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Findings Week #7 (Social Justice (Hytten (Defining Social Justice…

- - - - “Moreover, almost everyone in education seems to share at least a rhetorical commitment to social justice, especially as we routinely express the belief that schools should help to provide equality of opportunity” (Hyett, 2011, p. 9).
      - “He writes that “whole books and treatises have been written aboutsocial justice without ever offering a definition ofit.It is allowed to float in the air as if everyone will recognize an instance of it when it appears” (p. 1).” (Hytten, 2011, p.9)
      - “The phrase social justice is used in school mission statements, job announcements, and educational reform proposals, though sometimes widely disparate ones, from creating a vision of culturally responsive schools to leaving no child behind” (Hyett, 2011, p.7-8).
    - - “Writings in the philosophical or conceptual strand of the literature aim to tease out the meaning of justice in abstract, philosophical and/or theoretical terms.” (Hytten, 2011, p.10)
        
        “The liberal individualist view, drawn heavily from Rawls, elevates fairness as the central feature of justice. Two principles of Rawls (1972) come into play in the liberal individualist perspective. First, each person is entitled to as much freedom as possible as long as others share the same freedom. Second, social goods should be distributed as equally as possible, with inequities being allocated in a way that benefits the least privileged members of society.” (Hytten, 2011, p.11)
      - "Almost diametrically opposed to Rawls, the market individualist view of justice emphasizes that people are entitled in relationship to their efforts.” (Hytten, 2011, p.11)
      - “The social democratic perspective, largely drawn from Marx, considers justice in relationship to the needs of various individuals, emphasizing a more collectivist or cooperative vision of society.” (Hytten, 2011, p.11)
    - - “Writers in this genre often offer lists of conditions or competencies, for example, of what would be present in a just school or in a teacher education program that is grounded on a vision of social justice, or of the competencies needed for socially just teaching or leadership” (Hyett, 2011, p. 12).
    - - Throughout her experiential stories, she steadfastly maintains the power of classroom spaces to compel social justice work, arguing that they are one of the most important locations “where individuals can experience support for acquiring a critical consciousness, for any commitment to end domination” (16)
      - “A third strand in the social justice literature includes ethnographic and narrative works that offer portraits of injustice related to schools and education, reflections by educators committed to social justice, and narratives about personal experiences of lived injustice” (Hyett, 2011, p. 14).
        
        “Voices from experience often compel and move readers differently than the seemingly more abstract theories and arguments about justice” (Hyett, 2011, p. 16).
    - - “Sometimes the link to education is overt and specific such as work by education scholars in critical pedagogy, Whiteness studies, anti-oppressive education and multiculturalism. Other times the connection happens less directly because rather than being located primarily within education, the justice-oriented theoretical positions emerge more directly from fields such as women’s studies, sociology, and ethnic studies” (Hyett, 2011, p. 16).
    - - “Educators coming to social justice from this perspective situate their thinking about justice in connection to considering the fundamental purposes of education in a democratic society” (Hyett, 2011, p. 19).
    - - “As there is so much education literature directly and indirectly related to social justice, it is useful to have some kind of organizing framework to make sense of the various kinds of visions people hold when they claim to ground their efforts in social justice” (Hyett, 2011, p. 21).
  - - - • “Some of the literature on teaching for social justice acknowledges that children’s cognitive and emotional capacities need to be taken into account but usually stops short of providing speciﬁcs or teasing out the implications for practice. We need to know more about how children’s understanding of various equity-related issues develops with age while simultaneously viewing “child development with indifferent social, cultural, political and economic contexts of childhood” (Kelly, & Brooks, 2009, p.214)
        
        • “In our view, an anti-oppression approach to teaching for social justice should do more to highlight a conceptualization of children as both producers as well as products of culture. In poststructuralist theory, for example, “the focus is on the way each person actively takes up the discourses through which they and others speak/write the world into existence as if they were their own.” (Kelly, & Brooks, 2009, p.214)
    - - They recognize that teaching is inevitably political because it involves decisions that affect both the distribution of power, status, resources, and opportunities as well as whose knowledge is recognized and validated. When teachers facilitate classroom discussions, for example, they must decide which issues to recognize as worthy of class time, or in using a particular textbook, teachers can elect to draw students’ attention to the omission or sidelining of subordinated groups—or not (203)
        
        “When children are considered highly impressionable, teachers feel compelled to avoid controversial issues and to be careful not to “indoctrinate” children with their own opinions (Kelly & Brandes, 2001).“(Kelly, 2009, p. 204)
        
        To avoid conflict, a general opinion is that teachers should be careful not to put opinions into student’s heads at a young age.
    - - “how they would define teaching for social justice; whether they agreed or disagreed that primary children are too young to understand issues of social justice, such as racism or homophobia, and why; what, if any, concerns they had about teaching for social justice with young children; the ways in which their social locations and aspects of their identity (i.e., race, social class, gender, etc.) influenced what and how they teach; and perceived supports and barriers to teaching for social justice.”(Kelly, 2009, p. 205)
    - - “participants said in the first interview that they did not see the age of the children whom they would be teaching as a barrier to teaching for social justice.” (Kelly, 2009, p. 206)
    - - The issue of children’s ability to form their own opinion—captured in everyday metaphors of children as “sponges,” “blank slates,” and “parrots” versus the less common image of children as active meaning-makers—is crucial. (209)
        
        When teachers are sensitive to countering oppression, many such “teachable moments” as Kelly described will arise in and around the classroom. But as Kelly’s anecdote also illustrates, equity-minded teachers do not need to wait for teachable moments, either, but can introduce social justice topics, even with younger children, by reading a story or exploring artwork that allow the class to explore emotional investments and build their conceptual knowledge. (211)
      - “While she acknowledged that teacher and parent views would influence the students’ decision-making process, she stressed the importance of “giving them the little [critical thinking] tools along the way instead of all of them all at once,” because “they’ll be better prepared to use them.” “If they make a decision” in grade 4, Amanda concluded, “it might not be the right one, but they’re not going to go out and rule the world next year!” (Kelly, 2009, p. 212-213)
    - - • “it is incumbent upon beginning teachers and those who help prepare them to interrogate the concept of innocence, including links back to their own childhoods and how these might shape expectations about their future students.” (Kelly, & Brooks, 2009, p.209)
        
        “The greater the belief in childhood innocence, the more likely teachers were to intimate or state that they would avoid “iffy,” “scary,” or “heavy” topics unless their early primary students raised them first.” (Kelly, 2009, p. 208)
        
        The researches say that the greater the belief in this innocence of students the more likely the teachers are to remain hands-off in touchy subjects unless a student were to prompt the discussion. This is significant as students are not necessarily exposed to topics which hold great importance until they are older. The belief in the teachers, their mindset and perception of students, impact the way they approach teaching students. Iffy, scary, and heavy topics are also ambiguous
        
        Racism
        
        Homosexuality
    - - “Once at school, they continue to learn about social issues, informally at least. We need to prepare and support teachers to enact a curriculum that formally addresses these social issues so that children can learn to think about, analyze, discuss, and debate them in a structured manner and respectful environment.” (Kelly, 2009, p. 215)