The Question of Learning & Teaching Social Justice

These past few weeks, as Jamie and I have been designing the curriculum and objectives of PennCORP, we are heavily focused not only on what we want students to learn, but also what skills we want them to leave with and emotions we want to instill.

When it comes to social justice education, an ever-developing and undefinable practice and concept, teaching becomes a complex art that requires an immense amount of intention, analysis, and self-reflection. Social justice education is more than the content — it is touching on identity, power dynamics, ideologies, and other sensitive and charged topics. Thus, teaching and designing workshops on social justice requires consideration and assessment of different dimensions of teaching.

An extremely helpful resource in planning PennCORP objectives and lessons has been the “Design and Facilitation” chapter of Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice. Bell, Goodman, and Ouellett emphasize the importance of recognizing personal biases, knowledge, and teaching styles as a first step. Jamie and I used this first step to question who we are most and least comfortable teaching, how our identities influence our own understandings, and where we need to personally grow. In the second step of designing our curriculum, we’ve also had to consider who is learning from us. In this sense, we’ve had to consider the identities of our participants and what power dynamics may present themselves. Additionally, we’ve come to the understanding that our students will be coming from different perspectives and levels of social justice education.Much of this background thinking and pre-planning of workshops is probably just as, if not more than, important as the content we are trying to teach. Social justice education is challenging, but the ultimate goal is to create an environment of learning and challenge.