Metaphor as a methodological tool: identifying teachers’ social justice dispositions across diverse secondary school settings

Abstract

This article investigates the social justice dispositions of teachers and principals in secondary schools as inferred from their metaphoric expressions. Drawing on a Bourdieuian account of disposition, our focus is the use of metaphor as a methodological tool to identify and reveal these otherwise latent forces within our data. Our analysis shows evidence of redistributive, recognitive and activist conceptions of social justice. We argue that these three social justice dispositions may be insufficient to meaningfully address persisting inequalities in the school system and that a capability-based social justice disposition – absent in our data – is needed. We conclude by highlighting that: social justice dispositions can change; a valid interpretation of metaphors requires ‘contextual stabilization’; and metaphors for social justice are differently constructed in different contexts, influenced by the different social, cultural and material conditions of schools.

Keywords:

• Social justice
• metaphor
• Bourdieu
• dispositions
• teachers
• secondary school

Introduction

Inequality in learning outcomes, closely aligned with the socio-economic background of students, is on the rise in many OECD nations, including Australia (Dorling 2011; Gonski et al. 2011; Piketty 2014). There is a crucial role for teachers to play in promoting social justice in and through education. In this article we are interested in the metaphors for social justice mobilised by teachers and principals in diverse secondary school settings. While metaphor as a field of study is informed by several disciplines, particularly cognitive psychology and linguistics, the article takes a Bourdieuian sociological approach to extend these popular conceptions of metaphor.

The larger study from which the article is derived employed a multi-layered qualitative case-study design to investigate teachers’ pedagogic work in 10 secondary school sites – six advantaged and four disadvantaged – in two Australian cities. The sample size was intentionally small to enable an in-depth and intense examination of the social justice dispositions – which, as we elaborate later, operate between belief and practice; guiding and shaping socially just actions – of 16 teacher and 10 principal participants in advantaged and disadvantaged school contexts. We reasoned that advantage and disadvantage are relational concepts, so that understanding disadvantage is never complete without a complementary understanding of advantage and vice versa. The advantaged/disadvantaged distinction relates to the selection of school sites for the research and offers a contextual frame in the interpretation of metaphoric expressions of teachers and principals. Test results published on the Australian Government’s MySchool website (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority 2010) were used as a proxy for determining educational advantage and disadvantage (Teese 2011). The use of advantage/disadvantage categories is based on the alignment between students’ academic achievements and the socio-economic backgrounds of their schools: students from advantaged schools tend towards high academic achievement; and students from disadvantaged schools tend towards low academic achievement.

Based on the work of George Lakoff, Lakoffian conceptual metaphor theory suggests that metaphors are expressions of thought processes (Lakoff 1993; Lakoff and Johnson 1980). A sociological view of metaphors extends this cognitive understanding by highlighting how metaphors serve as discursive manifests of internalised social structures. That is, while metaphor has predominantly been the preserve of work in cognitive linguistics and philosophy as a means of accessing what people think, we argue that metaphors can also be seen as windows to look into one’s actions. From a Bourdieuian sociological perspective, what people think is an expression of internalised social structures, or habitus (Bourdieu 1990). In Bourdieu’s words, the habitus is a system of ‘durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize practices and representations’ (1990, 53). As a set of generative dispositions, the habitus guides actions and interactions in a field of practice (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992). The dispositions that constitute the habitus operate between belief and practice, distinguishing between what is said and done. They orient actions without strictly determining them, operating as a ‘strategy-generating principle enabling agents to cope with unforeseen and ever-changing situations’ (Bourdieu 1977, 72). In practice, dispositions signal an unthinking-ness in action or a ‘feel for the game’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992) representing subjectively internalised social structures expressed in the form of personal tendencies, preferences, actions and inactions.

The metaphors for social justice used by the 16 teachers and 10 principals in three separate stages of the research provide the particular focus for this article. In the first stage, metaphors were elicited spontaneously in the course of extended semi-structured interviews conducted with principals from the case schools which focused on what they saw as significant with respect to the social justice aims of their school. In the second and third stages, metaphors were generated in the course of semi-structured interviews with teachers, ‘stimulated’ (Gass and Mackey 2000) or provoked by replaying video excerpts drawn from Stage 2 recordings of three of the teacher’s own lessons. The teachers were then asked to ‘talk through’ each episode of teaching captured to video, commenting on what was happening at the time that the teaching and learning took place and, in Stage 3, from viewing video segments of other teacher-participants’ practice. In Stage 3 interviews we were less interested in their evaluation of these other teachers’ practices and more interested in their explanations of the extent to which the practices they identified were ones in which they could see themselves engaged, and why. That is, we were interested in their evaluation of themselves. These stimulated recall (Stage 2) and stimulated critique (Stage 3) procedures enabled the video material to become the basis for shared conversations between teachers and the research team about social justice assumptions, to identify and understand the otherwise unspoken dispositions that guide and shape socially just pedagogic action.

Drawing on a Bourdieuian account of disposition – the tendencies, inclinations and leanings which provide un-thought guidance for practice (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992) – our focus is the use of metaphor as a methodological tool to identify and reveal these otherwise latent forces within our data. Our conversations with participants focused on the social interactions and social arrangements characterising what it means to teach in that particular setting, with special attention in our analysis on the emphases and repetitions that teachers provide in their account of teaching. For participants, these extended interviews provided a forum to engage in reflexivity on their pedagogic actions to ‘speak’ these social justice dispositions. We then sought to map the metaphors that teachers and principals use to frame social justice work in their schools against social justice literature, to analyse the relationship between school context and metaphoric expressions, and to show how the metaphoric framing of social justice conceals alternative conceptions and perspectives.

In analysing the data we employed a critical approach to metaphor analysis (Charteris-Black 2004). Critical metaphor analysis draws on two main principles: first, metaphoric interpretation necessitates taking into account socio-cultural and historical contexts of speakers and their metaphoric utterances. This entails examining ‘the contexts in which metaphors occur, and the evidence that these contexts provide of speakers’ intentions in using metaphors’ (Charteris-Black 2004, 13). In our study, then, we saw our in-depth interviews with teachers and principals as ‘situated dialogic discourses’ (Cameron 2008). The intention was to understand not only the content of metaphoric expressions but also subjective meanings and presuppositions evident in the discursive context. Second, metaphoric expressions are useful as much for what they exclude as inconsequential as they are for what they highlight as important (Lakoff 2004). Hence, the critical aspect of the analysis is expressed in: the centrality of context in ‘issue framing’ through metaphor use; and the importance of exploring social realities concealed or highlighted by that particular metaphor use. A critical analysis can therefore be useful in understanding assumptions, intentions and beliefs conveyed by metaphoric expressions.

What follows is devoted to conceptualising social justice needs, goals and practices in terms of three conceptual metaphors evident in the data: social justice as redistribution; social justice as recognition; and social justice as activism. We argue that these three social justice dispositions may be insufficient to meaningfully address persisting inequalities in the school system and that a capability-based social justice disposition – absent in our data – is needed. We conclude by highlighting that: social justice dispositions and conceptions can change; a valid interpretation of metaphors requires ‘contextual stabilization’; and metaphors for social justice are differently constructed in different contexts, influenced by the different social, cultural and material conditions of schools.

Conceptualising social justice needs, goals and practices

Following Cameron and Low (1999) and Charteris-Black (2004), we analysed the data in three stages. In the first stage, we closely read interview transcriptions in search of examples of linguistic metaphors that teachers and principals used to name social justice needs, goals and practices in their schools. The focus was on identifying metaphors used to frame the issue of social justice. In a conceptual metaphor expressed in the form of ‘A is B’, the target domain ‘A’ is comprehended through a source domain ‘B’. However, it is worth noting that in some cases, as is evident in our data, linguistic metaphors may take the form of similes such as ‘A is like B’.

In the second stage of analysis, we generated key categories from the collection of metaphoric utterances identified in the first stage. This involved interpretation in that specific metaphors were grouped into conceptual metaphors based on the shared meaning they illustrated. Accordingly, we constructed the following three conceptual metaphors: social justice as redistribution; social justice as recognition; and social justice as activism. Table 1 presents the metaphoric utterances both in terms of categorisation and context (advantaged and disadvantaged).

Table 1. Categorisation and contextual background of metaphors.

School type	Social justice as redistribution	Social justice as recognition	Social justice as activism
Advantaged
Government	Putting the same mask on everybody (Stephanie)	An everyday, all day, sort of thing (Caitlyn)
Independent		Peaceful and harmonious; a ‘feeling’ of safety, comfort and confidence (Angela)
Independent Catholic		Like a firm handshake (Amanda); Dignified hospitality to others (Nicole)	Planting the seed (Simon); Pushing a rock up the hill (Sarah); Advocating, active (Elizabeth)
Disadvantaged
Government	Like a soccer team (Michael)	Building relationships (Thomas)	Embodies actions and forces deeds (Thomas)

Having categorised teachers’ utterances under these three conceptual metaphors, in the final stage of the analysis we problematised assumptions and intentions underpinning metaphor expressions in a particular context. Our aim was to explain ‘the way that metaphors are interrelated and become coherent with reference to the situation in which they occur’ (Charteris-Black 2004, 35). More specifically, we endeavoured to elucidate what a specific metaphoric expression tells us about people’s social justice beliefs and actions in schools.

Drawing on principles of social justice in the literature, in what follows we discuss our three identified conceptual metaphors. Pseudonyms have been employed throughout in order to preserve the anonymity of participants and schools.

Social justice as redistribution

The first conceptual metaphor is tied to principles of distribution and redistribution. Social justice as redistribution concerns itself primarily with shifting enough resources/opportunities from advantaged to disadvantaged groups in order to compensate them for their perceived deficits in what are considered to be the basics (e.g. of education) (Gale and Densmore 2000). While liberal-democratic forms of redistributive justice (or ‘simple equality’; Walzer 1983) regard all individuals as having the same basic needs, social democratic models of redistributive justice (or complex equality) advocate for the (re)distribution of different social goods for different people (equity).

The first of these exemplifies an approach to socially just teaching in a way that enables students to gain fair access to resources (including the teacher) and to opportunities. For some teachers, this means ensuring that every student has the same access to the same amount of resources and opportunities. The social justice principle is sameness or equality. Providing a typical example of this ideology, Stephanie, based in an advantaged government school, described social justice as follows:

putting the same mask on everybody … So you’re not defining somebody by how they look or where they come from or how they speak … Obviously everybody is an individual, but you treat them the same, you give them the same attention, you give them the same consideration. And by [applying] that mask you’re not looking at colour or creed or religion. It’s about them learning. (Stephanie, Guildford Girls College; emphasis added)

This quest for sameness (equality) is sometimes referred to as a deficit model of social justice (Walzer 1983). It regards all individuals as having the same basic needs. Advocates of simple equality work from the principle of one rule for all, which does not enable flexibility to deal with students on a needs basis. Where inequality exists, the solution is viewed as compensating (or normalising) ‘disadvantaged individuals by supplying them with basic material and social goods that meet their (dominantly determined) needs’ (Gale and Densmore 2000, 12). Such accounts fall short of delivering social justice and can even work to maintain unjust social arrangements.

What should also be noted here is the belief that treating some students differently is unjust, which stems from a position of seeing all students as equal. However, denying the existence of difference does not enable educators to teach in socially just ways. Despite the best intentions of many highly committed teachers who genuinely seek to improve the academic and social outcomes for their students:

Defaulting to the position that we are all ‘unique individuals’ … serves to block critical examination of how difference is discursively produced between groups on the basis of ethnicity, gender and class. If such differences are not recognised, then we run the risk of homogenising or silencing critical factors that can matter. We can miss the ways in which some groups are treated unjustly. That such differences do exist, as a result of cultural, ‘race’ and classed experiences is denied in the desire to ‘treat everyone the same’. (Allard and Santoro 2004, 6; original emphasis)

For other teachers in the study, social justice meant weighting access, resources and opportunities according to their students’ different needs or backgrounds. The social justice principle is qualified equality or equity in access. Equity does not necessarily mean treating everyone equally. As a policy concept, equity entails preferential provision to redress ‘undeserved inequalities’. In his principle of redress, Rawls noted, ‘in order to treat all persons equally, to provide genuine equality of opportunity, society must give more attention to those with fewer native assets and to those born into the less favourable social positions’ (1999, 86).

A typical example of social justice as equity was provided by Michael, a teacher in a disadvantaged government school with a high proportion of refugee students:

I’m just trying to imagine a place where everyone has a job and everyone’s working effectively and everyone feels like they belong. Kind of like a team or something. Maybe a soccer team where everyone’s got a job, but everyone is happy with their job and everyone feels like they have a degree of responsibility, they’re contributing to scoring a goal or something. (Michael, Marrangba High School; emphasis added)

In Michael’s metaphor, not all members of a soccer team are expected to be doing the same thing. Each player on the field has a different role and position within the team, but all collaborate and work toward a shared or common goal.

This conception of social justice could be likened to a focus on redistribution according to need rather than sameness, which suggests a position tied to a social-democratic or difference model of redistributive justice. Characterised by complex equality (Walzer 1983), this position argues ‘not just for unequal distributions of social goods but for the distribution of different social goods for different people’ (Gale and Densmore 2000, 13) (equity) rather than a quest for sameness (equality). This positive differentiation is of particular importance where an unequal distribution would contribute to the well-being of those who have unfavourable starting positions.

In analysing the relationship between metaphor type and school context, metaphors of social justice as redistribution were offered by teachers from both advantaged and disadvantaged schools, but both were government (public) rather than Independent or Catholic schools (private). This might be partly attributable to the contemporary distributive/redistributive policy debate prevalent in the public sector (for example, Gonski et al. 2011; Prasser and Tracey 2013). However, the metaphor informed by simple equality came from a teacher based in an advantaged government school, while the metaphor based on complex equality (equity) was expressed by a teacher based in a disadvantaged government school.

While the first of these perspectives (equality) regards all individuals as having the same basic needs and is guided by the principle of one rule for all, the latter (equity) focuses on redistribution according to need. Further exploration is warranted to determine whether there is a link between the recognition of the need for equity rather than equality in disadvantaged school contexts; contexts in which there are likely to be a higher proportion of students with unfavourable starting positions who would benefit from positive differentiation.

Social justice as recognition

Broadly speaking, the redistributive accounts of social justice already discussed tend to confine their interests to people’s assets – in the form of material and social goods – (or the lack thereof) and are only minimally concerned with social processes and procedures that (re)produce those assets. In contrast, the metaphor social justice as recognition draws instead on principles of recognitive justice. Informed by the work of Young (1990) and Fraser (1995), recognitive justice reconsiders the meaning of social justice and acknowledges the place of social groups within this. This expanded view of social justice includes a positive regard for identity differences and the centrality of socially democratic processes in working towards its achievement. In brief, there are three necessary conditions for recognitive justice: the fostering of respect for different social groups through their self-identification; opportunities for their self-development and self-expression; and the participation of groups in making decisions that directly concern them, through their representation on determining bodies (self-determination) (Gale and Densmore 2000).

Social justice as recognition is exemplified in an approach to socially just teaching that focuses on interactions with and between students. For teachers with a recognitive disposition towards social justice, positive and respectful interpersonal relations between teachers and students, and between students and students, are important. The social justice principle is about ensuring that students are given due recognition for who they are, as they name themselves, and given respect for this way of identifying themselves.

In this vein, Amanda, a teacher from an advantaged Independent Catholic school, suggested that social justice is:

like a firm handshake … It’s reassuring. It’s saying it’s okay. When you think of a handshake, it’s personable. You think who you handshake and it’s acknowledging someone as your equal as well. (Amanda, St Catherine’s School for Girls; emphasis added)

A handshake here signifies both an act of recognition and an acknowledgement of the equal moral worth of students. As an act of recognition, the handshake is described by Amanda herself as ‘personable’ and ‘reassuring’; representing positive interpersonal relations. Moreover, the handshake is ‘firm’ and ‘acknowledg[es] someone as your equal’. Such acknowledgement is an important aspect of fostering self-respect in and facilitating positive self-identities for students from different social groups, which is a key condition for recognitive justice (Gale and Densmore 2000). Amanda’s metaphor suggests that positive and respectful interpersonal relations between teachers and students are an important part of social justice.

In a similar way, a teacher from a disadvantaged government school envisioned social justice as building relationships:

I’ve taken that approach to teaching where I see … my duty for [my students] is … [to] work for them to get that A … That’s that sort of sales approach where it’s like, ‘What do you need, what can I do to help you?’ … I’d rather have relationships with these students … because then they’re working with you rather than against you. That’s one of the things that I’ve been teaching Michael [another teacher in the school and participant in the study] is that you want to build these relationships, especially with the problem kids … you want to make those friendly because then that’s the battle won. As soon as you’ve got them on your side everything else is easy. (Thomas, Marrangba High School; emphasis added)

Like Amanda, Thomas values positive relationships with students. He wants to build relationships with them, especially with ‘the problem kids’, and work with them rather than against them. In the particular context of the school in which he works, with its high proportion of non-English-speaking background and refugee students, his metaphor suggests that discourses and instruments of recognitive justice are mobilised to address cultural injustice (Fraser 1997). In the classroom context, this might manifest itself in the form of a ‘culturally responsive learning environment’. This requires having adequate information on who the students are and making use of the information to improve the learning outcomes of the students. In Thomas’ case, this takes the form of him seeing it as his ‘duty’ to find out what students need and what he can do to help them to ‘get that A’.

While the specific contextual conditions of the school in which Thomas works appeared to have an impact on his metaphor for social justice, it was also an important inspiration for Nicole. When asked to provide a metaphor for social justice, Nicole drew inspiration from her school environment, an advantaged Independent Catholic school, to suggest that it is a dignified hospitality to others:

There are many symbols on walls and rooms around the place [the school] but the one that comes to mind for me is the [statue of a significant nun] … It’s only a single representation of a person but it’s a person offering hospitality to others. It’s a person with open hands stepping forward and saying, ‘I’m here for the other’ and yet holding their ground, holding her ground as a very dignified sacred person in herself. (Nicole, Mercy Girls College; emphasis added)

Offering hospitality to others ‘with open hands stepping forward’ suggests recognition in terms of working towards the provision of opportunities for students’ self-development and self-expression, which is a key condition for recognitive justice (Gale and Densmore 2000). Not only does she provide the means (or support) for her students to exercise their agency, but this hospitality is offered in a ‘dignified’ way, which seems to refer to positive and respectful interpersonal relations: treating people in the way that they would want to be treated. Indeed, teachers who are wedded to a recognitive view of social justice work to challenge and transform oppressive processes, structures or policies that inhibit the development of their students, and this appears to be a part of Nicole’s work. At the same time, Nicole’s metaphor suggests that she is there ‘for the other’ yet ‘holding her ground’. This image seems to represent that while dignified hospitality to Nicole is about reaching out to others, she is not willing to shift in her own position. What social justice is in this case – or the exact nature of the hospitality offered – may be strictly on the terms of the person offering the hospitality.

While Nicole’s metaphor suggests that social justice is offered on her terms, Angela, a teacher in an Independent advantaged school, offered two metaphors, the second of which considers social justice from the perspective of students. First, she suggested that it is something of a condition or state: ‘it’s peaceful and harmonious’ (Angela, Heyington College). As the interview continued, Angela expressed her view of social justice as a ‘feeling’ of safety, comfort and confidence:

It’s hard to find something that’s … a physical representation, because for me [social justice] is a feeling … You know you’ve got it if you’re feeling safe, if students are feeling comfortable, if students feel that they can question you or authorities within the school system, so for me it’s about – and even feeling that you’re doing the right thing, that you’re behaving in an ethical way. That’s the most effective way for me to try and to name it, rather than ‘it’s like this’. (Angela, Heyington College; emphasis added)

Angela’s view of social justice begins from the standpoint of students. It suggests engagement with ‘the politics of recognition’, which seeks to empower members of culturally subordinated groups in society to the extent that they are ‘capable of participating on a par with the rest’ (Fraser 2000, 114). By first meeting the needs of students in terms of support to feel safe and confident and able to question teachers and authorities within the school system, students are empowered to exercise their agency. As Young (1990, 38) explains, ‘institutional processes which prevent some people from learning and using satisfying and expansive skills in socially recognized settings’ are oppressive. This is something that Angela’s metaphor suggests that she works against.

While Angela’s metaphor focused on social justice in the context of schooling, Caitlyn, a teacher based in an advantaged government school, saw social justice as part of everyday life:

I think if kids are happy and people are happy, that is part of social justice … [It’s] what people need to do everyday in their lives. So it might be standing up for someone on the tram or … smiling at someone … on the street, so it’s actually encompassing everyday life rather than just, here’s some money for the Red Cross … Or we’ll go and be a missionary … for three months and … I’ve done my bit. I think it’s more of an everyday, all day, sort of thing. (Caitlyn, Guildford Girls College; emphasis added)

This is an example of the claim that social justice is concerned not only with equitable and fair distribution of rights, duties and socio-economic goods (i.e. distributive justice), but also ‘the nature and ordering of social relations, the formal and informal rules which govern how members of society treat each other both on a macro level and at a micro interpersonal level’ (i.e. relational justice; Gewirtz 1998, 471; original emphasis). Treating others in the way that one would want to be treated is key to this aspect of social justice as recognition.

If there was any space to critique a recognitive view of social justice, it is perhaps its limited focus on affirmation and recognition of difference. It could be argued that there is room for recognitive justice to transcend an affirmative politics and move towards a critical or transformative engagement of difference. That is, affirmation and recognition of difference is not enough. Political philosophers such as Nancy Fraser (1997) challenge us to move beyond recognition and pursue a theory and politics of transformation by engaging with the deep structures that generate injustice. The aim here ‘is to remedy social disadvantage through problematising and restructuring the underlying frameworks that generate such disadvantage’ (Keddie 2005, 87). Keddie suggests that such radical re-envisionings, translated into curriculum and pedagogy, ‘might work to dismantle and transform the inequitable power relations and underlying frameworks that generate … injustice within and beyond the contexts of education’ (2006, 21). The final metaphor in our analysis, social justice as activism, responds to this critique and is considered in the next section.

At first glance, in considering the metaphor social justice as recognition, there appears to be little that can be said in terms of a relationship between the metaphor type offered and the social, cultural and material conditions of the schools in which teachers work. Indeed, metaphors characterising social justice in this way came from both advantaged and disadvantaged schools across the spectrum of school types from which teachers offered metaphors for social justice (advantaged and disadvantaged government, advantaged Independent and advantaged Independent Catholic). However, there are issues to consider in relation to Fraser’s (1997) challenge to move beyond recognition and pursue a politics of transformation by engaging with the deep structures that generate injustice. In her view, recognition does not go far enough. As taken up in the following, Thomas, a teacher from a disadvantaged government school, is the only teacher to offer a metaphor of recognition and then, at a later stage, a metaphor of activism. Other teachers in our study who evoked recognition metaphors are all from advantaged contexts. As will be shown in the following section, teachers from advantaged government and Independent schools typically only go as far as recognition in their conceptions of social justice. Whether this activist stance could be context related is discussed in what follows.

Social justice as activism

The conceptual metaphor social justice as activism is related to the principle of representative justice (Fraser 1997). With its focus on political injustice, representative justice is centrally concerned with whether or not individuals or groups have an equal right to be heard and accorded a voice. In an educational context, representative justice can be evaluated based on students’ abilities to have an equal voice in decisions that matter to them – on what they learn, how they learn and when they learn. In other words, the question is: does the pedagogic arrangement and curricular organisation allow ‘participatory parity’? Representation here has much in common with self-determination, the third condition of recognitive justice: the participation of groups in making decisions that directly concern them, through their representation on determining bodies (Gale and Densmore 2000).

Social justice as activism entails a critical gaze toward assumptions and norms informing policies and practices within school. In learning experiences, activism can be manifested in the form of exposing students to situations of disadvantage and marginalisation, and encouraging them to reflect on and engage in the problem. In other words, it is not enough to recognise undesirable conditions of inequality. It is equally important to appreciate the urgency of changing these conditions.

In the context of school systems, the conceptual metaphor social justice as activism sees education as a form of praxis committed to transforming conditions of injustice and subordination. Teachers and principals who see social justice as activism tend to ‘resist, dissent, rebel, subvert, possess oppositional imaginations and are committed to transforming oppressive and exploitative social relations in and out of schools’ (Rapp 2002, 226). In this respect, metaphors that name social justice as activism reveal speakers’ ‘pragmatic idealism’. Activism towards social justice and inclusiveness should not be based on mere optimism, but rather should be guided by a strategic position-taking and courage to speak truth to power (Said 1994). Said cautioned that any exercise of position-taking should take into consideration the context of the problem, involve a careful deliberation on alternative strategies and perspectives, and, most importantly, be an intelligent representation of the problem in a way that it can ‘do the most good and cause the right change’ (1994, 102). To put it differently, a pragmatic idealist tends to balance ‘the moral will’ to stand with the disadvantaged and a strategic thinking to substantiate the claim using tangible evidence (Lingard and Christie 2003). Pragmatic idealism of this kind was evident in our interviews with teachers and principals.

The principal of an advantaged Independent Catholic school, St Stephen’s College, suggested that in terms of social justice work in the school ‘we do a range of things. So we do collect money for different things but we would never do it in isolation’. He went on to discuss the current year’s social justice theme, ‘planting the seed’:

One of the strategies we use, we have a school theme each year, again just to try and give expression to … what we might have as a particular intent. So this year it [the theme] is called planting the seed. So what does that mean? … As a school you’re trying to plant seeds into a whole range of different ones. But whatever seeds you’re planting in the minds of others, what can you contribute, and what seeds have you planted in the minds of others? (Simon, St Stephen’s College; emphasis added)

It is interesting to note that Sarah, a teacher from another Independent Catholic school, also described social justice in Sisyphean terms of activism:

It’s like that old fable, isn’t it? It’s like pushing a rock up the hill and you get so far and then the rock comes back down a bit. And then you grab the rock again, you keep going … It’s a very hard, hard task but you’ve just got to keep at it … And that’s why I feel personal satisfaction I think almost every day coming here, in the 20 odd years that I’ve taught, is that I feel that I have self-worth, I really think that what I’m doing is in a small way hopefully changing the world to be better. (Sarah, Mercy Girls College; emphasis added)

A third metaphor related to activism came from yet another teacher working within a Catholic school. Elizabeth, based in an advantaged Independent Catholic school, described social justice in the following way:

It’s white, it’s bare, it’s peace, it’s happiness, equality … rights and responsibilities … But [on] the other hand it’s red and it’s angry, and it’s fighting, and it’s arguing, and it’s advocating, and it’s active … When [social justice is] achieved, it’s action, it’s white. But when it’s … social injustice, it’s fiery and passionate and angry and active. (Elizabeth, St Catherine’s School for Girls; emphasis added)

As already noted, the only teacher from a government school to provide a metaphor related to activism was Thomas. To him – a teacher in a disadvantaged school with a high refugee population – social justice:

is like trying to do the right thing in lots of ways but not just saying the right thing but doing the right thing … I think that action aspect of social justice is really important because social justice without action is almost hypocrisy … Social justice has to be something that embodies actions and forces deeds in lots of ways. (Thomas, Marrangba High School; emphasis added)

There are two features that are common to each of these four metaphoric expressions. First, they all share a focus on addressing political injustice. Planting seeds ‘in the minds of others’, ‘changing the world to be better’ (despite it being a ‘hard task’; like ‘pushing a rock up the hill’) and ‘advocating’ – all connect with the understanding that social justice is activism. Indeed, these are epitomised by Thomas’ metaphor of social justice as ‘not just saying the right thing, but doing the right thing’: moving beyond mere words to concrete action in the desire for more socially just outcomes for the least advantaged members of a society. Second, they all have a tendency to pay less attention to the aspect of activism that is related to the representation of students’ voice in decisions that directly affect them and what they learn. While the metaphors offered suggest that these teachers and principals work to challenge and transform oppressive processes, structures or policies, further attention could be paid to fostering students’ opportunities for self-determination. Indeed, accessing opportunities to engage in tasks determined by others is not sufficient if conditions of recognitive justice are to be met (Gale and Densmore 2000).

Perhaps when teachers/principals talk about ‘changing the world’, ‘advocating’ or ‘not just saying the right thing, but doing the right thing’, what they may be advocating for is increasing the avenues to accord equitable representation in decision-making; ‘re-constituting political space so that all are accorded a voice’ (Keddie 2012, 274). Indeed, ‘attending to, and thinking from the space of, marginalised groups can enable just and democratic societies’ (2012, 274).

In analysing the contextual origins of the teachers who offered the metaphor social justice as activism, only two school types were represented: three metaphors came from staff based in advantaged Independent Catholic schools, and one metaphor came from a teacher based in a disadvantaged government school. What is interesting here is the fact that no activism metaphors were offered by teachers from advantaged government or advantaged Independent schools. This calls into question whether the ethos of Catholic schools – or perhaps a systemic policy to employ staff who embody this ethos – lends itself to activism. The same could be said of Thomas from the disadvantaged government school. It could be the case that teachers based in schools with a high proportion of refugee students and/or students from low socio-economic backgrounds see the work of challenging and transforming oppressive processes, structures or policies as part of their role. Or perhaps their dispositions towards social justice are the very reason that they were employed in their respective schools, or what motivates them to remain and work in what can be quite difficult school contexts. This may be the strongest evidence we have that teachers’ interpretations of the importance of social justice work undertaken within their schools may differ depending on the positioning of the school, evidenced in their metaphors of social justice.

While beyond the focus of this article, extending a Bourdieuian reading of disposition to the contexts within which teachers practice could also allow us to draw upon his concept of fields; spaces of power relations in which the agent’s position is determined by the quantity and structure of capital (material and symbolic resources) at his or her disposal. While partly constituting the education field, schools also represent fields in themselves – they are structured social spaces that present opportunities and constraints for the actors involved, including principals, teachers, students and parents. A complex dialectical relationship exists between the objective conditions of the field and subjective individual dispositions (Bourdieu 1977). As much as an actor’s dispositions can be influenced by the field, ‘the constraints and opportunities imposed by fields’ are mediated through their dispositions (Swartz 2002, 66S). Bourdieu would suggest that this dialectical relationship means the context in which teachers and principals are based influences their dispositions towards social justice, and vice versa. So while the dispositions of staff in school contexts with a strong activist social justice ethos may be influenced by the structures and norms of the field – disposing teachers to do what they ‘have to do’ without any conscious calculation; like ‘fish in water’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 127) – the field itself is shaped by the (changing and changeable) dispositions of the staff.

Social justice as capability

As much as it illuminates meanings, a metaphor also conceals alternative conceptions and perspectives. Any picture within a frame attracts our attention from the space outside the frame. In a similar way, by emphasising some meanings and experiences at the expense of others, a metaphor presents a meaning framed as much by what is excluded as what is included. This exclusionary function of metaphors is evident in our data. A freedom-based account of social justice, for example, is missing in the teachers’ and principals’ metaphoric utterances. The capability approach to social justice, or what we are naming the conceptual metaphor social justice as capability, was developed by Nobel Laureate economist and philosopher Amartya Sen. It assesses injustice and associated social arrangements (e.g. policy responses) in the space of capabilities – real opportunities people have to achieve what they value in life (Sen 1992, 2009). As Sen argues, ‘A person’s advantage in terms of opportunities is judged to be lower than that of another if she has less capability – less real opportunity – to achieve those things that she has reason to value’ (2009, 231).

A capability-based assessment of social justice in and through education foregrounds the agency freedom that people have to choose what they have reason to value. It is also linked with what Fraser (1997) refers to as ‘participatory parity’. In the school system, this might mean that people are equally positioned to make decisions on what they learn, how they learn and when they learn. However, none of the participants in our study use metaphors that reflect the importance of active and fair participation of students in decisions that matter most to them.

This exclusion of agency freedom as a key aspect of social justice work in schools highlights how metaphors can constrain our understanding of important issues – ‘by virtue of their entailments, [they] pick out a range of experiences by highlighting, downplaying, and hiding’ (Lakoff and Johnson 2003, 152). Hence we argue that the absence of a transformative conception of social justice such as agency freedom in metaphoric framings of teachers and principals may shed light on their commitment to certain types of socially just pedagogic work as opposed to others.

In doing so, we also acknowledge that the mapping of social justice metaphors – in terms of distribution, recognition, activism and capability – in this article might not cover the full spectrum of political philosophies towards social justice. While this article presents one method of identifying dispositions through a discursive analysis, illustrating our point with a small but rich qualitative data-set based on teachers and principals positioned across diverse secondary school settings, we believe that the mapping we offer has potential for further development through future work engaging with larger sets of data.

Conclusion

By way of conclusion, we highlight three points. First, in analysing metaphors of teachers and principals, we are specifically interested in understanding how those agents conceptualise social justice ideals, demands and goals in relation to their teaching experiences, relations with students and leadership practices. In our study, social justice metaphors mobilised by teachers and principals are seen as expressions of ‘inner commitment’ (Skau 1989), which reveal their dispositions towards social justice, specifically regarding how and why inequality should be addressed in schools. That is, drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of the habitus, we argue that the social justice dispositions of teachers and principals can be inferred from their metaphors for social justice, which serve as discursive manifests of internalised social structures.

Relatedly, teachers’ dispositions towards social justice work can be a reflection of the context of their practice, and can change. As Bourdieu (1990) argues, the habitus is durable but not eternal. According to Swartz (1997, 2002), change and continuity of a person’s habitus largely depends on its alignment with structures (rules, norms and expectations) within the social space it operates. When there is a match between field opportunities and habitus expectations of the individual, dispositions are reinforced and reproduced. As Swartz notes, ‘the habitus conveys a sense of place in the social order’ because it ‘involves an unconscious calculation of what is possible, impossible, and probable for individuals in given sets of conditions of existence’ (2002, 67S). For example, a teacher with a strong social justice disposition may be more likely to ‘fit’ in disadvantaged government schools and systemic schools founded on a Catholic social justice ethos than in advantaged Independent schools that fully operate in the market system. However, in contexts where opportunities and constraints of the field do not fully match with the individual’s habitus, he or she tends to experience some adjustment – which ‘gives continuity amid apparent change’ (Swartz 2002, 66S). For instance, teachers with a strong sense of social justice may have to adjust their expectations if their school has no ‘room’ for such social justice goals as inclusion and recognition.

Most importantly, when social spaces such as schools present totally new structures of opportunities and constraints, ‘the habitus self-selects out of those fields’ or it ‘stays and protests’ (Swartz 2002, 66S). The mismatch between field structures and individual habitus may also lead to critical reflection on the social condition, and possibly to transformation of the habitus, as expressed in new lines of thought and action. The cumulative effect of protesting the status quo and transforming the habitus can manifest themselves in activism toward socially just school practices.

Second, it is difficult to draw a firm and decisive interpretation of metaphors. As Black (1993, 29) notes, ‘[s]ince we must necessarily read “behind the words,” we cannot set firm bounds to the admissible interpretations: Ambiguity is a necessary by-product of the metaphor’s suggestiveness’. Also, metaphorical interpretations of utterances are always context dependent, and informational content of a metaphor is subject to multiple interpretations, suggesting that a metaphor may have a continuum of meanings. One way of ensuring the validity of meanings of metaphors can be through ‘contextual stabilization’ (Maasen and Weingart 2000) – that is, a careful consideration of context of discourses in which metaphoric expressions arise. We make sense of metaphoric utterances in relation to ‘subject positions’ of the speakers from which they experience social realities. The implication for an empirical study like ours is that contexts need to be explicit in the interpretation of metaphoric utterances.

Finally, although not conclusive, our findings show that teachers’ interpretations of the importance of social justice work undertaken within their schools may differ depending on the positioning of the school (i.e. whether advantaged or disadvantaged), evidenced in their metaphors of social justice. That is, the relationship between metaphor type offered and the social, cultural and material conditions of the schools in which teachers work appears to be worthy of further exploration. This link may be particularly open to further research in disadvantaged government schools – where there is likely to be a high proportion of refugee students and/or students from low socio-economic backgrounds, where the need for equity rather than equality appears to be recognised by some teachers – and Independent Catholic schools, with their specific type of school ethos. It is in these school types that our data suggest an activist stance towards social justice may be more likely and possibly related to: systemic or school policies to employ staff who embody a certain disposition; or teachers in these contexts seeing the work of challenging and transforming oppressive processes, structures or policies as part of their role.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the Australian Research Council for its financial support of the project ‘Social Justice Dispositions Informing Teachers’ Pedagogy’ (DP130101297) and the generous participation of teachers and principals. They also acknowledge the Queensland and Victorian Departments of Education for their support to conduct the research. The research team included Trevor Gale (Chief Investigator), Russell Cross (Chief Investigator), Carmen Mills (Chief Investigator), Stephen Parker (Research Fellow), Tebeje Molla (Research Fellow) and Catherine Smith (PhD candidate).