Theories of justice among eight-year-olds

Exploring teaching for an emerging ability to critically analyse justice issues in social science

Abstract

The study addresses the question of what conditions of teaching that benefits the development of the ability to critically analyse issues of justice in early social science and civics education. It also presents some indications of this emerging ability, where students treat the concept of justice not as a stated or explained fact or viewpoint but as a contested concept that needs critical examination. The analysis shows the possibility for eight-year-olds to start learning how to reason about justice as an essentially contested concept and to start participating in critical analyses of societal issues of distributive justice in a qualified way. This article discusses how teaching can be designed to help younger students develop and qualify the ability to analyse justice issues and proposes indications of such an ability.