Religion, Family, and Justice: A Narrative Study of Adults Learning to Teach for Social Justice in the Deep South

The Deep South is a distinctive, complex sociogeographic region of the U.S. whose history and politics have been marred by societal inequities and injustices. This research considered theories of social justice education and transformative learning to understand the processes by which adults learn to teach for social justice in the Deep Southern context. The study included from adult students enrolled in a doctoral-level class in education at a large, urban university in the Deep South. Narrative inquiry and Voice-Centered Relational Method were used in the process of data collection and analysis. Among the participants, familial and cultural religious narratives pervaded, deeply affecting a continual process of negotiation among the participants’ understanding of teaching for social justice and their own socially constructed identities. The religious backgrounds and family ethos fostered new notions of social justice and contributed to the participants’ perceptions of confidence to teach for social justice.