Critical Personal Reflection

Implementation of social justice into teaching practice

Implementing social justice perspectives in our teaching practices is important because it is

identifying and acting to create positive change in the classroom and the teaching environment. This
is where social justice starts, with informing and educating the future generations, so that society
can become a more positive place, a place of belonging and equal rights.

To become an effective teacher entails more than developing and implementing socio-
political responsiveness and teaching skills, and grasping how children progress and understand
information. Shifting from theory to practice requires the nerve and understanding to create
learning and teaching environments that improves upon the way they are now and have been in the
past. Social justice is not an add on for classrooms and teaching practice, it is a way of teaching and
the essence which supports high level learning and thinking throughout the students’ and teachers’
lives.

Pedagogical influence and enhancement

Culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) would influence and enhance learning and teaching,
and students’ educational experience. This is important, as from what I have learnt a student’s time
in education is an influential period in their lives, and by teaching students to appreciate and view
everybody as equals irrespective everyone’s differences, sets them up for promoting academic, civic
and personal growth. Matching teachers and students that have styles of learning that are similar is
a method of providing a learning setting that enables students to be taught by a teacher that shares
with similar thinking and personality qualities and traits. This is supported by research that show
that when students and teachers with similar or same learning styles are critically incompatible, the
result is that the students have the tendency to become not interested, inattentive, and feel
awkward, resulting in weak performance in the classroom because of missed matched teachers and
students (Felder and Spurlin 2005). However, the flaw in this method is students who are educated
in only the methods they are affluent and relaxed in, neglect to acquire and improve the abilities
vital to other ways of learning.

A better pedagogical theory and approach for influencing and enhancing learning and
teaching for students is the ability for the teacher to adapt and adjust their approaches of teaching
in agreement with students’ learning patterns and styles. Requiring teachers to comprehend and
recognise the learning styles they hold themselves and their students understand. As teachers’
empathic capabilities grow, it is seen they would be better at understanding and responding
appropriately to their students’ educational needs (Barr, 2010). Teachers may become unaware that
their teaching style may be unsuccessful, if not matched with their students’. As a teacher, having a
wide scale of teaching styles is most effective for teachers and students to coexist in the learning
environment, as teachers can modify their tutoring and direction that exposes students to diverse
teaching methods. Resulting in students not only obtaining some direction in the learning style they
are most rehearsed or prevalent in, but will hopefully expose other approaches of learning that
students may find helpful in the future. This can be achieved by crafting an encouraging classroom
atmosphere that encompasses multiple perceptions, highlighting inquiry-based instruction and
critical thinking.

The pedagogical theories that I also believe would influence and enhance learning and
teaching and the student experience is making what I will teach relevant to what is going on in the
world at that time, as suggested by Sleeter (2012). Linking real world issues, situations and people,

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to the work I am educating my future students with, while enhancing their knowledge and
understanding of the world outside the classroom. I have learnt as a student myself that the walls
around us in the classroom are not some enchanted barriers from what is going on in the world
outside them, even though many students, and myself for a while, would think that way when in an
educational room. When I become a teacher, I will bring the reality of the real world into the
classroom as a teaching tool, asking students if they have any questions, not only about the work we
are doing inside the classroom, but on anything that they have heard, seen or felt outside the lesson.
Taking those questions and applying it to the work and education for the lesson, as this is an
opportunity to teach students high-level thing skills.

Teaching practice for equality and diversity

My teaching practice will address issues of equality and diversity by creating chances for
students to state their thoughts and questions, to discuss their opinions with others, as culturally
responsive teachers produce an inclusive culture of the classroom for all students (Irvine & Armento,
2001; Villegas & Lucas, 2002). This is done to encourage both sharing their own ideas and
responding to the ideas of other students and my own. As my role will be to use these questions to
make links between the big ideas of these students and the lesson plan. My pedagogical approach
will provide time for students to collaborate towards a shared goal; aiming to teach students to be
academic siblings, and that everyone is equal and diverse.

Furthermore, I can address issues of equality and diversity in the classroom by looking at the
materials and mediums that are used for educating my students, and questioning whether the
books, manuals and other teaching materials offer diverse aspects of society and ethnicity. Another
method for addressing ethnicity and diversity in my teaching practice would be using authentic
assessments in the classroom. By using authentic assessments, they allow students the opportunity
to spread their knowledge and involve themselves in work that happens inside and outside the
classroom.

In conclusion, implementing social justice perspectives into teaching practices is important,

as it allows students opportunities for being both followers and implementers of creating change.
Teaching for social justice in education, meets the requirements of all students, celebrates
multiculturalism/diversity, promotes equality, inclusion, and empathy and is culturally responsive. By
teaching students to discern fact from opinion and to figure out their own and others’ point of
views, will help them to interpret all that information to decide their own certainty and accuracy. It
is important that I be pedagogically neutral as I teach and support my future students journey of
education and learning, and teaching them to be critical thinkers and to form their own ideas on
equality and diversity.

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 References

Barr, J. J. (2011). The relationship between teachers’ empathy and perception of school culture.
Educational Studies, 37(3), 365-369.

Felder, R., and J. Spurlin. “Applications, Reliability and Validity of the Index of Learning Styles.”
International Journal of Engineering, 21(1), 2005, 103-112.

Irvine, J. J. and Armento, B. J. 2001. Culturally responsive teaching: Lesson planning for the
elementary and middle grades, Boston, MA: McGraw Hill.

Sleeter, C. E. 2012. Confronting the marginalization of culturally responsive pedagogy. Urban

Education, 47: 562–584.

Villegas, A. M. and Lucas, T. 2002. Educating culturally responsive teachers: A coherent

approach., Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

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