Considering social justice: Lived experiences of education students during the first course year

Increasing research focus is placed on how to embed social justice within Education degrees. This paper reports findings from the first two phases of a cohort study completed just before and at the start of the pandemic, which track Scottish Education students’ reflections on social justice at one university. We used three focus groups ( n = 14) and surveys to analyse students’ ( n = 45) definitions of social justice. Using Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological System’s Theory and Saldana’s Analytical Coding framework we found that themes around prejudice, culture, policy and emerging professional identity captured participants’ reflections as both beginning teachers and students of educational studies. Key to our findings was that fewer reflections of social justice were cited to global than to local contexts. This paper highlights ways in which university educators may conceive of social justice such that it is considered by students in both their immediate and in global contexts.