Social Justice is a term that encapsulates many of the problematic issues concerning modern societies. As a reflection of society, the concept has evolved to emphasize different aspects of fairness such as distribution or recognition. One often tacit but central element in this discussion is the articulation of social justice with the development of equitable education systems. In other words, what it means to pursue social justice in educational change and improvement.
To address this question, contemporary ideas of social justice can be brought into the field of educational change and improvement in a more intentional and explicit way to respond to the societal imperatives for justice in education. By tracing the evolution of the key conceptualizations of social justice rooted in political philosophy, it is possible to examine its implications for educational and systemic transformation. Furthermore, from a systems perspective, understanding the ecology of equity can offer important insights into the interplay between schools, education systems, and wider society. The exploration of experiences and approaches in education that aim to disrupt inequities can be used to propose a number of key principles to guide educational change efforts from a social justice perspective, aiming to foster more equitable educational systems.
These principles serve to unpack issues of social justice and move to a more complex and action-oriented perspective that places distribution, recognition, and representation as key to developing more equitable education systems. The six principles are: a focus on learning and teaching; a commitment to collaboration and networking; the use of inquiry, research, and evidence; understanding the contextual nature of justice; investing in support and agency; and
building leadership capacity. The notion of a networked learning system and how this perspective can advance the discourse toward a more explicit agenda for developing socially just approaches in educational research, policymaking, and practice is also helpful. The overarching goal is to stimulate dialogue and action aimed at creating more equitable educational systems that prioritize social justice principles in all facets of education.
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Social Justice and Equitable Systems in Education
Romina Madrid Miranda and Christopher Chapman
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Challenging the Nature—Culture Binary Through Urban Environmental Education
Marijke Hecht
Environmental conditions facing our local and global communities in the early 21st-century demand an urgent shift in education toward fostering healthy multispecies communities through stronger relationships between human and more-than-human beings. Environmental education, which has long pushed for interdisciplinary pedagogies that connect people and place, is well positioned to serve this aim. However, for the field to continue to develop and meet the challenges of the 21st century, it needs to address its roots as an outgrowth of science education where entrenched Eurocentric perspectives, such as human exceptionalism and the persistence of a nature–culture binary, are pervasive. These perspectives contribute significantly to the ongoing extraction of natural resources and degradation of habitats, which are tied to pressing environmental issues such as climate change and biodiversity loss. For environmental education to effectively impact learning in ways that lead toward a lasting protection of people and the planet, the field must be more critical of its roots and practices. Urban environmental education, which takes place where the majority of people live globally and in landscapes where humans and more-than-human beings are in close proximity, has the potential to challenge existing practices and continue to grow the field. Rethinking the nature–culture binary and the insistence on human exceptionalism are necessary for transformational improvements to the local landscape and planetary health. Two existing approaches that can support field-level change are critical place-based and Indigenous L/land-based pedagogies, which are drawn from different traditions but both support the transformation of relations between human and more-than-human beings. However, this requires an interrogation of if and/or how non-Indigenous scholars might take up Indigenous philosophies and pedagogies respectfully and ethically.
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Critical Perspectives on Positive Youth Development and Environmental Education
Marianne E. Krasny, Tania M. Schusler, Jesse Delia, Anne Katherine Armstrong, and Lilly Briggs
Positive youth development (PYD) assumes that, when given appropriate support, all youth have the capacity to develop the assets that enable them to succeed in life. Such assets include competence, confidence, connection, character, caring, and contribution to community, otherwise known as the six Cs of PYD. Environmental education (EE) programs that focus on youth action and empowerment offer the support needed for youth to develop these assets.
Youth after-school, summer, and residential programs, often serving low-income and minoritized youth, increasingly are using environmental action and learning as a means to achieve PYD outcomes. Yet both PYD and EE have been criticized for not addressing the root causes of poverty and environmental degradation. In response, critical traditions in PYD and EE have emerged, in which youth reflect and act on structural barriers to human and environmental well-being in their communities. As youth and their mentors seek to address systemic inequities impacting themselves and their environment, they develop additional “Critical Positive Youth Development/Environmental Education” assets including critical reflection, efficacy, the ability to take collective action, and community-level empowerment.
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Reimagining Arabic in Islamic Schools
Nadia Selim
Islamic schools have become a noticeable feature of the educational landscapes of multicultural, English-dominant, Muslim-minority contexts like Australia and the United Kingdom. The number of Islamic schools has progressively increased since the 1980s, and the growing nongovernmental Islamic schooling sector caters to several thousands of diverse Muslim learners. Islamic schools are key providers of K–12 Arabic learning with great potential for promoting Arabic language learning innovation and research. While Arabic provisions in Islamic schools are not fully understood due to research paucity, some emergent findings with adolescent research participants suggest that dissonance arises between learners’ goals and interests and the nature of their programs. The contemporary realities of Muslim learners of Arabic and Arabic programs at Islamic schools can result in dissonance, and using a whole-school approach that promotes an Arabic-integrated ethos could help in bridging the gaps between students and their Arabic language education.
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Sweden and Education as a Market
Lisbeth Lundahl
Since the late 1970s, the relationship between the state, the public sector, and the economy has undergone a profound transformation globally toward privatization, commercialization, and market organization. Pronounced marketization of education has occurred even in the Nordic countries, traditionally characterized as having social democratic/universalistic and egalitarian welfare systems, but with considerable national variations. Sweden has caught international attention by introducing unusually far-reaching, state-supported privatization of educational provision and strong incentives for school choice and competition. Central issues addressed include the factors associated with the exceptionally swift and far-reaching market reforms in Sweden, as well as the persistence of the resulting system and its consequences according to current research.
A hasty reform decision, paucity of envisioned alternatives, and the appeal of school choice for an expanding middle-class contributed to the neoliberal turn in Swedish education politics. Generous rules of establishment and possibilities of profit-making attracted big businesses, particularly after the decision in the mid-1990s to fully tax-fund independent “free” schools. Within a 10-year period, substantial proportions of the schools were owned and run by large, profit-making companies and chains. Research has shown that the school choice and privatization reforms, besides providing parents and young people in the urban areas with a vast smorgasbord of schools, have fueled growing educational inequity and segregation since the 1990s. Despite increasing criticism of the design of school choice and profit-making in education from many sides, recently even from conservative–liberal media and politicians, the Swedish “market school system” persists and flourishes.
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Teacher Education in Poland
Joanna Madalinska-Michalak
Teacher education in Poland is viewed as a lifelong journey, encompassing preservice training, induction, and ongoing professional development. The primary emphasis is on empowering teachers as perpetual learners and tailoring their education to meet individual needs, as well as the needs of educational institutions and students. In Poland, teacher education is deeply integrated with higher education and has been shaped by substantial reforms. The current landscape of teacher education in Poland is a result of significant reforms initiated by the state, aligning with the Bologna process. The Bologna process aims to harmonize higher education systems across Europe by establishing the European Higher Education Area. This facilitates student and staff mobility, enhances inclusivity and accessibility, and boosts the competitiveness of European higher education globally. The changes in teacher education in Poland have also emphasized quality assurance, qualifications frameworks, recognition processes, and more. The overarching objective is to elevate the quality of teaching and learning. Comparative analysis of Poland’s teacher education system and international findings suggests several policy initiatives that should be implemented. These initiatives can be broadly categorized into two sets: strategies aimed at improving the status and competitiveness of the teaching profession, and targeted approaches for attracting and retaining specific types of teachers, particularly in specific schools. To enhance teacher education in Poland, recommendations include limiting the number of teacher education candidates based on demand, increasing funding, and implementing more selective admission processes within higher education institutions. Moreover, strengthening support for teacher mentors and improving the socioprofessional position of teachers is seen as essential. Attracting and recruiting the best teachers in Poland is a critical challenge, particularly in the face of emerging trends and teacher shortages. To address this issue effectively, it is essential to improve the image of the teaching profession, enhance working conditions, and provide incentives for aspiring educators. Additionally, more flexible teacher education programs that accommodate a diverse range of candidates and prepare teachers for the changing educational landscape are necessary to ensure a continuous supply of high-quality teachers.
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Multilingualism in Monolingual Schools and the German Example
Ingrid Gogolin
The majority of European countries consider themselves as monolingual nation-states. Some exceptions are countries composed of different linguistic territories, such as Belgium and Switzerland. Another form of exception is countries where certain territories are inhabited by linguistic minorities who are granted particular linguistic rights. Monolingualism with exceptions for special constellations or cases is therefore considered the “linguistic normality” in European nations. This understanding of normality is also reflected in the nations’ public institutions and is particularly pronounced in the national education systems.
The linguistic reality in Europe, however, contrasts with this notion of normality. Since time immemorial, the regions that have become European nation-states have been characterized by linguistic diversity, not only across but also within their boundaries. Since the second half of the 20th century, however, the number of languages that are vital and used daily has considerably increased. The most important driver of this development is international migration. Some European countries—Germany in particular—belong to the most attractive immigration destinations of the world. Despite of this reality, European national education systems largely persist in their monolingual mindset—or in other words: in a monolingual habitus.
This ambiguity can be amply illustrated by the example of the German education system. Education research shows that it belongs to the causes of educational disadvantage for children from immigrant families. This is precisely why innovation initiatives have been launched to mitigate the risks to teaching and learning associated with multilingualism, while making the best use of the resources offered by linguistic diversity to all children—be they growing up in monolingual or multilingual families.
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Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED) for Student Well-Being
Karen Moran Jackson and Rosemary Papa
The use of artificial intelligence in education (AIED) is a growing concern for both its potential benefits and misuses. Originating in research following the Second World War, artificial intelligence (AI) refers to technology that perform activities, such as making predictions and generating text, at levels equivalent to human ability. Early AI efforts had little public applications, but that began to change in the late 20th century, with applications in education becoming common in the early 21st century. AI is dependent on data collection and model selection, technical aspects of development that allow for personalized data but that also permit human biases into the system. AIED applications have taken largely predictive and decision-making roles, but generative applications are becoming more common. How different types of AIED applications become integrated into educational systems will depend not just on student and teacher needs, but on larger stakeholders in educational systems, such as administrators, policymakers, and business interests. AIED applications are subject to ethical violations and concerns, so development and implementation must be guided by ethical principles, even as ethical governance of AI in schools is riddled with challenges. Implications for educational organizations include developing more robust frameworks and principles around data access and generative AIED challenges, similar to those surrounding personalized medicine. These frameworks can guide oversight, auditing, and analysis of the performance of AIED applications, including miscues and mistakes. Educators should strive to implement AIED that is human-centered and based on principles of transparency, explainability, trustworthiness, accountability, fairness, and justice.
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Indigenous Language Revitalization
Anne Marie Guerrettaz and Mel M. Engman
Countless Indigenous languages around the world are the focus of innovative community regeneration efforts, as the legacies of colonialism have created conditions of extreme sociopolitical, educational, and economic adversity for the speakers of these languages—and their descendants. In response to these conditions that Indigenous people face globally, the burgeoning field of Indigenous language revitalization and maintenance has emerged since the 1990s with the goal of supporting speakers of these languages and future generations. Indigenous language revitalization involves different but often interlocking domains of research, practice, and activism. Given the uniqueness of each community and their desires, history, values, and culture, the significance of the local is critical to the global phenomenon that is language revitalization. For instance, cases on five different continents offer valuable insights into this field, including the Hawaiian language in Oceania; Myaamia in the United States (North America); Básáa in the Cameroon (Africa); Sámi in Finland (Europe); and, Cristang and Malay in Malaysia (Asia). These offer examples of both local resources and common challenges that characterize revitalization efforts.
The field of Indigenous language revitalization is interdisciplinary in nature, exemplified through five lines of inquiry that significantly contribute to this area of research: (a) theoretical linguistics and anthropology, (b) applied linguistics, (c) education, (d) policy studies, and (e) critical studies, including postcolonial studies, Indigenous studies, and raciolinguistics. Questions of research ethics are central to the field of Indigenous language revitalization since reciprocity and collaboration between researchers and Indigenous communities matter as the lifeblood of Indigenous language revitalization work. Finally, we believe that the notion of Indigenous language revitalization pedagogies along with underexplored Indigenous concepts (e.g., from Yucatecan and Māori scholars) offer compelling directions for future research.
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Matching Performance Assessment to Teacher Capabilities: The Bridge Between Teacher Performance/Evaluation and Student Learning
Robert Morris
America’s public educational system is under constant scrutiny concerning student performance on standardized tests. Some blame the teachers, others blame the students, and recently many have begun to blame the test. A clearer picture of the issues is important and by reviewing the traditional aspects for evaluating teachers and then analyzing how contemporary testing methods in today’s classrooms has evolved a clearer perspective can be accomplished. The advent of newer models and methods of teacher assessment that focus on the classroom performance of teachers and based on observable assessments, along with a more authentic measure of student capabilities, are central. Although many researchers praise this movement, others have found many pitfalls in the attempt to standardize performance assessments.
Many critics advocate the use of performance assessments in the classroom but remain loyal to the multiple-choice assessment as the more reliable and valid measure for comparative standardized testing. All aspects of this debate are important however. Given the increasing usage of performance assessment in today’s classrooms, many believe and advocate the development of newer assessments to replace the more traditional assessments. Understanding the roles evaluation and assessment play in reforming teacher evaluation is vital. Different data sources, new social power relations, and new ways of thinking about teacher evaluation are all important. The link between these developments in teacher evaluation and school reform is hoped to bring about an increased focus on the most important resource for change: the best practices of current teachers.
