Education Commons^™

Actualizing Social Justice: An Exploratory Case Study Of A Public Middle School, Camille Lee

Open Access Dissertations

Researchers and k-12 practitioners have been struggling with inequity and diversity issues for the past four decades. These struggles have produced multiple philosophies, theoretical perspectives and educational approaches—each with strengths and limitations. The various approaches to addressing diversity indirectly and implicitly address, but have not managed, the systemic changes necessary for education to be socially just. Ideally, all diversity approaches should result in academic achievement and social change—the goals of social justice education. Past research has mainly focused on crisis intervention strategies or on meeting individually-based needs rather than on systemic practices and strategies at the school or district level. …

Teaching For Social Justice With Standards-Based Secondary English Language Arts Curriculum, Alison George Dover

Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014

Teaching for social justice is the attempt by classroom teachers to use their position in the classroom to promote social and educational reform within and despite current educational conditions and mandates. However, while a growing number of K-12 teachers have published anecdotal reports of their attempts to teach for social justice in secondary classrooms (e.g., Bender-Slack, 2007; Christensen, 2000; Singer, 2005), there is great variability among these accounts, and scant evaluation of their impact on specific academic, behavioral/motivational, and attitudinal outcomes (see Grant & Agosto, 2008; Kelly & Brandes, 2008; Poplin & Rivera, 2005).

This qualitative study addresses this research …