Pluralistic and equitable education in the neoliberal era: paradoxes and contradictions

ABSTRACT

Education, under the neoliberal doctrine, has undoubtedly undergone multiple reforms that have led to its economisation. They have also turned education into a mechanism that intensifies the reproduction of inequalities and suppresses diversity, which only helps to perpetuate social exclusion. Despite radical criticism of neoliberalism’s effect on education, neoliberal educational strategies have emerged stronger in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. The goal of this paper is to review the effect of the neoliberal paradox on diversity and equity in education and to consider a new socio-economic paradigm that would foster more progressive educational practices. Such practices are advocated by Kalantzis and Cope’s New Learning model, which points to the relationship between senses of belonging and academic achievement in education. To achieve this, this paper adopts a polemical, critical approach to analysing the selected literature. It highlights the paradoxes and contradictions of neoliberalism on diversity and equity and analyses how inequity is perpetuated through neoliberal education. Then, it discusses neoliberal education and considers the reasons criticism of neoliberalism has been rather ineffective. The paper concludes by exploring alternative pedagogical models and contemplating whether education can be recalibrated in the interest of an inclusive and just society.

KEYWORDS:

• Neoliberalism
• critical review
• depoliticised diversity
• equity
• social exclusion
• transformative education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Angeliki Mikelatou

Angeliki Mikelatou holds a Masters degree in European Administration and Politics and a Med in Adult Education. She has worked as a Project Manager of projects co-financed by the European Social Fund in the EC Business and Innovation Centre of Attika and as a Project Officer of Lifelong Learning programmes in the Ministry of Employment in Greece. Currently she is working at the European Aviation Safety Agency in Cologne, Germany. She is also a PhD candidate at the Department of Educational Sciences and Early Childhood Education, University of Patras and a research associate to the Forum on Intercultural Dialogue and Learning (Laboratory of Sociology and Education, DESECE, University of Patras).

Eugenia Arvanitis

Eugenia Arvanitis currently works at the Department of Educational Sciences and Early Childhood Education, University of Patras as Assistant Professor of Interculturality & Diversity in Education. Eugenia teaches at the Post Graduate Program “LRM LANGUAGE EDUCATION FOR REFUGEES AND MIGRANTS” of the Hellenic Open University. Since 2015, Eugenia has been coordinating the Forum on Intercultural Dialogue and Learning at the University of Patras, Greece and has also been acting as an Intercultural Expert at the Intercultural Cities Network, a world-wide program run by the Council of Europe. Eugenia was a visiting researcher and scholar at the National Europe Center, Australian National University (2004), and the Fulbright Foundation at the University of Illinois (2017). She is an Associate & Research Partner in several scientific organisations such as PASCAL International Observatory, the International Association for Intercultural Education, the European Society for Research on the Education of Adults (ESREA), and the University of Illinois (Common Ground: Scholar & Learning by Design project teams). In recent years, she has focused on the dissemination of the Learning by Design. She manages the Greek web based platforms ‘Nea Mathisi’ and ‘Scholar,’ which support professional and intercultural learning in school-based activities.