Nailing jello to the wall: articulating conceptualizations of social justice

This article presents conceptualizations of social justice expressed by a group of teacher educators in New Zealand and seeks to reinforce the importance of placing social justice on the agenda of teacher education. It is presented in the form of a reader's theater script designed to elicit discussion and encourage others to reflect critically on their own conceptualizations of social justice. The script is a product of doctoral thesis research, influenced by poststructural theory, which used individual interviews and group discussions to examine participant conceptualizations of social justice in teacher education contexts. The presentation of the reader's theater script is followed by discussion of the range of discourses that the participants drew upon in their accounts of social justice and consideration of some of the effects of a discourse of responsibility. We invite educators to conduct multiple readings of the script or produce their own scripts with their colleagues and students as a means to trouble the often taken‐for‐granted underpinnings of conceptualizations of social justice in teacher education contexts.