Measuring Fairness and Justice in the Classroom: A Systematic Review of Instruments’ Validity Evidence

Abstract

Empirical research in education has largely adopted quantitative approaches to measure teachers’ and students’ perceptions of fairness and justice in classroom contexts. The purpose of this study is to understand the validity evidence of fairness and justice instruments including how fairness and justice have been conceptualized in measures. Through a systematic review method, 96 quantitative studies were identified and their measurement instruments were analyzed based on five validity criteria: (a) framework and conceptualization of construct, (b) response processes, (c) internal structure, (d) internal consistency reliability, and (e) relationship to other variables. Results showed that most studies conceptualized classroom fairness and justice from organizational and social psychological theories with only a few conducting rigorous statistical analyses to support their validity interpretations. Findings are critically discussed and point to the need to develop a theory of fairness and justice rooted in classroom contexts.

Impact Statement

By reviewing the quality of classroom fairness instruments, this study provides guidance to school psychologists, teachers, and educational researchers with the choice of reliable instruments to promote fairer school culture and climate that supports students’ academic engagement and motivation as well as mental health at schools.

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/2372966X.2021.2000843.

Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/2372966X.2021.2000843 .

Keywords:

• Justice
• fairness
• classroom contexts
• measurement
• systematic review

ASSOCIATE EDITOR:

• Francis Huang

Disclosure

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Author Biographical Statement

Amirhossein Rasooli has recently received his PhD in Education at Queen’s University, Canada. He is currently a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Alberta and is the current managing editor for the Canadian Journal for New Scholars in Education. Amir’s research focuses on examining fairness and equity in assessment and education contexts. His doctoral dissertation leveraged mixed-methods and developed the Classroom Assessment Fairness Inventory to investigate students’ perceptions of fairness in assessment in relation to their secondary school experiences and associated impact on their psychological and behavioral outcomes.

Hamed Zandi is an Assistant Professor and the head of the Department of English at Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences, Iran. Dr. Zandi’s research focuses on assessment validity and its relationship to fairness, the validity of research methodologies from a philosophy of science perspective, and the validity of teaching practices from the perspective of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) and the communicative pragmatics it entails.

Christopher DeLuca is an Associate Dean in the School of Graduate Studies at Queen’s University, Canada and a Professor of Educational Assessment at the Faculty of Education. Dr. DeLuca leads the Classroom Assessment Research Team and is a director of the Queen’s Assessment and Evaluation Group. Dr. DeLuca’s research examines the complex intersection of curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment as operating within the current context of school accountability and standards-based education.

Notes

1 Given that previous research on perceived fairness and justice in education has tended to use ‘fairness’ and ‘justice’ terms interchangeably (Rasooli et al., 2019; Resh & Sabbagh, 2016), we used fairness and justice as interchangeable hereafter.