The present mixed-methods study examined adolescents’ moral identity development and its relation to their awareness of problems of social justice. Fifty-eight inner-city adolescents in Grades 9 and 12 ranked personal values according to their self-relevance or importance and a sub-sample also provided responses to interview questions that were coded qualitatively for maturity of moral identity. A written questionnaire assessed the adolescents’ awareness of issues of racism, sexism, and classism. It was found that adolescents held moral values at significantly higher levels of importance than non-moral values, with no differences between grades. However, trends suggested that females placed somewhat greater emphasis on moral values in terms of centrality or importance to the self and also expressed slightly more mature explanatory responses than males. Adolescents’ moral identity and social justice awareness were not correlated. These findings highlight the need to foster the development of morally motivated, socially aware individuals.

This qualitative research examines how school principals perceive social justice and accountability, the actions they take, and the reasoning process they use in their attempt to satisfy accountability mandates while simultaneously tackling the various causes of social injustices in their schools. This constructive study aims to gain an in-depth understanding of the world from the subjects’ points of view, to unfold the meaning of their experiences, and to uncover their lived world. It employs semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions guided by the conceptual framework developed from review of literature on social justice, educational leadership, and accountability policy. Twenty-two school principals and vice-principals from the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) were interviewed. The findings show that some participants define social justice as equity, which goes from the economic and political dimensions of resource distribution and equality of opportunity and access, to the cultural aspect of social representation and inclusion. Some view public education as a social justice endeavour with a particular reference to the purpose of public education. Others construe social justice by focusing on its end goal – the academic and social outcomes of students and the impact on their lives. Study participants implement their social justice beliefs and values in praxis by engaging all stakeholders and catalyzing them to be the new force for the social justice movement. Evident in this study is that participants enacted their social justice practices by putting students at the centre, positioning themselves as social justice leaders, developing people for social justice, building school climate through justice, and fostering positive relationship with families and communities. Under current accountability context, principals in this study responded to the current reform by going beyond its narrow focus through instilling a sense of moral responsibility in their perceptions of accountability itself. As social justice activists, they are proactively engaged in expanding its parameters by encompassing the moral, social, and professional aspects of their accountability. Leading for social justice thus becomes a process of constantly confronting and tearing down such obstacles and barriers by leveraging the politics of accountability and social justice to move towards what is best for students.

This thesis seeks to illustrate the important contribution that philosophy of education can make to the work of educators. It develops and advocates an ideal of dialogical inquiry as the preferred methodological basis for this practice. Underpinned by a dialogical or relational ontology, this ideal suggests that educators, as philosophical inquirers, should attempt to pursue more comprehensive and inclusive understandings of the aims of education, through processes of open and ongoing dialogue with other educational stakeholders that are involved in and/or affected by these aims. Illustrating the importance of this approach to philosophy of education, I argue that dialogical inquiry may go some way toward retrieving the primacy of social justice as an important aim of education, in an intellectual, political and economic context that has witnessed a considerable retreat of concern with this public good. / Constructing a dialogical text across the voices of social theorists and thirteen practicing South Australian teacher-educators, the theses explores some of the current challenges and possibilities, both for pursuing social justice in education, and for exemplifying and fostering dialogical inquiry in teacher-education institutions. / Thesis (PhDEducation)--University of South Australia, 2006.

In my thesis I explore way in which adolescent male students negotiate and interrogate discursive ideologies relating to hegemonic masculinities and to the normality of "whiteness", specifically within one English classroom in an Australian private single sex boys’ school in Perth, Western Australia. A feminist poststructuralist theoretical framework is employed to explore how gendered and racialized positions available to adolescent males contribute to the shaping of their subjectivities, and how the social constructions of masculinities and femininities contribute to the ways in which adolescent males represent themselves. A quantitative approach, which included individual classroom observations, questionnaires and interviews, provided me with tools essential for examining the complexities of the effects of social constructs such as gender, sexuality and ethnicity on masculinist positionings at school. The study reveals the complexities surrounding discourses of hegemonic heterosexual masculinities and privileges of whiteness on the situationally specific formation and negotiation of subjectivities in adolescent males’ lives in one school. Central findings of the study show that adolescent males in this single sex boys’ school easily maintained socially constructed ideas surrounding the feminisation of females and masculinization of males, with notions of homophobia embedded in discourses of hegemonic masculinities. A resistance to alternative masculine discourses shows the impact and maintenance of hegemonic heterosexual masculinities for adolescent males. However, through the use of particular texts, female teachers in the all boys’ classroom were able to open up spaces for male students to interrogate hegemonic forms of masculinities, to interrogate power relationships, and to access alternative masculinities. Ina similar vein, my findings show how easy it is for students to ignore social injustices in relation to racism and stereotyping of Indigenous Australians, and to retain notions that reinforce these injustices. A major conclusion of the study is that social injustices are easily maintained through educational institutions as active agents of reinforcing ideas and ideologies, particularly when changes mean disruption of privileges, such as privileges associated with hegemonic masculinity or with whiteness. Although this study was conducted within a middle class milieu, and thus the students were from an advantaged position in life, this does not justify their ignorance of issues of social justice. Indeed, the findings highlight the importance of this kind of critical approach with middle class boys in single sex schools. Important implications of this study are that findings contribute to the discovery of ways of changing deeply ingrained ideologies such as perceived gender dichotomies, the masculinization of males and the feminisation of females. My findings also contribute to ways in which privileges, such as whiteness, can be deconstructed and interrogated by those in privileged positions. My findings have potential significant implications for pedagogical practices. Education provides a means by which tools can be utilized to deconstruct and interrogate notices which maintain privileges, and in the study particularly white male privileges. Within the educational systems, an understanding relating to how subjectivities are shaped within a classroom setting will also lead to greater educational insights into how specific texts and classroom interactions affect students’ self representation and understanding. Thus a gender equity and social justice curriculum committed to interrogating the ways in which male students subscribe, invest and negotiate hegemonic masculinities in advocated and has particular relevance to those males already in privileged class positions in terms of working towards a more socially just society.

Thesis (Th. M.)--Regent College, 1987. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 170-184).

Thesis (J.C.L.)--Catholic University of America, 1988. / Bibliography: leaves 67-72.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on January 3, 2008) Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.I.T.)--The Evergreen State College, 2007. / Title from title screen viewed (4/10/2008). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 184-206).

Thesis (B.A.)--Haverford College, Dept. of Philosophy, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Australian Catholic University, 2004. / Submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Includes bibliographical references (p. 345-375). Also available in an electronic format via the internet.