Towards social justice in education: contradictions and dilemmas

Abstract

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.

Keywords:

• Equity
• social justice
• theory

Notes

1. Albeit of course care is needed here; see for example, Skelton and Francis (2007); Cousins and Mills (2015).

2. It is notable that while much critique is directed at the OECD for their role in the development of global audit and new managerialist practices in education, social justice researchers also frequently make recourse to citing OECD evidence when needing to highlight educational inequalities and so on.

3. For a discussion of some of the conceptual challenges with the concept of meritocracy, see Young (1958).

4. It has also developed other programmes aimed at promoting the educational attainment of pupils from low SES backgrounds, including the Pupil Premium, and the sponsor academies programme (Francis and Wong 2013).

5. A collection of GCSEs in ‘traditional’ academic subject areas, see: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/english-baccalaureate-ebacc/english-baccalaureate-ebacc.

6. See http://www.labourteachers.org.uk/author/editor/.

7. See endnote 5.

8. Frequently via engagement/negotiation with the unions; see Mills et al. (2014).

9. Sahlgren (2012) claims that this has been due to the poor quality/vision of systems adopting voucher systems, rather than the mechanism itself, which he sees as potentially emancipatory. However, without exemplars of success in this regard, this argument seems to lack credibility.

10. For example, several researchers have explored efforts towards democratic education provided by some fee-paying schools (Woods and Woods 2009; Mills and McGregor 2014). Moreover, the provision of products such as textbooks by private publications houses does (at least to some extent) avoid potential challenges that can arise when such products are provided by the State.

11. Recent examples of such collective action can be found in the British Educational Research Association social justice ‘manifesto’ produced before the 2015 UK general election (in which some of the authors were involved) and in the National Union of Teachers manifesto ‘Stand Up for Education’ at the same time.