Educator perspectives and experiences of teaching social justice to allied health students: a scoping review

Purpose How allied health educators experience teaching social justice is unknown. This scoping review fills this gap in the literature to guide improvements in allied health education that support development of socially just practitioners. Design/methodology/approach A scoping review was conducted to explore allied health educators' perspectives and experiences of teaching social justice in tertiary institutions. Thematic analysis was used to inductively synthesise educator perspectives and experiences reported in the included articles. Findings Thirteen studies were included, representing physiotherapy, pharmacy, occupational therapy, radiology, speech pathology and optometry professions. Incorporation of social justice content relied on individual educators' passion, experience or interest with social justice issues, and most educators felt they did not have interest, confidence or capacity to teach social justice. Educators thought that their proposed approaches to teaching and assessing social justice competency did not align with current best-practice teaching approaches and wanted more guidance and support around how incorporate social justice content into allied health curricula. Practical implications Lack of guidance around how to effectively teach and assess social justice in tertiary education is a key barrier to effective social justice teaching in allied health education. As such, there is a need to develop clear guidelines, objectives, performance indicators and frameworks to guide social justice teaching for allied health students. Originality/value This work provides critical insight into the current state of social justice teaching in allied health degrees, highlighting the need for further research and intervention in this space to support the development of socially just allied health professionals.