Teaching for social justice education: the intersection between identity, critical agency, and social justice education

In line with national policy requirements, educators are increasingly addressing of social justice education by focusing on classroom pedagogies and practices to combat different forms of oppression such as racism and . As all educators have a role to play in dismantling oppression and generating a vision for a more socially just future, teacher education has the responsibility to capacitate pre-service teachers to work in areas of social justice education. is, however, difficult to conceptualise programmes for social justice education considering the interconnection between various social identities and how identities can feed into critical agency and education for social justice. with the assumption that white women teachers must be part of the solution bring about social change in South African education, we used in-depth interviewing to explore pre-service teachers’ emerging identities as teachers, and how identities are connected to notions of critical agency and a stance towards justice.