , university instructors, K-12 teachers, and community members.

Kelly and Brandes (2010) described how their British Columbia, Canada , teacher education programme explicitly foregrounds an anti-oppression model in all courses, with pre-service teachers critiquing school structures and conducting critical/transformative action research projects during their practicum. Zeichner and Flessner (2009) described teacher education at York University, Canada, where 50 % of pre-service teachers are culturally/racially diverse, with courses critically examining the social and political forces that shape schooling and fostering their critical cultural identity. Additionally, they experience community engagement through service learning and collaborate on action research projects in school contexts , with cross-race conversational partners and learning communities with K-12 practitioners and university instructors.

Cochran-Smith et al. (2009) described the programme at Boston College, where teacher educators agreed on five principles to infuse in all courses and field placements: (1) explicit promotion of social justice; (2) learning as knowledge construction; (3) inquiry into practice; (4) affirmation of diversity; and, (5) collaboration with others. Pre-service teachers conduct an action research project during their final practicum. And finally, Kumashiro et al. (2007) described the 1980s–1990s school and teacher education practice in Puerto Alegre, Sao Paulo, Brazil. Considered organic intellectuals and societal change agents, teachers under Paulo Freire’s leadership generated community-relevant justice issues, taught knowledge and skills to analyze issues, and, collaborated with students to challenge those injustices. The accompanying teacher education included formation of supportive communities, development of all aspects of quality teaching , and an expressed commitment to an activist, collective struggle for social justice.

Recommendations for Holistic Programmes

We recommend researching such programmes, individually and across multiple sites, over time in the programme and into the first years of teaching , to identify the methods used to prepare their pre-service teachers, document the actual outcomes in teaching performance, and describe the impact on student learning. In addition, we recommend that thorough descriptions of the components of such holistic programmes—theoretical grounding/warrants of practice, organizational schemes, detailed description of course readings and teaching methods, and field placement experiences—be compiled and shared with the profession.

Conclusions and Future Directions

These recommendations (see Table 28.3), drawn from considering the context , the theory , and the practice of socially just teacher education , operate together, not in isolation from each other. And they operate best as we are willing to critique ourselves, never defending weaknesses in either our nations’ schools or our teacher preparation programmes (Fraser, 2005a, 2005b; Kumashiro, 2010). Our aim is excellent preparation of qualified teachers capable of pursuing all the elements of social justice. We submit these recommendations to help support reaching that goal.

Table 28.3 Summary of recommendations for teacher education for social justice

Woven throughout the recommendations derived from our examination of the context , theory and practice of socially just teacher education are common threads that cohere all and can orient future efforts. First, we need to increase political awareness in our preservice teachers and ourselves if we are to understand forces that may prove antithetical to our goals of social justice in education. While we need to teach knowledge and skills that allow all children to achieve economic stability, and we need to respond to the tensions of cultural pluralism and tradition, we equally must remain separate and able to critically analyze and wisely select our response to both economic and cultural demands (Bates, 2010). Second, theoretical grounding is important throughout. We need to grapple with theory, such as Fraser’s theory of justice—recognition, redistribution, and representation—and Young’s theory of Social Connection Model of Responsibility, to deepen our understanding, to inform our practice, and to cogently provide thoughtful warrants to support our preservice teachers in their struggle for greater justice. Third, our efforts must be holistically coherent throughout our programmes. Our pre-service teachers need recursive, thematic learning experiences to construct meaningful understanding and application of the knowledge, skills, and dispositions aligned with socially just teaching . Fourth, the future of teacher education for social justice demands continued and increased high quality research, done by practitioners at all levels and domains of education, studying their local contexts, and by teams of researchers conducting multi-site, longitudinal , rigorous research. And finally, consistent in all we have presented in this chapter is the importance of widespread collaboration among multiple stakeholders from all contexts, supporting research and sharing findings across programmes so we can learn from each other as we locally shape our own contexts. Though systems of reward and ideologies of competition might tempt individualistic efforts, we must surely support each other if our profession is to reach our goals of greater social justice in schools and society.

These five themes, political awareness, theoretical grounding, holistic coherence, high quality research, and widespread collaboration, all work reciprocally. Political awareness informs theoretical understanding, which in turn, informs programme formation, grounds research, and warrants activism and collaboration. Holistic programmes foster theoretical conversation, grist for meaningful research, and connection for all players. Research drawn from theory , contextualized in political realities, and focused on holistic programmes will best be done collaboratively, with results widely shared for the improvement of all. And finally, collaboration will enhance the value of all the other threads. Together we can inform our practices for improvement, we can enrich the quality of our research, and we can use our practice, our research, and our theoretical understanding to illuminate and challenge the political threats that would undermine socially just teacher education . This is not work that can be done alone; indeed, attempts to work alone often are done at our peril.

In preparing this chapter, we were struck by the constant drum beat—that we have made little progress in either the practice or research of teacher education oriented towards social justice. This accusation seems to be accurate, but the possibilities are real for improving our preparation of socially just teachers, who will be instrumental in creating a more humane, just world. And the stakes for doing so warrant no less than our best efforts.