Pursuing justice for refugee students: addressing issues of cultural (mis)recognition

In this paper Nancy Fraser’s conceptual tools are drawn on to theorise issues of justice in a culturally diverse primary school in Australia where approximately 30% of the student population are immigrant/refugees. The paper examines justice issues of cultural recognition in relation to refugee student identity, behaviour and assessment. Drawing on interview data from a study that sought to identify productive approaches to addressing equity for refugee students, the paper highlights the school’s efforts to remedy issues of cultural misrecognition associated with an equation of refugee student difference and marginality with deficit and lack. Such efforts relate to the school’s endeavours to create an inclusive and socially cohesive environment that supports a valuing of, and connection to, refugee student difference. These endeavours are theorised as highly productive in their capacity to disrupt the relations of cultural domination, non-recognition and disrespect that exclude and/or malign some refugee students at the school and broader level. The paper argues the importance of such an approach in light of the unprecedented diversity and complexity of the global context where schools are consistently challenged with new and changing equity concerns and priorities.     

Meritocracy,policy and pedagogy: culture and the politics of recognition and redistribution in Singapore

ABSTRACT

Ideas about merit and the associated notion of a meritocracy have long been drawn upon to frame and understand a range of issues central to education policy. Little attention, however, is given to how in practice and through the workings of policy, meritocracy functions as an ideology that is struggled over by various social groups and pedagogic agents. Focusing on classroom pedagogic practices in Singapore, this article explores the ways in which in an ostensibly meritocratic education system, teachers interpret and negotiate ideas about culture to engage their students in the system’s low-progress tracks. We argue that these teachers are creatively resisting, even challenging official discourses of meritocracy and engaging in what Nancy Fraser calls struggles over recognition and redistribution.     

Alternative education and social justice: considering issues of affective and contributive justice

This article considers the ways in which three alternative education sites in Australia support socially just education for their students and how injustice is addressed within these schools. The article begins with recognition of the importance of Nancy Fraser’s work to understandings of social justice. It then goes on to argue that her framework is insufficient for understanding the particularly complex set of injustices that are faced by many highly marginalised young people who have rejected or been rejected by mainstream education systems. We argue here for the need to consider the importance of ‘affective’ and ‘contributive’ aspects of justice in schools. Using interview data from the alternative schools, we highlight issues of affective justice raised by students in relation to their educational journeys, as well as foregrounding teachers’ affective work in schools. We also consider curricular choices and pedagogical practices in respect of matters of contributive justice. Our contention is that the affective and contributive fields are central to the achievement of social justice for the young people attending these sites. Whilst mainstream schools are not the focus of this article, we suggest that the lessons here have salience for all forms of schooling.     

德国难民义务教育入学政策浅析

由于中东问题的持续动荡,大批难民涌入欧洲。德国最开始针对难民持欢迎态度,导致德国成为难民申请避难最主要的目标国之一。在这一背景下,德国难民儿童和青少年人数也急剧上升。即使德国已拥有较为完善的针对移民子女义务教育的相关政策法规,但是难民学生人数的增加无异于对德国义务教育又提出了新的挑战。针对这一现象,德国各州根据本州自身情况,针对难民接受义务教育资格出台了相关规定。本文从规定出台背景原因,各州规定具体内容两方面入手,结合德国社会实际情况,浅析规定对德国社会的益处和可能存在的问题,最后进行总结以及对未来的展望。     

Indigenous higher education in Mexico and Brazil: between redistribution and recognition

Abstract

Indigenous groups in Latin America face a double exclusion from higher education, with low levels of access to institutions and little acknowledgement of their distinctive cultural and epistemological traditions within the curriculum. This article assesses current policies in Mexico and Brazil towards indigenous populations in higher education, considering the various responses to the challenge, including affirmative action programmes in mainstream universities, intercultural courses and autonomous institutions. These policies and initiatives are analysed using the theoretical frames of redistribution and recognition, focusing on demands for formal equality and material wellbeing on the one hand, and a distinctive cultural and educational space on the other. While state-sponsored policies focus primarily on the redistributive element, initiatives based on recognition come largely from autonomous organisations, raising a series of dilemmas and tensions around educational justice for indigenous populations in the region.     

Accounting for genocide: transitional justice,mass (re)education and the pedagogy of truth in present-day Rwanda

ABSTRACT

Vigorous debate has recently arisen on the particular contribution of education to transitional justice (TJ). This article, focusing on the case of post-genocide Rwanda, raises the question of the possibilities, limitations and desirability of approaches which seek to impose, through education, top-down forms of reconciliation. The article employs the concepts of ‘mass (re)education’ and ‘pedagogy of truth’ to characterise the approach used by Rwanda’s post-genocide government to reshape and reconcile society, and reflects on the extent to which the past thus taught can be employed in furthering TJ goals. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the study evaluates Rwanda-style practices by examining history and civic education programmes alongside young people’s utterances on the ‘truth’ of historical wrongs. Concluding, it casts doubt on the transformative and conciliatory value of ‘pedagogies of truth’ that seek to recast identities and inter-group relations, especially in light of state-imposed selective understandings of legitimate truth, justice, memory and identity.     

Teacher candidates' transformative thinking on issues of social justice

This article examined how teacher candidates' thoughts shifted regarding social inequity in a sophomore-level Foundations of Education course located in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. First, we described in detail the teacher education program and course, as well as class simulations, school observations, course readings and class discussions. Then, we examined the narratives of our teacher candidates' transformation. We found that the afore-mentioned experiences successfully supported transformative thinking regarding social justice. By the end of the course, many teacher candidates began to take ownership over their learning and started viewing themselves as responsible change agents. They began to examine education as embedded in larger social contexts, scrutinized their own schooling experiences and stepped outside of their own conceptions of education to initiate discussions of social justice.     

Reclaiming teacher intellectualism through and for inclusive education

Inclusive education, understood as a pedagogical commitment to schooling experiences that value diversity and promote equitable participation for all students, has not been broadly taken up in practice in the United States. Much of the research in this field suggests that teachers’ attitudes towards inclusive education are the primary barrier to its successful spread and enactment. With this study, a year-long multiple case study design, I sought to understand how those teachers who do pursue inclusivity sustain themselves and their inclusive work in a national discourse that does not systemically value inclusivity. I found that schools worked as deskilling spaces; that enacting inclusivity was a tool for teachers to navigate these exclusionary climates and reclaim an intellectual self; and that an intellectual community was a key support for teachers to enact inclusive practices and in some cases even supported the reclaiming of the school as an intellectual space. These findings suggest that inclusive education can be thought of and enacted as a form of a resistance to audit culture, but that to do so requires ‘strategic transgression’ often in the form of flexible pedagogies. Additionally, providing teachers with an intellectual community and supporting them to navigate an exclusionary climate may be essential for the individual sustainability of enacting these practices have the potential to contribute to the spread of inclusive education.     

近10年来近代流民史研究综述

流民问题一直以来是困扰中国社会的一大问题,近10年来,众多专家学者以极大的热情投入到其研究之中,流民研究硕果累累,并呈现出方兴未艾之势。著作方面,池子华先生作品居多,且成系列化。论文方面,成果层出不穷,研究内容主要包括：近代流民产生的原因;流民的流向问题研究;流民对于流入地影响的研究;流民的调节与控制问题研究。对于流民问题,宏观和整体研究成果较为丰富,而分区分省研究则明显不足,中外流民对比研究也很薄弱。     

性别公正与学校教育

Gender justice includes three basic dimensions: gender equality, respect for difference, and free choice. In reality, schools construct and reproduce the gender injustice of the social culture through multiple dimensions that include the visible and the invisible curriculum, and the teacher’s behaviour. In terms of gender justice, the social culture and the school culture are like two separate “circulations”, but these two circulations are of the same inner structure. However, in pursuing the value of gender justice, we need to start from both of these two “circulations” at the same time. As a self-conscious cultural institution, the school should recognize its own small circulation, and then pursue the realization of gender justice by all possible means. Moreover, the more important contribution of the school is to help drive the larger transformation of gender justice in the social culture. __________ Translated from Quanqiu Jiaoyu Zhanwang 全球教育展望 (Global Education), 2007, (9): 33–38, by WANG Molin, School of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Beijing Normal University     

(In)validation and (mis)recognition in higher education: the experiences of students from refugee backgrounds

Students from refugee backgrounds face unique challenges within higher education. This article reports analysis from a systematic review of qualitative research which aimed to explore these students’ experiences. Four databases were searched, inclusion/exclusion criteria applied and the remaining studies subjected to a quality assessment, leaving eight studies. The research adopted meta-ethnography as a method of data synthesis. An overarching theme of invalidation was identified within our synthesis of the research literature. We express this as a line-of-argument synthesis comprising seven metaphors, which aim to illustrate the ways in which refugee-background students’ higher education experiences can be understood as (largely) invalidating. Drawing on a range of literature, we argue that despite education’s potential for being an egalitarian, empowering and validating environment, the experiences documented in the research literature are conceptualised as relationally inegalitarian and an instance of ‘misrecognition’ of a group of students. This misrecognition appears to occur within and across the various micro, meso and macro social systems in which the students are situated. The implications of these findings for education are discussed.     

Creating a Continuing Education Pathway for Newly Arrived Immigrants and Refugee Communities

With the increase in the number of displaced peoples, the demand for skilled social workers from diverse backgrounds to serve them is critical. This article explores a continuing education program that prepares precollege individuals from newly arriving communities who will work as entry-level workers serving these immigrant and refugee communities. The article focuses on the development of a Case Management Certificate Program as a response to community-identified issues, then presents a discussion exploring the educational pathways and unique contributions of these individuals. The article calls for the profession to explore how continuing education pathways can bridge service gaps, contribute to the knowledge base of social work, and meet current labor market demands.     

School collaborations within the contemporary English education system: possibilities and constraints

This paper’s focus is on an alliance of schools in England that came together as part of the National Teaching Schools initiative. Drawing on interviews from Head Teachers within the alliance, the paper explores issues of school collaboration from a premise that such collaboration is paramount to school improvement within the current climate of increased school autonomy and increasingly rigid accountabilities. The Head Teachers highlight key factors that supported effective school-to-school collaborations associated with sharing their expertise and fostering active and cooperative connections. They also, however, highlight factors that undermined genuine collaboration associated with a prioritising of the performative demands and economic imperatives of the audit culture. The impact of this prioritising should, it is argued, be considered in any analysis of school collectives within the current English education system – particularly given their proliferation and the responsibility placed on them in terms of school improvement.     

Empathy,teaching dispositions,social justice and teacher education

ABSTRACT

Considerable attention over the past several years has been given to empathy as a desirable teacher disposition. Situating empathy in a slice of the research on dispositions, the author identifies and explores several problems surrounding empathy related to expectations, definitions, measurement, inferential accuracy, and the realization of social justice. An argument is made for listening to learn as an alternative to empathy as a teaching disposition and virtue.     

Tackling social inequality and exclusion in education: from human capital to capabilities

Both in the international context and in Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium), research shows that many young people experience social exclusion in relation to education. However, research evidence concerning structural social inequality in education is predominantly underpinned by an outcome-based approach, since educational policies and practices are largely informed by a human capital model. Inspired by the theoretical insights of the Capability Approach, we aim to contribute to process-oriented knowledge about the ways in which educational and social welfare actors can support socially vulnerable young people in realising their capability for education rather than focusing on human capital. We draw upon a rich empirical basis of participatory biographical research with young people in the system of part-time vocational education and workplace learning, perceived as the residue of the educational cascade mechanism in Flanders and pertinently revealing problems of social exclusion and exit of young people.     

Barker's ecology of disadvantage and educational equity: issues of redistribution and recognition

As Barker notes, the link between disadvantage and poor educational attainments is an enduring one. Educational policy over the last 40 years or so has tended to respond to educational inequality in predominately one of two ways – attempts to raise standards across the system as a whole and attempts to redistribute resources to families, schools and neighbourhoods in mainly poor urban contexts to help improve educational outcomes. Over time these later compensatory educational policies and interventions have become known as area-based initiatives (ABIs). This article categorises and documents these important initiatives and provides evidence of impact. The key finding is that although there have been improvements in attainments linked to these interventions, there continues to be an enduring link between disadvantage and educational outcomes. In an attempt to conceptualise why this is the case, this article utilises Barker's ecological macro, meso and micro perspective on educational disadvantage and Fraser's social justice ideas of redistribution and recognition.     

Fee-free education,decentralisation and the politics of scale in Papua New Guinea

Policies aimed at both reducing the costs associated with schooling (particularly through fee-free education) and decentralising responsibility for education delivery have become a central part of international education doctrine. This article draws on the ‘politics of scale’ literature to highlight how these education reforms are contested at different scales, in turn leading to uneven administrative and material outcomes. It examines education policy reforms in Papua New Guinea, which have – contra international trends – sidelined non-state actors and strengthened the state’s role in managing education services. National fee-free education policy has been contested at different administrative scales. Church administrators have rallied (without much success) at national directives; subnational administrators and politicians have had greater success, rolling back some aspects of national policy; while local-level schools have employed their own tactics to resist national fee-free education policy. In turn, this case study highlights how fee-free educational policy shapes and is shaped by conflict at multiple administrative scales. The article’s findings have implications for debates about the relationship between fee-free education and decentralisation policies.     

Social justice and school linkages in teacher education programmes

This paper investigates current research into the role of education in combating social injustice, assembles this research to indicate key features of a teacher education programme that would assist education for social justice, and links these features to one innovative university teacher education programme to ascertain some of the practical difficulties in establishing such a programme. The research indicated key approaches that would enhance the probability that graduates from teacher education programmes will be able to pursue social justice initiatives.     

Failures and possibilities of epistemic justice,with some implications for higher education

ABSTRACT

This papers draws on the compelling example of a political movement in South Africa in the 1960s and 1970s to explore both how epistemic justice conditions of possibility and of failure play out in practice. It provides a springboard to understand how and why failures of epistemic justice matter tremendously for democratic and inclusive lives and how the historical example can point us in the direction of higher education as a space for Amartya Sen’s redressable injustices if underpinned by Miranda’s Fricker’s core capability of epistemic contribution being available pedagogically to all. The paper engages with ideas, practices and actions fostered by Black Consciousness against apartheid as both a hermeneutical and a testimonial injustice in South Africa, with both having a relational structure of giving and receiving, as Fricker argues and as Jose Medina elaborates by extending the structure to include the communicative and participatory. The paper then shows the importance of these conceptual frames to transformative higher education practices and how such practices might contribute to more epistemic justice in higher education.