0.8 Mirci, p., loomis, c., & Hensley, p. (september 2011). social

About the authors

Philip Mirci is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at the University of Redlands.

Corey Loomis is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Education at the University of Redlands.

Phyllis Hensley is an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership at Texas A&M, Corpus Christi.

Introduction

What should professors of educational leadership understand regarding the generation of student engagement in learning in order to assist aspiring administrators in promoting effective teaching and learning? Engagement in learning is defined as students believing they possess the potential to succeed academically (Cambourne, 1993). It reveals the importance of relationships in the learning process (Hensley&Burmeister, 2009; Mirci&Hensley, 2011). When students are marginalized, excluded, negatively labeled, and do not fit what is considered to be normative, they may experience social injustice because of the ways in which oppression have been institutionalized within the education system. For the purposes of this article social justice is defined as the pursuit of equity and the creation of inclusive school cultures that are absent of overt or covert oppression. Oppression is a sense of powerlessness and exclusion. In schools, students face social injustice when they are oppressed based on racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, ableism, audism, sizeism, ageism, and religious intolerance (Mirci&Hensley, 2011).

As a group they are stereotyped at the same time that their experience and situation are invisible in the society in general, and they have little opportunity and little audience for the expression of their experience and perspective of social events … group members suffer random violence and harassment motivated by group hatred or fear. (Young, 1997, p. 262)

A sometimes subtle and not so subtle form of social injustice is evidenced by teachers who have low expectations of students’ intellectual, social, emotional, and ethical success in schooling. Low expectations are conveyed both verbally and nonverbally by acts of exclusion and are reflected in attitudes, beliefs, and practices by some (not all) educators and other stakeholders in education. These, in turn, influence how students targeted for such treatment are influenced to internalize this oppression and low expectations of oneself.