Critical Consciousness in High School Outdoor Experiential Environmental Education

Background: Research highlights how high school near-peer mentors (HSNPMs) in outdoor school settings enhance younger students’ programing experiences. Through this engagement, HSNPMs’ critical consciousness (CC) of equity in outdoor and experiential education (OEEE) expands. Purpose: This article explores how HSNPMs develop CC of environmental and social justice in OEEE. Methodology/Approach: We used critical ethnography to understand how near-peer mentoring programing associated with equity, diversity, access, and inclusion (EDAI) develop CC, in OEEE. Findings/Conclusion: Intentionally developed training and curricula rooted in social justice education facilitate CC development. This training includes staff's facilitation of equity discussions and support of high school students’ EDAI-related awareness, skills, and behaviors. Implications/Recommendations: HSNPMs contribute to EDAI in OEEE programs. We recommend including HSNPMs in staff training, program improvements, and planning activities.

Clinical Legal Education and Human Rights Values: A Universal Pro Forma for Law Clinics

This article explores the theoretical foundations for a social justice–centric global law clinic movement. Our starting position is that law clinics, a type of clinical legal education (CLE), are in a unique position to engage in, and potentially promote, social justice issues outside their immediate communities and jurisdictions. To achieve this aim, it is necessary for law clinics to adopt a universal pro forma underpinned by the key concepts of CLE, namely social justice education and promoting access to justice through law reform. We argue that the main features of CLE are aligned with those of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) on issues such as human dignity and social justice. Incorporating UDHR values into CLE serves three purposes. First, it acts as a universal pro forma, which facilitates communication between clinics across jurisdictions, irrespective of their cultural or legal background. Second, it allows clinics to identify sources of global injustices and to share resources and expertise to collectively address injustices. Third, the theoretical approach advocated in this article argues that clinics have a Kantian moral right to engage in transnational law reform.

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.

SOCIAL SCIENCE STUDENT TEACHERS’ AWARENESS OF THE INTERTWINESS OF SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE IN MULTICULTURAL SCHOOL SETTINGS

This qualitative study is an exploration of final year Social Science education students awareness of the intertwined nature of Social Science as a subject and the role of social justice in the classroom of a democratic South Africa. This study finds that South African Social Science teachers interpret or experience the teaching of Social Science in various ways. In the South African transitional justice environment, Social Science education had to take into account the legacies of the apartheid-era schooling system and the official history narrative that contributed to conflict in South Africa. Throughout the world, issues of social justice and equity are becoming a significant part of everyday discourse in education and some of these themes are part of the Social Science curriculum. Through a qualitative research methodology, data was gathered from Focus Group Discussion (FGD) sessions with three groups of five teacher education students in two of the groups and the third having ten participants from the same race, in their final year, specializing in Social Science teaching. The data obtained were categorised and analysed in terms of the student teacher’s awareness of the intertwined nature of Social Science and social justice education. The results of the study have revealed that participants had a penchant for the subject Social Science because it assisted them to have a better understanding of social justice and the unequal society they live in; an awareness of social ills, and the challenges of people. Participants identified social justice characteristics within Social Science and relate to some extent while they were teaching the subject, certain themes within the Social Science curriculum. Findings suggest that the subject Social Science provides a perspective as to why social injustice and inequality are so prevalent in South Africa and in some parts of the world. Social Science content in its current form and South African context, emanates from events and activities that took place in communities and in the broader society, thus the linkage to social justice education. This study recommends different approaches to infuse social justice considerations Social Science; one being an empathetic approach – introducing activities to assist learners in viewing an issue from someone else’s perspective, particularly when issues of prejudice or discrimination against a particular group arise, or if the issue is remote from learners’ lives.

The French Play: An Ethnodrama About Applied Theatre for Social Justice Education in Middle School

In this study, I investigate the use of applied theatre with French Immersion Grade 8 students to better understand social justice issues. Through unstructured interviews, four participants were asked to recall their past experiences participating in applied theatre projects as a learning experience and as a process to better understand social justice issues. Participants’ words and feedback were then used to create an ethnodrama script, performed by the participants and me via video conference. Findings are grouped under five categories; Doll’s (2013) 4Rs: Richness, Rigor, Recursion, and Relations and Freire’s (2000) concept of conscientization. Participants in applied theatre reported they had a space to tell authentic stories in their own words, became more self-confident, and work towards being catalysts for change. The purpose of this article is to inform educators of the possibilities in using applied theatre and problem-posing education for social justice education and to share the process of ethnodrama as a methodology in arts-based research. Keywords: applied theatre; ethnodrama; problem-posing education; social justice education