More anti-Zionist than thou: An unlikely remedy — A reply to Joseph Agassi

The author concludes the interchange with Joseph Agassi on cultural pluralism in Israel.     

Diversity and intergroup contact in higher education: exploring possibilities for democratization through social justice education

This study contributes to research linking diversity and higher education teaching to democratic learning outcomes. It explores processes and outcomes associated with the intergroup contact of Black and White students enrolled in two sections of a diversity education course at a public university in the southeastern United States. The goals of this study were: (1) to explore the intergroup dynamics that emerged when students interacted in both sections of the course; and (2) to identify student support for intergroup cooperation as a result of their experiences in the course. While one section of the course experienced a high degree of intergroup conflict, students in both sections reported support for intergroup cooperation at the end of the course.     

论析美国关怀教育视野下的社群主义、品格教育与自由主义

社群主义和品格教育认为美德稳固地维系于社群的自觉成员或个人的身上,笃信社群性或者个人性美德的结果是易于在自我与"他者"之间造成关系紧张,易于误读"他者"、导致集权主义、使人变得伪善.而自由主义过分聚焦于个人权利,过于理想化地设置了理性人的人性假设,其所推崇的自由与平等两个核心概念亦面临着理论与现实的困境.     

文化多元化与大学生道德教育

在全球化的大背景下,大学生道德教育面临着多元文化的挑战,文化多元化使道德观念多元化,出现了道德观念认同危机及道德观念相对主义化等问题,高校在进行道德教育时也出现了迷失方向的现象。以上问题的出现要求各高校在德育过程中增强学生的民族文化认同意识,培养学生的道德人格,增强其道德鉴别的能力,实行民主、开放的德育方式,以建立和谐共生的文化体系。     

Social developments and school music education: the struggles in Hong Kong

This paper explores two current issues in the educational policies and practices of Hong Kong that have been shaped by the emergence of the nation-state and the return of Hong Kong's sovereignty from the UK to the People's Republic of China on 1 July 1997. Since this time there have been two great challenges facing music education. The first concerns how to incorporate diverse cultures, including Chinese music, into a Western-orientated music curriculum; and the second is to find a way to cultivate national identity and democracy through music education. The data presented here were collected via in-depth, semi-structured individual interviews with music teachers, school heads and assistant school heads across 40 primary and secondary schools between 2006 and 2007. The findings can be explained by referring to the shortcomings of multicultural education and the underdevelopment of democracy in Hong Kong's education system.     

A case for climate justice education: American youth connecting to intragenerational climate injustice in Bangladesh

Abstract

In this paper, I present evidence for framing climate change education around social justice. More specifically, I provide empirical support for framing climate change education around intragenerational climate justice, and argue that this frame can influence youth in industrialized, wealthy nations to become mobilized, climate-engaged individuals. To do so, I apply critical qualitative analysis to narratives from American youth who participated in a global climate change education program in Bangladesh. My findings include the importance of contextualizing climate justice, framing climate change around humans, implicating ourselves in the problem and recognizing our own obligations in mitigation, seeing climate change as real and tangible, being in a place impacted by climate change, feeling solidarity with those impacted, and recognizing social injustice and power disparities within climate change impacts. Based on these findings, I recommend an approach that provides context, nuance, and personal connection to an otherwise abstract global problem.     

文化多元化对高校思政教育要素的影响及对策

在对高校师生调查的基础上,分析了当前文化多元化对高校思想政治教育的环境、对象、内容、方法、理念、目标和教师等要素所产生的影响,从大学生思想政治教育的内容、领域、形式、观念、方法和队伍等方面探讨了增强高校思想政治教育实效性的对策,并通过实证研究验证了对策的有效性。     

The Catholic school and social justice in Africa: a Zambian case study

Abstract

This paper will argue that the state-aided Catholic school in Zambia has contributed significantly to the development of the country over the years. However, because of its enmeshment in the state system of education it has inadvertently become an instrument of underdevelopment. It is structurally complicit in alienating some of the poorest sectors of society, which runs counter to its professed religious mission. This essay presents the Zambian situation as a case study where it is contended that in order to understand the current situation there is need to see it in the light of its history. The discussion is intended to explore how faith-based educational settings within the state systems in Africa may become complicit in sustaining forms of oppression. It will include a consideration of how, as part of this, religion has been reduced historically through being too closely allied to a modernisation framework generating the illusion of promoting social justice. The article notes that in the light of better historical appreciation of the issue there is need for a review of the faith-based school’s pedagogy.     

The social justice implications of privatisation in education governance frameworks: a relational account

This paper explores the social justice implications of two, ‘linked’, governance developments which have been instrumental in reshaping many education systems throughout the world: the ‘privatising’ and ‘globalising’ of education (Klees, Stromquist, & Samoff, 2012 Klees, S., Stromquist, N. and Samoff, J., eds. 2012. A critical review of the World Bank’s education strategy 2020, Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.  [Google Scholar]). We argue that such education governance innovations demand an explicit engagement with social justice theories, both in themselves, and as offering an opportunity to address issues of social justice that go beyond the re/distribution of education inputs and outputs, important though these are, and which take account of the political and accountability issues raised by globalising of education governance activity. To do this we draw upon Iris Marion Young’s concept of ‘the basic structure’ and her ‘social connection model’ of responsibility (Young, 2006 Young, I. M. 2006. Taking the basic structure seriously. Perspectives in Politics, 4: 91–97. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]a,b) to develop a relational account of justice in education governance frameworks.     

Feminism and neo/liberalism: contesting education’s possibilities

ABSTRACT

Feminist theorists critiqued classical liberalism for the gender binaries embedded in social, political and economic theory and everyday social relations. Neoliberalism economises the social and political based on autonomous individualism, equating equity with choice, naturalising the market as the mechanism to allocate social goods and education while disregarding constraining discursive and material contexts. Neoliberalism also co-opts the feminist desire for agency through notions of choice. The paper tracks the historical conditions in Anglophile states that nurtured neoliberalism’s uptake with its focus on human capital theory, rethinking the dominant educational discourse of twenty-first-century skills using Yeatman’s democratic framing of social liberalism and Nussbaum’s capability approach. Feminists argue for a just and civil democratic society that dissolves binary thinking and focuses on relationality, rights and responsibility.     

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.     

The emerging fourth tier in K-12 education finance in British Columbia,Canada: increasing privatisation and implications for social justice

This paper examines increasing privatisation of education in the province of British Columbia, Canada. Conceptually, the paper is informed by theories of privatisation and social justice; and methodologically, it uses policy analysis to examine documents and financial records obtained from government departments. The paper critically analyses education policy that has enabled the emergence of private sources of revenue (tuition fees and for-profit revenue) and the establishment of school and programme choice. Analysis of levels of international student tuition generated by school districts in the province reveals differential capacity to produce such revenue. The authors argue that this differential capacity is leading to the development of a fourth tier within a pre-existing three-tier K-12 education system in British Columbia. The article concludes with a discussion of implications related to social justice in education.     

Educational pluralism and freedom of religion: recent decisions of the European Court of Human Rights

This paper addresses the sensitive issue of the teaching of religions and beliefs in schools by analysing two recent decisions of the European Court of Human Rights. In these cases, the Court asserts that students should be exempted from compulsory courses on religion or from courses that are not conveyed in an objective, critical and pluralist manner in order to protect the rights of parents to raise their children in accordance with their beliefs and to protect the child’s religious freedom. What emerges from both decisions are sound principles about how to implement and teach these kind of courses without violating the freedom of religion and belief or undermining the state competences on education.     

Ecojustice education and communitarianism: Exploring the possibility for African eco-communitarianism

Abstract

In this article, we explore the concept of African communitarianism and reflect on its potential value for ecojustice education as a localised response to the wider ecological crises that impacts on African communities. We argue for an African eco-communitarian perspective and propose that this perspective extends ecojustice education. Such extension occurs firstly through foregrounding and emphasising the establishment of harmonious and co-constitutive relationships that is characterised by intersubjectivity and secondly, by extending community to beyond humans (and ancestors) to be inclusive of the more-than human world. We contend that ecojustice education, framed within an African eco-communitarianism, constitutes a localised response to the ecological crises in the form of critical place-based education, that it enables co-constitutive dialogue and interaction between the human and non-human elements of an eco-community and is an ethico-political praxis characterised by an African environmental ethic.     

Supporting inclusion in early childhood settings: some possibilities and problems for teacher education

Aotearoa New Zealand, like other countries, has legislation and policies that support inclusion and promote the participation of all children and families in early childhood education. We might expect therefore to see a culture of inclusion resonating through policy and practice in early childhood settings. There are early childhood teachers who support such legislative and policy goals, who are committed to inclusion, and who are developing more inclusive early childhood services. Yet, it is also evident that discrimination and exclusion is experienced by many. Teacher education plays an important role in supporting inclusion and assisting teachers’ development of knowledge, skills and attitudes that will support them to teach all children. In this paper, we write as a group of teacher educators and demonstrate the challenges we took up to move beyond traditional approaches to inclusive education and to open up theoretically and practically diverse possibilities for thinking and doing inclusion differently in early childhood teacher education.     

When inclusion excludes: a counter narrative of open online education

Open education aspires to democratize education, promote inclusion and effect change through social justice. These aspirations are difficult to realize in open, online environments, which enable multiple, and often conflicting, perspectives. This paper proposes a counter-narrative that surfaces certain operational norms of the internet and foregrounds their exclusionary nature. We offer an illustrative inventory of some social media interactional patterns to examine communication used in open online education communities. This examination leads us to conclude that language online is subject to a dialectical tension that both includes and excludes. We conclude that a different language is needed in open online educational environments; one that embraces exclusionary structures and strategic ambiguity, as well as the aspirations to further democratize education via digital means.     

Innovation in teacher education: towards a critical re-examination

ABSTRACT

In the course of introducing a themed issue of the journal on “Innovation in Teacher Education’, we lay out an argument for re-examining the meaning of innovation in the field, shifting it away from the dominance of the economistic and technological. Acknowledging its status as a ‘buzzword’, we distinguish between purposes for innovation and, in particular, between changes driven by arguments for social mobility and those driven by social justice and equity. Two imperatives for innovation underpinned by arguments for social justice and equity are identified: the concept of a ‘teacher education debt’, built on Ladson-Billings’ more general notion of ‘education debt’; and the humanization of learning, teaching and becoming a teacher as person-centred, relational practices. The final section of the article introduces each of the six papers in the context of the discussion in previous sections about these imperatives for change.     

(Re)igniting a sociological imagination in adult education: the continuing relevance of classical theory

This article argues that sociology has been a foundational discipline for the field of adult education, but it has been largely implicit, until recently. This article contextualizes classical theories of sociology within contemporary critiques, reviews the historical roots of sociology and then briefly introduces the classical theories illustrating the continual presence of sociological thinking in the adult education field. Finally, it periodizes the lineage of the sociology of adult education, highlighting recent contributions. With 30 years of neoliberalism, social justice is eroding, authoritarianism is increasing and democracy—as the idea of a self-governing people deliberating issues of mutual concern in the public sphere—is further subordinated to the idea of society as an economy for exchanging goods and services. It is time to (re)ignite a sociological imagination among adult educators/learners, building on familiarity with both classical and contemporary sociology theories, more robust sociological analysis of the field and a (re)commitment to the historical principles of social justice and deep democracy. While international in focus, Canadian exemplars will be used.