FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – An initial examination of how teachers understand and teach about social justice confirmed that “it is critical that teachers understand social injustice before teaching about social justice,” according to University of Arkansas educator Sung Choon Park.

In a paper presented to the American Educational Research Association, Park examined how teachers understand social injustice and how it is related to their pedagogical practices.

To select participants in his study, Park used a process of community nomination. He asked 35 educational professionals to nominate teachers who taught “for social justice” in the classroom, that is, teachers who incorporated social justice in their classroom both as subject matter and as a process. From the pool of nominees, eight teachers, including five women and three men, from eight schools in five districts volunteered to take part in an extensive study of their backgrounds, attitudes and teaching practices.

Of the eight participants, five taught social studies, English or art in different high schools, one taught social studies and English in a middle school, and two taught kindergarteners and 5^th graders in different elementary schools. Three identified themselves as “white but” with a distinct racial or ethnic origin. 

The data collected from each teacher included five interviews of 30-55 minutes each, 10 classroom observations and one or two observations of the teacher working with others in the school or community.

Among the teachers studied, a mix of experience and empathy influenced how they understood social justice and injustice and how that understanding influenced their teaching practices.

When individuals came from bicultural backgrounds, Park called them teachers with “cultural ambidexterity,” and he found they showed greater understanding of social injustice. The experience of living “between the mainstream and the margins” of society helped them understand “diverse inequalities and unequal diversities,” Park wrote.

“Different experiences bring different perspectives on social justice issues,” Park said, noting that when he interviewed teachers from bicultural backgrounds, they had a heightened awareness of others.

“They were always looking at themselves through the eyes of others. They have double consciousness,” he said.

One elementary teacher, whose mother was descended from English and German settlers in America and whose South American father was descended from Incans, studied the concept of dominant and non-dominant cultures in college, which helped her make sense of her childhood in the 1950s and the 1960s. She has carried her experiences and learning into her classroom and has won an award for her classroom library and use of literature in teaching.

When she teaches with literature, she is careful to include all cultures, “because I think kids need to see their cultures represented in a special way,” she said. “I try to create social justice in my classroom and make it obvious here.”

Other teachers, who were not bicultural but who had experienced injustice in their lives, “showed their constant border-crossing between rural, urban, suburban and global communities, from which they experienced otherness and extended their own experiences,” Park wrote.

For example, Park interviewed a high school English teacher who had grown up as a relatively lower class student in a white upper class suburban school. When she attended college in Appalachia, she felt like crossing a boundary of her community. As a white teacher teaching African American literature, she encourages her students to explore boundaries.

“I think there is no way that each of us could live somebody else’s experience,” she said, “But I wonder why we are still touched even though we haven’t lived the experience.”

In addition to collecting data from teachers, Park kept a journal of his own reflections and observations of each teacher for a period of 15 weeks.

“As a researcher for social justice education, I feel it is my responsibility to tell what I learn from the social justice educators to people outside the study,” Park wrote.

Park is an assistant professor of curriculum and instruction in the College of Education and Health Professions at the University of Arkansas. He received the Kipchoge Kirkland Teaching for Social Justice Research Award from the College and University Faculty Assembly of the National Council for the Social Studies in 2007.

His paper “Teachers’ Perceptions of Teaching for Social Justice: Understanding Social Injustice in Teaching for Social Justice” was presented at the 2009 annual conference of the American Educational Research Association.