Conceptualising and mapping student teachers' perceptions of themselves as agents of social justice: a case study from Ghana

‘My big question is that if we are studying a generalist teacher programme, how will we know how to teach children with non-generalist needs?’ (student teacher, Ghana) The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) move beyond... [ view full abstract ]

‘My big question is that if we are studying a generalist teacher programme, how will we know how to teach children with non-generalist needs?’ (student teacher, Ghana)

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) move beyond equal access to schooling and towards a focus on inclusive and equitable opportunities for learning. A right to educational opportunities is enshrined in the Ghanaian constitution, and Ghanaian policies emphasise the role of the teacher in ensuring these opportunities extend to children who are enrolled in school, but at risk of being excluded from learning through gender, disability or poverty: two-thirds of primary school leavers in Ghana are not proficient in basic literacy and numeracy.

This paper reports on the findings of a study of Ghanaian student teachers’ perceptions of themselves as agents of social justice, capable of dismantling barriers to learning in classrooms. The project (an ethnographic study at a College of Education which concludes in July 2015) is using Amartya Sen’s capability approach to map how these perceptions of agency are embedded or disrupted by institutional and pedagogical processes within a pre-service teacher education programme.

The paper outlines student teachers’ developing understandings of the ‘non-generalist needs’ of the children they will teach and the capabilities they seek to develop in order to address them. It suggests that while student teachers’ confidence in their ability to create inclusive, equitable and sustainable learning environments increases, their understanding of diverse learning needs contracts, rather than expands, through the curriculum and learning environments of the Diploma in Education.