Global inequality,capabilities, social justice: The millennium development goal for gender equality in education

The Millennium Development Goal (MDG) for gender equality in education by 2005 has been criticised for its grandiose ambition, its failure to adequately conceptualise the nature of gender inequality or the diverse forms this takes, the inadequate policies developed to put the goal into practice and the limited measurements used for monitoring. The paper argues for a strategic defence of the MDG as an opportunity to think more widely about what the contents of rights in education are and how gender equality might be advanced. Drawing on the capability approach of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum it considers gender equality in education in relation to wellbeing and agency freedom and achievement. Utilising Thomas Pogge's taxonomy of institutional conditions for human flourishing the paper considers how global, national and local policy might better measure gender equality in pursuit of the MDG.     

Education and social justice: gender lessons of the past

In 1927 the Swedish grammar school opened up for girls. Thereby girls got access to higher education on the same conditions as boys, at least formally. Thus, many towns' boys and girls were seated in the same classroom. In the large cities, however, sex segregation remained, as separate grammar schools for girls were established and some boys' grammar schools were still reserved for boys. The main aim of this paper is to compare the process of gender construction in these different school forms during the period 1927–1960. The questions put are: Were the discourses and the discursive practices of these schools part of the politics of equality or the politics of difference with regard to gender? Which representations of gender and gendered patterns of communication and domination did they produce? The main data consists of interviews with 30 ex-students of coeducational schools and female and male single-sex schools. The conclusion is that the pedagogy in all school forms was inscribed within the meritocratic discourse of equality, which was also important in shaping the students' subjectives. Both girls and boys had to prove themselves worthy of the privilege of attending the grammar school, and in this respect girls as a group were more successful than boys. To begin with the politics of equality also operated in the norms for how girls should dress and look, but later on a discrete make-up was allowed. The politics of difference was manifest in the swot syndrome, the techniques for punishments and rewards, and also, at least partly, in physical education. It was also manifest in the traditional representations of masculinity and femininity, like the male breadwinner and the housewife, prevalent in boys' grammar schools. Girls in female single sex schools, on the other hand, were firmly determined to make a career of their own.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

A question of gender justice: Exploring the linkages between women's unpaid care work,education, and gender equality

ActionAid International implemented an action-research programme on women's unpaid care work in rural Nepal from March 2011 to December 2012. This social empowerment methodology, Reflect, enabled 106 women to gain recognition for their unpaid care work through their own collection of time-use data. The literacy skills women acquired facilitated greater representation in community meetings calling for a reduction in their unpaid care work rather than shifting this work to girls. The article draws on Fraser's model of gender justice to explore how women's literacy, girls’ education and a more equitable balance of care work are needed to improve women's status.     

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...