Education and Social Justice: A Beyond School Approach

• In Event: Mapping Leadership for Social Justice: Innovations, Applications, and Syntheses

Abstract

The author begins with a Ken Robinsonesque argument for why social injustices in and out of school should be viewed as a crime (against society and humanity). As such, interventions or leadership for social justice must “fit the crime” for “justice to be served.” In other words, equitable within-school programs that leave individuals and communities at disadvantages relating to poverty and racism do not rise to the level of social justice. To the claim made by educators that neither schools nor education can fix the ills of society, we have the default position for schools as “providing opportunities” as the solution to social injustices. The paper will first examine the opportunities’ arguments for evidence of social justice beginning with the work of Colin Greer (1976) and then move to the “beyond school” arguments of William Foster (1986).
Conceptual Framework and Analysis: The author has offered six operating principles which guide the analysis of social justice as opportunities. Principle 1: Social justice as opportunities are both necessary and contingent, but can never be guaranteed or sustained without continuous efforts, including work within difficult – undemocratic– circumstances; Principle 2: Social justice, even as opportunities, must be a deliberate intervention, more than and different from good teaching and moral leadership; Principle 3: Educational researchers can design and/or systematically observe these interventions as opportunities, but cannot know social justice outcomes as consequences unless they are first experienced by participants in their studies: Therefore, Principle 4: one cannot proclaim, a priori a theoretical concepts as definitions of social justice or as solutions for social injustice; nor can a researchers’ well-intentioned dispositions be a substitute for social justice; nor can awareness or diagnosis of social injustices substitute for leadership for social justice. As such, Principle 5 is that social justice can be measured only by material changes in participants’ own lives and only then can it be validated by educational researchers post hoc; and Principle 6: Social justice as an educational leadership construct has to do with the PLACE of education in societies in terms of re-centering and engaging educational leadership within dominant social, political, economic, and transcendent discourses.
Results: The paper clarifies the difference between within-school equity and beyond-school social justice, first by questioning researchers’ epistemological assumptions, and then empirically studying outcomes in terms of persistent correlations of tests scores with race and SES. The author concludes with the limitation to developing a general theory of social justice as an educational construct, that any intervention must be sensitive to diverse contexts and cultures and worldwide events (e.g., the migration of Syrian refugees).
Significance. Social justice comes into focus when educators are able to help societies confront their social values and attitudes towards children and adults with differences and disabilities beyond the schools’ wall. A social justice educator’s actions help to make changes in society which give dignity, worth and sustenance to all children and adults as citizens – not just as classroom learners.

Author

• Ira E. Bogotch, Florida Atlantic University