Teaching
For Social Justice: Teachers Inquire Into Their Practice
University
of British Columbia
Vancouver,
British Columbia
Socially
critical action research in education is informed by the
principle of social justice...It is not simply a matter
of challenging the system, but of seeking to understand
what makes the system be the way it is, and challenging
that, while remaining conscious that one's own sense of
justice and equality is itself open to question.
—Tripp, 1990: 161
Over the years, each of us has been engaged
in various teaching and research projects that focus on
social justice concerns. Teaching with social justice at
its heart highlights the importance of the teacher’s
role in imagining and working towards a more equitable society.
We began to talk about (to echo Tripp) our “own sense
of justice and equality” some years ago. The occasion
for our conversation was the desire to start a cohort-based
teacher education program that centred on teaching for social
justice. Our dreams came to fruition when we helped to found
the Humanities and Social Justice Teacher Education Program
(HSJTEP) at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in
1998. While we learned a lot in the process and have enjoyed
working with student teachers, we wondered how more experienced
teachers, who were already well established in their schools,
would translate a concern for social justice into their
practices.
Therefore, when an opportunity to develop
a teacher inquiry course arose in the Urban Learner program,
we eagerly seized upon it. The magistral-level Urban Learner
program is cohort-based and designed for experienced teachers,
many of who teach in inner-city schools. We assumed (correctly,
as it turned out) that teachers confronted with the daily
realities of poverty, racial discrimination, and lack of
support for children and caregivers for whom English is
an additional language would resonate to a thematic focus
on teaching for social justice. This focus was broad enough
to encompass a wide variety of concerns arising from teachers’
own practices, and led to the various inquiry projects included
in this issue. We hope that these stories from the field
will instruct and inspire both new and experienced teachers.
We believe that teacher inquiry plays an important role
in teachers’ professional development and provides
an important avenue for teachers to develop “some
understanding, influence over, and responsibility for the
social conditions and outcomes of education" (Tripp,
1990: 165).
Democratic Citizenship and Anti-Oppressive Education
Teaching for democratic citizenship is
a key element of teaching for social justice. Living in
a democracy calls for civic responsibilities and, in particular,
active interest and involvement in the community. Teachers
play a crucial role in preparing students to take on these
responsibilities. Teaching for democratic citizenship focuses
on democracy as a moral way of life (Henderson, 1999). Teaching
for democratic citizenship emphasizes inquiry, choice, and
action (Kincheloe, 1999) as teachers and students pose questions;
make meaning of curriculum, school, and society; and confront
social problems.
Understanding and attempting to address
societal inequities make up the second element of teaching
for social justice, anti-oppression education. Anti-oppression
education highlights diversity in schools and society and
proposes ways of using the multiple perspectives brought
forward by the diverse student population as an integral
part of teaching. Teachers, therefore, need to foster “productive
dialogues about the inequities and the possibilities for
social reconstructions in the communities within which [teachers]
and their students are developing” (Darling-Hammond,
French & Garcia-Lopez, 2002: 2).
Teachers cannot
fix the problems of society by “teaching better,”
nor can teachers alone, whether through individual or group
efforts, alter the life chances of the children they teach,
particularly if the larger issues of structural and institutional
racism and inequity are not addressed. However, while teachers
cannot substitute for social movements aimed at the transformation
of society’s fundamental inequities, their work has
the potential to contribute to those movements in essential
ways. —Cochran-Smith, 1999:116.
Among the key roles teachers can play in addressing
inequities is inquiring into their own practice and its
context within the educational system. Teachers have a particular
responsibility for understanding the role schools play in
perpetuating economic and cultural dominance.
Overly narrow (e.g., Eurocentric)
curricula and various other institutional practices—standardized
testing, ability grouping and tracking, in-grade retention,
repeated failure, suspension, expulsion—selectively
discourage, stigmatize, and exclude young people from school.
Both inside and outside of schools, societal inequalities
based on class, race, gender, sexuality, and ability place
further limits on “actually existing democracy.”
—Fraser, 1997 & Kelly, 2003.
Teaching for Social Justice and Teacher
Inquiry
When teachers inquire into their practice,
they often make decisions about teaching and learning as
they develop knowledge (Cole & Knowles, 2000: 2). They
reflect, theorize, and examine their theories continuously
as a part of teaching (Schon, 1983). Teacher researchers
make this process of inquiry more systematic and often public.
When teachers engage in inquiry about their practice, they
do so from the “inside,” using their own sites
as the focus for their study (Anderson, Herr & Nihlen,
1994: 2). They pose a question, systematically collect data
about the question, analyze the data, draw conclusions,
and report on them publicly. This process of researching
their practice provides teachers with the distance necessary
for an investigation, as they make the familiar unfamiliar
so that they can examine and analyze it. We believe that
teacher inquiry, informed by a concern for social justice,
should be oriented towards reflective action and positive
change in the classroom, the school, or the community.
Teachers who conduct research in their
classrooms need to ask questions about the status quo and
uncover their own beliefs, assumptions, and biases. They
should be willing to critically examine their practice as
well as the practices of their school. Teacher inquiry has
the potential to help students learn better (Patterson &
Shannon, 1993) as well as “reform classroom practice
by prompting powerful intellectual critique of assumptions,
goals and strategies” (Cochran-Smith & Lytle,
1993: 35). This kind of inquiry is less daunting when done
in collaboration with like-minded teachers (Wolk, 1998:
13).
Our Project: Teachers Inquiry and Teaching for Social
Justice
The reports in this volume are empirical
studies that include collection, analysis and interpretation
of data that focus on particular classrooms and schools.
Twenty-one teachers, most of whom teach in elementary inner-city
schools, undertook a year-long course, entitled “Teaching
for Social Justice: Teacher Inquiry,” that we had
team-taught as a part of the Masters of Education program
(Urban Learner II cohort) at the University of British Columbia.
The teachers came to our course with varying experiences
and interests in teaching for social justice. One had been
a member of the B.C. Teachers’ Federation’s
Social Justice Committee, others had engaged in activism
through other venues, while still others had thought about
the issues raised in the course in less formal and systematic
ways.
Together, we examined various social justice
frameworks and the complexities of translating them into
educational practices. We identified and reflected on various inequities (e.g. sexism, heterosexism,
homophobia, racism, and poverty) that operate within classrooms
and schools. We also analyzed the multiple traditions
of practitioner research in the field of education, and
the teachers who participated in the course were invited
to learn the rudiments of critical teacher inquiry, including:
developing a research question, conducting a literature
review, submitting an Application for Ethical Review at
UBC, exploring methods for conducting a small-scale inquiry,
and analyzing and sharing the results of such an inquiry.
Thus, as a part of the course, the teacher
researchers investigated and reflected upon their practices,
and some considered action to mitigate inequities, being
careful to document their results.
The teachers spent considerable
time selecting topics and questions for inquiry. Knowing
the sustained effort that would be required for this undertaking,
we urged them to select personally meaningful projects.
We encouraged the teachers to reflect on their own backgrounds,
particularly as these connected to their views of diversity
and teaching for social justice (some of these reflections
ended up in the final project write-ups; see, e.g., Beale;
Eng; and Stirk). Adapting advice from Sleeter (1996), we
also asked the teachers to include writings by, or interviews
with, scholars or other experts who were members of the
marginalized groups that figured into their research topics.
For example, for those whose topic or research context involved
Aboriginal students or parents, we suggested that they consult
articles published in such journals as the Canadian Journal
of Native Education or
the Canadian Journal of Native Studies.
All told, the participants
in our course worked on fifteen projects, and ten are published
in this volume. The teacher researchers used a variety of
methods in their inquiry projects: observation,
questionnaires, analyses of students’ work, photography,
and interviews. To varying degrees, all the projects can
be seen as contributing to anti-oppression education, teaching
for democratic citizenship, or both.
According
to political philosopher Iris Marion Young:
Oppression consists in systematic institutional processes, which prevent
some people from learning and using satisfying and expansive
skills in socially recognized settings, or institutionalized
social processes which inhibit people's ability to play
and communicate with others or to express their feelings
and perspective on social life in contexts where others
can listen. (1990: 38)
She discerns five major forms of oppression:
exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism,
and violence. Taken as a whole, the ten projects presented
here can be seen as attempts to counter at least four of
these forms of oppression: marginalization, powerlessness,
cultural imperialism, and violence.
Marginalization
In various ways, all the contributors whose
projects are featured speak to the value of including all
students in class activities. Each teacher researcher identifies and reflects on various inequities
that negatively affect classrooms and schools: sexism (Beale;
Eng; Hait; Pinsonneault & Malhi); heterosexism (Beale);
poverty and unequal access to resources (Costa; Hait; McIsaac;
Stirk); racism (Beale; Pinsonneault & Malhi; Stirk;
Teeuwsen); ableism (Beale; Hait; Clarke, Gill, Hounsell,
& Urquhart); ageism (Clarke,
Gill, Hounsell, & Urquhart; Croll;
Hait); and discrimination by language and immigration status
(Clarke, Gill, Hounsell, & Urquhart; Teeuwsen). Thus, they recognize that, historically, certain
social groups have been excluded from “useful participation
in social life” (Young, 1990: 53).
The majority of the students in Don Teeuwsen’s
class belonged to racial minority groups; yet they did not
find many images of themselves reflected in the school and
the wider society, a situation that Teeuwsen, citing bell
hooks (1992), attributes to “white supremacist culture.”
In his project, Teeuwsen asked students to incorporate both
writing about what they learned from their parents and “a
teaching” their parents wanted to share into an artistic
representation. He sought to fully include those students,
for example, who spoke English as an additional language
and were relative newcomers to Canada.
Powerlessness
Conventional schooling has been organized
in ways that allow young people little say in what and how
they learn or in shaping the rules that govern their behavior.
Often, “they must take orders and rarely have the
right to give them,” and, given their position at
the bottom of a hierarchy, they are allowed to “exercise
little creativity or judgment in their work…and do
not command respect" (Young, 1990: 56-57).
Darrin Clarke, Sibli Gill, Miranda Hounsell,
and Bill Urquhart direct our attention to the missing voices
of students in their research on cooperative learning. They
believe that cooperative learning activities can shift the
current hierarchical structure in most classrooms. “Cooperative
activities give those students a chance to shine in a system
that often legitimizes the best readers, writers, and athletes,
but does not see the inherent value in asking our students
to care for each other.” Susan Croll’s project
investigates ways of empowering parents and students who
often do not have a voice either in the assessment of students’
learning or in the attendant reporting procedures in school.
Croll notes the injustice of conventional evaluation practices,
which make the learner, and the learner’s parents,
passive recipients of the judgments of teachers as the sole
experts.
Although in some contexts teachers may
seem relatively powerful, in others they themselves are
treated as having no expertise or authority. M. Costa notes
that the “voice of teachers” was often “forgotten”
in the debates over open-area school design in the 1970s.
Her project provides teachers at an inner-city school the
opportunity to weigh into this debate. As advocates for
their students, the teachers she interviewed insisted on
linking school design to the creation of “learning
environments that can enliven and inspire students of all
interests and abilities.”
Cultural
Imperialism.
Cultural
imperialism involves "the universalization of a dominant
group's experience and culture, and its establishment as
the norm," which has the result of rendering invisible
the oppressed group's perspective, while simultaneously
stereotyping that group as the Other (Young, 1990: 58-59).
Shanda Stirk’s project reminds us of the near cultural
genocide of First Nations peoples in Canada. In interviews
with First Nations parents, Stirk found that they identified
racism as a key problem for their children in school. Aboriginal
parents believed, for example, “others thought of
them as the weakest culture,” and they shared their
ideas about how teachers might begin to challenge destructive,
yet enduring, stereotypes.
The teacher researchers attempted to work against cultural
imperialism when they interrupted the sexist, Eurocentric,
socially dominant curriculum. Susan Pinsonneault and Kara
Malhi analyzed the intersection of gender and “race”/culture
in the ways their Grade 1 students responded to literature.
Among other things, they found Indo-Canadian boys and girls
both identified with an adventurous male character from
India. In general, the girls in Pinsonneault’s class
were much more willing to identify with adventurous male
or female characters, while boys preferred high-status male
characters even when these characters were less adventurous.
Their findings speak to the need for teachers to help students
“read against the grain” (Davies, 1993). These
two projects, Pinsonneault and Malhi’s and Stirk’s
examine the ways in which simply teaching the canon negatively
affected students from non-dominant groups.
Jason Eng, who explored the experiences
of male elementary school teachers, discusses the
contradictory results for these men of the harmful stereotyping
of women as “good with children” and “more
patient than men” (and, we might add of gay men teachers
as “promiscuous” or “pedophiles”).
In order to overcome this harmful stereotyping, Eng hints
at the need for men to develop “new masculinities”
(Bradley, 1993: 25).
Violence
“Members
of some groups live with the knowledge that they must fear
random, unprovoked attacks on their persons or property,
which have no motive but to damage, humiliate, or destroy
the person” (Young, 1990: 61). Sadly, adults consciously
and unconsciously pass along attitudes that help sustain
this systemic violence, which then manifests itself among
children. Ursula Beale’s project was motivated by
her observation that children seize on differences and attempt
to hurt each other by insulting each other’s families.
Beale developed a unit on family diversity that prompted
students to consider such issues as the stereotyping of
same-sex families. She asked students to reflect on the
possible connection between valuing differences and curbing
schoolyard bullying.
Teaching for democratic citizenship
Each of the projects highlighted can be
seen as contributing to anti-oppression education. Some
can also be seen as underscoring the importance of democratic
citizenship when teaching for social justice. The teacher
researchers who focus on cooperative learning, for example,
critique the individualistic competition that characterizes
traditional classrooms and other institutions in our society.
Clarke, Gill, Hounsell, and Urquhart argue that each student
in the class has significant contributions to make, and
this is important for all students to learn. Helen Hait
focuses on the challenges teachers face when they teach
about social responsibility in a democratic society. She
argues that teachers ought to prepare students to be active
citizens in a society that values diversity. Hait illustrates
how teaching the skills of cooperative learning, cultivating
communication across differences, and solving group problems
are crucial to building a democratic and “peaceful
classroom.”
As a group or individually, the projects
in this collection illustrate the principles of practice
that Marilyn Cochran-Smith identifies as central to teaching
for social justice (1999: 118-119): teachers need to enable
students to learn within communities (Clarke, Gill, Hounsell,
& Urquhart; Hait; McIsaac; Teeuwsen); teachers build
on what students bring to school (Stirk; Teeuwsen); teachers
focus on teaching skills (Clarke, Gill, Hounsell, &
Urquhart; Hait; Pinsonneault & Malhi; Stirk); teachers
work with communities and families (Beale; Croll; Stirk;
Teeuwsen); and teachers diversify assessment (Croll). We
consider these projects as first steps in research and in
teaching for social justice. Although at this point most
projects did not “make activism, power and inequity
explicit in the curriculum” Cochran-Smith’s
sixth principle of practice when teaching for social justice
(1999: 119), we hope action, in varying degrees and forms
will be the next step for the teacher researchers.
“The richest form of professional
development”
At the end of the second year, as the teacher
researchers reflected on their learning, they discussed
what they had gained from doing research in their own classrooms
and schools. Croll highlighted the importance of inquiry
that relates directly to practice: “I benefited immensely
from conducting action research, if for no other reason
than because the research I did was directly connected to
my practice as a teacher.” Teeuwsen felt a “heightened sense of purpose and significance,
more clarity about the intention” in his teaching
practice. The teacher researchers suggested that
they became more aware of their own perceptions and biases
and how those affected their practice. Stirk suggested that
research made her “examine…[her] own perceptions
and teaching practices, and helped [her] identify how to
effect change in [her] own small place.” Pinsonneault
summarized the impact of such inquiry on her practice: “Doing
action research in my classroom raised my awareness of gender
issues. As a result, I see gender biases in the words and
actions that play out in my classroom more clearly now.”
Teeuwsen highlighted how paying attention
to the familiar in his classroom and learning to detach
himself as he collected the data made him more aware of
what was happening in the classroom. “There
seemed to be much more I was seeing and hearing.”
Others, such as Pinsonneault, discussed
their analysis:
Being able to listen to the tapes
of student discussions afterward also allowed me to analyze
the group dynamics in my class. It was only then that I
realized how much discussion time the three most vocal boys
claimed, and how they repeatedly dominated class discussions.
After this process of analysis, Pinsonneault
shared her findings with her primary students and took action
that changed her practice:
One day I presented the class with
some of the results of our survey. I cut a 100 cm strip
of paper in segments to represent the percentage of comments
made by each of the three vocal boys, the remainder of the
boys, and all of the girls. The class was quite shocked
with the visual image. Afterwards I took steps to ensure
that all students had a share of time to speak during discussions.
Reflection, inquiry, and action are interrelated
and emphasized differently in the reporting of each project.
One teacher researcher emphasized the unique features of
the context; another questioned formation and data collection;
while yet another focused on the reflections and implications
for further action. Some had to learn how to manage their
time in order to be able to teach, observe, and record data
for their study. Beale discusses the challenges as well
as the benefits of doing research in her classroom:
Doing research in my own classroom
required enormous energy, concentration, and focus. The
constantly changing classroom situation from day to day
asks for extreme flexibility. However, the challenge of
exploring and honing research questions became stimulating
and left me with more energy than I thought possible.
Pinsonneault
summarizes the way in which the research made her more aware
of, and ultimately changed, her practice as she focused
on creating a socially just classroom:
Participating
in action research in my classroom was the richest form
of professional development that I have experienced so far
in my teaching career. It has given me the opportunity and
time to examine, study, and reflect upon my own teaching
practices. Investigating these teaching practices has shed
light on aspects of my teaching that I took for granted,
bringing them more fully into my consciousness. Because
I participated in action research, I realize more fully
how important it is to make a deliberate effort to create
a more equitable environment for all students.
Although all the teacher researchers indicated
that they had learned from doing research in their classes
and schools, they also faced a number of challenges as they
investigated their practice with social justice in mind.
Some, for example, faced resistance from parents, staff
members, and others from administration and the school board.
In one particular project, the teacher
researcher, Scott McIsaac, and his Grade 7 students examined
the links between a healthy learning environment and school
design. They compared the green space and play areas in
their own school, located in a low-income neighbourhood,
with others in high-income areas, carefully documenting
their observations and calculations. As students reflected
on the apparent inequities, they related them to the socio-economic
gap between the neighbourhoods.
At the outset of this project, however,
the school board raised concerns about the initial plan
to incorporate student protest. Moreover, the teacher researcher
and we were determined not to leave students with a sense
of hopelessness about their lived reality. McIsaac addressed
these concerns by inviting students to develop and create
replicas of their ideal schools. In retrospect, this encouraged
students to respond to resource inequalities that they had
documented with imagination, creativity, and hope.
Teacher inquiry that focuses on teaching
for social justice often pushes the boundaries and challenges
the status quo. Fear of consequences and self-censorship
may sometimes limit teachers’ visions of the possible.
We invite teachers to continue to explore their practice
and inquire into teaching for social justice. This issue
illustrates the value of such work; the importance of collaborating
with teachers who share similar concerns; and the worth
of building coalitions with progressive teachers and administrators,
caregivers, students, and community members.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Mohammed Shamsher
(British Columbia Teachers’ Federation), Lynn Fels
(Centre for Cross-Faculty Inquiry/Centre for the Study of
Curriculum and Instruction, UBC), and Elaine Decker (Office
of External Programs, UBC) for their interest and support.
Thanks also go to Karen Meyer for inviting us to develop
the teacher inquiry course in the first place. The Vancouver
Elementary School Teachers’ Association (VESTA) and
the BCTF Social Justice Committee generously provided a
grant to support the write-up of the inquiry projects. We
are grateful to our copy-editors, Karen Hawkins (CSCI) and
Elizabeth Lambert (BCTF), for their careful attention and
helpful suggestions, and to Colleen Reid for assisting with
the course. Lastly, we would like to thank the members of
the Urban Learner II EDCI 561 class for participating in
the course, sharing their insights, and honing their skills
as teachers/researchers.
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