Social justice and the social studies

This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter in Handbook of Research in Social Studies Education published by Routledge/CRC Press in 2008, available online at https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203930229Social justice is a supremely appropriate goal for social education. Three related dimensions of ‘democratic’ social interaction, in schools and societies, facilitate (or impede) social justice: • processes: voicing, listening, advocacy, persuasive reasoning, dialogue, dissent, discussion, negotiation, deliberation, consensus-building, decision making; • institutional governance frameworks: civil, legal, and political protections and mechanisms for appropriate and consistent treatment of persons and problems, including power sharing and rights; • substantive equity: practice of fairness—openness, accessibility, inclusivity, impartiality, non-repression, non-discrimination, equivalent status—for all, across individual and social differences (in effect, the personal and political, culturally and socially ‘just’ conditions that democratic processes and institutions seek to achieve. My (rather daunting) purpose in this chapter is to examine theory and research about how social studies education might contribute to democratization—that is, facilitate the development of citizenship that embodies and fosters movement toward democratic social justice