Collective Justice: What Can Education Policy Learn From the COVID-19 Reopening Debates?

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session Eight
  In Roundtable Session: Pandemic Politics: Power, Policy, and COVID-19 Policy Making (Table 1)

Abstract

This paper draws upon a recent empirical study of justice claims that various stakeholders evoked in the debate about school reopening in New York City during the COVID-19 pandemic. We build on work by Fraser (1997, 2000, 2005) and Abu El-Haj (2006) to delineate how multiple dimensions of justice may overlap or conflict with each other. We further consider the tensions that emerge among a variety of actors situated within a broader set of social and material relations and who inevitably hold conflicting ideas about what constitutes just educational policy and practice. In response, we offer a framework of collective just relations that addresses such conflicts, articulating a more thorough and nuanced view of educational justice.

Authors

• Alexandra J. Freidus, University of Connecticut
  Presenting Author

• Erica O. Turner, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Presenting Author