ABSTRACT
Education, especially social justice education, is about change. The hope is to transform or broaden attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. We may use a variety of strategies: cognitive strategies that offer new information or analyses; behavioral strategies that foster interpersonal contact or participation in new experiences; or emotional strategies that encourage empathy and personal insight. However, an educator cannot make someone change. Rather, we can provide the context, content, and process that allow an individual to grow. There are many things that affect whether there will be shifts in someone’s views
or actions, including one’s psychological state, personality structure, previous experiences, time in one’s life, and relationship with the educator and colleagues/ classmates. These aspects all have an impact on a person’s openness to learning and change. Just as we cannot control the experience of each individual, we cannot control many of the other factors that influence one’s growth. In the time that we work with someone, they may not be able or willing to engage in a process of reflection and change. We can just do our best to understand the people we are working with, and to provide the ingredients that we believe will most facilitate their education. In this chapter, I will discuss several theoretical frameworks that I find helpful in
designing and facilitating educational experiences, and in understanding the perspectives and behaviors of people from privileged groups. They will be addressed in relation to diversity and social justice education, though their relevance extends to other contexts. I will primarily focus on developmental perspectives as related to personal growth in general, and to intellectual development and social identity development in particular.
