Sustainability and social justice: Revisiting an education quality framework

• In Event: Measurement and critique of sustainability

Proposal

In 2011, we first published a framework for conceptualising education quality which drew on social justice theories (Tikly and Barrett, 2011). Treating education systems as a part of society, it was obvious to us that it should be subject to the same moral philosophies that shape what we view as social progress, development, peaceful and just societies. Much of our research is conducted in sub-Saharan Africa and we needed a framework could be applied to an analysis of the postcolonial condition as it pertains to global relations of power and a lasting legacy on education systems in Africa (Tikly and Barrett, 2013; ..). The framework was published just before the post-2015 debate got going and indeed one of our first moves was to apply to it to an analysis of early proposals for ‘a learning goal’ (Barrett 2011). However, whilst the framework did reference sustainability, we did not anticipate the overarching international sustainable development encapsulated in the current sustainable development goals (SDGs). This paper returns to the original social justice framework to ask whether and how it needs updating to more explicitly address environmental sustainability.
The paper starts by briefly re-capping the three characteristics of quality that provide the key coordinates for the framework – inclusion, relevance and participation - and the reasoning behind its construction. We identify the third characteristic of participation, which corresponds with representation or the political dimension of Nancy Fraser’s (2008) framing of social justice. In the following section we question and develop our framework through refering again to social justice literature with a focus on theories that integrate social with environmental justice (Scholsberg). As these theories highlight representation as the key issue for environmental justice, the reinforce the centrality of participation in our framework and bring into sharper relief the need to elaborate an understanding of democracy in education. For this we turn to Education for Sustainability theorists (Sterling 2001; Wals, ; Blewitt; Scott and Vare 2018), who propose radical transformation of education so that it develops critical capacity for ontological change. Drawing on this literature to elaborate a conceptualisation of democratic education. Having strengthened the framework, we put it to work to address one of the sticking points in the SDG4 agenda, that of defining learning outcomes which are relevant to a sustainability agenda across diverse contexts. We argue for reframing the debate away from the concern with what should be measured and how to focus on the processes by which we determine the learning that is valued within societies and their education systems. We illustrate this through reference to recent review we conducted on secondary science education in sub-Saharan Africa (Tikly et al., 2018).

Authors

• Leon P. Tikly, University of Bristol

• Angeline M. Barrett, University of Bristol