Polylithic Definitions of Justice: Guiding Teachers From Speculative to Actual Justice-Oriented Classrooms

• In Event: Five Years of Justice-Based English Education: A Symposium on Speculative Research, Remedy, and Repair

Abstract

Objectives
Despite pedagogies (e.g., culturally relevant, responsive, sustaining) that guide teachers, injustice persists in our curricula, pedagogy, assessments, and discretionary decisions because teachers engage with “safe” definitions of justice that value assimilation and normative disciplinary skills (Author, 2022, 2023), subordinating developing critical consciousness (Ladson-Billings, 2017). This paper explores how categorizing common pedagogies into three different kinds of justice can guide pre- and in-service teachers to ascertain which justices they privilege and avoid. Teachers’ understanding how justice is fostered and foiled via polylithic definitions and enactments of justice can move teachers toward actual rather than speculative justice-oriented classrooms.

Theoretical Framework
This study draws on common frameworks for equity- and justice-oriented teaching in secondary literacy classrooms to investigate which frameworks teachers may draw on: antiracist Black Language pedagogy (Baker-Bell, 2020), critical English education (Morrell, 2005), critical literacy (Luke, 2012), critical race English education (Johnson, 2018), cultural modeling (Lee, 2007), culturally and historically responsive literacy (Muhammad, 2020), culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995, 2009), culturally responsive pedagogy (Gay, 2002), culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris & Alim, 2014), and restorative English education (Winn, 2013). This non-comprehensive list could also include additional pedagogies (Dover, 2013), such as democratic education, multicultural education, and social justice education.

Methods & Data
Wondering about overlaps between common pedagogies, I examined each as written by the original author/s and extrapolated their major themes.

Results
In looking across common approaches and pedagogies oriented towards justice, five themes arise: developing students’ academic success; relational work to better understand themselves, others, and the world; relationships teachers develop with students, their families, and communities; examination of structural inequities; and promotion of social transformation (Calabrese Barton et al., 2020; Cochran‐Smith et al., 2009; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Moje, 2007; Sleeter, 2014; Wetzel et al., 2019). While these themes can be matched with common asset pedagogies teachers enact, they do not by themselves offer underlying principles as to how these markers enact justice, and what kind.

These themes can thus be further categorized to reflect principles of critical multicultural education (Gorski, 2009) and decolonialism (Subedi, 2013). The first category privileges students’ assimilation into normative disciplinary ways of knowing and ensures students have material resources to support learning. The second focuses on building relationships between students, themselves, and the world and the relationships formed throughout schooling. The final justice values assessments of systems of power and privilege.

Significance
Justice-oriented classrooms where teachers evaluate systems of power and privilege are speculations rather than reality as teachers more often engage with “safe” notions of justice, reproducing whiteness and valuing assimilation (Author, 2022, 2023). Understanding themes among multiple pedagogies offers a way to conceptualize justice not simply as a checklist, but as a comprehensive act that entails students’ success in school and learning more about themselves, others, and the world, while they are taught to questions systems of power and oppression, using their disciplinary learning to transform or even upend those systems. Knowing and pursuing polylithic definitions of justice, including a better understanding of which we avoid—can move speculations of justice-oriented classrooms into realities.

Author

• Naitnaphit Limlamai, Colorado State University