Teaching English language arts students about social justice

Abstract

The authors discuss the opportunities for teaching English language arts students about social justice including what texts to teach, approaches to teaching those texts, and discuss specific texts and instructional strategies to expose issues such as racism, inequality, gender issues, ethnicity, social class, and ableism. The authors discuss how a constructivist approach using conceptual units centered upon social justice themes can help students examine issues of social justice and help students consider the cultural issues and historical conditions as well as the social purposes of reading a text.