Thematic Analysis and Poetic Inquiry of Educators' Meaning-Making and Sense-Making of Social Justice

Abstract

This paper presents a qualitative study that explores how educators in higher education construct their meaning of social justice. The data consists of transcripts of personal stories shared by three subjects in a public panel discussion. The data analysis employs two complementary methods: thematic analysis and poetic inquiry and analysis. The thematic analysis identifies two main themes: reflection from life events and heightened self-awareness, which illustrate how the subjects' life experiences and perceptions have shaped their understanding of social justice. The poetic inquiry and analysis transform the subjects' voices into narrative and lyrical poems that evoke the emotional and experiential aspects of their stories. The paper explores the consequences of the findings for campus programming and social justice education. This paper also reflects on the benefits and challenges of using thematic analysis and poetic inquiry as qualitative research methods.The dual approach illuminates the complexities of social justice in education, contributing to a more holistic understanding.

Received: 3 April 2024 | Revised: 8 May 2024 | Accepted: 29 May 2024 

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to this work.

Data Availability Statement

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.

Author Contribution Statement

Ishwarya Narayanan Iyer: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data Curation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Visualization, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition; Sridhar Ramachandran: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data Curation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Visualization, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition.