Justice and Injustice in English as a Foreign Language Classes: Analysis of Teachers’ Conceptual Metaphors

Classroom justice, an under-investigated topic in language education, has been brought under focus in this study. Employing a qualitative research design, we took conceptual metaphor as both the theoretical framework and data analysis tool. Accordingly, 51 Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers were selected via snowball sampling to express their beliefs about (in)justice by creating a metaphor/simile. The aim was to discover EFL teachers’ conceptualization of metaphors of classroom (in)justice. The participants took a metaphor completion task (e.g., classroom justice is like …… because ……). Data analysis involved gathering, inductively coding, and classifying linguistic metaphors. Three elements were identified for each response, namely, the topic, vehicle, and ground. Then, conceptual categories were formed based on thematically grouping vehicles. Findings indicated reflection of the multidimensional conceptualization of classroom justice based on the organizational justice theory in many created metaphors; reference to emotional, psychological, and learning consequences of (in)justice in many other metaphors; and many pairs of opposite metaphors. These findings have implications for teacher education programs to employ metaphor as a useful tool to promote teachers’ reflection about classroom (in)justice; raise awareness of second/foreign language (L2) teachers about both issues of justice and injustice and their potential consequences for students’ wellbeing and educational outcomes; and train teachers for practical strategies of implementing justice principles in the instructional context as a way to address their professional development needs for becoming a quality L2 teacher and acting fairly in classroom.