efl teachers’ understanding of classroom (in)justice: conceptual metaphors as evidence

Research on classroom justice has been growing over the last 50 years. however, the majority of the studies have adopted a quantitative approach and explored students’ views. further, such research in second/foreign language education has been limited. to fill these research gaps, the present study explored iranian efl teachers’ conceptualizations of classroom justice. purposeful sampling was used to select 28 novice and veteran teachers to fill out an open-ended metaphor-eliciting questionnaire, which prompted them to think about metaphors for (in)justice in the classroom. the data were analyzed qualitatively twice: first, through the lens of conceptual metaphor theory (lakoff & johnson, 1980) and second, based on organizational justice theory. findings of the first round of analysis indicated that justice and injustice were not the mirror image of each other as participants used different metaphors and underlying concepts to conceptualize them. moreover, it was found that novice teachers initially had a less clear and structured conception of justice compared to more veteran teachers. however, as they thought more about the prompts, they were able to develop more well-formed ideas of (in)justice on par with the veteran teachers. the results of the second round of analysis suggest that half of the conceptual metaphors pointed to a unidimensional or holistic view of classroom justice while the rest indicated a dimensional conceptualization, referring to distributive (e.g., equity and equality), procedural (e.g., bias suppression) and interactional (e.g., caring) dimensions of classroom justice. however, other important principles of classroom justice (e.g., consistency, accuracy, and giving voice in class procedures; politeness and truthfulness in interactions) were absent in teachers’ conceptualizations. the findings have implications for teacher education programs to raise the awareness of both novice and veteran language teachers about a more comprehensive conceptualization of dimensions and principles of classroom justice.