Enhancing social justice and socially just pedagogy in higher education through participatory action research

ABSTRACT

Social justice in education can be understood as empowering students to participate meaningfully in their education on par with peers. Participation amongst students in higher education classrooms is becoming a concern because of increased globalisation and local student diversity. In this work, Nancy Fraser’s three-dimensional framework of social justice (economic, cultural, and political) is applied to higher education courses to promote participation. For the implementation of her framework, participatory action research (PAR) may be employed to help educators promote social justice in their teaching practice by taking a leadership role in reform. PAR can be implemented by encouraging students to become co-creators and co-investigators in the pedagogical planning process and is one means of encouraging participation. Creating collaborative communities through student voice can create space for knowledge redistribution, recognition, and representation of different student groups and can ensure social justice is at the forefront of educational reform in higher education.

KEYWORDS:

• Social justice
• higher education
• participatory action research
• student voice

Acknowledgements

Thank you kindly to Bob Adamson, who gave valuable feedback on the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Department for Children, Schools, and Families is now called Department for Education.