PRISM: Casting New Light on Learning, Theory and Practice

Editorial: From Social Justice to Educational Justice: Challenging Practice, and Finding Hope

2023-09-25T11:02:01+00:00

The purpose of this Special Issue is to explore, expose and energise issues around the concepts of social justice and education. We recognise that the notion of ‘social justice’ is not static, and is not shaped in a vacuum; it is iterative by nature, and flows across generations and contexts. The multiple historical and ideological perspectives that arise from this flow include education theory, research, and practice. These positionings offer deep insights into the purpose of education; they also raise important questions: are the social and ideological dynamics a force for challenging the status quo, and for rupturing cycles of inequity or perpetuating inequality? Do they interrupt the relations of dominance and subordination?

When inclusion leads to exclusion: A consideration of the impact of inclusive policy on school leaders working within a pupil referral unit

2022-10-26T15:26:06+00:00

My research investigates the experiences of a range of professionals tasked with the role of enacting a policy aimed at achieving social justice. In a drive where one of the priorities was aimed at reducing exclusions from mainstream schools, some participants report feelings of being marginalised and excluded from the policy process. This paper offers a valuable insight into the permeations of the policy process, and the experiences of senior leaders working within education, health and social care, and who feel excluded from the decision-making process. This raises fundamental questions around the planning and implementation of policy aimed at inclusive practice, and a move towards achieving social justice. It raises the question of if it ever justified to exclude the voices of professionals who are directly impacted by a policy? This is particularly pertinent given that the purpose of the policy itself is concerned with inclusion and social justice.

Children’s Rights and Child Labour

2022-10-26T15:13:13+00:00

An examination into the origins of rights’ discourse and contemporary debates around child labour in developing countries, illustrates some of the problems with the discursive uses that children’s rights is put to, and its weakness as a means of addressing issues of social justice. Addressing the discourse around child labour, and how this is related to wider conceptions of the individual in post-European Enlightenment thought, enables some enquiry into the nature of these problems. Arce (2015) reveals the scale of child labour as a social issue, and that it occurs predominantly in developing countries, with almost a fifth of the global total of child labourers residing in Africa. Whilst it has a global impact that transcends national borders, the framing of the discourse around it occurs within parameters set by European actors. In this paper we argue that, if children’s rights campaigns wish to do more than reinforce existing global systems of domination and subordination, there needs to be a focus on children’s place in a nexus of social relations that themselves need radical rethinking. Such a project, we argue, could more usefully provide a starting place for conceptions of social justice that pay adequate attention to the needs of childhood.

Playing social justice: How do early childhood teachers enact the right to play through resistance and subversion?

2022-10-26T13:48:56+00:00

In this paper we narrate how two teachers enact playful pedagogies by resisting the single story of formalised learning discourses in early childhood education and care. Playful learning is well established in international literature and children have the right to play. Yet in contemporary outcomes-driven policy, adult-led formalised teaching has become normalised at the expense of child-initiated play. Play is thus marginalised; positioned as a privilege rather than as a right and dependent on views of children as capable holders of rights. Here, we position play in relation to democracy, equity and social justice by storying how teachers’ circumvent scrutiny to facilitate the right to play and we argue this as a fruitful sub-context for resistance. From this perspective, teachers’ resistances do not just enable play, they embody and enact representative and democratic justice. Firstly, teachers story representative forms of social justice as ‘being the right thing’ in making play happen. Secondly, teachers enact democratic forms of social justice through resistance actions of ‘doing the right thing’ that entangle an emotional vulnerability to scrutiny. Adopting alternative resistance positions shifts play beyond a privilege and creates transformational spaces for social justice where time, space and materiality have a role to play. We call on teachers and educators to deepen their critical awareness of the narrowness of a single story of learning and the rich relationships between rights and play agendas. We assert that teachers’ resistances can enable playful pedagogies and act as hopeful storytelling of social justice as serious play.

The Slow Learner: Feeling our way to Thinking about Lifelong Learning

2022-10-26T13:47:51+00:00

This article is a critique of the current formal education system as a construct for consumerism, where the value of learning is geared towards increasingly limited instrumentalist ends. It considers alternative ways of educating the population to prepare for a century of disruption and upheaval as we transition from an unsustainable fossil fuel-based economy, where competition and acquisition are lauded to a less frenetic, but ultimately more egalitarian reflective future. It argues against the short-term myopia of credentialism, determined by election cycle politics and competitive advantage, and instead posits a humanistic vision for community education and teaching innovation that takes the longue durée regard of the history of human relations into account.

Accepting Gellner’s exo-socialisation model for mass education in the industrial age, it asks what will replace this in a post-industrial world. Beginning with the principles of widening participation and social inclusion as the starting points for a socially just education, it argues that relationships are central for emancipatory education to take effect. It uses two programmes offered by Maynooth University’s Department of Adult and Community Education, the Communiversity and the Critical Skills modules: A Social Analysis of Everyday Life, as examples of programmes that have inclusion, equality and diversity, and social justice as core principles in their modus operandi. Here participation, dialogue, reflection, and a willingness to engage offer hope for an intergenerational lifelong learning approach to education in the twenty-first century that is ‘thought led’ rather than ‘market driven’.

Reimagining adult learning in community-based contexts: A framework for social justice education in Australia

2023-05-02T14:27:13+00:00

In Australia, there is no one cohesive program design or curriculum which provides a framework for adult learning in Adult Community Education (ACE) organisations, with the two major states New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria leading the most developed systems. Many adult learners who learn in these education settings return to study to find pathways to employment, or to re-train for a new role after losing their job. In addition, later-life learners may attend because they want to remain healthy, participate in leisure activities, build friendships and remain active and engaged in their later years. Many of the learners are ‘second chance learners’ who have had prior negative experiences with the neoliberal system which assesses, ranks, and categorises learners according to their academic abilities. In this paper, we propose a comprehensive framework for the delivery of pre-accredited training in Australia, founded on social constructivist theory, learner-centred pedagogy, and course design enhanced by Nussbaum’s Capability Framework. We commence the article by delivering a context for adult education policy and social justice education in the development of the ACE system. What we mean by a socially just education is one in which all people access a critical and democratic curriculum with equity and access to resources at its core. In this paper, we argue for the importance of adult learning, which is holistic, flexible, and nimble to cater for diverse learners and learning needs. Social justice education of this kind, delivered to diverse learners, requires a comprehensive epistemological and theoretical framework for practice that considers learners’ prior experiences of learning, one which accounts for learners’ existing knowledge, skills and experiences and education that provides well-developed pathways to further education and training.

Book review: The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons on Intellectual Emancipation. (1991)

2022-10-26T13:58:15+00:00

Understanding Social Justice: Why it matters

2023-09-25T09:43:39+00:00

Social justice as a concept is both widely used and widely misunderstood. It is also, increasingly, a term of derision. In this Think Piece I explain why it is important to have a clear sense of what we mean by social justice, but to do so without tying it to a precise definition. Rather we need to work with broad understandings of social justice that we share with our fellow scholars and our readers. We also need to make efforts to understand other conceptualisations of social justice, even those with which we disagree. A commitment to social justice can be both a firm belief in key principles, and an openness to hear and understand other perspectives. I contrast the procedural social contract approach to social justice, most famously associated with the work of John Rawls, and more outcomes-focussed approaches such as the capabilities approach and critical theory. My own work is based in a critical theory understanding of social justice which looks at hidden and unseen forms of oppression in an historical context. And yet, I also acknowledge the terrible neglect of issues of race and colonialism in early critical theory. This neglect has become more apparent as we respond to the welcome need to decolonialise education and philosophy. This Think Piece finishes with a reflection on how to engage with indigenous understandings of social justice without appropriation. I advocate an open and forgiving approach to social justice that sits firmly with a deep and thoughtful commitment.