From Problem to Possibility: A Systematic Review of Teacher Education Research on Social Justice, 2012–2021

• In Event: Guiding Justice-Driven Teacher Education: Using Theory to Change Practice in Teacher Education

Abstract

Objectives
The call to ground teacher education (TE) in social justice has become ubiquitous (Zeichner, 2006). However, little is known about how various stakeholders in TE conceptualize social justice (Cochran-Smith & Keefe, 2022). The ways in which the issue of social justice is framed in TE research matters because it helps frame the discourse in the field (Zeichner, 2011). To map the ways in which research on TE has conceptualized social justice, we conduct a systematic review of research on TE from 2012 through 2021, asking: How has research on initial K-12 TE in the United States framed the issue of social justice?

Framework
We draw theoretically on: (1) frame analysis, and (2) theories of social justice. We examine how ideas can be strategically “framed” in order to “shape others’ meaning-making processes in an effort to mobilize them into action” (Coburn, 2006, p. 346-247). Frames matter because they manifest in material practices (Snow & Benford, 2005); as such, the ways in which researchers frame the issue of social justice in TE has real consequences on policy and practice. Second, we draw on Cochran-Smith and Keefe’s (2022) framework of thin vs. strong equity. This framework maps out five conceptions of equity in TE, which we build upon in our own framework.

Data Sources and Methods
Our data was peer-reviewed research on initial K-12 TE published between 2012 and 2021. We first conducted a systematic search across five databases for all combinations of terms describing pre-service TE and terms describing and/or related to social justice. This search resulted in 17,611 articles. We then reviewed the abstracts of articles and screened articles based on a set of exclusion criteria, which brought down our final corpus down to 1,300 articles.

Finally, we randomly selected a sub-sample from this corpus (n=250) and coded the framings of these articles through an iterative process: first we developed and tested a coding framework grounded in theory (e.g., Cochran-Smith & Keefe, 2021) and then developed and applied emergent codes.

Findings
Our emergent findings suggest that TE scholarship on social justice framed the issue of social justice in four distinct ways, each relying on divergent theories of justice.
(1) Framed by attention to unmet needs.
(2) Framed by an inequity between social groups.
(3) Framed by systems that advantage some and disadvantage others.
(4) Framed by unquestioned dominant norms.
While our analytic process included a search for framings that focused on speculative framings of just worlds, we found a relative absence of such framings in the literature.

Significance
Howard’s call for AERA 2024 asks researchers to examine the nature of racial injustice. However, his call also asks us to construct possible futures. One finding of our review is that TE research has historically been framed around injustice rather than organizing around speculative framings of justice. Clarifying how the field defines “social justice” and its “philosophical and political roots” is critical to understanding the motivations and consequences of various approaches to addressing justice in research on TE (Cochran-Smith, 2010, p. 445).

Authors

• Sarah Schneider Kavanagh, University of Pennsylvania

• Maya Kaul, University of Pennsylvania