Teaching for Social Justice: the Promise of Transformative Expectations for Urban Chicanx/Latinx Youth

Drawing on the concept of transformative expectations—that is, the instructional practices that demonstrate teachers’ belief systems for the educational justice and empowerment of Chicanx/Latinx youth—this qualitative study explored the expectancy effects of nine classroom teachers with social justice commitments in a school district in California. Through semi-structured interviews, teacher journaling, and artifacts of classroom practices, this study points to the importance of teacher disposition and socialization in developing classroom expectations, as well as helps to conceptualize the expectancies of academic rigor, social capital, empowering curriculum, and teacher caring from perspectives of justice and their importance in supporting students to meet or exceed instructional goals. Applying figured worlds and transformative expectations as the study’s analytic frameworks, teachers reported these four expectancies as important strategies for bringing social justice into the classroom, thereby prompting discussions of the future directions of teaching for social justice.     

Educational Justice and the Value of Knowledge

How should a liberal democratic society value knowledge and understanding, and does this valuation inform how we ought to reason about the justice of our educational institutions? In scholarly and public discourse, it is orthodox to argue that because educational institutions bring about various goods—goods of character such as wellbeing or economic goods such as social mobility – they ought to be structured by principles of political justice. In this paper, I argue that knowledge and understanding valued for its own sake should also inform judgements of educational justice.     

Pedagogies of being with: Witnessing,testimonio, and critical love in everyday social movement

This conceptual article explores education and the relational in everyday social movement. I highlight a single, local community event—a Speak Out—and travel with scholarship on public pedagogy, witnessing, and Latina feminist theories of coalition to articulate pedagogies of ‘being with’ in community activism for racial justice. My interpretive vignettes of the Speak Out are part of a larger ethnographic study focusing on a segment of a rural/small city community that moved with intention to teach and learn racial justice. While larger concrete goals were crucial and at the center of the community’s curriculum for justice, the various sites and forms of race-conscious pedagogy in public life—community forums, vigils, celebrations, mural projects—were also enactments of a profound commitment to the relational, to finding common ground in difficult solidarities. With a focus on the testimonios of three women of Color participants in the Speak Out, I show how witnessing and testimonio were at the center of pedagogies of ‘being with.’ In this work of education, the women (1) redefined community, accountability, and ally work, (2) exposed the fissures in social justice organizing across difference, describing commitment to social action with rather than for those most affected by institutional violence, and (3) affirmed the knowledge, histories, and self-determination of people of Color while challenging self-defeating stereotypes. Critical love sustained an ethics of openness to difference and facilitated the intentional work of creating race-conscious learning communities.     

Social justice education with Chinese characteristics: An example from Shanghai

This article analyses a Chinese approach to social justice in education using the example of Shanghai. In addressing schooling inequalities, Shanghai illustrates social justice education with Chinese characteristics, which revolves around the ideal of ‘educational balance’ (jiaoyu junheng). The ‘balance’ in question is about achieving a values-centred and all-round education in and across all schools through the cultivation of a school’s ‘inner quality’ (neihan). This Chinese formulation of social justice education is manifested through two representative policy measures: creating and strengthening ‘new high-quality schools’ and helping weak schools to level up. The Chinese characteristics of these action plans are seen in two ways: a focus on social justice between schools rather than between students; and an emphasis on the moral cultivation of students. It is argued that a Chinese model of social justice education promotes educational equity to some extent through the politics of redistribution, recognition and representation. However, a major critique is its hegemonic and top-down nature, which overlooks alternative and competitive voices—especially those of migrant children—as part of a politics of representation.     

国外基础教育管理及财政体制改革

发达国家和发展中国家都不同程度地遇到了教育经费不足、经费使用效率不高、教育机会不均、教育质量低等问题。为此，各国政府积极探索改革教育管理及财政体制的有效措施，其中包括：扩大地方政府的教育统筹权；扩大学校的办学自主权；增加家长选择学校的权利和参与学校管理的机会；发展私立教育等。事实证明，政府可以采取多种方式对教育市场进行干预，包括财政、管制和公共设施建设手段，以实现公平、效率、选择和社会凝聚等多项社会目标。     

国外基础教育管理及财政体制改革分析

不论是发达国家还是发展中国家,都不同程度地遇到了教育经费不足、经费使用效率不高、教育机会不均、教育质量无法使人满意等问题。为此,各国政府积极探索改革教育管理及财政体制的有效措施,包括下放中央政府对教育的管理权,扩大地方政府的统筹权;扩大学校的办学自主权;增加家长选择学校的权力和参与学校管理的机会;发展私立教育;采用市场机制,吸引私营企业参与办学等。仅仅依靠市场机制无法实现教育资源的有效配置,适度和适当形式的政府干预和社会调节是必要的。政府可以采取多种方式对教育市场进行干预与治理,包括财政、管制和公共设施建设手段,以实现公平、效率、选择和社会凝聚等多项社会目标。     

Teaching with ignorance: Questions of social justice,empathy, and responsible community

This paper explores the limitations of empathy for the formation of community, particularly within social justice education. I begin with a discussion of the major tension within the idea of community — that it is founded at once on commonality and difference. Building in particular upon the work of Emmanuel Levinas, the paper articulates an understanding of community as a signifying encounter with difference that is not founded upon knowledge about the other, but upon a being-for and feeling-for the other. Focusing upon the explicitly educational commitment to working out forms of relationality conducive to establishing community and social justice across social differences, I ask how might teaching with ignorance, as opposed to teaching for empathy, bring us closer to the being-for others that marks our ethical engagement with other people and engenders our responsibility to the collective?     

邓小平的公平观——纪念邓小平诞辰110周年

邓小平公平观主要涉及历史公平、分配公平、政治权利公平、用人公平以及教育公平等方面。他认为,实现历史公平,要正确处理历史遗留问题;实现分配公平,要坚持按劳分配原则,实行部分先富,防止两极分化,发挥中央调控作用;实现政治权利公平,要加强民主法治建设,反对特权和腐败;实现用人公平,要推进干部年轻化,坚持正确的用人标准;实现教育公平,要恢复高考,正确对待学生,正确对待考试,提高教师待遇。邓小平的公平观,对于进一步维护社会公平正义具有重要的现实意义。     

Competing Paradigms of Educational Justice: Parent Organizing for Educational Equity in a Neoliberal Reform Context

This article examines a grassroots parent organizing effort in a large, high-poverty, urban school district. Drawing from ethnographic field research at a community-based popular education organization, the study describes how parent organizers worked to educate and mobilize Latina/o immigrant parents on issues of educational justice and equity. It identifies three pillars of their approach—a social theory, a theory of change, and a theory of knowledge— and argues that these were not reducible to a set of practices or methods; rather, they constituted a coherent paradigm of educational justice. This paradigm differs in significant ways from the neoliberal justice paradigm that currently dominates education reform and policy. By examining points of tension between these two competing paradigms, this article seeks to accomplish two aims. First, it aims to deepen our understanding of how underlying paradigms of educational justice shape the work of educating, organizing, and reforming schools. Second, it aims to expose the cultural specificity, or non-universality, of the neoliberal paradigm in order to challenge its hegemonic status in education reform and policy.     

Levinas,bureaucracy, and the ethics of school leadership

Given present criticisms of contemporary education and leadership practices, this article investigates the ways in which the basic concepts of state freedom and bureaucracy stifle ethics and social justice in educational leadership practices through the philosophical framework of Emmanuel Levinas. By investigating Levinas’ ‘an-archy’, the definition of ethics and justice in school leadership can be reframed towards responsibility to otherness rather than individual freedom. The anarchical ethic of pure responsibility to the Other suggests that educational leaders should prioritize specific acts of responsibility over general actions based on the assumptions of traditional state education. Aspects of transactional, transformational, and social justice leadership are critiqued from this perspective.     

社会公正——社会主义和谐社会的一个向度

本文阐述了实现社会公甲和正义是构建社会主义和谐社会的主要特征之一，根据当前我国出现的社会不公平现象、贫富差距越来越火、教育不公等问题，提出政府必须提供服务的平等性，通过制度创新解决公平问题，实现社会公平和正义，构建社会主义和谐社会。     

Preparing Teachers for Anti‐oppressive Education: International movements

While theories and recommendations continue to proliferate in the educational research literature on what it means to teach towards social justice and to prepare teachers for such teaching, so do concerns that these theories and recommendations fail to account for the ways that the contexts of teaching—cultural contexts, national contexts, political contexts—always affect teaching in idiosyncratic, unpredictable and even contradictory ways. Given that much educational research fails to trouble the US‐centric nature of prevailing conceptions of social justice and teacher education, it is important to learn about the unique as well as shared challenges facing teacher educators around the globe. In this article, teacher educators from Asia, Africa, North America and South America offer a sampling of initiatives in anti‐oppressive teacher education; that is, initiatives to prepare teachers to teach various subject matters to various age groups, addressing various forms of oppression in various cultural and community contexts.     

Reflexivity,Social Justice and Educational Research

This paper identifies the role of reflexivity as a central concern to educational researchers. We argue that reflexivity as a concept needs to be recognised at three key levels. Reflexivity can be considered in terms of learning in general, in relation to our research designs and finally with respect to the production of educational knowledge. Each of these levels is analysed and related to our understanding of social justice research in education. Through an exposition of Giddens’ notion of the ‘duality of structure’ we put forward one way of researching in the area of social justice and education which takes into account the reflexive nature of educational research.     

‘Freer’ Forms of Organization and Financing and the Effects of Inequality in Latin American Educational Systems: two countries in comparison

The introduction of ‘freer’ forms of organization and financing into the Latin American educational systems about 20 years ago parallels similar developments in the contexts of neo‐liberal policies in the USA, Great Britain and, more recently, in Eastern Europe. This article will highlight the effects of ‘school autonomy’, decentralization, and privatization in the Latin American educational systems. In so doing, I will focus on the analysis of educational policy development in Chile and Argentina, based in part on my own research results. The results demonstrate that ‘freer’ forms of organization and financing have not proven to be positive for the progressive distribution of education, democratization and the consideration of diversity—and also not for the (difficult to measure) categories of ‘quality’ and ‘efficiency’ of education. These findings contribute to question whether the neo‐liberal forms of organization and financing of educational systems in Latin America are important factors in the realization of these goals.     

Hegemony of the “Great Equalizer” and the Fragmentation of Common Sense: A Gramscian Model of Inflated Ambitions for Schooling

Increasingly over the past 50 years, the mission statement of schooling in dominant US-American discourse has coalesced around a Great Equalizer narrative of education; that is, it has identified schools as the primary means through which individuals can achieve social mobility. In this article, I employ a Gramscian framework to describe how this dominant yet illusory definition of purpose disorients well-intentioned educational actors and often pits them unwittingly against each other. I show that as a result of a false narrative about what schools do for society, a fragmented common sense has arisen amongst teachers, politicians, scholars and activists to the detriment of a collective theory of change. To guard against fragmentation and avert educational actors' consent to a hegemonic social order, I argue that the first step toward collective resistance is acknowledging the limited impact schools have on the socioeconomic layout of society. Accordingly, educational actors hoping to ameliorate inequality must agree upon more realistic—and less tangible—cultural goals for schooling, such as inculcating critical citizenship and fostering civic participation.     

When Race Enters the Room: Improving Leadership and Learning Through Racial Literacy

This article explains (a) why racial literacy—an understanding of the origins and function of race in US schools and society—is essential to the work of educational leaders, and (b) how educational leaders can improve their leadership through racial literacy. It introduces the concept of racial literacy as a first step to improving school leadership practices, to be followed by racial realism, racial reconstruction, and racial reconciliation in racially diverse school communities. The article concludes with recommendations and resources designed to advance the racial literacy of educational leaders and their teams as part of a broader commitment to inclusion and social justice in US schools.     

Expanding the Frame: Building Transnational Alliances for Racial and Educational Justice

U.S. educational policymakers and equity advocates often frame the negative ramifications of racial inequality in schools in terms of worries about the nation's future global economic competitiveness. This article draws on frame theory (Snow & Benford, 1988) and education organizing theory (Warren & Mapp, 2011) to argue that educational policymakers and advocates must expand this national competitiveness frame to advance racial and educational justice. By outlining the emergence and reification of the national competitiveness frame in contemporary U.S. education policy, this article demonstrates how the national competitiveness frame can successfully build domestic alliances and create urgency for education reform. However, it can also risk co-opting racial justice goals. Further, this U.S.-centric frame ignores the global experience of racialization and educational injustice shared by marginalized groups around the world. The article closes by suggesting that educational equity advocates build on these transnational connections and use a collaborative frame to build collective power among historically marginalized groups worldwide to advance racial and educational justice in both the United States and abroad.     

论教育考试公正的内涵与实质

教育考试公正是教育考试的生命线,也是社会公正的重要体现。本文在讨论公正的一般内涵和实质基础上,着重研究教育考试公正的理论内涵和社会实质。文章认为,教育考试公正就是组考者通过考试使可能的应试者得其所应得,或者说使可能的应试者各得其所,其社会实质在于:它是教育公正的基本前提,是社会公正的重要体现,是社会资源合理分配的基础方式,是个人潜能合理开发的保证机制。文章提出,不能仅仅从教育考试本身来认识教育考试公正的必要性和重要性,而要从整个社会的宏观视野、站在人类更好地生存和发展的高度来认识教育考试公正问题。     

Forty years in the union: Incubating, supporting, and catalyzing socially just educational change

North American teacher unions’ positive contributions to educational change have historically flown under the radar of educational policy makers, a situation that has been reified by recent attacks on public sector unions. In this article, I draw on social movement theory and an institutional case study of a self described social justice union to analyze teacher unions’ unique contributions to educational improvement. The primary product of this analysis is a cyclical model of union-supported, teacher-initiated educational change that codifies 40 years of social justice activism incubated, supported and catalyzed by a Canadian teacher union.     

Unlearning adultism at Green Shoots: a reflexive ethnographic analysis of age inequality within an environmental education programme

In 2010, I volunteered at Green Shoots, a service-learning educational non-profit school focused around environmental justice. While the school claimed to operate under an egalitarian, empowering ‘community of practice’ framework, the experiences of youth and myself revealed a hierarchal power dynamic that put unequal demands on youth and left them feeling disrespected. Blending ethnographic and reflexive statements, I examine this age inequality, called adultism, and how it affected the community of practice at Green Shoots as well as myself. Findings reveal that adultist expectations were placed on youth in conversations and in work demands. Adultism also intersected with other social locations such as race/gender/class and led youth to engage in resistance strategies against me, an adult they could control. Finally, I conclude that adultism must be addressed within educational settings and we as educators must reflect on our own adultism to truly educate for social and environmental justice.