Many students at Western are highly interested in working with children and youth in a variety of settings to foster social justice. This program is designed to support that desire.
We work to prepare youth workers, professional educators, counselors, and community organizers who understand and effectively use social justice frameworks, critical reflection and praxis to address equity issues in formal and informal educational settings, nonprofit, public service, and private organizations.
Key concepts that thread through the program include: critical and decolonizing theories and pedagogies, studies of the social and political context of education in it broadest sense, the construction of individual and collective identities, systems and mechanisms of social and cultural reproduction, critical consciousness, and resources, forms of resistance and processes of empowerment.
