Engaging Criminal Justice Students through Service Learning

The increasing popularity of service learning has led to the implementation of the pedagogy across educational levels and disciplines. Evidence of its utilization in criminal justice education spans two decades, most of which include case studies of service-learning courses or projects. These examples of service-learning implementation seem to serve as a best practices guide for other faculty and researchers interested in adopting the pedagogy. By examining responses to offender populations and policy areas by students (n = 37) involved in a service-learning course, the current research adds to this “best practices” approach and is intended to instigate further examination of the benefits of service learning for criminal justice students and the discipline.     

Analyzing a service-learning experience using a social justice lens

This mixed methods study explores a service-learning experience embedded in a social foundations course in a teacher education program. The authors differentiate learning outcomes for social justice and charity service-learning, and utilize this framework to examine whether the service-learning experience fosters a social justice perspective. The findings demonstrate that while the experience did foster social justice perspectives for some students, the data also reflect evidence of learning outcomes that align with charity service-learning.     

Potential of service-learning to promote sustainability competencies in pre-service teachers: a case study

This research investigates the potential of service-learning to develop a situated, embodied and critically reflective human agency for sustainability. It employs document analysis to review the intended curriculum and the institutional contexts of national and international cases wherein service-learning is a component of pre-service teacher education. Exploration of intended learning outcomes and project and assessment experiences across three cases reveal the potential of service-learning to develop in pre-service teachers sustainability competencies involving participative action with community partners to achieve agreed-upon outcomes, as well as critically reflective capacities and understanding of how, in their future classrooms, schools and communities, they can serve as adaptive, lifelong learners and agents for social and environmental change. Findings also suggest that explicitly linking service-learning activities, guided by social justice and equity principles, with a (social) sustainability agenda may further validate the utilisation of and investment in service-learning and civic engagement in teacher and higher education settings.     

Liberal education and the criminal justice major

New perspectives on the impact of college on students, on linking general education, the major, electives and extra-classroom experiences toward the goal of “integrated learning,” and renewed emphasis on the importance of producing liberally educated college graduates, present opportunities for criminal justice educators to make their field a keystone in the architecture of a liberal education. In this essay, I argue that the multidisciplinary perspectives that characterize the field of criminal justice, as well as its core intellectual concerns, make criminal justice well-suited to serve as the infrastructure for a high-quality undergraduate liberal education program.     

Mathematics in and through social justice: another misunderstood marriage?

The current push to marry off mathematics with social justice compels one to ask such critical questions as “What is social justice?” and “How does (or can) mathematics look and act when viewed in/through the lenses of social justice?” Taking a critically reflective approach, this article draws the reader into a discussion of what is amiss in the currently promoted picture-perfect marriage of mathematics and social justice, presenting perspectives on both the content and context of mathematics teaching and learning. In this article, the author’s account of her experience in teaching a mathematics curriculum course for prospective middle years' teachers highlights a call to re-imagine the relationship between mathematics and social justice as more than a perfunctory integration of a “statistics and figures” approach. The author’s reflections acknowledge the complexity and potentiality of the relationship while challenging current status quo practices and paradigms in mathematics education.     

The Comparative Impacts of Social Justice Educational Methods on Political Participation,Civic Engagement,and Multicultural Activism

This cross-sectional, repeated measures, quasi-experimental study evaluates changes in college students’ commitment toward, and confidence in, political participation, civic engagement, and multicultural activism. Our sample (n = 653) consisted of college students in a Midwestern university who participated in one of three social justice education course types (service learning, intergroup dialogue, or lecture-based diversity classes) or in an “introduction to psychology” course (the non-intervention group). After completion of a social justice education course, students reported an increase in political participation and multicultural activism, whereas students enrolled in the non-intervention group reported no changes in these measures. Service learning course participants started and ended their course with the highest reported levels of political participation, civic engagement, and multicultural activism but did not demonstrate an increase in any of the three outcomes. Intergroup dialogue participants demonstrated increases in all three outcomes, while participants of lecture-based classes focusing on social justice issues demonstrated increases in political participation and multicultural activism, but not civic engagement. Our findings suggest that participation in social justice education courses is associated with increases in political participation and multicultural activism.     

Liberal education reconsidered: cultivating humanity in the knowledge society

In the knowledge society, there is a conflict between “education for profit” and “education for humanity.” Education for profit is needed for students’ economic survival and success in the knowledge economy. Education for humanity is needed for their existential lives worthy of human beings. This paper deals with the question of whether it is possible to educate for humanity in the knowledge society. First, I suggested a complemented concept of “education for profit in the broad sense,” transforming the knowledge society for a better one. Second, I discussed Biesta’s criticism of “cultivation of humanity,” defending using this term as a general and honorific sense. Finally, I explained how an expanded concept of education for profit in the broad sense is compatible with the cultivation of humanity. Education for profit in the broad sense, considering the disadvantaged in the social and political sense, is to teach virtues such as caring, compassion, justice, etc. Teaching various values in addition to economic value also contributes to the cultivation of humanity by enriching human life. Teaching various learning skills for continuous learning, “social capital” as well as intellectual knowledge, global citizenship, communal relationship, is to cultivate one’s self-learning capacity. I concluded the paper by reconsidering directions of liberal education in the knowledge society.     

Rural science education as social justice

What part can science education play in the dismantling of obstacles to social justice in rural places? In this Forum contribution, I use “Learning in and about Rural Places: Connections and Tensions Between Students’ Everyday Experiences and Environmental Quality Issues in their Community”(Zimmerman and Weible 2016) to explicitly position rural education as a project of social justice that seeks full participatory parity for rural citizens. Fraser’s (2009) conceptualization of social justice in rural education requires attention to the just distribution of resources, the recognition of the inherent capacities of rural people, and the right to equal participation in democratic processes that lead to opportunities to make decisions affecting local, regional, and global lives. This Forum piece considers the potential of place-based science education to contribute to this project.     

Learning by Doing: Experiential Learning in Criminal Justice

This article highlights the efforts of colleagues in a criminal justice department to offer experiential learning opportunities (ELOs) to undergraduate students. Operating within the framework of a liberal arts curriculum, we provide criminal justice majors with a range of opportunities that fall under the general rubric of “experiential learning”, including the following: internships, field trips, service-learning, and research projects. Our goal was to combine the academic rigors of traditional, classroom-based learning with exposure to hands-on, real-world, subject-based knowledge. We explain the multistage framework that is used to tie all of our ELOs together across the curriculum. Results from a senior and alumni survey indicate that experiential learning offers significant academic and professional benefits for students.     

Expressions of Liberal Justice? Examining the Aims of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals for Education

This paper analyzes the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for education, which sets benchmarks for member states to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong opportunities for all” by the year 2030. I examine ways in which the underlying philosophical rationale for the targets invokes a liberal social justice tradition along the lines of four rationales: equal distribution, just recognition, moralism, and utilitarianism. An analysis of the SDG education targets along each of these views is followed by a discussion of some of the challenges and contradictions inherent in applying a liberal social justice rationale to the achievement of education for all in a global setting. From this analysis, I suggest that while liberalism has provided a compelling rationale to harness public and political will around the claims of equality and democracy in the West, it has not proved adequate to informing the emergence of the kinds of education needed for social and economic justice and transformation on a global scale. Education scholars may well consider an epistemological “shift” that informs a vision of society and human nature reflective of the interconnectedness of a complex world-wide community.     

Teaching for Social Justice and K-12 Student Outcomes: A Conceptual Framework and Research Review

Redressing educational inequity requires taking a comprehensive and systemic approach to education reform, a practice increasingly framed as “social justice (in) education.” However, while state and federal accountability mandates require any reform intended for K-12 classroom implementation to have a demonstrable impact on student achievement, published accounts of classroom-level “teaching for social justice” are widely varied and scantly evaluated. This article examines the conceptual foundations of teaching for social justice, presents a concrete framework for teaching for social justice in K-12 classrooms, and examines how elements of teaching for social justice are supported by existing research on secondary students’ academic, behavioral/motivational, and attitudinal outcomes. In conducting this review, the author hopes to provide both a rationale for teaching for social justice in K-12 classrooms and a foundation for future empirical research on how doing so affects student outcomes.     

The Way They Care: An Ethnography of Social Justice Physical Education Teacher

The concept of teacher education (TE) for social justice has limited exploration contexts of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, preservice teachers of color, and physical education teacher education (PETE). To address this lacuna, I sought to explore how social justice manifested within a historically Black PETE program. Using the ethnographic methods of interviews, observations, and artifact analysis, this article emphasizes one of many major themes that emerged from the larger ethnography—caring. Undergirded by a framework of analysis that viewed teaching and learning as highly contextual and social justice as multifaceted, the results of this study indicated that caring is a form of TE for social justice, and that although teacher educators expressed care, it was part of a larger institutional ethos of care.     

In the Service of Self-Determination: Teacher Education,Service-Learning,and Community Reorganizing

Influenced by Third World Liberation social movements in the United States and abroad, this article applies a serve-the-people concept to service-learning in education. Rooted in pedagogies more traditionally associated with ethnic studies and community organizing, and informed by sociocultural and critical frameworks in education, this article offers insights from school community spaces that serve K–12 youth from different urban working-class neighborhoods. Transformative opportunities for grassroots collaboration, learning, agency, and community reorganizing are explored with implications for students, teachers, teacher educators, and community workers concerned with social justice.     

智能化时代:职业教育学习论的路向

学习是人类社会发展的核心任务,也是社会科学研究领域的关键问题。基于自然属性视角、社会属性视角、教育属性视角出发,全面分析和理解“什么是学习”,智能化时代背景下职业教育在学习内容、学习方式、学习互动、学习动机存在着“四维度”的反思命题。以此职业教育学习论的路向应该包括:以“社会”为核心,搭建“多元跨界”的学习内容新平台;以“开放”为理念,建构“多维扩展”的学习方式新平台;以“对话”为方式,创设“多维互动”学习情景新平台;以“幸福”为目的,生成“个体完善”成为学习内驱动机新平台。     

Contra Aquam Remigare*: Reimagining Humanistic Paideia Through Comparative-Historical Analysis of Education

This article attempts a reading of Andreas M. Kazamias’s work and method as a persistent and firmly grounded attempt to “go against the tide” of an empirical/instrumentalist comparative education and toward a “modernist episteme.” Kazamias has been explicitly critical of the social-scientific-cum-positivist comparative education, while at the same time acknowledging the limitations of the traditional historical-philosophical-humanistic approach. His “revisionist” comparative-historical analysis seeks to combine history with social science toward an “anthropocentric” comparative education, “concerned with the great problems—political, social but also ethical—which ‘mankind’ faces.” Consistent with his rejection of instrumental/“techno-scientific” approaches to comparative education, Kazamias argues for a promethean humanistic education (i.e., paideia, liberal education, culture générale, bildung) cultivating the soul and the mind, aiming at both the Platonic/Socratic psyche and the Aristotelian phronesis.     

Asian Pacific Americans and Critical Race Theory: An Examination of School Racial Climate

We attempt to answer where the social justice is in service-learning by probing what it is, how it looks in the process of being institutionalized at a Jesuit university, and why it is important. We develop themes about institutionalizing service-learning from a social justice perspective. Our themes were developed through an analysis of service-learning research focused on institutionalization and social justice, and a case study of a Jesuit university attempting to institutionalize it, including five faculty action research service-learning projects. From these themes, we share lessons that we learned from this experience.     

The ruins of neo-liberalism and the construction of a new (scientific) subjectivity

Given my long-time interests in neoliberalism and questions of subjectivity, I am pleased to respond to Jesse Bazzul’s paper, “Neoliberal Ideology, global capitalism, and science education: Engaging the question of subjectivity.” In what follows, I first summarize what I see as Bazzul’s contributions to pushing science education in ‘post’ directions. I next introduce the concept of “post-neoliberalism” as a tool in this endeavor. Finally, I address what all of this might have to do with subjectivity in the context of science education. I speak as a much-involved veteran of a version of the science wars fought out in education research for the last decade (NRC 2002). My interest is to use this “battle” to think politics and science anew toward an engaged social science, without certainty, rethinking subjectivity, the unconscious and bodies where I ask “what kind of science for what kind of politics?”     

Service Learning as a Mechanism for Change in Attitudes and Perceptions of Human Services Students Toward Substance-Dependent Mothers

The purpose of the study was to explore the potential effectiveness of service learning as a pedagogical technique for providing substance abuse education to human services/social work students. Using a quasi-experimental design, the authors assigned 38 human services undergraduate students to experimental and comparison groups on the basis of their availability to attend a service-learning project in substance abuse. The service learning consisted of a 30-min educational presentation followed by a visit to a residential substance abuse treatment facility for women. Results indicated that service learning in substance abuse had a positive effect on the general knowledge, perceptions, and attitudes of human services students toward substance-dependent mothers and their children. The findings from this exploratory study support future research in this area.     

林德曼终身教育思想的缘起、观点及现实启示

林德曼终身教育思想缘起于社会变迁对终身教育的吁求,进步主义教育思潮的驱动以及个人终身教育实践的引领,主要包括终身教育是贯穿人一生的学习过程、终身教育是社会生活的必要条件以及终身教育是个人价值的实现形式三个核心观点,为新时代我国终身教育改革创新提供了重要现实启示。基于此,未来我国应致力于构建“持续性”终身教育体系,营造“无疆界”终身教育生态,形塑“个性化”终身教育模式,以推动我国终身教育理论与实践的发展与进步。     

Social Justice in Teacher Education: A Qualitative Content Analysis of NCATE Conceptual Frameworks

A review of theoretical or conceptual writing on teacher education reveals numerous examples of the term “social justice” in discussions of preservice preparation. Despite this widespread use, little research documents if and how teacher education programs utilize the concept in their programs. This study examines how institutions that included “social justice” within their NCATE accreditation documents used the term in their articulation of program practices, goals, and values. Based on an extensive qualitative content analysis of NCATE conceptual frameworks, the authors assert that the social justice reform agenda is only weakly represented in accreditation artifacts and that there is little consensus on the enactment of social justice in teacher education, even among those programs that invoke the terminology.