This paper pays homage to the late Kadir Beycioğlu's invaluable contributions to social justice and education. Beycioğlu crafted a reflexive narrative that uses philosophical methodologies to explore the concept of social justice within educational settings. In this brief article, we aim to engage in a dialectical and theoretical discourse with Beycioğlu's scholarship, expanding upon his arguments, critically assessing various aspects of his work, and providing responses to several of his assertions. By adopting the approach of conversationalism (Chimakonam, 2017), we create an intellectual space for critical, reflective, and productive dialogues among ourselves and in relation to Beycioğlu's later work and hope to enrich the ongoing discourse on social justice in education. Our intention is to honour the lasting contributions of Beycioğlu to education in Turkey by tracing his work into three distinct theoretical strands and engaging critically with his scholarship. These three strands are his conceptualisation of social justice, his contributions to critical policy-making and his later work on questioning gender equality and other intersecting inequalities in education.