"Inherently Embodying Justice": Enacting Equity in the Classroom Through Justice-Oriented Pedagogy

• In Event: Roundtable Session 22
  In Roundtable Session: Social Justice Action Across Multiple Sites

Abstract

Using data from a nineteen-month school ethnography, I analyze the interplay between curriculum, pedagogy, and philosophies of justice, first by exploring how community members understand a social justice curriculum and then by juxtaposing three classrooms: one that is a self-described example of social justice teaching and two that embody what I call justice-oriented pedagogy, or more robust pedagogical work for justice. I argue that a singular focus on social justice as content to be learned can obscure justice as something to be enacted in classrooms, and that unless practice is grounded in a guiding, critical philosophy of educational justice, inequities can too easily be reproduced—even in a social justice classroom.

Author

• Melissa Leigh Gibson, Marquette University