The Enactment of Classroom Justice Through Explicit Instruction: Deciphering the Changes in English as a Foreign Language Teachers’ Perceptions and Practices

Abstract

This mixed methods research study investigated if explicit instruction could affect EFL teachers’ perceptions and practices of classroom justice considering its three-dimensional conceptualization based on the social psychology theories of justice, encompassing the distributive, interactional, and procedural justice. To this end, 77 Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers, chosen through maximum variation sampling, attended a four-session online justice-training course. The data were collected both before and after the course intervention through close- and open-ended questionnaires. Quantitative data analysis results, obtained through running paired samples t-tests and Wilcoxon signed ranks tests, indicated that except for the distributive component, the treatment was effective in significantly enhancing the Iranian EFL teachers’ procedural, interactional, and total classroom justice perceptions. Content analysis of the posttest qualitative data, done through MAXQDA, revealed that the participants approved the course usefulness, its significance, and uses of justice enactment strategies in their classroom. Furthermore, they confirmed positive changes in their conceptions and practices of justice because of attending the course and showed enthusiasm in attending more such courses in the future. The convergence of the quantitative and qualitative results in this study demonstrated the effectiveness of the justice-oriented training course for enhancing EFL teachers’ just classroom behaviors. Hence, the results would be fruitful for teacher educators aiming to promote the pre- and in-service EFL teachers’ professional effectiveness through explicit instruction on classroom justice and its use in teacher education programs.

Iranian Efl Teachers’ Expectations and Perceptions About Teacher Classroom Justice Training

“…Moreover, the research findings uncovered that the majority of the participants approved the necessity of receiving training on the rudimental aspects of teacher classroom justice for Iranian EFL teachers. This finding is in line with the results of other studies, which indicated that implicit or explicit increasing of teachers' knowledge and awareness of justice dimensions or principles could positively influence their justice perceptions and practices (Estaji & Zhaleh, 2022b;Kobs et al, 2021;Sonnleitner & Kovacs, 2020). The participants of this study explained that such trainings are essential because the teachers' just behavior in the classroom associates with improving the teacher-student relationships and increasing the students' meaningful learning, class participation, more focusing on academic goals, and interest in teacher and subject matter.…”

“…In other words, the quantitative studies on classroom justice drastically outnumbered the few recent qualitative studies, which attempted to obtain rich, descriptive, and textual accounts of justice from their participants' perspectives. For instance, Chory et al (2017Chory et al ( , 2022, Estaji and Zhaleh (2021a, 2021b, 2022a, 2022b, Horan et al (2010), and employed open-ended justice questionnaires allowing the participants to explicate their responses to the extent that they desired. On the contrary to the majority of studies in the literature, which were mainly psychometrically-driven, these qualitative studies engaged in the content and thematic analyses of the obtained textual data and calculated frequencies only where needed.…”

“…This is because the teacher's role is as essentialif not more significantas that of students in the justice give-and-take process (Estaji & Zhaleh, 2021a). Horan and Myers (2009) and Berti et al's (2010) studies of teachers' perceptions of justice dimensions and principles lighted the way for ensuing the research undertakings in this area, such as those of Gasser et al, (2018), Ehrhardt-Madapathi et al (2018), Sonnleitner and Kovacs (2020), Kobs et al (2021), and Estaji and Zhaleh (2021a, 2021b, 2022b. Overall, the findings of these studies reveal that the teachers' perceptions of justice could be different from those of their students; teachers care about treating their students justly; they attempt to implement justice in all classroom domains of assessment, interactions, learning, and teaching; it is beneficial to educate teachers for justice through implicit or explicit methods of instruction; and increase in the teachers' awareness and knowledge of justice can influence their justice perceptions and practices.…”

Students’ Experiences of Fairness in Online Assessment: A Phenomenological Study in a Higher Education Institution Context

“…A few studies have also used the procedural, distribute, and interactional justice. For example, Estaji and Zhaleh (2021) examined the viewpoints of 31 Iranian language teachers working in private language institutes. Their analysis revealed that while the teachers had different perspectives on classroom fairness, they emphasized the importance of distributive justice (equality, equity, and need), procedural justice (bias suppression, consistency, and voice), and interactional justice (exceptionally caring) in their understanding.…”

EFL Learners' Perceptions of Classroom Justice: Does Teacher Immediacy and Credibility Matter?

“…The principles of equity, need, and equality are used to realize this facet (Jasso et al, 2016 ). This facet is thought to be maintained when learners perceive that the distribution of outcomes is based on their academic endeavors, contributions, and performance (Cropanzano et al, 2015 ; Ehrhardt et al, 2016 ; Estaji and Zhaleh, 2022 ). The second facet of classroom justice, interactional justice, refers to “to perceptions of fairness in the interpersonal treatment received by individuals, mainly as far as the communicative and relational requests that learners address to their teachers are concerned” (Berti et al, 2010 , p. 543).…”