Doing Social Justice Education: A Practitioner's Guide for Workshops and Structured Conversations
By: D. Scott Tharp, Office of the Vice President for Student Affairs; with Roger A. Moreano
"Doing Social Justice Education" provides a succinct but comprehensive introduction to the planning, design, facilitation and assessment of social justice experiences for professional staff and student peer educators. It offers readers a practical framework, hands-on tools and real-world examples for creating effective and positive educational interventions and workshops.
It provides an easy-to-follow five-part framework that ensures both in-person and virtual social justice education experiences are relevant to students’ context, grounded in theory, guided by learning outcomes, designed in congruence with social justice education principles and assessed in practical ways to measure their intended impact on student learning.
(Image courtesy of Stylus Publishing)
What inspired you to write this book?
When I first began to design, facilitate and assess social justice education workshops, I struggled to find resources to help me do this work in a co-curricular context. Multiple books and journals explore various aspects critical to social justice education; however, none of them synthesized these topics or applied them outside of a classroom setting.
Additionally, many professional conferences feature sessions that highlight specific examples of diversity and social justice education programs and workshops; however, few focus on teaching folks how to create these experiences on their own campuses to meet the needs of their student body. These experiences motivated me to document my own process and realize it might be valuable to other educators.
What is the most surprising thing you learned while writing this book?
As a first-time book author, I had no idea what to expect when working with a book publisher. I felt so nervous and intimidated at first. However, my managing editor was absolutely delightful to work with. He was extremely supportive and took extra time to "show me the ropes" of the book publishing world. I did not expect to receive so much personalized care and attention, but I was so grateful to have such a delightful experience!
Persuade someone to read your book in less than 50 words
If the university president asked you to create and implement a social justice workshop two weeks from today while also providing evidence of its impact on student learning, could you do it? If not, this book is for you.
About the author:
D. Scott Tharp is assessment & effectiveness specialist for the Office of the Vice President for Student Affairs. He is a scholar practitioner whose research interests focus on the development and assessment of social justice education curriculum and pedagogical practices. Tharp has published journal articles in the Journal of Whiteness and Education, the Journal of Transformative Education, the Journal for Critical Thought and Praxis, Multicultural Education, and Multicultural Perspectives. He received his Ph.D. in Curriculum Studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and he has served the DePaul community for 12 years, both as a staff professional in Student Affairs and as adjunct faculty in the MSW program.
Publisher, release date:
Stylus Publishing, October 2020