Social justice as a conduit for broadening curriculum access: stories from classroom teachers
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Date
2015
Authors
Martin, Melanie
Ngcobo, Jabulani
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Faculty of Education, University of the Free State
Abstract
It has become public knowledge that teachers have gradually been called to teach
learners to world-class standards in order to enable them to participate actively in the
global economy. This has fuelled a debate on how teachers should be prepared to fulfil
this new role. In-service programmes on social justice and education have often been
critiqued for failing to build teachers’ subject knowledge and pedagogical skills which
are essential for facilitating learners’ access to the curriculum. This paper takes a
position that teaching is an inescapably political act that often (if not always) involves
ideas, power and access to learning and life opportunities. The study presented in
this paper was designed to explore how teachers used social justice pedagogy as
a conduit for making the curriculum accessible to all their learners. Data for this
study were generated from self-reflexive action research reports from a sample of
20 teachers submitted as part of the assessment requirements for the Advanced
Certificate in Education (ACE) programme. The data were used to understand 1) How
teachers conceptualised and understood social justice, and 2) How teachers utilised
these understandings in broadening curriculum access for their learners. The study
found that participants conceptualised and understood social justice on a basis of a
philosophy of education as transformation, which often called on them to traverse
political borders. For these teachers, teaching for social justice meant that education
was construed as a means to break the cycle of social ills, victimhood and hegemony.
The study presented some emerging thoughts on how knowledge about social justice
in education could be deployed by teachers to broaden access to and in the curriculum.
Description
Keywords
Social justice, Curriculum access, In-service education
Citation
Martin, M., & Ngcobo, J. (2015). Social justice as a conduit for broadening curriculum access: stories from classroom teachers. Perspectives in Education, 33(1), 87-99.