Social justice and political education through non-formal education

The New Policy will lay special emphasis on the removal of disparities and equalise educational opportunity by attending to the specific needs of those who have been denied equality so far.     

Models of transformative learning for social justice: comparative case studies of non-formal development education in Britain and Spain

This paper presents comparative case studies of non-formal development education by non-profit organisations in two European countries. The study aimed to explore the extent to which such activities provide opportunities for transformative learning. The research was qualitative and began with interviews with educators across 14 organisations in Britain and Spain. Case studies were then identified, purposefully selecting interesting non-formal activities. This paper presents four activities and analyses their potential for transformative learning, drawing together ideas from the literature and the cross-case analysis of the perspectives of development education practitioners. By using the framework of transformative learning pedagogies, this research can inform non-formal education with aims regarding social justice in a range of contexts. It is argued that while there are scarce opportunities for sustained non-formal development education, these cases contribute to knowledge by providing examples of how participative methodologies can generate critical thinking and thus offer learning opportunities that are transformational.     

Bilingual education policy and social justice

This paper examines the Australian government’s Indigenous policy by interrogating the concept of partnership between governments and Indigenous communities through three examples. Increasingly, the Australian federal government is focusing attention on the poor literacy and numeracy outcomes for Indigenous children in remote and very remote locations. The three examples examined in this paper occurred between 2002 and 2007 during the development of the government’s policies about partnership accountability. A case study methodological approach evolved into a policy ethnography which was adopted to investigate the central question examined in this paper about the strengths and limitations of partnering as a policy concept. The strongest theme to arise from analysis was that parents and caregivers, and indeed their broader families and communities, had a distinctly different expectation of partnership to that of the government policy. Drawing on social exchange theories, the differences identified were concerned with the asymmetry and reciprocity. Indigenous communities are asserting the right to negotiated agreements that are accountable ‘both ways’ and governments seem to be more focussed on a ‘one way’ process of making Indigenous people accountable for education failure.     

Development as education for social justice

Asia Pacific Education Review - The correlation between education and development, with time, went through many changes along with the changes of perspectives. Since both of these concepts...     

Rural science education as social justice

What part can science education play in the dismantling of obstacles to social justice in rural places? In this Forum contribution, I use “Learning in and about Rural Places: Connections and Tensions Between Students’ Everyday Experiences and Environmental Quality Issues in their Community”(Zimmerman and Weible 2016) to explicitly position rural education as a project of social justice that seeks full participatory parity for rural citizens. Fraser’s (2009) conceptualization of social justice in rural education requires attention to the just distribution of resources, the recognition of the inherent capacities of rural people, and the right to equal participation in democratic processes that lead to opportunities to make decisions affecting local, regional, and global lives. This Forum piece considers the potential of place-based science education to contribute to this project.     

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.     

Equity and social justice in teaching and teacher education

This essay presents a review on the theme of equity and social justice in teaching and teacher education based on articles published in TATE since its inception. It is a part of an initiative started by the current editors of TATE to “encourage us all to look backward to deepen our understandings of how earlier research has shaped our current research and the ways we can see the reverberations across the temporal span” (Clandinin & Hamilton, 2011, P. 2).     

Towards social justice in education: contradictions and dilemmas

The article builds on prior arguments that research on issues of social justice in education has often lacked constructive engagement with education policy-making, and that this can be partly attributed to a lack of clarity about what a socially just education system might look like. Extending this analysis, this article argues that this lack of clarity is perpetuated by a series of contradictions and dilemmas underpinning ‘progressive’ debate in education, which have not been adequately confronted. At the heart are dilemmas about what constitutes a socially just negotiation of the binarised hierarchy of knowledge that characterises education in the UK, Australia and elsewhere. Three exemplar cases presented from contemporary education curriculum policy in England and Australia are used to illustrate these dilemmas. We then extend this argument to a series of other philosophical dilemmas which haunt education and create tensions or contradictions for those concerned with social justice. It is maintained that we need to confront these dilemmas in efforts to extend conceptual clarity in what it is we are seeking to achieve, which in turn can better equip us to provide the empirical and conceptual information necessary to effectively engage policy-making to remediate inequalities in education.     

Inclusive education: a prerequisite for equity and social justice

Asia Pacific Education Review - Whether education fosters equity and social justice, as it is said to do, is a matter of debate. Whatever the outcome of the debate, education has a better chance of...