Relational justice pedagogy in social care education: key insights from critical perspectives on intellectual disability

This article proposes a model of relational justice pedagogy to guide critical educational practice for social care professions. Grounded in a multidimensional perspective that combines care with justice, this model identifies four integrated sets of practices – critical, caring, emancipatory and creative – that guide critical pedagogy. The article refines the framework of relational justice pedagogy by developing and applying key insights from intellectual disability studies. It suggests that students from social care, social work and other health and social professions should be able to comprehend the implications of four paradigms of disability as well as the importance of combining care with justice, defend and expand an emancipatory vision in practice and create interventions that support real choices and options.