Possibilities towards a socially just pedagogy: New tasks and challenges

ABSTRACT

This paper contributes to an emerging debate on what it means to transform teaching and learning in higher education and to renew the social justice mission of universities. By focusing on the teaching and learning environment, we set the stage for the special issue, exploring the idea of socially just pedagogy, where it comes from and what it means in the present day. The social justice-pedagogy nexus as taken up in this paper aims at using pedagogy as a change process to transform higher education. We offer new considerations arguing that to adopt socially just pedagogies it is important that teachers consider the personal dimensions of pedagogy, the politics of difference, and the relationship between pedagogy and agency. In doing this, the chance that universities remain places of possibility, rather than turning into divisive spaces, becomes more plausible.

KEYWORDS:

• Social justice
• pedagogy
• teaching and learning
• higher education