Four Ways to Expand the Foundation for CPED's Social Justice Framework

• Main Author: Four Arrows
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University Library System, University of Pittsburgh 2017-07-01
• Series: Impacting Education
• Online Access: http://impactinged.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/ImpactingEd/article/view/28

This article offers recommendations for deepening and expanding the important ideas about social justice that are presented in the current CPED social justice framework for the EdD. One suggestion is to better articulate the fact that social justice is ultimately inseparable from ecological justice, sustainability and diversity. I also argue that it is best if the proposed framework’s reference to the knowledge economy include awareness of the possibility that it can be as destructive as a material-based one. Although the framework report does mention community as a target for social/ecological justice, sustainability and diversity (SEJSD), it tends to focus primarily on its application in education settings. This paper emphasizes a greater expansion of SEJSD into the world of social/ecological justice education. Finally, I suggest a foundation for CPED’s framework that includes “project-based learning” whereby work on the EdD program’s final project, whether a capstone or dissertation, start “from day one” and be the focal point for all coursework. Such a process, common in most International doctoral programs, will assure SEJSD and mastery of a chosen topic area are at the highest level of interdisciplinary and will help encourage the kind of praxis in the real world the EdD should require, especially in the Trumpian era we entered on January 20, 2017.