Carving out a hybrid space: a self-study of contextualizing teaching for social justice in South Korea

Throughout the world, issues of justice, equity, and diversity have been extensively discussed and are now ubiquitous in educational research circles under the overarching term, teaching for social justice. The expansion and worldwide popularity of teaching for social justice is promising, but it opens up new challenges with contextualization: situating the global-scale discourse within local and national contexts. With careful attention to the context of South Korea, this self-study illuminates one teacher educator’s struggle to integrate social justice teaching with the nation’s culture and education system. Guided by hybridity theory, the findings provide a detailed description of the course improvement, focusing on how the teacher educator interpreted and responded to context-specific tensions encountered in each academic year. The discussion highlights tensions and dilemmas that might be encountered by teacher educators who practice social justice teaching in countries where there are curricular standards at the national level; teachers serve as government officials; and, in spite of increasing diversity, student demographics are still homogeneous. Based on the findings, instructional strategies for carving out third space in the practice of social justice teaching are provided.