Demanding Justicia: The justice orientations of Oaxaca’s Sección 22 teachers

By Christian Bracho

Faculty member:

Christian A. Bracho, Assistant Professor

Research-at-a-glance:

  • This study’s findings reveal how teachers can enact justice-oriented teaching outside the classroom, through public-facing mobilizations that directly address historical and contemporary injustices.
  • The case of Oaxaca’s Sección 22 relates how teachers can act counter-hegemonically, in ways that directly challenge long-standing practices, offer a unique vision of what it means to be a teacher, and create new possibilities for the teacher role.
  • The findings here also suggest that we must clarify what exactly ‘justice’ means in the local contexts where justice-oriented teachers live and work. 

Summary:

The ‘demand for justice’ is a long-standing principle of Oaxaca’s Sección 22 union chapter, which has led a teachers’ movement since the 1970s that has evolved to meet changing social, political, and economic circumstances. Various researchers around the globe have increasingly linked notions of justice with education, exploring terms like social justice education, justice-oriented teaching, justice-oriented education, and teaching for social justice in a range of contexts, mapping the ways educators integrate these concepts into classrooms and schools. 

Missing from this research, however, is an examination of the ways teachers might practice ‘justice-oriented teaching’ outside the classroom as well, as they participate in movements and struggles. 

Drawing on ethnographic data collected over a five-year period, and on interviews with 40 teachers, teacher educators, union officials, and student teachers, I will map out four ‘justice orientations’ via which Oaxacan teachers demand justice. Sección 22 educators perform justice-oriented teaching along economic, political, cultural, and humanistic orientations, manifesting a widely held belief in Oaxaca that ‘the teacher fighting, is also teaching’. 

This study can inform research about teachers globally enacting justice-oriented pedagogies and practices, not only in the classroom, but also in the public domain as activists, movement actors, and union members.

Citation:

Bracho, C. A. (2025). Globalisation, Societies and Education, 23(1), 350-364.