Towards a philosophy of equity in educational effectiveness research: moving from utilitarianism to a Rawlsian paradigm

ABSTRACT

The uses to which educational effectiveness research (EER) is put by policymakers cannot be blamed on the field, but it is apparent that it has become aligned with the utilitarianism of Western government policy and transnational bodies like the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). This alignment was not consciously adopted – it is more the case that in the absence of its own asserted philosophy, EER simply defaulted to that world view – but as the field shifts to a “dynamic” model and meta-syntheses, the need to reconsider the current paradigm becomes urgent. This paper attempts to reclaim the field philosophically for the academics who work in it and for the policymakers who rely on its science. It is beyond the scope of the paper to present a full comprehensive philosophy, but it describes, as a first step towards one, a new manifesto based on John Rawls’s work on justice as fairness.

KEYWORDS:

• Philosophy
• equity
• educational effectiveness
• utilitarianism
• Rawls

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Prof Leonidas Kyriakides for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. There is a distinction to be made between “society” and “community”. Neither utilitarianism nor Rawls (1971) have much to say on the subject, but the noted Scottish philosopher John Macmurray (1957) regarded society as a construct for organisations to achieve particular purposes, while community was an end in itself (McIntosh, 2004).

2. Utility is a measure of the preference that a consumer has for a particular set of goods or services and represents the satisfaction experienced by the consumer from the good. The concept is important in rational choice theory because one cannot measure benefit directly. In its simplest form, economists consider utility to be revealed in people’s willingness to pay different amounts for different goods.

3. It is beyond the scope of this paper to present an “archeology” of EER or to explore all possible applications of Rawls’s (1971) work to the field. The purpose is to identify the shortcomings of utilitarianism and to introduce Rawlsian theory as an alternative philosophy.

4. Actually, the underpinning idea predates Bentham by more than sixty years. Francis Hutcheson (1726/2004) first introduced the idea that virtue is in proportion to the number of people deriving benefit from it, and that the best action is therefore the one that procures the greatest happiness for the greatest number.

5. Bentham (1780/2007) and Hutcheson before him (1726/2004) even developed a “hedonic calculus” for measuring the happiness generated by an action.

6. Interestingly, the seventh edition, Sidgwick (1981), has a preface written by Rawls.

7. In his book, Theory of Legislation, Bentham (1780/2007) distinguishes between “evils of the first and second orders”. First-order evils have immediate consequences; second-order evils occur when consequences spread through society causing disruption, and it is the latter that “makes punishment necessary”.

8. Hare (1981) is not suggesting that people are innately either Archangels or Proles, but that everyone has the characteristics of both to varying degrees, and in different contexts and at different times.

9. Karl Popper (1945) suggested that instead of “the greatest happiness for the greatest number”, we should look instead at “the least amount of suffering for the greatest number”, but this still fails to address the problem of aggregation.

10. He further developed his ideas in his lectures at Harvard. It is beyond the scope of this paper to explore fully Rawls’s motivation in developing his theory of justice, but he had a record in the mid-1960s of opposing the exemptions offered to university students who wanted to avoid being drafted to fight in the Vietnam War. His view was that the children of better off parents – and the vast majority of university students at that time fell into that category – had no right to preferential treatment of that sort; and that the waging of a war was only justified if the burden was evenly shared by all sections of society.

11. When the dynamic model considers “stage”, it does not expect that all factors have the same functioning over the course of time. The “context-specificity is shown by the differentiation in the functioning of the factors, which is taken into account when applying them not only at the classroom level but at the other levels too” (L. Kyriakides, personal communication, May 3, 2017).

12. This partly explains why education policy in fracturing societies is so chaotic; the system is inherently unstable because there is insufficient overlapping consensus.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anthony Kelly

Anthony Kelly researches in the area of education policy and effectiveness, particularly in the development of theory and methodology. His recent books are on the use of effectiveness data in schools (Routledge), adapting Sen’s capability theory to school choice (Palgrave Macmillan) and measuring equity, diversity, and competition in schools and universities (Routledge). Professor Kelly was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2012.

Colum Elliott-Kelly

Colum Elliott-Kelly studied Classics at Oxford University. He is Head of Education at Blippar, a leading company in the field of augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and visual search technology. He leads the development of Blippar’s education technology. Elliott-Kelly is a governor at two London schools.