Enhancing social justice? : Experimenting with social media in preservice teacher education at Makerere University in Uganda

Abstract

This chapter investigates the use of social media as educational tools that can enhance social justice. Rather than focusing on learning, the chapter asks how local social innovation – a new practice of using wikis as a pedagogical tool in a particular way in a specific context – can enable social justice first, in the form of novel, less hierarchical pedagogical relationships and, second, the inclusion of diverse ethnic voices. It first reviews how educational research discusses the notion of social justice in a wide variety of ways and then presents a case of experimenting the use of wikis to educate preservice teachers at Makerere University, Uganda. The analysis of interviews with participants shows the particular ways in which wikis used in discussing the topic of ethnicity enhanced dialogue and collaboration and enabled various voices to be heard, potentially contributing to the practices of future teachers to promote social justice in the multi-ethnic context of Uganda.