Disrupting narrow conceptions of justice - Exploring and expanding ‘bullying’ and ‘upstanding’ in a university honors course

Oct 15, 2026

“Upstanding” covers actions rooted in defending one’s beliefs and others, but its broad use can lack direction in critical education. The article argues that effective responses to injustice require upstanding to move beyond personal convictions toward justice-oriented action that addresses chronic social victimization through systems of oppression. It presents a new heuristic and the university honors course using it to broaden students’ understanding of justice.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages16

Reading Time40 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Key Concepts: Upstanding and Justice

Limitations in Existing Bullying and Civic Education Frameworks

Intersectional Approach: School Bullying and Social Justice Education

Course Design and Teaching Heuristic

Classroom Findings and Implications

Article ecsj Disrupting narrow conceptions of justice: Exploring and expanding‘bullying’ and ‘upstanding’ in a university honors course Education, Citizenship and Social Justice 2020, Vol. 15(3) 258–273 © The Author(s) 2019 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[DOI: 10.1177/1746197919853808](DOI: 10.1177/1746197919853808) [journals.sagepub.com/home/esj](journals.sagepub.com/home/esj) Jennifer Farley University of Nebraska–Lincoln, USA Jennifer Gallagher East Carolina University, USA Katherine Richardson Bruna Iowa State University, USA Abstract The term ‘upstanding’ encompasses actions and behaviors grounded in one’s defense of their own beliefs and others. While such broad application of the term has merit, from a critical education perspective it lacks direction. To efficaciously address injustice, upstanding action must go beyond one’s beliefs. A directional application of upstanding behavior, or the notion of ‘upstanding for justice,’ frames upstanding as action to address chronic social victimization via systems of oppression. In this article, we describe the development of a new heuristic to support students’ understanding of upstanding and detail the university honors course in which we used the heuristic to explore the phenomena of ‘bullying’ and historical injustice to expand ideas of ‘upstanding’. Results indicate that students in the course broadened their conceptions of justice and the use of historical cases aided in their understanding of the interplay between individual agency and social structure in social justice efforts. Keywords bullying, bystander, civics education, social justice, upstanding Programmatic and pedagogical responses to school bullying and civic education are constrained by conceptual limitations. The first limitation involves a situational, not systemic, understanding of the causes of bullying behavior. In school bullying, for example, individuals who intervene on Corresponding author: Jennifer Farley, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, 212 barkley Memorial Center, Lincoln, NE 68503 USA. Email: [jfarley3@unl.edu](jfarley3@unl.edu) behalf of a person targeted by bullying behavior are known as upstanders (Upstander, n.d.), but the conceptual understanding of upstanders and their actions rarely addresses that bullying behavior is often a manifestation of larger societal injustices. The most obvious example of this is identitybased bullying (Chatters and Zalaquett, 2018; Swearer and Hymel, 2015) which targets, for instance, sexual orientation, reflective of heteronormative hierarchies, and discrimination. Discussions about school bullying which targets real or perceived sexual orientation will call for‘upstanding’ but they stop short of interrogating the discrimination that exists in the school and community environment that breeds the bullying behavior to begin with. The second limitation, on the other hand, involves a focus on the systemic framework of civic education without attention to situational manifestations requiring individual action and what the nature of such action could be. While civic education is often taught through social justice-oriented definitions (Westheimer, 2015; Westheimer and Kahne, 2004), it rarely makes the long journey from the collective combatting ofa societal injustice such as racism, to individual interpersonal actions, such as upstanding inan incident of racialized bullying. We believe that an intersection of these fields, school bullying, and social justice-oriented civic education can address these limitation and provide powerful understandings for helping individuals see themselves not just as upstanders in bullying but upstanders toward justice. As critical education scholars, we are united in our efforts to better understand how to prepare undergraduate students to be agents of change in an unjust world. From the stances of ou

FAQs

What does the article mean by “upstanding” in relation to justice?

“Upstanding” refers to actions and behaviors grounded in defending one’s beliefs and others, but the article emphasizes that upstanding must be directed toward justice, addressing chronic social victimization through oppressive systems.

Why do the authors say current approaches to bullying and civic education are limited?

They identify two constraints: bullying is often explained situationally rather than systemically, and civic education often focuses on systemic injustice without connecting it to the individual interpersonal actions needed in incidents of bullying.

How did students’ understanding change in the university honors course?

The results indicate students broadened their conceptions of justice, and historical case use helped them understand how individual agency interacts with social structure in social justice efforts.

Oct 15, 2026

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