K-12 EDUCATOR EXPERIENCES AND DEFINITIONS OF SOCIAL JUSTICE EDUCATION IN HAWAIʻI

Abstract

This study examined the experiences of a diverse group of K-12 educators in Hawaiʻi, exploring the factors that shaped their orientation towards social justice education (SJE) and their definitions and conceptualizations of SJE in their work as educators. The framework of settler colonialism highlighted the fact that there can be no social justice without recognition of the particular histories, rights, and claims of Kānaka ʻŌiwi communities in a settler society. Using a hybrid phenomenological approach, I surveyed and interviewed K-12 educators in Hawaiʻi who self-identified as having a social justice, decolonizing, or anti-colonial orientation. Participants asserted that their orientations towards social justice were shaped by (a) situated, relational identities; (b) experiences with erasure and devaluation of identities; (c) complex, non-linear conscientization processes; and (d) educator identity as a response to lived experiences. In defining SJE, participants focused on equity and empowerment through skills, knowledge, and civic engagement, which provided ways for students to transform their communities. Participants also defined SJE as responsive to identities and place. Some educators grappled with awareness of outsider status, settler status, or specific injustices from past and ongoing settler colonialism. Others emphasized injustice as systemic rather than individual and reached beyond boundaries like disciplinary silos in their definitions. This study highlights resonances and gaps between SJE definitions and SJE in practice in K-12 Hawaiʻi schools, and argues that SJE in Hawaiʻi must (a) affirm identities in ways that include specific relationships to place and contexts, (b) attend to systems and histories, and (c) address ongoing injustices of settler colonialism with an awareness of varying positionalities.