How Can Professors Build Justice in the Classroom?

Can findings from consumer research enhance equality in college classrooms?

 

Justice as “Contract”

 

In a 1999 article for Sloan Management Review (Volume 41.1), Benjamin Schneider and David E. Bowen explore the emotional side of business-consumer interactions. Taking a cue from personality theorists such as Maslow, and from “considerable research in philosophy and psychology,” Schneider and Bowen identify three fundamental consumer needs: security, justice, and self-esteem. Service providers will achieve high customer satisfaction by delivering on all three of these core needs.

 

In particular, Schneider and Bowen discovered that consumer notions of justice are powerful and multi-layered. People demand fairness, but in varying aspects of the service experience and in disparate ways. Moreover, individual expectations of justice are ever adapting and often unspoken: “people have a justice motive that derives from an implicit contract with others and with society” (3).

 

Three Components of Justice: Equity, Equality, Need

 

There are three dimensions to justice from the consumer perspective: distributive justice (is the outcome fair?), procedural justice (were the firm’s methods and procedures fair?), and interactional justice (was I treated fairly by the firm’s employees?). Among these, distributive justice (focusing on outcomes) is possibly the most complex, emanating from three concepts: equity, equality, and need.

 

Equity states that consumers should be rewarded by the firm for their loyalty, investment, and patronage: “I’ve been a loyal customer for 10 years! I deserve preferential treatment.” Equality stipulates that all consumers are treated the same. And need refers to special individual requirements for each consumer that the firm should satisfy.

 

“In effect, then, a customer may define justice as being treated the same as some other customers (on the basis of equity), the same as all other customers (on the basis of equality), or like no other customer (on the basis of need)” (3).

 

As Schneider and Bowen point out, airlines have figured out how to satisfy the overlapping requirements of equity, equality, and need: equity in the form of first-class travel (passengers who fly more or pay more have access to a more comfortable flight); equality in that all passengers in a given class have the same food service options; and need in that families with young children and passengers requiring physical assistance are boarded first.

 

The key, the authors suggest, is that in cases of differential treatment (equity and need), the reasons for treatment must either be publicly known or established in advance by the firm.

 

 

 

 

Syllabus as Arbiter of Distributive Justice

 

How can we apply these findings to interactions in the college classroom? Today’s college students are emotionally intelligent, possessing sharp viewpoints on justice and fairness. While the classroom is not exactly a service experience (tuition doesn’t buy an education, but rather buys access to an education), many parallels can be drawn here from the realm of consumer psychology. Students deserve to be treated fairly; high-achieving students should be rewarded; students with special needs must be accommodated.

 

A good syllabus will address equity, equality, and need. The syllabus acts as an arbiter of distributive justice. If students develop an “implicit contract” of justice between themselves, classmates, and the professor, then the task of the syllabus is to record those implicit notions in concrete form. The syllabus will never exhaustively cover all components of a student’s psychological contract, but it can cover enough ground to ensure that the classroom functions smoothly.

 

In the syllabus, students read about the equity contract: excellent attendance and high-quality work are rewarded with excellent grades and a rich learning experience. Equality comes across in clearly stated policies (on attendance, grading, course expectations, house rules, exam dates, etc.) that apply to everyone. And needs are addressed through learning accommodation services as described in the syllabus, or in special exceptions for students facing emergency situations.

 

Some professors require students to read and sign the syllabus during the first week of class to make this contract “official.” I would recommend publishing the syllabus on the course website with a timestamp, and filing syllabi at the start of the term with your department chair, to certify that the contract is transparent and valid from day one.

 

Beyond the Syllabus: In-Class Interactions

 

But the syllabus doesn’t cover everything. For me, day-to-day in-class interactions are a difficult balancing act. Do I spend more time getting the weakest students up to speed (perhaps an expression of equality), or do I dive deep into critical, nuanced questions posed by high-performing and highly prepared students (an expression of equity)? In its extreme form, the equity route might suggest a meritocracy, whereby only the highest scoring students hold court over in-class discussion.

 

I recently attended a talk by Dr. Raghuram Rajan, celebrated economist and Professor of Finance at Chicago Booth, where this exact issue came up. Teach to the weakest student, and the stronger students feel left out; teach to the strongest, and the weakest are excluded, Rajan pointed out. His suggestion: post the lectures online beforehand, and reserve class time merely for questions, discussion, and application. That way, Rajan explained, each student (regardless of level) may bring their own concerns to the class, and yet learning outcomes are deeper for students who take the initiative to review the lectures carefully. Indeed, I once knew a chemistry professor at Oberlin College who took this very approach.

 

 

 

 

Challenging Cases

 

But this won’t work in all cases. Some students might protest that they don’t have time outside class to study–they may have a distant commute or work multiple jobs to stay afloat. Many college students struggle with homelessness or food insecurity. These students may have no other choice but to wholly depend on class time for learning the material.

 

Moreover, some course subjects can’t be neatly conveyed through online lectures. This is particularly true for musicianship skills classes. In order to effectively teach ear training, I need to be in a room with the students, with a piano, diagnosing their challenges step-by-step and providing customized solutions and practice regimes.

 

One further complication: undergraduates increasingly value one-on-one interaction over open discussion. My hypothesis is that this stems from smartphone use: students are accustomed to posing a specific question (to Google, etc.) and receiving an immediate response. For this reason, students may not realize that, by answering a classmate’s question, I am providing useful information for the entire room. This shifts the student’s definition of equality from equal access to the instructor’s knowledge to equal access to the instructor’s individual attention.

 

In the past three years especially, I have had students visit office hour with excellent questions on the material. “Why didn’t you pose that question in class?” I ask. The answer is often that they prefer to hear from me one-on-one. Or, occasionally, I will hear feedback from students that their sense of equality was violated when I spent more time in class answering a classmate’s question over theirs. When I explain that “all class discussion is for the benefit of everyone,” it comes as a surprise.

 

Make Equality a Routine

 

No teacher can achieve a perfect score in distributive justice. My main recommendation is to instill routines that establish equality in the classroom. Once these practices are regularly occurring, expressions of equity can be added on top where appropriate. I place equality first here, because expressions of equity regularly occur in private through assessment (the grades and feedback each student receives on their classwork). Equality must principally be expressed to the entire group, otherwise those expressions cannot be trusted.

 

How can equality become routine? Simple, practical methods: make sure each student is called on. Go around the room in order, or solicit answers in alphabetical order. Walk around the room and make eye contact with each student. In that little space before class starts, engage all students (not just a select few) in discussion: “How are you? How are your other classes?” As students leave for the day, say goodbye to each one.

 

What about getting weak students caught up? One doesn’t always have time to review old material in class. Make sure that robust systems are in place outside of class to assist students who want extra help. Office hours, TAs, problem sets with solutions, and tutors should be available and plentiful. If you can’t field a question on the spot, list the resources available to that student for answers or outside help. Treat each question as equally valid, even if some questions must be addressed at a later time.

 

 

 

 

Apply Equity Equally

 

Not every student deserves the same reward, but every student deserves some reward. Praise and positive reinforcement are powerful tools. Make sure that each student publicly receives some form of positive mention at least once during the semester. The magnitude doesn’t matter: it could be a large or small mention. Just don’t leave anyone out. As long as each expression of equity is public and is truly earned by the student, you will achieve some measure of distributive justice in the classroom.

 

I refer to this as the “sticker principle.” Some years ago, I was teaching piano lessons at a grade school in Chicago. I thought I was providing good instruction, but I simply couldn’t connect with the students. No matter how nice, fun, or entertaining I tried to be, they never seemed to be “into it.” That’s when my wife asked if I was awarding stickers. A sticker for a good lesson, a sticker for finishing a piece. Once I started rewarding these young students with stickers, their morale and engagement bloomed. 

 

Turns out, college students need their stickers too.

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright 2019 Teddy Niedermaier

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