scholarly journals System leadership in Australian and Swedish education: What’s social justice got to do with it?

2021 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-10
Author(s):  
Simon Fittock ◽  
Christine Cunningham ◽  
Michelle Striepe
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Educational Outcomes ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
System Level ◽  
Disadvantaged Students ◽  
Current Time ◽  
System Leadership ◽  
Primary Driver ◽  
Neoliberal Policies ◽  
Just Society

Since the start of the 21st century, education in Australia and Sweden have seen system level reform efforts change and shape both nations’ schools. In an endeavour to improve the educational outcomes of students, both countries have enacted neoliberal policies that aimed to decentralise education and provide increased autonomy for school leaders. The real-world consequences of these policies have restricted school leader autonomy and academic performance has declined while the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students has continually grown. When excellence trumps equity as the primary driver of education at the system level, it creates a disadvantage cycle which sees the development of societal status hierarchies and unjust participatory parity for particular social groups. In the current time of COVID-19, when these disadvantages are exacerbated, it is timely to evaluate educational leadership at the system level in terms of its ability to positively affect social justice issues. Social justice leadership at a system level holds the potential to unite schools in competition and empower them to help overcome the unjust reality faced by disadvantaged students. So, the focus of this piece is to provide commentary on whether system leadership can enhance education’s potential in realising a more socially just society.

Housing, crises and crime

2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-46
Author(s):  
John Braithwaite
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
First Nations ◽  
Public Housing ◽  
Social Housing ◽  
Housing Stock ◽  
Housing Policies ◽  
Treaty Negotiations ◽  
Disadvantaged Neighbourhood ◽  
Neoliberal Policies ◽  
Just Society

A disappointment of responses to the Covid-19 crisis is that governments have not invested massively in public housing. Global crises are opportunities for macro resets of policy settings that might deliver lower crime and better justice. Justice Reinvestment is important, but far from enough, as investment beyond the levels of capital sunk into criminal justice is required to establish a just society. Neoliberal policies have produced steep declines in public and social housing stock. This matters because many rehabilitation programmes only work when clients have secure housing. Getting housing policies right is also fundamental because we know the combined effect on crime of being truly disadvantaged, and living in a deeply disadvantaged neighbourhood, is not additive, but multiplicative. A Treaty with First Nations Australians is unlikely to return the stolen land on which white mansions stand. Are there other options for Treaty negotiations? Excellence and generosity in social housing policies might open some paths to partial healing for genocide and ecocide.

scholarly journals Social justice and provision for children with additional support needs in Scotland

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheila Riddell ◽  
Elisabet Weedon
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Educational Outcomes ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Support Needs ◽  
Class Inequality ◽  
Scottish Parliament ◽  
Family Case ◽  
Social Class Inequality ◽  
Additional Support ◽  
High Level

Since the re-establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999, successive administrations have reaffirmed their commitment to social justice. However, despite high-level equality policies, social-class inequality is a major feature of Scottish society, affecting all social policy domains, including education. In this article, we provide a brief overview of the development of support for children with learning difficulties and disabilities within the context of Scottish comprehensive schooling. We then consider the way in which ideas of social justice are reflected in education for learners with additional support needs, whose numbers have expanded over recent years and who are particularly likely to live in the most deprived parts of Scotland. Using family case studies, we explore the experiences of families from different social backgrounds, whose children have been identified as having additional support needs. The data suggest that children living in deprived areas experience cumulative disadvantage, attracting stigmatising labels without the benefit of extra resources necessary to improve educational outcomes. By way of contrast, those from more advantaged areas are generally more successful in avoiding stigmatising labels while ensuring that facilitating resources are in place. Findings are discussed within Fraser’s three-dimensional framework of social justice, encompassing distribution, recognition and representation.

scholarly journals Affirmative Action for Minorities in India: Constraints and Possibilities

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 246
Author(s):  
Mohd. Sanjeer Alam
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Affirmative Action ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

India is one of the most socially fragmented and unequal societies of the world. At the same time, it has the distinction of having the longest history of most elaborative affirmative action programmes for alleviating socially structured inequalities. While the affirmative action programmes have wider coverage in terms of social groups, there is continuing demand by new social groups for getting acknowledged as ‘disadvantaged’ and inclusion in the system of affirmative action. While group based ‘reservation’ as the most vital instrument of social justice has long been under fire and grappling with several challenges, the social justice regime is faced with the charge that it has largely excluded nation’s religious minorities. Of course, religion based affirmative action is faced with many constraints; nevertheless there are possibilities for it. This article discusses the constraints and possibilities of affirmative action for disadvantaged religious minorities, Muslims in particular.  

Competing locals in an autonomous schooling system: The fracturing of the ‘social’ in social justice

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (5) ◽  
pp. 786-801
Author(s):  
Jessica Holloway ◽  
Amanda Keddie
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
School Principals ◽  
Local Level ◽  
System Level ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
Public Education System ◽  
The Social ◽  
Level Versus ◽  
The One ◽  
Schooling System

This paper troubles notions of ‘social justice’ as being compromised and fractured by the autonomous school agenda. Drawing on interviews with 13 autonomous school principals in Australia, it demonstrates how the devolution of schooling simultaneously rips the seams of the ‘social’ fabric that makes collective justice possible. The stories of these principals signal a fracturing of the social cohesion that is necessary for creating a just and equal society. We aim to distinguish between individual efforts to create socially just conditions at the local level versus collective projects to create socially just conditions at the system level. We argue that, on the one hand, school autonomy affords individual principals opportunities to exercise what might be considered socially just discretion; on the other hand, this sometimes occurs at the expense of fracturing the cohesion of the greater public education system. In doing so, we challenge the extent to which social justice can be realised within a decentralised schooling system.

Social justice in a tertiary education context: Do we practice what we preach?

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 207-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Gair ◽  
Len Baglow
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Tertiary Education ◽  
Social Activism ◽  
Social Justice Education ◽  
Social Work Students ◽  
Student Body ◽  
Core Study ◽  
Just Society ◽  
Work Family

Concepts of social justice have strong historical roots, while more contemporary notions of social justice coincide with human rights, equity, fairness and facilitation of social change with lasting impact. In higher education, evident examples of social justice include widened university access facilitating a diverse student body and graduate workforce who can, in turn, contribute to a more just society. University student identity in past eras has been synonymous with social activism. Equally, social work has a mandate to uphold social justice. Yet tertiary students’ own growing material hardships appear to constitute an unacknowledged injustice. While it is understood that tertiary study may mean short-lived poverty, more recent literature suggests that many university students are suffering mounting debt, increased mental health stress and vulnerability to withdrawal. In this article, the authors ponder social justice education by calling on specific results of a 2015 survey of 2320 Australian social work students. Findings revealed that for many students a juggling act of core study requirements, paid work, family commitments and affording necessities impacted their health, wellbeing and study success. Some astute students identified a disconnect between social work’s staunch social justice agenda and its lack of acknowledgement, empathy or action regarding student hardship. The findings have implications for curricula, universities, accrediting bodies and educators who want to facilitate social justice education.

Identifying Gifted-Disadvantaged Students: Issues Pertinent to System-Level Screening Procedures for the Identification of Gifted Children

1984 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 92-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Deschamp ◽  
Greg Robson
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Gifted And Talented ◽  
Gifted Students ◽  
System Level ◽  
Disadvantaged Students ◽  
Gifted Children ◽  
Screening Procedures ◽  
Talented Students ◽  
Identification Of Gifted ◽  
Identification Procedures

At the beginning of 1980 a study was initiated to trial special provisions for gifted students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The stimulus for the study was a concern that schools in neighbourhoods with high cultural diversity and severe socioeconomic problems may have students who are very able but, because of cultural, social, language or other factors, their ability may not be recognized by their teachers and they might not be selected by the conventional methods of identifying gifted and talented students. An initial concern for the project was how to identify these children. At the beginning of the project several different ways of thinking about ‘gifted-disadvantaged’ students were considered and ways of identifying students within each concept were analysed. This paper describes four ways of conceptualizing ‘gifted-disadvantaged students’ and proposes identification procedures believed to be appropriate to each concept. Also considered are the implications of adopting these identification procedures as adjuncts to system-level screening procedures for the identification of gifted students.

Re-imagining the nature of (student-focused) learning through digital technology

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina Hood
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
Education System ◽  
Digital Technology ◽  
Educational Outcomes ◽  
Learning Experiences ◽  
Learning Opportunities ◽  
High Quality

Digital technology is frequently positioned as being central to the establishment of a ‘future focused’ education system that provides high quality student-focused learning opportunities and re-envisioned educational outcomes. While recognising the potential of technology, this paper explores some of the questions about its role in education and learning – in particular, how technology addresses issues of equity and social justice; what it means to design educational and learning experiences that are truly student-focused; and the potential for technology to dehumanise the learning process. The paper concludes with some considerations of how to integrate digital technology effectively into an education system.

Human Rights Rituals: Masking Neoliberalism and Inequality, and Marginalizing Alternative World Views

2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (01) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Larking
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
World Views ◽  
Neoliberal Policies ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract The role played by ritual in the field of human rights has not been widely remarked or analysed. Here I argue that the triumph of human rights as the predominant language for making social justice claims in the international sphere is partly attributable to the power of certain linguistic and embodied rituals. I suggest that these rituals veil the material factors at stake when human rights are invoked internationally, obscuring the relationship between neoliberalism, material inequality, and human rights. I compare the vision of justice propounded through the rituals of human rights with that proposed by the peasants’ movement, Vía Campesina. Vía Campesina’s vision is grounded in material realities and confronts neoliberal policies head on. I consider how it unsettles the rituals of human rights, and whether it can be preserved in the form of a UN Declaration on the rights of peasants.

scholarly journals Relativita sociálnej spravodlivosti ako základného princípu sociálnej politiky štátu

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Oskár Tóth
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
System Approach ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Western Civilization ◽  
Social Teaching ◽  
Political Ideologies ◽  
Scientific Disciplines ◽  
Vega 1

Each state of Western civilization, which is identified by the boundaries of three basic subsystem – the system approach and value legacy of ancient Greece, Christianity, Christian social teaching, modern and postmodern political ideologies, implements a certain model of social policy. Social justice is one of the main principles of social policy. It is a natural requirement of society, which aims to ensure the good of society on behalf of individuals and various social groups. Social justice is the subjects of research by scientists and theorists in the fields of philosophy, sociology, law, economics, and political science. Its essence is relative and change in the time and space. The main goal of the paper is to identify common intersections of individual scientific disciplines with a view to social justice. Presented contribution is a part of solution of Project VEGA 1/0290/20 – Sociálna spravodlivosť a starobné dôchodkové sporenie v Slovenskej republike

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