FORMATIVE EPISTEMIC JUSTICE IN EDUCATION: THE TEACHER’S POSITION WITHIN THE TRAJECTORY OF INSTITUTIONAL TRANSFORMATION

Abstract

The article conceptualizes institutional mechanisms of epistemic injustice reproduction in general secondary education through the analysis of the teacher’s position and develops principles for systemic transformation based on the concept of formative epistemic justice. The teacher’s position is identified as a structural paradox manifesting the conflict between formal epistemic recognition and actual limitation of professional autonomy through contradictory sources of legitimation: institutional, sociocultural, and epistemic. This paradox embodies systemic contradictions through which injustice is reproduced. The study reveals three interconnected mechanisms of institutionalization: normalization of administrative procedures, construction of deficit subjects, and self-regulating exclusion, which transform epistemic coercion into an invisible regime of educational relations. The theoretical framework of formative epistemic
justice operationalizes three normative orientations — epistemic recognition, hermeneutical inclusion, and reciprocity — as diagnostic criteria for identifying hidden mechanisms of exclusion and strategic points of transformation. The research demonstrates that overcoming epistemic injustice requires not local corrections but systemic restructuring of institutional foundations determining what is recognized as knowledge and who can be recognized as its bearer. Five principles of transformation are formulated: redefinition of epistemic power, liberation of pedagogical labor, institutionalization of trust, formation of epistemic communities, and development of adaptive resilience. Their cascading interaction creates a logic of systemic change rooted in the present yet open to overcoming
its structural limits, transforming local practices of resistance into foundations for systemic transformations.