Abstract:
This project aims at incorporating an innovative perspective of ‘social justice’ in two undergraduate courses, with innovative in the sense of bringing social justice to a more prominent place in undergraduate teaching, thus contributing to student attainment of GILO of ethical decision making. By equipping students with a conceptual lens and analytical perspective of ‘social justice’, which aims at developing students ability to form a value judgement and discern issues of fairness and justice behind, students can move beyond analytical method such as cost-benefits analysis. The project design is re-organizing the teaching contents and adding ‘social justice’ as a perspective without affecting the overall course contents, so as to explore the effectiveness of applying social justice as a form of issue analysis and ethical decision making by engaging students in conceptual clarification and learning activities. Finally, a class of 27 and a class of 26 have separately been delivered three lectures of social justice teaching unit in the first seminar and the second seminar in 2017/2018 respectively. To analyze the effectiveness of the study unit, mixed methods of quantitative and qualitative research were adopted. Quantitatively, most of the participants filled in a pre-teaching questionnaire before the teaching, while a post-teaching questionnaire were completed after the teaching. Qualitatively, two focus groups were held to explore more in-depth insights into subjects’ thinking of the study unit. The following part will briefly report the result of the quantitative evaluation.
Code:
T0186
Principal Project Supervisors:
Keywords provided by authors:
Start Date:
01 Jul 2017
End Date:
31 Aug 2018
Status:
Completed
Result:
A total of 53 students participated in the social justice study unit. Finally, forty-eight of them completed both of the pre-test and post-test questionnaires. Among them, 15 were male and 33 were female, basically because more female students took B.Ed courses. Their mean age of the time they filled in the questionnaire was 19.92, with SD=1.38, range=19-25. The participants’ ethnicity were diverse. Among the 48 participants, 35 were local Hong Kong Chinese students, 13 were Mainland Chinese students (three of them were exchange students from universities in China), and two were foreign students from Myanmar and the Philippines.
According to the descriptive statistics, a majority 19 of them (72%) said they do benefit from learning about social justice perspective.
Table 1: Do you benefit from learning about social justice perspective?
Frequency
Percent
Yes
34
72.3
No
5
10.6
Don't know
8
17
Total
47
100
Thirty-seven (79%) reported that they have changed their views on certain social issues after studying in the social justice teaching unit. Only 2 participants said he or she has not changed their view on certain social issues after the teaching unit.
Table 2: Does the course change your view on certain social issues?
Frequency
Percent
Yes
37
78.7
No
2
4.3
Don't know
8
17
Total
47
100
A paired-samples t-test was run (see table 3). It found that the participants showed a significant increase in the expectations on three aspects: I will learn/ learned to apply concepts from my course to real situations, with t (47) = -2.38, p
Impact:
The two cycles of the social justice teaching unit have been completed. In both cycles, the concept of ‘social justice’ have been defined and clarified by guiding undergraduate students in studying different social justice theories and interpretations, as well as putting the social justice concept into examining real-life social and political issues and debates, thus contributing to their analytical ability and ethical decision making. Second, students were engaged in active discussion and debates with a social justice perspective, with learning tasks demonstrating their application and mastery of using social justice perspective in analysis and decision making. Third, issues of global social injustice have been discussed and debated, including economic injustice, food injustice and climate injustice. The perspectives introduced can widen the horizon of students. Fourth, student participants’ own previous assumptions and even stereotypes on social issues and vulnerable or social disadvantaged groups have been reflected in ethical decision making when examining the social justice issues at stake. This contributes to their development of reflective ability. According to the quantitative evaluation, the majority of participants agreed that they do benefit from the teaching unit; most participants have changed their views on certain social issues; participants tended to hold a more positive perception about ethnic minorities such as South Asians; they have known more about the society in which they have long lived and became more interested in community works; they became more likely to empathize with individuals of racial or ethnic backgrounds different from theirs. Undoubtedly, the overall positive results indicate the successfulness of this TDG project to certain extent.
Deliverables:
Books / Book Chapters / Journal Articles / Conference Papers
Chong, K. M. E., Davis, I., Pao, S. (2020). Teaching about and for social justice in teacher education in Hong Kong.Citizenship, Social and Economics Education. (https://doi.org/10.1177/2047173420957380)
Seminars/Presentations/Sharing Sessions
Chong, K. M. (2020, June). Enhancing student global learning through Social Justice Education: Conceptual clarification, learning and teaching methods. Paper presentation at the online live conference of Academic Network on Global Education & Learning, University of Oulu, Finland. (https://repository.eduhk.hk/en/publications/enhancing-student-global-lea...)
Chong, K. M. (2019, March). Enhancing Student Learning through Social Justice Education: Conceptual Clarification, Learning and Teaching Methods. Presentation at the Teaching Development Grant (TDG) Project Sharing Seminar, The Education University of Hong Kong. (https://repository.eduhk.hk/en/publications/enhancing-student-learning-t...)
莊璟珉、包順盛(2019)。教大教學發展計劃：社會公義概念與應用─試驗計劃成果發佈。社會公義教與學講座，香港教育大學。(參加人數：13位中學老師) (https://www.eduhk.hk/rcils/view.php?m=436&secid=436&id=50404) (https://repository.eduhk.hk/en/publications/%E6%95%99%E5%A4%A7%E6%95%99%...)
莊璟珉(2019)。社會公義概念的教與學，論文發表於通識教育研討會2019，香港教育大學。(參加人數：28位中學老師) (https://www.hkptu.org/ls2019)(https://repository.eduhk.hk/en/publications/%E7%A4%BE%E6%9C%83%E5%85%AC%...)
Teaching and Learning Resources/ Materials (including online resources)
A Teaching Guidebook for Social Justice Educators – Enhancing student learning through Social Justice Education: Conceptual clarification, learning and teaching methods.(https://repository.eduhk.hk/en/publications/a-teaching-guidebook-for-social-justice-educators-20172018-tdg-pr)
Financial Year:
2016-17
Type:
TDG