Social Justice Research in Physical Education Teacher Education: Contextualized in the United States

Overview & Synopsis

Purpose: The primary purpose of this comprehensive literature review was to analyze the current body of social justice research in Physical Education Teacher Education conducted in the United States exclusively. As a secondary purpose, we defined social justice as articulated in the Physical Education Teacher Education literature and summarized discourse undergirding social justice principles. Method: The research design was documentary analysis with keyword searches used to identify articles from selected electronic databases over a 15-year period from 2005 through 2020. Thirteen articles met all inclusion criteria (i.e., empirical studies). These studies were retrieved, reviewed, coded, analyzed thematically, and summarized. Findings/Discussion: From this process, six major recurrent themes emerged: (a) social justice in Black context; (b) learning social justice; (c) diversified and racialized identities; (d) competencies and pedagogies; (e) viewpoints; and (f) criticality and pluralism.