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PREFACE: 
 SOCIAL JUSTICE IN CHILD, YOUTH AND FAMILY STUDIES 

 

Shannon A. Moore 

 

 

Abstract: This special issue of the International Journal of Child, Youth and 
Family Studies offers critical insights into contemporary social justice issues 
impacting the lives of children and young people, their caregivers, and their 
communities. The authors write from a range of fields as they question taken-for-
granted knowledges within social work, child welfare, health promotion, 
psychology, sociology, education, human rights, and women’s studies. As such, 
the collection includes feminist, post-colonial, post-structural, and post-modern 
analyses organized through an editorial standpoint of critical pedagogy. The 
preface offers additional insights into my own personal, professional, 
epistemological, and pedagogical locations that illuminate my role of guest editor, 
and further contextualizes the transdisciplinary selection of manuscripts within a 
social justice discourse.  
 
Keywords: social justice; child, youth and family studies; careers; 
transdisciplinary critical pedagogy 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
Shannon A. Moore, Ph.D. is Director, Centre for Women’s Studies and Associate 
Professor in the Department of Child and Youth Studies at Brock University. 
 
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Shannon Moore, 
Department of Child and Youth Studies, Brock University, 500 Glenridge Avenue, 
St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, L2S 3A1. Contact: smoore@brocku.ca 
 

 

 



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The selection of articles in this volume focuses on social justice issues within 
child, youth, and family studies, and has been shaped by my epistemological and personal 
standpoint. Specifically, this standpoint comes from a feminist perspective wherein 
gender and power relations can be seen to impact our ways of knowing, and further, 
situate the knower as a researcher, a pedagogue, and in my instance, as a practitioner 
(Harding, 1986, 1991, 2004; Hartsock, 1983; Smith, 1987, 2005). As Levison (2000) 
further explains, there is a clear relationship between the visibility of women’s ways of 
knowing and children’s perspectives: “There is a striking parallel between the evolution 
of feminist research….to gendered analysis and feminist standpoint theory – and 
emerging directions for studies of children and childhood” (p. 126). I hold a Ph.D. in 
Counselling Psychology and since 2000 have been a registered clinical counsellor and 
psychotherapist in Canada. From this foundation, I integrated feminist and indigenous 
epistemologies that for me formed a transdisciplinary theoretical foundation for praxis in 
service delivery systems across Canada, Scotland, and England. Moreover, as the mother 
of two young children, my viewpoint has been shaped by two decades of counselling the 
children, young people, and caregivers who have accessed the various social service 
systems where I have found employment. These lenses shape how I ask questions and 
seek answers about social justice issues within the “spaces of childhood” (Moss & Petrie, 
2002). 

 
In an effort to move from the epistemological (and ontological) debates over 

contested definitions of social justice, I take this premise forward: Social justice is the act 
of raising awareness of injustice, and taking action to address inequities with the aim of 
creating a world with less suffering (Moore, 2008). This definition is associated with 
notions of praxis discussed in the work of critical educator Paulo Freire (1970, 1985) who 
began as a teacher in poverty-stricken northeastern Brazil during the 1960s, and was 
introduced to North Americans through his seminal text, Pedagogy of the Oppressed 
(Freire, 1970). By raising political awareness, he proposed an approach to education that 
is focused on critical reflection and praxis. Critical pedagogues encourage individuals “to 
think, to reflect, and to act, in order to create a more democratic egalitarian society” 
(Kaufmann, 2000, p. 432; see also Moore, 2006). They also propose that the 
responsibilities of those who have privilege in society include actions leading to greater 
social justice for marginalized individuals and groups. In line with critical educators 
Henry Giroux and Susan Searls Giroux, for me this means “academics need to connect 
their work to a larger public and assume a measure of responsibility in naming, struggling 
against, and alleviating human suffering” (Giroux & Searls Giroux, 2004, p. 84). Critical 
pedagogues are challenged to open up safer spaces for criticality, and in so doing, attempt 
to be agents of change by taking risks (Moore, 2006; Moore & Mitchell, 2008; Mitchell 
& Moore, 2008). These scholars are aware that practitioners, educators, and academics 
are faced with complex decisions concerning social justice, democracy, and competing 
ethical claims in all aspects of their work (Kincheloe, 2005). Moreover, they engage 
liberation pedagogy with the intention of creating more democratic and egalitarian 
societies through their actions as educators and citizens (Moore, 2006). 

  



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 This critical yet optimistic stance focuses on illuminating the nexus of power and 
knowledge hidden in both academic and policy texts shaping interventions in the lives of 
young people and families. (In this issue, see the contributions of Stevens and Ajandi for 
further discussion). As Sevenhuijsen (1998, p. 123) has affirmed, such texts are “sites of 
power”. She further observes: 
 

By establishing conventions, authoritative repertoires of interpretation and 
frameworks of argumentation and communication, they confer power upon 
preferred modes of speaking and judging, and upon certain ways for expressing 
moral and political subjectivity. Through examining official documents in this 
way it becomes possible to trace both the overt and hidden gender load in their 
vocabulary. (also cited in Moss & Petrie, 2002, p. 81) 

 
 Once again, Sevenhuijsen directs our attention to challenging the taken-for-
granted knowledges embedded within childhood studies. Historically, childhood 
professional training has been dominated by developmental psychologists and notions of 
“the child” divorced from culture, community and history, presenting not as competent or 
powerful, but as a future investment, or an adultist abstraction rooted in the medical 
model (Aitken, 2001; see also Mitchell, 2003; Burman, 2008a, 2008b, 2008c). These 
categorizations reflect a type of modernist “arborescent thought” thus reinforcing notions 
of lesser power and passivity for young people, and not infrequently, the women 
providing the bulk of their care: 
  

The study of children and childhood has historically been accorded a marginal 
place in the health, human, and social sciences. In part, this is due to prevailing 
Western ideology that constructs children as passive, presocial, innocent, and 
vulnerable. The dominant discourse is further characterized by the treatment of 
children as a homogeneous group, devoid of race, class, or gender. (Berman, 
2003, p. 102) 

 
 In medical literature and developmental psychology, ideas are generally 
understood to have originated as universal truths. This quest for the ultimate axiom has 
been associated with masculine epistemologies and the establishment of binary positions 
suspended in confrontation and struggles for domination. By contrast, feminist 
epistemologies are often drawn towards connectedness, continuities, convergence, and 
relational constructions (Hartstock, 1983). (In this issue, see Madan for further 
discussion). Again as Sevenhuijsen (1998) has suggested, the inclusion of a feminist ethic 
of care and relational vocabulary shapes different questions and answers about childhood 
making it more likely we will develop new conceptions of what constitutes social justice. 
This conceptualization of a gendered, fluid, and socially constructed world view has been 
described as “rhizomatic” thought in contradistinction to the set trajectory of arborescent 
thought (Jung, 1956; see also Holmes & Gastaldo, 2004; Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; 
Moore, 2006; Moore & Mitchell, 2008). 
 
 Socially constructed knowledge has established a solid foundation in sociological 
discourse throughout the 1980s and is integral to understanding the sociology of 



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childhood (James & Prout, 1990; Jenks, 1996; Matthews, 2007; see also Mitchell in this 
issue for further discussion) and more critical psychological perspectives (Burman, 
2008a; in this issue, see Grondin for further discussion). Matthews (2007) has explained 
the epistemology of such historically and culturally situated forms of knowledge as 
follows: 
  

Both the socialization and the developmental psychology perspectives push 
scholars to write about children as if all children were the same regardless of 
social location or context. The “new” sociological perspective stresses “the 
plurality of childhoods” not only with the same society but also across the settings 
in which children conduct their everyday lives … Historical and anthropological 
research provides strong evidence that the nature of childhood and children varies 
through time and across society. (p. 325) 
 

 The au courant notion of the “social studies of childhood” (Matthews, 2007, p. 
330; see also Prout, 2005) now draws attention to a merger of far-ranging disciplines 
from anthropology, cultural studies, psychology, history, education, and law, as well as 
sociology (Montgomery, Burr, & Woodhead, 2003; in this issue, see also Mitchell for 
further discussion). Similarly, Burman (1995, 1996) has encouraged scholars to 
investigate the linkages between women and children in particular by experimenting in 
disciplinary and cultural tourism. 
  
 My experience as a counsellor for children and their carers (and most particularly 
within mental health settings) has shown me that there is an inverse relationship between 
the number of professionals intervening in young people’s lives and the positive 
outcomes that one may expect. In this way, I have observed that young people are more 
likely to “fall through the cracks” of service delivery systems if professionals charged 
with their care hold tight to disciplinary knowledge and power. The impact is massive as 
collaboration, knowledge exchange, and socially just action become paralyzed (see 
Moore & Mitchell, 2009, p. 36). Disciplinary boundaries are another artifact of the 
modernist notion of truth that holds only that which can be objectively evaluated in the 
greatest esteem: 
  

In truth there is little that is merely measurable … there is an inverse relationship 
between importance and what can be easily measured. The deeper we venture 
beneath the surface, the more profound the moral and spiritual character of 
learning and the more elusive the measurement becomes (Scottish Council 
Foundation, as cited in Moss & Petrie, 2002, p. 67). 
 

 Thus, as Levison (2000) claims, if our aim is to improve the quality of knowledge 
creation in childhood studies and extant practice within professional settings, we must 
move away from “rigid disciplinary boundaries and limiting entry points for ideas” (p. 
131) towards a transdisciplinary study of childhood (Mitchell & Moore, 2008; Moore & 
Mitchell, 2009). As Klein (2004) explains, “The problems of society are increasingly 
complex and interdependent. Hence, they are not isolated to particular sectors or 



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disciplines, and they are not predictable. They are emergent phenomena with non-linear 
dynamics, uncertainties…” (p. 517). 
 
 Transdisciplinarity involves moving beyond all disciplines “into a fabulous space 
of new knowledge” (Nicolescu, 2005, p. 3). It concerns emergent new thinking, new 
ways of accessing old ways of thinking, construction of new ways of knowing, and praxis 
in order to transcend tired, dichotomous critiques (Moore & Mitchell, 2008). Transdis-
ciplinary approaches to science, politics, education, and cultural studies of media and the 
arts sharply contrast multi- or even inter-disciplinary methodologies, and are 
fundamentally associated with critique. A transdisciplinary epistemology (Moore, 2006; 
Moore & Mitchell, 2008, 2009) – defined as a “deep interdisciplinarity” by Kincheloe 
and McLaren (2005) – holds key ontological concerns for “the relationship between 
individuals and their social contexts” where an “ever evolving criticality … does not 
determine how we see the world but helps us devise questions and strategies” for 
exploring our social spheres (Kincheloe & McLaren, 2005, pp. 303–342). The idea is to 
create spaces for plurality, diversity, and opportunity to encourage open dialogue about 
counter-hegemonic processes. Moreover, through transdisciplinary critical pedagogy 
(Moore, 2006), voices and social issues from the margins enter active discourse to 
promote critical inquiry, consideration of multiple viewpoints and perspectives in 
dialogue with others, and engagement of socially just actions (in this issue, see Moore, 
Gegieckas, Marval, McCauley, & Peloquin; Pon, Gosine, & Phillips; de Finney, Dean, 
Loiselle, & Saraceno for further discussion). 
  

As guest editor for this special issue, I have taken real pleasure in my 
“responsibility … to provide a space where the complexity of knowledge, culture, values 
and social issues can be explored in open and critical dialogue through a vibrant culture 
of questioning” (Giroux & Searls Giroux, 2004, p. 243). Readers are now invited to 
consider the following multiple viewpoints and perspectives in a dialogue with the 
contributors, and to move from simple contention towards a positive transformation of 
the world around them (Nagda, Gurin, & Lopez, 2003; hooks, 2003).  
 



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