UCLA

With a change in access to information and a rising social and political consciousness for young people, elementary schools must start to think more about their role in shaping kids’ understanding of social issues. While researchers certainly have not agreed upon a single definition of social justice education, Bell (2016) defines its aim as helping students “develop awareness, knowledge, and processes to examine issues of justice/injustice in their personal lives, communities, institutions, and the broader society” (p.4). In this qualitative study, I interviewed 17 elementary school teachers who teach their students about social justice. The participants were current educators teaching Kindergarten through 2nd grade. I apply Dover’s (2013) Dimensions of Teaching for Social Justice as the theoretical framework to guide our understanding of the results. While some research has been done on teaching for social justice, very little has been done at the elementary level, especially early elementary. This exploratory research demonstrates ways early elementary school teachers can think about implementing education about social justice in their classrooms, as well as the challenges faced in this work. The findings show the complex ways in which teachers address challenging topics of social justice while navigating the various social and political contexts of classroom and school environments. The results indicate that there are several challenges to teaching early elementary school students about issues of social justice, but having specific supports in place can eliminate or lessen those challenges. There are many reasons that teachers teach about social justice, and these reasons can be applied to help more teachers start bringing issues of social justice into the classroom. The goal of this dissertation is to demonstrate how and why some early elementary school teachers are teaching their students about social justice. I hope that other early elementary school teachers can see these examples and start to bring topics of social justice into their own classrooms.