Equality and justice in education policy

Introduction

There has always been a connection of sorts between education policy and issues of equality and social justice. Sometimes this is an overt relationship; other times it is more to do with unintended outcomes of policies that are socially unjust. Additional complexities in this relationship are provoked by tensions in the way that education policy work is sometimes conceived of; as being either instrumental or as being more socially located, unstable and contradictory, tied into ‘enabling, organizing and coordinating social relations’ (Ozga 2000, p. 9). In instrumental educational policies, for example those that concentrate on a narrow focus such as raising achievement through testing, issues of equality and social justice are often impacted but might not always be formally recognized by policy makers. In policies that are avowedly attempts to promote social justice, some outcomes may be unanticipated, unexpected and contradictory. As Ball (2017, p. 167) argues, there are ‘omissions, misconceptions and avoidances’ in policies and social justice matters; there are also different ways in which concepts like equality and justice are constructed and inserted into policy texts. That said, many contemporary strands of policy work are about ameliorating past injustices, closing structural gaps in attainment, ensuring forms of inclusion as well as attempting to give some recognition and respect to the excluded and maligned ‘other’ in curriculum, pedagogy and sometimes in school governance. More recently, in social justice policy work, there has been a shift from large – scale structural concerns such as classed factors that influence attainment, towards a more fluid approach dealing with issues of identity policies – often involving concerns with redistribution as well as the politics of recognition. ‘Amid this climate of uncertainty, what is certain is that we must continue to engage in an ongoing monitoring and critical examination of our presumptions for understanding and approaching matters of justice’ (Keddie 2012, p. 277).

In this special issue of the Journal of Education Policy (JEP), a diverse set of papers have been selected to illustrate some of this complexity in how policy work is understood and differently enacted in diverse settings with what are sometimes seen as competing strands within the social justice lexicon being foregrounded. These papers also reflect a diverse set of theoretical and methodological approaches. For example, in the ‘One-in-Ten: Quantitative Critical Race Theory and the Education of the ‘New (White) Oppressed’ Claire Crawford draws on English national attainment data to argue that some of the current taken-for-granted tropes in educational equity discourses need further interrogation. The current argument that white working class boys are the ‘new oppressed’ is challenged by an analysis that claims that this constituency enjoys ‘achievement advantages’ over their BME peers, particularly those of Black Caribbean ethic origin. Drawing on QuantCrit – Quantitative Critical Race Theory – this paper demonstrates a lack of neutrality in the way that statistics are sometimes deployed and how racialised assumptions and injustices are ‘re-made’ in the way that attainment data are reported. Crawford argues that this racialised approach to data handling is evident elsewhere, and cites Australia as an example. The importance of this paper lies first in the deconstruction of the supposed neutrality often associated with large attainment data-sets that then drive policy imperatives, and second, in the foregrounding of QuantCrit.

In ‘Patterns of Racialised Discourses in Norwegian Teacher Education Policy: Whiteness as a Pedagogy of Amnesia in the National Curriculum’, Sandra Fylkesnes points to a discrepancy in policy documentation. Norway works with a social justice agenda of Norwegian ‘imagined sameness’ (a form of misrecognition) and embraces a policy rhetoric that centres on ‘diversity’. Her paper demonstrates the various ways in which policy outcomes construct students as being either superior or inferior non-Norwegians. In a perverse manner, educational policy documents work to institutionalise ‘whiteness’ valorizing culture and marginalizing consideration of racisms. ‘This amnesic behaviour silences the workings of Whiteness and, in turn, leads to an understanding of contemporary Norwegian teacher education policy and curriculum documents as anti-racist promoters of social justice’. This paper contains a strong account of ‘omissions, misconceptions and avoidances’ in the ways that allegedly just policies can sometimes be misleading, misguided and, somewhat inevitably, counter-productive.

Shereen Hamadeh’s paper takes a more traditional and established approach to policy analysis, drawing as it does on the approach of Lesley Vidovich. In ‘A critical analysis of the Syrian refugee education policies in Lebanon using a Policy Analysis Framework’ Hamadeh lays out the policy context. There are an estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon and half of these refugees are children. The paper explores the Lebanese policy approach towards the education of Syrian refugees and details the stresses that can be involved in supporting the educational progression of a high influx of refugees. The international movement of and the displacement of people, particularly in the ‘middle east’ has thrown up many similar issues of justice and equity; currently places like Lebanon and Jordon are in the front line of supporting Syrian refugees. In this paper, Shereen Hamadeh deploys critical policy analysis to promote a ‘critical understanding of the limits and possibilities to ensuring Syrian refugee children do not become “a lost generation”’.

‘Identity Policies of Education: Struggles for Inclusion and Exclusion in Peru and Colombia’ by Lorenza Belinda Fontana, is also concerned with issues to do with ethnic-cultural differences in education and schooling but here the argument is differently made. The paper draws on a varied set of interviews conducted with elites as well as local policy stakeholders in order to provide a warrant for the claim that identity politics can sometimes work to isolate groups and tear them out of their social contexts. In contrast, ‘social heterogeneity and spillover effects between groups’ make for more complex understandings of policy concerns. Fontana demonstrates how in ‘fragile social contexts’, policy changes can lead to new claims for inclusion/exclusion that in turn can figure in social conflicts. Identity policies can sometimes target particular groups in a linear and uni-dimensional manner and disregard local complexities, and identity-hybridities and overlapping interests, with the result that inclusionary policies turn out to be exclusionary in practice.

The next paper by Jenny Chesters deals with a very pertinent policy question that bedevils many national settings, ‘Alleviating or exacerbating disadvantage: Does school attended mediate the association between family background and educational attainment? This paper draws on school choosing in Australia. This is an almost archetypical policy paper as it looks at the persistent of structural inequalities in class-based attainment and relates this to issues of redistribution. Deploying a large data set from an Australian project, Chester shows that attainment at age 15 is associated with SES and that these factors correlate with accessing university level education. One finding that will be useful in many national settings is that, in Australia, school-choice promotes intake polarization and that this outcome exacerbates disadvantage. In this paper, there is a focus on some of the advantages and disadvantages of redistributive educational policies.

The final paper comes from Canada and deals with some current issues of identity policies. In ‘ Mapping transgender policyscapes: A policy analysis of transgender inclusivity in the education system in Ontario’ Wayne Martino, Lee Airton, Diana Kuhl and Wendy Cumming-Potvin deal with a specific policyscape and policy ensemble and in this way, they foreground the role of place and context in coming to understand how and why ‘trans and gender- specific policy discourses, processes and narratives emerge and are articulated, translated and enacted’. They relate the policy history of trans activism in Canada and detail its influence on the production of key legislation. Methodologically, they use Ball’s work on policy as text to detail the interplay between macro and micro issues of power and power relations.

This special JEP collection does a number of things. It offers a rich assemblage of theoretical and methodological approaches to socially just policy research. It offers a strong account of international policies that are working with different dimensions of social justice; from distribution to recognition, in a variety of settings, phases and with different sets of policy actors. We hope that this collection will ‘trouble’ policy work and its analysis by revealing how policies contain gaps and omissions, and show how they work (or do not work) in practice – in sometimes unanticipated and socially regressive ways. Policies are contingent formations and they are subject to mediations and machinations by different sets of policy actors. They are also influenced by time, space and place. But policies matter – they contain the potential for reform, disruption, and for making a difference. Complex policy research, such as contained in this collection, is vital to the project of documenting and hopefully extending educational empowerment, democratization and social justice.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.