Is Complicity in Oppression a Privilege? Toward Social Justice Education as Mutual Aid

The concept of privilege is widely used in social justice education to denote unearned advantages accrued by members of dominant groups through the oppression of subordinate groups. In this conceptual essay, Nicolas Tanchuk, Tomas Rocha, and Marc Kruse argue that an atomistic conception of advantage implicit in the discourse of privilege supports persistent inequity between groups contrary to the intentions of social justice educators. To solve this “problem of privilege,” the authors draw on themes in Black feminist and Indigenous thought to advance a reframing of the way educators teach advantage that is based in foundational relational responsibilities. This new frame, social justice education as mutual aid, retains the power to describe oppressive relations between groups while portraying oppression as disadvantageous to all.

Seeking Convergence and Surfacing Tensions Between Social Justice and Core Practices: Re-Presenting Teacher Education as a Community of Praxis

The Core Practices Movement (CPM) and Social Justice Teacher Education (SJTE) represent two communities of practice within which novices develop as professional educators. However, there is little dialogue about how they might collaborate to develop novice social justice educators, and the critiques and recommendations that do cross movements originate from divergent theoretical starting points. Possibilities for convergence within the learning theories that underpin CPM and SJTE are explored, examining how social learning theories might be infused with, and enveloped within, critical learning theories. This article thus re-presents teacher education as a “community of praxis.” Within each of its three hybrid dimensions—a shared repertoire of practice/praxis, mutual engagement of vertical and horizontal expertise, and joint enterprise of professional and political aims—possibilities for developing novice social justice educators are described, and tensions at the intersection of justice and practice in teacher education are explored.