In line with national policy requirements, educators are increasingly addressing
forms of social justice education by focusing on classroom pedagogies and
educational practices to combat different forms of oppression such as racism and
sexism. As all educators have a role to play in dismantling oppression and generating
a vision for a more socially just future, teacher education has the responsibility
to capacitate pre-service teachers to work in areas of social justice education.
It is, however, difficult to conceptualise programmes for social justice education
without considering the interconnection between various social identities and how
such identities can feed into critical agency and education for social justice.
Working with the assumption that white women teachers must be part of the solution
to bring about social change in South African education, we used in-depth interviewing
to explore pre-service teachers’ emerging identities as teachers, and how
these identities are connected to notions of critical agency and a stance towards
social justice.

doi: 10.15700/saje.v31n3a533