Student Affairs and Services Leadership Role Towards Social Justice in Higher Education
Purpose
The role of Student Affairs and Services (SAS) towards ensuring social justice in higher education is well recognized, with some of the core tenets driving the profession being access, equality, diversity, success and development. Consequently, student affairs practitioners and researchers have been argued as well positioned to contribute holistically to student development, support and success and could play a strategic role in transforming higher education (January, 2023). Previous analysis of a decade of student affairs literature published in one of the key journals on Student Affairs in Africa, finds that the field more strongly conceptualizes its professionalization/ism in relation to social justice as opposed to the more ‘traditional’ aspects associated with professionalism; such as credentialism, standards and societal status (Wildschut & Luescher, 2023). This raises the question of the potentially unique nature of SAS as profession in the African higher education context.
Methods and content
To explore potential continuities and divergences, this chapter will build on this novel dataset of 240 substantive items of publication over 10 volumes of the Journal of Student Affairs in Africa. It will select a comparator journal in the North and construct a similar dataset. The same process of systematic review, content and discourse analysis will be applied, with more detailed coding of different aspects constituting the social justice discourse across journals.
Contribution
Selecting a comparator journal in the North and conducting the same analysis over the same period will allow exposition, firstly, of the extent to which the same recognition and foregrounding of the social justice aims of the profession is evident. Secondly, the more detailed social justice coding will allow insight into potential North/South differences in the way in which SAS researchers and practitioners conceptualise their leadership role as it relates to ensuring social justice in higher education.