Investigating the observance of educational justice in Iranian universities: From students' viewpoints

BACKGROUND: Educational justice is one of the fundamental dimensions of social justice, and the progress of each society depends on its realization. Since students are engaged in the educational process, recognizing their viewpoints can provide useful guidance to correct existing problems. The purpose of this study is to investigate the observance of educational justice from the viewpoint of medical students in southeastern Iran. METHODOLOGY: This cross-sectional study was carried out on 200 students of Zahedan University of Medical Sciences, southeastern Iran, in 2017 by stratified sampling. The tool for measuring organizational justice was a questionnaire. The validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by content validity method, and its reliability was confirmed by Cronbach's alpha (0.8). Descriptive statistics (frequency and percentage), Chi-square test, and analysis of variance (ANOVA) test were used to analyze data. RESULTS: The mean age of students was 21.7 +/- 2.91 years. Fifty percent of students assessed the educational justice as good to excellent, and based on a general score, educational justice was observed in 73.2% of cases. The one-way ANOVA showed a significant difference between the scores of educational justice from the viewpoints of students in different faculties of Zahedan University of Medical Sciences (P < 0.001). CONCLUSION: According to the results, students' needs for achieving educational justice have been identified in this study. This study can provide useful guidance to correct existing problems and help policymakers in Zahedan University of Medical Sciences to achieve a full educational justice.