Integrating Social Justice in Health Care Curriculum: Antiracist Approaches for Nursing

This paper discusses the relevance of a critical antidiscriminatory pedagogy for nursing (CADP) in integrating social justice in health care curriculum. It argues that adopting a CADP offers opportunities for nurses and future nurses to develop their capacity to counteract racism and other forms of individual and systemic discrimination in health care. The paper explores the place and relevance of a CADP in nursing education, and how it can positively impact caring practices and change conditions of social injustice. It also discusses the limitations of culturally congruent care and multicultural approaches in addressing discrimination and racism issues in healthcare. The paper proposes a CADP as a promising way to translate social justice into nursing education through transformative learning.

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Integrating social justice in health care curriculum: Drawing on antiracist approaches
toward a critical antidiscriminatory pedagogy for nursing
Blanchet Garneau, A., Browne, A.J., Varcoe, C.
Suggested citation: Blanchet Garneau, A., Browne, A.J., Varcoe, C. (2016). Integrating social
justice in health care curriculum: Drawing on antiracist approaches toward a critical
antidiscriminatory pedagogy for nursing. 2nd International Critical Perspectives in Nursing and
Healthcare, Sydney, Australia.
Abstract
Nursing as a discipline has a unique contribution to advancing the social justice agenda in
healthcare practices and education. However, even if social justice is claimed to be a core value
of the profession, researchers, practicing nurses, educators, and students are continually
challenged to understand how social justice could be enacted in caring practices. In this paper, we
discuss the place and relevance of a critical antidiscriminatory pedagogy for nursing (CADP). We
argue that, because discrimination is inherent to the production and maintenance of inequities and
injustices, adopting a CADP offers opportunities for nurses and future nurses to develop their
capacity to counteract racism and other forms of individual and systemic discrimination in health
care. Grounded in critical theories and pedagogies, this approach involves an explicit
examination of structural conditions and power dynamics, and a praxis informed by critical
consciousness that can positively impact caring practices and change conditions of social
injustice. A CADP challenges the liberal individualist paradigm, as well as culturalist and
racializing processes prevalent in nursing education and situates nursing practice as responsive to
health inequities. Thus, a CADP is a promising way to translate social justice into nursing
education through transformative learning.

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Background
A growing body of research continues to demonstrate the profound effects of health and social
inequities on peoples’ health, access to care and overall well-being. Knowing that race and
racism are key determinants of health inequities (Krieger, 2014; Solar & Irwin, 2010), racializing
and discriminatory processes are primary targets for social justice interventions. However, racial
discrimination rarely operates in isolation from other social dynamics. For example, experiences
of discrimination have been shown to be amplified by issues of poverty, substance use, or
stigmatizing chronic conditions such as HIV or mental health issues (Varcoe, Browne, & Ponic,
2013). Varcoe et al. (2013) argue that while the impacts of discrimination may be interpersonal
and obvious, they are more likely to be systematic, built into the structures of society, and often
invisible. Discrimination then refers to “all means of expressing and institutionalizing social
relationships of dominance and oppression” (Krieger, 2014, p. 250).
In this paper, we focus attention on the value-added of focusing on multiple, intersecting forms of
discrimination, including for example, the stigma of poverty, the impact of racialization, ageism,
and gendered inequities, among others, and how these are often co-constituted determinants of
health and well-being for individuals, communities, and populations. We pay particular attention
to systemic discrimination as inherent to the production and maintenance of health and social
inequities and injustices (Krieger, 2014; Marmot, Friel, Bell, Houweling, & Taylor, 2008), and
the potential of a critical antidiscriminatory pedagogy (CADP) to enhance the capacity for
nursing to address key social justice issues. We argue that integrating CADP in nursing education
holds promise for moving social justice as a professional value into transformative learning and
action.
Approaches to Addressing Social Justice and Heath Inequities in Nursing
To address health and healthcare inequities, scholars and nursing educators have advocated for
curricular changes based on the principles of social justice (Chinn, 2014; Hardy, 2011). As
Thorne (2014) argues, even if some scholars have operated from a stance of liberal individualism,
social justice “has been a dominant normative position for nursing for as long as we have been

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professionalized” (p.79). However, Canales and Drevdahl (2014) argue that even if social justice
is at the core of the nursing discipline, it is generally absent or may operate as mere rhetoric in
the nursing curriculum.
Culturally congruent care and multicultural approaches
Because inequities and injustices are hypervisible for racialized groups, the translation of social
justice in nursing practice and education has been dominated by attention to cultural sensitivity,
drawing on a plethora of theories and models orienting nursing practice and education towards
culturally congruent care (Andrews & Boyle, 2002; Campinha-Bacote, 1998; Leininger, 1991;
Papadopoulos, Tilki, & Taylor, 1998; Purnell & Paulanka, 2008). These theories and models
have been developed from a cultural diversity and multiculturalist perspective, often founded in
culturalist ideology, which is prominent in nursing and promoted by a majority of schools,
universities, and other public institutions (Vandenberg & Kalischuk, 2014). In such approaches,
health behaviors, for example, are seen as primarily determined by an individual's presumed
ethnocultural, and often racialized identity. As a consequence, and in concert with the long
recognized dominance of liberal individualism in nursing (Browne, 2001), racialism and
culturalism are frequently used to explain behaviors and health issues (Browne & Reimer-
Kirkham, 2014; Varcoe et al., 2013). This can lead to practices that separate culture from its
social, economic and political context and reinforce racializing and intersecting culturalist
processes (Blanchet Garneau, 2016; Downing & Kowal, 2011). Recent empirical studies have
highlighted that educational approaches focusing on culture alone are not sufficient to address
discrimination and racism issues in healthcare (Allen, Brown, Duff, Nesbitt, & Hepner, 2013;
Hardy, 2011). Thus, even with the best intention of providing culturally congruent care,
multicultural approaches have failed to challenge racism and discrimination at the level of
clinical practice, as well as at the organizational and systemic levels.
Racial discrimination and anti-racist approaches
In concert with the critiques of individualistic and multicultural approaches in nursing education,
some authors have argued for a critical turn cultural competence and toward the inclusion of
concepts related to racism and other individual and systemic forms of discrimination in its
conceptualization and in health professionals’ education (Almutairi & Rodney, 2013; Blanchet

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Garneau & Pepin, 2015; Herring, Spangaro, Lauw, & McNamara, 2013; Sakamoto, 2007). For
example, strategies involving critical reflection (Blanchet Garneau, 2016) and reflexive
antiracism training (Franklin, Paradies, & Kowal, 2014) have been presented as promising
alternative to multiculturalist education. These strategies include reflection upon the sources and
impacts of discrimination and racism in society while avoiding essentialist perspectives on
culture.
Antiracist pedagogy is theoretically grounded in the critical pedagogy and orients students
through an analysis of systems of oppression and domination to « explain and counteract the
persistence and impact of racism using praxis as its focus to promote social justice for the
creation of a democratic society in every respect » (Blakeney, 2005, p. 119). However, as much
as anti-racist pedagogy has to offer to nursing education in terms of promoting reflection and
action on the structural causes of racism, it is imperative that nursing education prepares nurses
not only to address racism as a basic social process with harmful impacts but racism as it
intersects with multiple social locations, such as gender and class. If social justice is a goal of
nursing, an approach is required that takes into account multiple intersecting forms of structural
and interpersonal discrimination, with an emphasis on racism. The CADP we discuss in this
paper builds on ideas related to anti-racist approaches, but it extends beyond its singular
dimension to an intersectional perspective. CADP also pushes beyond culturally sensitive,
tolerant, and respectful attitudes promoted by multiculturalist approaches.
Expanding Beyond Anti-racist and Multiculturalist Perspectives
A CADP both acknowledges and challenges the long tradition of liberal individualism in
healthcare, as well as culturalist and racializing processes prevalent in nursing. In this approach,
education based on developing humanistic care that is sensitive and respectful, without
addressing structural conditions related to health and healthcare is insufficient (Dovidio, 2015).
Building on antiracist pedagogy and developed from a critical perspective, the CADP we discuss
in this paper extends beyond an individualistic and essentialist perspective of discrimination.
Indeed, it is grounded in an intersectional perspective, which investigates “the interaction of
numerous characteristics of vulnerable populations, not only at the individual level but also at

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structural levels so as to capture the multiple contexts that shape individual lives and health
statuses” (Dhamoon & Hankivsky, 2011, p. 16). Intersectional perspectives are useful in drawing
attention to complex dynamics of racism, gendered inequities, economic disparities, and other
social processes, and how they interact and are often co-constituted to influence health and well-
being. Thus we focus on racial discrimination, keeping in mind these complex dynamics, and
drawing on intersectional theory to illuminate them.
A CADP offers a framework for health care professionals to analyze power relations at multiple
levels and in multiple intertwined contexts to look at and disrupt structural dynamics producing
and reproducing systemic discrimination. It gives them the opportunity to develop strategies to
change conditions of social injustices.
The Aims and Features of a CADP
A CADP is closely linked to its critical theoretical roots as it aims to foster transformative
learning oriented toward action to counteract the effects of discrimination both at individual and
systemic levels in healthcare. To achieve this transformative learning, two processes are central
to a CADP: an explicit examination of structural conditions and power dynamics and a praxis
informed by critical consciousness.
An explicit examination of structural conditions and power dynamics
A CADP brings a contextualized perspective on culture and health, which helps to understand the
power relations and dynamics of oppression in health care and to act upon structural inequities
such as discrimination and structural racism. Doane and Varcoe (2015) argue that health
professionals need to simultaneously intervene to address structural conditions at the contextual
level. Hence, nurses ought to develop skills to infuse their caring practices with a contextualized
view to counteract racism and discrimination in healthcare and address health inequities
(Thompson, 2014). A CADP shifts the mere act of discrimination between two persons to an
analysis of structural processes by looking at power relations at play in discriminatory processes.
A CADP is then explicitly concerned with power relations, knowing that power operates at all
levels and not just in a hierarchical, top-down manner.

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Critical thinking is essential to analyze of structural conditions and power dynamics involved in
the interlocking systems of oppression embedded in society and affecting health and healthcare.
Developing critical thinking among students and nurses is central to a CADP. However, critical
thinking as part of a CADP departs from an analytic philosophy perspective, which frames how
critical thinking is currently conceived and taught in nursing. Following this perspective, thinking
critically focuses on cognitive processes, such as recognizing false inferences and logical
fallacies, and being able to distinguish opinion from evidence (Brookfield, 2007). Although these
are essential intellectual functions for nursing practice, this focus on cognitive processes tends to
neglect social and political critique (Kincheloe, 2000). From a critical theoretical perspective,
educators acknowledge the multiple methods of producing knowledge and challenge bipolar and
true-or-false epistemologies in the service of challenging normative ideas and approaches, and to
shifting the status quo. They advocate for diverse perspectives on similar events and the
importance of contextuality. Critical pedagogy leads students and nurse to engage in a reflexive
dialogue to analyze ways power operates and its effects on social structures. The legitimacy of
power structures is then challenged and leads students and nurses to be able to challenge the
status quo.
A praxis informed by critical consciousness
Praxis is the dialectical relation between theory and practice, where reflection facilitates “a
dialogue between theory and practice to develop a new understanding of the world of practice,
and a new ability to change practice” (Nairn, Chambers, Thompson, McGarry, & Chambers,
2012, p. 190). In critical pedagogy, Freire (1970) conceptualizes praxis as simultaneous reflection
and action to transform the world. The processes of reflection and action both interact to develop
critical consciousness among students and give them the power to act and resolve or change
situations (Freire, 1970).
The development of critical consciousness is inherent to a CADP because it involves new forms
of understanding that connect one more directly to acting to counteract discrimination. A CADP
considers that structural and interpersonal discrimination are inseparable and positions the
individual within the larger forces at play in discriminatory processes. It supports students and

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nurses in developing a new understanding of their social location and focusing their attention on
their responsibility for action – even if they perceive themselves as separate from or not
implicated in the conditions that give rise to discrimination. They are invited to critically think
about their social location and uncover structural and systemic taken-for-granted assumptions that
shape their practice. The exploration of personal experience as structurally produced is then
always linked to a contextualized perspective of the world and with knowledge of how one can
counteract the effects of discrimination in healthcare. Critical consciousness is then different
from consciousness raising. Being aware of racism and discrimination in not enough, and a
CADP helps students to articulate this critical consciousness with action. If only consciousness is
raised without articulating it with action, there is a risk that this awareness causes feelings of
helplessness and powerlessness among students, and paralyze their action (Mooney & Nolan,
2006). In line with a critical theoretical stance, one alternative is to reorient reflection toward
social, political, economic, cultural contexts within which a person live and reflect on how this
context is shaping his or her everyday life and actions. Examining the self from a critical
perspective thus tend to avoid feelings of guilt and shame regarding privileged social locations
and orient students towards responsibility for action grounded in contextualized knowledge. For
example, from a CADP perspective, Euro-Canadian middle-class students are not viewed as
being responsible for what they might construct as their White privilege but are encouraged to
take responsibility for their action or inaction about intersecting forms of discrimination in health
care. Being aware without invoking guilt or attributing responsibility for this context is one way
to foster agency instead of blaming one for his or her social position (Young, 2011).
“We must lift as we climb”: Educating to uncover, challenge and disrupt discriminatory
processes
Teaching from a critical antidiscriminatory perspective implies to teach with a specific social and
political intent, a transformative impetus, which is to act upon individual and systemic
discrimination. “Lift as we climb” was the motto of the National Association of Colored
Women’s Clubs founded in 1896. The idea behind this phrase is that transformative processes are
collective and people need each other to make significant changes in the world. Transformative
processes require a social movement across lines of race, gender, and class, and at multiple levels

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of organization of the society in which we live. The implementation of a CADP at the curriculum
level will then involve changes in institutional policies and procedures, and in teaching
approaches (Rowan et al., 2013; Thackrah & Thompson, 2013).
Critically conscious educators for collective and safe learning
We suggest that collective learning might be well suited to develop critical consciousness and
foster transformative learning among students and nurses. However, group learning also brings
challenges related to power dynamics amongst team members. Authors such as Ellsworth (1989),
Gore (1992), and Lather (1992) have highlighted the uncovered division in critical pedagogy
between the « critically aware teachers » and the « ideologically duped students » (Brookfield,
2007, p. 327). Gore (1992) and Lather (1992) have both argued that when the focus is only on
developing critical consciousness of the learners, educators tend to assume the correctness of
their ideological reading of the world. Ellsworth (1989) raised that educators ought to take into
account their own positionalities and learned racism, classism, or sexism. The adoption of an
intersectionality lens in a CADP allows considering the positionality of the educators and their
self-criticality as equally important as those of the learners. Thus, educators, as well as learners,
can learn from becoming critically conscious. Educators must engage in self-criticism about the
ideologies that underlie teaching methods because teaching can also lend itself to the
reproduction of social inequities. Educators must, therefore, avoid indoctrinating students but
stimulate them to examine the way power and knowledge work together and reinforce one
another.
Following the same logic, we must not assume that classrooms are safe heavens. As Brookfield
(2007, p. 359) states, "Neither learners nor teachers leave their racial, class, or gender identities at
the classroom door, nor do they forget their previous participation in discussions with all the
humiliations and manipulations these often entailed." There are many times in a group where
expressing one's voice may not feel safe. Educators can most certainly suggest ways to foster a
safe learning environment, but we cannot assume that they have the power to create spaces that
are free of prejudice. In addition, silence should not be automatically associated to voicelessness
but could also be considered a deliberate political choice (Ellsworth, 1989). We believe that
creating a safe environment to question what is taken for granted and to imagine ways to do and

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think things differently is a collective responsibility that is shared by educators and learners.
Conclusion
The nursing discipline has a unique contribution to advancing social justice in healthcare
practices and education. Considering the multidimensionality and the various interpretation of
social justice, we do not presume that a CADP is the one and only way to translate social justice
in nursing education. As classrooms and workplaces are subject to infinite possibilities and
combinations of learning preferences and intersecting social positions, a variety of approaches
and methodologies will be necessary to develop the field of CADP. Efforts to integrate social
justice into nursing education from multiple perspectives are encouraged in this direction.
Suggested discussion points:
- Does CADP offer anything new to our understanding of what is needed to affect
transformative shifts in nursing education?
- How is support for CADP possible among professoriates that are not familiar with these
critical theoretical underpinnings?
- We state in the paper that "educators must engage in self-criticism" and "educators must,
therefore, avoid indoctrinating students but stimulate them to examine the way power and
knowledge work together and reinforce one another," how can these « musts » be
achieved?

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