Nailing jello to the wall: articulating conceptualizations of social justice

Demos as an explanatory lens in teacher educators’ elusive search for social justice

“…Our collective reflections on what social justice means for teacher education (Sandretto et al, 2007) are definitely in progress. We believe that in our practice, we do not only see social justice as a preservice teacher's future development role but also as an ongoing civic element of our daily practice, within and beyond our classes.…”

“…Focusing on the constitutive dimensions of demos gives us a better picture of the implementation of a social justice vision in practice, opening the door to identifying both the strengths and weaknesses of such an endeavor. While conceptualizations of social justice are quite variable (Sandretto et al, 2007) and vague in nature, 1 demos provides a framework for a clear transfer from theory to practice. Thus, we view the interactions of the four colleagues as an open democratic forum (Davenport and Leitch, 2005;Fleck and Hanssen, 2006), utilizing all three constitutional processes of the demos: isigoria, isonomia, and isopoliteia (RaafLaub, 1996).…”

Considering social justice: Lived experiences of education students during the first course year

“…Coming up with a definition of social justice is problematic and complex and depends on political ideology or the context in which it is applied (Smith, 2018). As a case in point, in a study of teacher-educators in New Zealand, Sandretto et al (2007: 307) liken the pinning down of a definition to ‘nailing jello to the wall’. Smith illustrates this complexity using the three principles suggested by Ruitenberg and Vokey (2010) to explore how we decide what is fair as one means of conceptualising social justice.…”