Privileged and non-privileged agencies – education about, into and with social justice in religious education classrooms

ABSTRACT

When social justice education is conducted in religious education (RE) classes, it can take the forms of education about (concepts and facts), into (enhancing commitment), with (negotiating practices) and through (pupil-led action) social justice. The first three approaches were used in seven RE lessons observed in urban Finnish lower secondary schools. The aim was to find out how different approaches to social justice education fit into RE classes and what kind of social justice identities these create. Social justice identities were combinations of the degrees of privilege and agency constructed in the classroom interaction. The analysis shows that non-privileged identities were often referred to as absent and remote. Construction of agency was also often left incomplete. The exceptions were the instances where the teacher intentionally taught with social justice and encouraged the pupils to criticise school practices. They provided a safe but limited way to address powerlessness and promote pupil agency. RE classrooms are well fitted for cultivating informed and concerned citizens but more attention needs to be paid to fostering agency and addressing minoritized identities.

KEYWORDS:

• Religious education
• agency
• social justice education
• privilege

Introduction

Who, in the field of education, would oppose social justice? There might be some debate on what it means. Still, most scholars of education would accept its value, even if it were defined as critical social justice, with the notion that the unequal distribution of social power affects individuals and groups all the time (Sensoy and DiAngelo 2017; similar definitions in Bell 2007; Francis and Le Roux 2011). However, the practical implications of social justice as a goal for education seem to be divided into school policy measures like inclusion at all levels of the system, community relationships, and what Carlisle, Jackson, and George (2006) describe as ‘direct social justice education’, i.e. including concepts like oppression in the curriculum. It is this latter kind of social justice education that I am interested in in this study; education of citizens who are not only objects of inclusive and socially just education but future actors in the change towards a more just society.

With content like ethics, values, and religious diversity, religious education (RE) could be an important tool of ‘direct’ social justice education. Moreover, from the ‘learning from religion’ perspective (Grimmitt 2000), many stories from diverse religious traditions may serve this purpose. Poulter (2019) has expressed the concern that stressing the civic purpose of RE might lead to fusion with other socially oriented subjects; losing RE as an independent subject would mean losing a safeguard of full religious and spiritual freedom. However, I argue that social justice issues need to be included in RE not only to justify the existence of the subject but also, or mainly, to contribute to the social justice literacy (Sensoy and DiAngelo 2017) of the pupils. How can full freedom of conviction be reached without critical review of structures that subordinate minority worldviews, without the majorities understanding their privilege and the need to change these power structures? This necessity has been recognised in the field of education concerning cultural diversity (e.g. Kumashiro 2000; Dolby 2012; Zilliacus, Holm, and Sahlström 2017); but not within theorisation on RE. Gearon (2002) has pointed out the need to address the historical and political dimensions of religion and its capacity to oppress. He argues that RE fails to do this, because it focuses on tolerance and harmony. This highlights the importance of addressing social justice in research on RE.

In this article, I address two research questions: How do different approaches to social justice education fit into RE classes? What kind of social justice identities are created in RE classrooms when social justice is addressed? The approaches and the significance of social justice identities will be discussed below.

Social justice education in curricula and classrooms

Sporre (2020) has compared social justice in curricula from five different contexts: Namibia, South Africa, California (US), Québec (Canada), and Sweden. In all the contexts, the curricula had some social justice related content, most consistently on human rights. Sporre concludes that explicit mentions of race, class, and gender would clarify the in-context matters of social justice. According to Osbeck et al. (2018), the Swedish ethics education curriculum both seeks to enhance certain values in a conservative vein and liberally stresses the importance of developing personal standpoints. However, the curriculum lacks the critical approach that would aim at social change. Regarding the Finnish curriculum, Zilliacus, Holm, and Sahlström (2017) point out that it is pluralist-oriented and seeks to develop an ethical stance among all pupils in the spirit of democracy and human rights. A stronger transformative orientation with explicit aims to deal with structural oppression and inequality would still be needed to achieve greater commitment to social justice. Similar observations have been made on the Finnish RE curriculum (Kimanen 2022).

Related to research on diverse school subjects, mathematics and science seem to have a steady tradition of including social justice issues in the teaching of the subject and classroom research. While many studies are primarily concerned about bridging achievement gaps through culturally responsive pedagogies (e.g. Esmonde and Caswell 2010), others have placed equal weight on both academic capabilities and social commitment (e.g. Morales‐Doyle 2017; Schindel Dimick 2012).

Although classroom studies on social justice education among teenagers are scarce, it has been addressed often in the field of higher education, especially teacher education (e.g. Gachago et al. 2014; Francis and Le Roux 2011; Klaasen 2020). Again, student teachers of science are well represented (Moore 2008; Maulucci and Maria 2013). Some of the findings and insights from teacher education can be applied to younger pupils. The understanding that agency and identity are intertwined is worth stressing here. Gachago et al. (2014) examine how students construct their agentive selves, whereas Moore (2008) shows that the extent to which student teachers see themselves as teachers determines how they see themselves as agents of change. Francis and Le Roux (2011) pay more attention to the interplay between the student teachers’ various social identities and the formation of critical agency.

Thus, the interconnectedness of agency and identity depends on the definition of education as a complex process of socialisation. Socialisation and individual identity are at the heart of RE studies, but often seen in tension with each other (e.g. Åhs, Poulter, and Kallioniemi 2019, 208; Andersen and Sigurdsson 2019). However, an important perspective on identities and social justice in education is connected to identity negotiations. What teachers say and how they talk about different identities and related issues affects their pupils’ self-esteem and sense of belonging (Cummins 2001). Affirming and negotiating religious identities is an important debate concerning RE in Finland (e.g. Kimanen and Poulter 2018; Rissanen 2014).

This study examines the emergence of pupils’ identities in discussions on social justice and social action, to inform RE theory and practice. However, identities are here examined as social identities with certain responsibilities and opportunities constructed in the discourse, not primarily as sense of belonging to certain groups (e.g. Fairclough 1992). Membership of certain groups is here interesting mainly from the perspective of power, and as such an important structural factor behind those social identities or subject positions.

Theory

‘Direct’ social justice education aims at educating citizens, to make them more aware of social justice concepts and committed to change (Carlisle, Jackson, and George 2006). There are several descriptions of the dimensions of social justice education, although many of them are designed for higher education. For instance, Hackman (2005) has described social justice education as more than examining or celebrating diversities or democratic and inclusive classroom practices. Instead, effective social justice education entails analysis of systems of power and oppression and aims at promoting social change and pupil agency. Five tools for this are: factual information, critical analysis, personal reflection and action, and awareness of multicultural group dynamics. Democratic and inclusive practices are often seen as fundamental. For example, Klaasen (2020) lists socially just principles and formations of citizens that advance social justice, reciprocal relationship between the teacher and the students fostering their academic identities as student teachers, and taking their life histories into account. Klaasen also mentions moving beyond the abstract to the concrete and, similarly to Hackman, public participation of the students.

One tool to classify the dimensions of social justice education comes from education for democracy, which, along with citizenship education, in some aspects comes very close to social justice education. The ‘thick’ approach to education for democracy entails political action and critical engagement, avoiding a passive learning experience. It addresses power relations and social change. Its ‘thin’ counterpart focuses primarily on formal processes and structures of democracy. (Carr 2008.)

From the perspective of subject didactics, social justice education has implications for the content, methods, and aims of teaching and learning, as well as the relationship between the teacher and the pupil. Hence, to encourage social justice education in a certain subject, one has to be explicit about the approach being discussed. In many subjects and fields of education, different prepositions are traditionally used to distinguish different approaches. Following Björkgren et al. (2019), I will use the prepositions about, into, with, and through to analyse the diverse aspects of social justice education, adopted from Hackman, Klaasen, and Carr. This framework enables more precise and comprehensive analysis than the previous ones.

First, social justice education may entail teaching and learning about social justice. For instance, teaching about global injustices, defenders of justice, and key concepts would be teaching about social justice. Second, education into social justice means socialising into citizenship that is aware of social justice issues and willing to act for it. In practice, this could mean arousing empathy and encouraging action. Third, social justice education may include teaching and learning with social justice. Then the classroom practices support the reduction of the power imbalance between the teacher, school as a system, and the pupil, for example starting discussions about learning methods and encouraging criticism. Fourth, social justice education may take the form of projects where the pupils gain first-hand experience of action and hence learn through social justice.

These four approaches represent different positions or relationships between the teacher and the pupil. In education about social justice, the pupil and the teacher both observe social justice from outsider’s perspective. In education into social justice, the pupil is invited to step into the field of social justice as an actor, but the teacher is in charge of the measures that make the pupil to take that step; the pupil is educated from above. Education with social justice creates situations where the pupil and the teacher negotiate issues on the same level. Finally, education through social justice requires the pupils to take the lead.

In a sense, the four approaches form a continuum from ‘thin’ to ‘thick’ social justice education. In a similar vein, they are not separate, but all of them are needed to conduct sustainable social justice education. The about approach pays specific attention to content, the into approach to learning goals, the with approach to learning environment and through approach to teaching methods.

As has been noted above, agency is a key concept that defines the standard of successful social justice education. Definitions of agency that relate to critical citizenship are the most relevant. Bell’s (2007) definition refers to a recognition that one is a social actor, capable to act for and with others. Ghorashi, de Boer, and ten Holder (2018, 377) point out that agency can be defined as ‘(1) actively getting things done; (2) actively resisting against visible forms of power; (3) resisting normalized structures through reflective consciousness; (4) maintaining a delayed form, inspired by dreams and desires without immediate actions; or (5) choosing marginality in relation to power’. Taking into account that teenagers in many ways are on the threshold of power (although they may have power as consumers etc.), the more subtle forms of agency have to be considered.

Context, data and method

The study took place within Lutheran RE classes, which is the mainstream of Finnish RE. Pupils are entitled to religious education according to their own convictions as long as certain conditions are met, but the RE of the majority (almost always Lutheran) is open to everybody. For historical reasons, the Lutherans in Finland for the most part also represent the linguistic and ethnic majority. The lessons took place in three different urban schools in more or less privileged areas. Only one of the pupils in the classrooms seemed to the researchers to have an ethnic minority background. Hence, the study provides a perspective on providing social justice education to pupils who are in a majority and power position in many respects.

Ten lessons or sequences of lessons where pupils in the eighth or ninth (aged 14 and 15) grade were taught about social justice in the context of RE were observed as part of a larger development project. These lessons were chosen as material for this study as the other lessons were observed in primary school and very different in approach. One was actually a social studies lesson, but the teacher could have conducted the same activity in an RE lesson as part of social ethics. All the teachers were male. Different activities were used, but none were pupil-led action projects – instead, the teachers used visual arts, simulation, and information processing. The activities were designed in co-operation with the project the author was employed by, and two of the teachers were part of the community of practice created by the project. The pupils and their guardians were provided information on the research, and their consents were collected by the teachers. Those pupils who did not give their consent were not observed.

The lessons were observed by the author and the research assistants,¹ sometimes separately and sometimes as a pair. The interaction in the classroom was written down as accurately as possible and finalised soon after the lesson. The field notes were read through for interactions where social justice was either taught or learnt. The lessons were not analysed as wholes but the focus was on these instances where the teacher or pupils addressed a certain point related to social justice. In three lessons there was no explicit discussion on social justice, so the final analysis focused on the remaining seven lessons. In sum, 55 instances were very unevenly distributed between the observed lessons or sequences of lessons. These were subject to an initial twofold analysis.

First, the quotations were analysed deductively, to identify instances of teaching or learning about, into, with, or through social justice. In many cases, there was overlap between the categories. Sometimes, merely some information on injustice (education about) aroused empathy or willingness to act in pupils (education into). It can also be argued that even when there was no teaching through social justice (i.e. pupil-led projects), pupils did take the initiative on some occasions and gained experience of enhancing social justice, so small-scale learning through social justice occurred.

Second, each instance was analysed inductively paying attention to what kind of agency was constructed for the pupils. This analysis led to the understanding that two factors were often at stake: privilege and agency, or lack of them. Here, the combination of these two factors is called social justice identity, highlighting the interconnectedness of identity and agency suggested in previous literature. Membership of certain groups is related to these identities only indirectly. For instance, ethnic, gender and religious identities were mentioned in the conversations, and the analysis focuses on how these identities were adopted by or offered to the participants.

The twofold classification of each quotation was changed into an examination of how the different approaches to social justice education and the types of social justice identities are being constructed in classroom interaction. Thus, the approach is discursive and concentrates on the subject positions created in the interaction (e.g. Fairclough 1992, 64). In the following, I use the initial analysis to describe the variety of cases I found in the first stage and use excerpts to examine this ‘how’.

Results

Privileged social justice identities

Many of the topics and materials used in the observed lessons addressed injustice in history or in other countries. For example:

Girl:

It was nice that I for once found out how Christians are persecuted nowadays.

Teacher:

Was it a surprise? I guess it’s not among the most read news in Finland.

Boy:

Yes, it was pretty surprising. (Pilot lesson 9.)

The girl states that she had learned about persecution of Christians. As a citizen of a Christian-dominated society this comes as a surprise to her and her groupmate. The teacher highlights this by noting that the news does not cover the oppression of Christians, so the task of the lesson is constructed as raising awareness of the lack of religious freedom globally. Here the stress is on education about justice, although it is evident that some degree of education into justice, in the form of raising empathy, is going on. However, empathising or feeling responsibility is not elaborated in the intercourse. The position of the pupil is clearly privileged; she is so outside of the situation that she says it was ‘nice’ to know, instead of shocking or something similar. No agency is constructed here at all, so it does not become a part of the social justice identity offered by the teacher.

By contrast, in the next excerpt agency is stressed. It is from a situation where the teacher lectures about scale models of participation.

The teacher […] goes on presenting the scale models. ‘If you go to a confirmation camp or elsewhere as a peer supervisor, you are contributing to participation.’ […] ‘When you have power, avoid this grey [area] [points at certain parts in the model], manipulation, decoration, tokenism.’ (Pilot lesson 16.)

Here, the teacher deliberately constructs a social justice identity of future agency and power position for the pupils. The position is not in a remote future but it could be even the next summer. Hence, he is educating into social justice. Responsibility is stressed here and privilege means being in a power position and inside, not outside, the topic.

The following interaction occurred when the class discussed the possible consequences of being open about one’s homosexuality at school.

Boy:

My mother is a teacher, too, and there is a gay teacher at her school, and pupils bully him. [Somebody gives a loud laugh] Is it a laughing matter? So I guess there they would bully a pupil, too. (Pilot lesson 17)

The pupil here talks from the outsider and thus privileged position: his experience on bullying because of one’s sexual identity is mediated through his mother, and he talks about probabilities. Somebody in the class interrupts the account by a laugh; it is unclear whether they are scornful or amused by the idea that somebody in the power position like a teacher could ever be bullied by pupils, or something else. The boy interrupts his account and acts to retain the classroom a safe space for minoritized sexual identities by silencing the person who laughs. In a sense this could even be learning through social justice. The social justice identity constructed in this sequence is that of an ally: a person who is committed to use their privileged position to support minoritized groups.

These three excerpts bring up three different privileged social justice identities. One of them was a privileged outsider without the possibility or responsibility to act. Another had future insider’s agency and responsibility. The last one instantly took action from a privileged outsider’s position. Teaching and learning about and into social justice enabled construction of these social justice identities. The last one probably entailed previous socialisation into the approach adopted by the pupil and created an opportunity for learning through social justice.

Cases where non-privilege is avoided

Above, a minoritized sexual identity was discussed without exactly knowing whether it concerned somebody in the classroom personally. Other identities, too, may not be clear from what a person looks like: class, religious, cultural, and ethnic identities. They too were consistently addressed in the lessons from an outsider’s perspective – which is understandable, as the contexts were mostly Lutheran RE groups consisting of ethnic majority pupils. However, in some cases minoritized positions that clearly concerned some of the pupils were addressed, but the pupils did not adopt them and the teacher did not offer them to the pupils. In the next excerpt, several minoritized groups are mentioned in a situation when a group of pupils tell the whole class what texts they have read.²

Girl:

About the UN children’s rights.

Boy:

About different religions in Finland.

Boy:

I had one about Sami cultures.

[…]

Boy:

How the power should belong to everybody.

Boy:

They were all kind of save …

[…]

Boy:

[What was] common to them [was] that there was a larger group related to the article.

Girl:

They had [texts] about minorities, I had [one] about children’s rights. (Pilot lesson 16.)

In their short descriptions the pupils show that just by reading informative texts they have understood something about the power relations concerning minority issues. Power is explicitly mentioned, and the unfinished line refers to saving or protecting something. A boy struggles to find the concept minority, but a girl introduces it. Hence, the pupils conclude their learning at least about social justice. They talk about the minoritized groups clearly as outsiders, which underlines their privilege. Although all the 15-year-old pupils in the classroom are children according to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, they do not adopt this identity. At the end of the excerpt, the girl stresses that children are not a minority, but in all other senses the pupils avoid expressing that anything in the texts was really about them. Thus they also avoid taking any non-privileged position offered in the texts. Agency constructed in this interaction is also very low as the pupils’ suggestion for action is without an actor: ‘the power should belong to everybody’.

In the following excerpt, the teacher exceptionally suggests an explicit social justice identity to his pupils. The pupils’ task is to identify difficult choices or ethical problems in artistic images. Here, the discussion is on a historical painting depicting people in agricultural work.

Girl:

Only the women work.

Teacher:

Oh, I didn’t notice that. The women work and the men only drink. Feminists here noticed that.

A girl close to me says to another:

Oh, does that mean that you are a feminist? (Pilot lesson 2)

The pupil notes inequal division of tasks in a painting that depicts people in the past. The male teacher confirms the observation and says that he initially did not note the inequality at all. He not only gives positive feedback but offers an identity of a feminist to the girl group. The social justice identity is not constructed as privileged nor non-privileged. The observation is not framed as something that the girl paid attention to because of her similar experience or position as a female, but there is no reference to the non-privileged position of the working-class women of the past, either. Instead, the teacher suggests the pupil could have an eye for the position of women. Consequently, the identity of a feminist is not here oriented towards action but awareness. Interestingly, one of the research assistants managed to hear a private conversation between two girls who questioned this definition of feminism, or protested against adopting the identity of a feminist. In any case, the teachers’ choice to introduce the term feminist and to empathetically stress the inequality in the situation depicted in the painting constructs this interaction as education into social justice.

The following sequence was initiated by the question of what an individual or society could do to remove obstacles created by a minoritized position or by factors like loneliness. Those obstacles had been just covered in a simulation activity in the same lesson.

Girl:

Everybody can influence discrimination as an individual, for instance [discrimination] based on gender. The wages were originally made public so that men and women would not get different wages without reason.

Teacher:

And in recruiting the interviewer’s personality often affects, one hires persons who are similar to oneself although one should choose a good team.

Girl:

It is difficult to change another’s opinions, but if you don’t accept the others, you could be silent about it. For instance, you don’t say ‘you’re not part of us,’ you should be tolerant. In education there should be talk about social problems so that information would increase.

Teacher:

And it’s one of the reasons for this activity.

A girl also talks about a piece of information she had read that more women were hired in orchestras if the audition was arranged so that the jury did not know the gender. (Pilot lesson 17.)

Here the girls take the lead in educating about and into social justice. They give many examples of actions that can be taken in order to enhance inclusivity. Not all of them are very progressive, like hiding one’s prejudices, but some reveal that they have read a lot about topical issues. Some degree of agency is constructed: the girl stresses individual responsibility, but making wages public is talked about as a remote circumstance, where human action is disguised. Many of the issues brought up by the girls are about gender, but both the teacher and pupils avoid personal relation to identity as a woman. Neither privilege nor non-privilege is constructed, and thus future agency as a woman remains absent.

The topics of women’s and children’s rights provided opportunities to engage the pupils with social justice on a personal level, but for one reason or another, both the pupils and the teacher avoided this. Admittedly, non-privilege is such a disadvantageous position that adopting or offering it would probably have caused negative emotions (Sensoy and DiAngelo 2017). Another consequence that was possibly avoided was tension between the privileged and non-privileged pupils, for instance girls and boys when talking about gender equality. However, the avoidance approach prevented the construction of agency. This also happened in the case where the teacher offered the pupils a social justice identity of a feminist that he defined only as a certain kind of awareness.

Non-privileged social justice identities

Non-privileged positions were explicitly addressed only in pilot lesson 16, when the teacher was repeatedly teaching in a way that can be described as education with justice. In this context the pupils were constructed as the non-privileged, non-powerful members of the school community. In the following excerpt, the teacher talks with some girls engaged in group work.

The teacher asks about the Instagram account of the school.

Girl:

A pupil should be involved. It’s run by middle-aged women and it’s horrible.

Girl:

Well, maybe it has to be child-friendly. (Pilot lesson 16.)

The teacher opens discussion about the pupils’ possibilities to participate by using an example of social media. He positions himself as a listener who encourages criticism, thus reducing the usual power imbalance in a classroom context and constructing the situation as education with justice. One pupil takes a critical stance and confirms that the pupils do not have a voice concerning the Instagram feed. Another pupil, however, brings up an argument that probably has been used either implicitly or explicitly in similar occasions: pupil engagement might result in inappropriate content. It could be even said that the comment represents internalised oppression. Agency is clearly bound by the powerlessness of pupils in this interaction. Instead of positioning themselves as nonchalant outsiders, the pupils express willingness to be involved but also some self-censorship, whereas they do not articulate views on how to influence the Instagram content.

The following last two excerpts are situated in the context presented above, where the teacher teaches about the scale models of participation. The first is right after the previous one where the concept of tokenism was presented and explained.

Teacher:

For instance tokenism, there are pupil members in the school council. Is it just tokenism, how do you find it, pupil members?

Girl:

Well, they do try. It’s up to us, too, whether we respond when we are asked. (Pilot lesson 16.)

The teacher encourages criticism by directly asking the pupil members of the school council who seem to be in this class. The pupil members’ position is described as at risk of tokenism, although they clearly are closer to power than their peers in the class. One of them states that tokenism does not define their position. Moreover, she constructs some agency for them claiming that pupil members of the school council can act in a way that ensures a higher degree of participation.

Finally, the teacher asks the pupils to draw conclusions about the overall situation in the school:

Teacher:

How do you feel, how do these things actualize, at which point [in the scale] is the school of [X]? Silence.

Teacher:

Be bold! It probably depends on the situation. If you feel the adults don’t give you the power to participate, say about it.

Girl:

At least we aren’t in the top [of the scale] as nobody wants to do the projects we are given.

Teacher:

So you are given [the projects]. Is this lesson like that?

Several girls:

No, this isn’t a project.

Girl:

But for instance the [project assigned by the teacher with a deadline on that day]. Teacher gives a small laugh.

Teacher:

At least you can choose how to do it. You can’t always choose the projects you give even as a teacher. (Pilot lesson 16.)

The teacher is committed to educate with social justice as he gives the pupils some time to think of things to criticise. He talks about the pupils as a party with little power in a school community but constructs for them the opportunity and obligation to claim their rights. The pupils start to talk about school projects, more specifically defined not as simple classroom activities but larger assignments that have to be finalised at home. Mentioning a project the teacher himself has assigned results in a small confused laugh. The teacher constructs himself as subject to somebody else’s power, be it colleagues’ consensus or the school tradition. The pupils’ agency is limited along with their teacher’s agency: there is no space for negotiations on the project itself. However, the teacher reminds the pupils that they have a choice concerning the details of the project, thus constructing at least some agency for them.

In sum, education with social justice provides natural paths to foster pupils’ agency. In the cases above, the pupils adopted the non-privileged or powerless position and expressed criticism of it. However, some policies, like pupil membership of the school council, were perceived as sources of agency instead of mere tokenism. In the best case, negotiations on classroom and school policies may offer pupils opportunities to initiate action, to get experience of producing change, and thus to learn through social justice. Yet, these negotiations do not necessarily construct agency beyond the classroom, in relation to wider society or global issues. To what extent is the agency constructed in this kind of interactions transferred to other forms of power imbalance, like gender discrimination or racism?

Conclusion and discussion

Approaches to social justice education are constructed in classroom interaction. The analysis indicates that education about and into social justice are closely connected. It also proves that in an interactive classroom it is not only the teacher who teaches about and into social justice, but the pupils may also challenge their peers to see things from another angle and act for a safe learning space. To do this, they draw on their prior learning.

Social justice identities were mainly constructed as privileged and non-agentic. Privileged positions were either those of an outsider and in some special cases that of an insider or powerful person. In contrast, both teacher and pupils avoided constructing or adopting non-privileged positions. An exception to this was the power relation between the teacher and the pupils. This power relation provided a safe platform for discussing inequality in the sense that it did not set any pupils in a more disadvantageous position than the others.

If agency is defined in line with Bell (2007) as recognition of one’s responsibility and capability to act in society, agency was rarely fully constructed in the observed lessons. Pupils’ agency was most powerfully fostered in instances where the teachers deliberately taught with social justice, i.e. they invited the pupils to criticise and negotiate classroom and school practices. Discussion concerning the broader social topics like minoritized groups often used passive and vague language about action or did not touch action at all. Although the data excerpts are just fragments of the classroom discussion, no conversations about action were left out from the excerpts.

However, if agency is defined according to Ghorashi, de Boer, and ten Holder (2018) as including resistance to structures and practices or delayed agency of dreams and plans, the data reveals more agency. One teacher defined feminism as an ability to note gender inequality, but there were several other attempts to raise awareness and cultivate the ability to note inequality through information. Thus, the most usual social justice identity constructed by the teachers was one of a privileged, informed, and concerned citizen, whose agency is somewhat obscure. By this I do not mean to judge teachers’ ability to seize every possibility to foster agency in diverse respects in the unprecedented flow of classroom discussion with all the time limits that are constantly present in the school context. The informed and concerned citizen is a good starting point to cultivate more critical and agentic forms of social justice identity. It is also what the curricular content and goals support the most.

In an RE classroom, education about and into social justice seems to concern, at least, religious minorities and social ethics. As to the content and goals of social justice education, there is nothing incompatible with RE, but social justice education challenges the typical teaching methods and classroom discourses. In fact, education about, into, with and through social justice could provide a ground for a critical form of RE which has not been articulated in previous research.

One implication for practice, concerns pupils with minoritized identities in the classroom. How does it affect pupils if their identities are constantly referred to as absent and remote? Certainly, providing accurate information about them is a somewhat meaningful way to address minoritized identities with majority pupils because it may be a sign of recognition. Providing this information may enhance informed empathy (Kimanen 2022). The research results suggest that more attention should be paid to constructing agency, minoritized pupils’ self-esteem, and problematising outsider positions. This social justice identity work could build on previous RE theorisation on socialisation, identity, and identity negotiations. More research is needed to understand the position of minoritized pupils in the social justice classroom.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Finnish National Agency for Education.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Opetushallitus;

Notes on contributors

Anuleena Kimanen

Anuleena Kimanen was a university researcher in the Faculty of Theology, University of Helsinki. Kimanen holds a title of docent in religious education in the same faculty. Her research interests include, for example, pupil perspectives on religious education and worldview diversity in education. Currently, Kimanen works as a university lecturer in the Department of Teacher, University of Turku.

Notes

1. The data was created by the author and research assistants Kia Kurunmäki, Minna Kyrkkö and Ida-Maria Keisala. In order to protect the anonymity of the teachers and the pupils, it cannot be specified which observations were made by whom.

2. In the fast-moving observation situation it was impossible to give each group member an ID of their own: the same speakers take turns here.