Examining Pre-service Teachers' Dispositions Towards Social Justice In India: Findings From A Survey

Abstract

Teacher dispositions play a critical role in enabling teachers to embrace social justice praxis and ensure equitable educational outcomes for marginalized students. Teacher education programs thus have a formidable challenge to develop the social justice dispositions in pre-service teachers. The present study is an exploratory mixed methods study examining the efforts made by a teacher education program in India towards preparing elementary school teachers to teach for social justice in diverse classrooms. The study explores the dispositions of the pre-service teachers who are enrolled in their first year, final year, and one year out of a teacher education program at a large university in Delhi. Five social justice dispositions were conceptualized and examined using the concepts from critical theory and social justice education: Awareness of diversity, Critical self-reflection, Sense of preparedness for diversity, Challenging status-quo, and Advocacy orientation for social justice. A sequential design was adopted with two phases: the pilot study (online survey), the main study: a) online survey b) in-depth interviews with 20 participants selected purposefully. One hundred fifty-three participants responded to the pilot survey, and 300 participants responded to the survey in the main study (including demographic details). This paper focuses on sharing the design and findings from the survey as part of the larger study. As the policy reforms in India increasingly focus on technical solutions to educational inequality, this study will help teacher educators and policymakers think critically about ways to prepare and support pre-service teachers to teach for social justice.