Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 56, Issue 2, Page 305-317, April 2022.

Philosophical conceptions of educational justice are centered at the intersection of political philosophy and philosophy of education. They justify moral‐political rights to education and sometimes also determine who is responsible for their realization through which kinds of pedagogical practices or systemic educational reform. This article concentrates on contemporary conceptions of educational justice in primary and secondary education and highlights central practical implications that the various conceptions of educational justice have under non‐ideal circumstances. Section 2 explains the conceptions of fair and (...) luck‐egalitarian equal educational opportunity, Section 3 the conception of educational priority for the least‐advantaged students, and Section 4 the conception of democratically adequate education. Finally, Section 5 presents a philosophical conception of global justice in school education. Section 6 concludes. (shrink)

This article presents the promising framework for educational decision makers developed by Brighouse, Ladd, Loeb, and Swift. The framework consists of an account of the educational goods, distributional principles and independent values at stake in education, and a method for making policy decisions on the basis of these and solid social science. I present three criticisms of this approach. The first says that the derivation of educational goods proceeds on the basis of a too narrow conception of values. I suggest (...) that this foundation should consist of an overlapping consensus, rather than flourishing. The second criticism has to do with the way that the distributive principles are characterized. I argue that BLLS’s characterization of distributive principles should be complemented with accounts of what domains of social life these principles regulate and a specification of whether the distributive principles should be understood as applying over time or at specific instances. The final criticism is that BLLS’s conception of independent values focuses solely on values that constrain the pursuit of educational goods. I claim that this part of the framework should be revised to include aspects of values that also support this pursuit. I conclude arguing that the BLLS frameworks should be further developed rather than rejected. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that universities ought to account for the diverse conceptions of the good employed by their students. The complex nature of the good of education, which has both instrumental and intrinsic aspects, means that the modern university should be impartial between students who consume this good for itself or as a means towards more fulfilling goals. The discussion on the intrinsic nature of education follows the line of the Humboldtian perspective. The instrumental benefits considered are the (...) better democratic outcomes reached by having an educated population, the autonomy-facilitating character of higher education and the improvement of marketable skills. I put forward the view that achieving a balance between satisfying the needs of students valuing education intrinsically and those of students valuing it instrumentally is a strategy that should be employed by universities if they aim at regaining their imperiled legitimacy. (shrink)

What kind of citizenship education, if any, should schools in liberal societies promote? And what ends is such education supposed to serve? Over the last decades a respectable body of literature has emerged to address these and related issues. In this state of the debate analysis we examine a sample of journal articles dealing with these very issues spanning a twenty-year period with the aim to analyse debate patterns and developments in the research field. We first carry out a qualitative (...) analysis where we design a two-dimensional theoretical framework in order to systematise the various liberal debate positions, and make us able to study their justifications, internal tensions and engagements with other positions. In the ensuing quantitative leg of the study we carry out a quantitative bibliometric analysis where we weigh the importance of specific scholars. We finally discuss possible merits and flaws in the research field, as evidenced in and by the analysis. (shrink)

An education for cultural coherence tends to the child’s well-being through identity construction and maintenance. Critics charge that this sort of education will not bode well for the future autonomy of children. I will argue that culturally coherent education, provided there is no coercion, can lend itself to eventual autonomy and may assist minority children in countering the negative stereotypes and discrimination they face in the larger society. Further, I will argue that few individuals actually possess an entirely coherent identity; (...) rather, most of us possess hybrid identities that lend themselves to multiple, not necessarily conflicting allegiances. (shrink)

Full privatisation of schools would involve states abstaining from providing, funding or regulating schools. I argue that full privatisation would, in most circumstances, worsen social injustice in schooling. I respond to James Tooley's critique of my own arguments for funding and regulation and markets. I argue that even his principle of educational adequacy requires a certain level of state involvement and demonstrate that his arguments against a principle of educational equality fail. I show, furthermore, that he relies on an over-optimistic (...) attitude regarding the operation of markets, which involves a failure to appreciate the diversity of quality in states, and that he misreads the evidence concerning private schooling in some developing countries. (shrink)

In this article, I examine a case involving an equity-minded parent caught in a quandary about which school to select for her child, knowing that her decision may have consequences for others. To do so, I heuristically construct a fictional portrait and explore the deliberative process a parent might have through a dialogue taking place among ‘friends’, where each friend personifies a different set of ethical considerations. I then briefly consider two competing philosophical assessments but argue that neither position helpfully (...) assists in resolving the quandary. To conclude, I ask the provocative question whether parental motives – but also their school choices – actually matter if the inequitable outcomes seem to remain unchanged. (shrink)

A good education provides useful ‘knowledge, skills, attitudes, and dispositions’ (Brighouse, Ladd, Loeb, & Swift, 2016, p. 6).1 Educational justice cares about the distribution of these goods beca...

School boosters are tax-exempt organizations that engage in fundraising efforts to provide public schools with supplementary resources. This paper argues that prevailing forms of school boosting are defeasibly unjust. Section 1 shows that inequalities in public education funding in the United States violate John Rawls’s two principles of domestic justice. Section 2 argues that prevailing forms of school boosting exacerbate and plausibly perpetuate these injustices. Section 3 then contends that boosting thereby defeasibly violates Rawlsian principles of nonideal theory for rectifying (...) injustice. Thus, boosting should be presumptively either made illegal or substantially reformed. Finally, Section 4 responds to potential objections. (shrink)

Offering the first developed account of political liberal education, this book combines a thorough analysis of the theoretical groundwork of political liberal education with application-oriented approaches to contemporary educational challenges. Following in depth engagement with the shortcomings of Rawls’ theory and addressing some key objections to neutrality-based restrictions in education, the volume moves on to provide an insightful discussion of topics such as same-sex relations in sex-education, the position of migrant children and the rights of religious parents to determine the (...) education of their children. This book outlines a political liberal account of education which provides a useful contribution to the current debates about liberalism and education in a way unprecedented in the literature on political liberalism so far. It is of interest to anyone working at the intersection of political philosophy and philosophy of education as well as for scholars with a broader interest in how liberalism can respond to the challenges of value pluralism. (shrink)

This thesis explores the relationship between the capability approach to justice and liberal philosophy. I argue that the most compelling articulation of the capability approach—one given by Martha Nussbaum—suffers from an unattractive kind of inconsistency. On the one hand, Nussbaum is committed to formulating a robust account of a dignified human life which can give rise to a range of individual entitlements which ought to be guaranteed to all individuals. On the other hand, Nussbaum is committed to political liberalism which (...) requires state institutions to uphold strict neutrality between a variety of reasonable conceptions of the good. Nussbaum’s first commitment results in the formulation of a list of ten central human capabilities. However, I argue that the content and justification of this list cannot be successfully established in a way that is consistent with Nussbaum’s second commitment. Therefore, in this thesis, I propose a novel capability approach: a two-step approach which consists of two principles arranged in lexical priority. First, governments have a moral obligation to secure individuals with a meta-capability of autonomy. That is to say, governments must provide the conditions which are conducive to individuals exercising a range of agentic competencies which are constitutive of autonomous judgement. Second, governments have a moral obligation to provide opportunities for individuals to exercise this meta-capability in six domains of well-being: health, politics, knowledge, relationships, self-expression, and work. I argue that exercising autonomous choice in the pursuit of welfare is necessary for a good life, regardless of the specific choices individuals eventually make, and even if they choose to forgo some supposedly valuable choices altogether. My proposal has two striking features which set it apart from other articulations of the capability approach. First, my proposal is comprehensive in that it relies on a particular view about what is a valuable way of life. In my view, a way of life is valuable if it is pursued autonomously, that is to say, if it involves an individual exercising a set of agentic competencies and standing in appropriate relations with other people. And second, by virtue of being based in this particular comprehensive claim, my account of justice is anti-perfectionist. That is to say, my proposal does not aim to compel people to make valuable choices. Rather, it aims to equip people with the means to live the kind of life they find valuable and worth living. I then apply this capability approach to the domain of education, and I argue it can be useful in formulating an ambitious and transformative approach to education. In particular, I develop a program of civic education aimed at responding to the problems associated with disinformation and ‘post-truth’ trends in politics. (shrink)

Despite widespread agreement that privacy in the context of education is important, it can be difficult to pin down precisely why and to what extent it is important, and it is challenging to determine how privacy is related to other important values. But that task is crucial. Absent a clear sense of what privacy is, it will be difficult to understand the scope of privacy protections in codes of ethics. Moreover, privacy will inevitably conflict with other values, and understanding the (...) values that underwrite privacy protections is crucial for addressing conflicts between privacy and institutional efficiency, advising efficacy, vendor benefits, and student autonomy. -/- My task in this paper is to seek a better understanding of the concept of privacy in institutional research, canvas a number of important moral values underlying privacy generally (including several that are explicit in the AIR Statement), and examine how those moral values should bear upon institutional research by considering several recent cases. (shrink)

Persuasive arguments have been put forward for the permissible use of neuroenhancements (Bostrom and Sanberg 2009; Dees 2008). It is argued that in the same way that adults are (and should be) free...

In this paper I make a contribution to three distinct, but deeply interwoven subjects. Firstly, I argue that, at the level of ideal theory, the distribution of educational goods should follow a sufficientarian pattern and that the evaluative space of children’s advantage should be inspired by the capability approach. Secondly, the paper is delving into the more policy-oriented debates on the desirability of school choice. I argue that, given the non-ideal circumstances in which decision makers have to act, giving parents (...) the opportunity to choose the school for their children is a sine qua non condition for even approaching the ideals of sufficientarian justice. Lastly, I move the discussion on more empirical grounds, advancing a criticism of the Romanian educational legislation. I argue that the sufficiency-constrained school choice system that I envision could solve some of the problems that the Romanian educational system faces today. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to outline the basis for a comprehensive account of educational rights. It begins by acknowledging the difficulties posed by diversity, and defends a conception of universal human rights that limits parental educational discretion. Against the backdrop of the literature of public reason and fair equality of opportunity, it sketches arguments for the existence of rights to education of some specific kinds. Those rights, and associated educational purposes, are systematised on the basis of a conception (...) of education as initiation into practices that express human flourishing. (shrink)

I argue that political liberals should not support the monopoly of a single educational approach in state sponsored schools. Instead, they should allow reasonable citizens latitude to choose the worldview in which their own children are educated. I begin by defending a particular conception of political liberalism, and its associated requirement of public reason, against the received interpretation. I argue that the values of respect and civic friendship that motivate the public reason requirement do not support the common demand that (...) citizens “bracket” their comprehensive commitments in politics. Rather, citizens should seek to enact policies the justification of which is compatible with the truth of their fellow reasonable citizens’ worldviews. Next I argue that no single educational approach can meet this standard of justification. Many believe that state sponsored education in a pluralist, liberal society ought to present multiple worldviews in a neutral way. I argue that this aspiration is unrealizable, and no other educational model will plausibly meet the justificatory demand. Finally, I address two objections to my favored alternative: that it may allow for the inculcation of disrespect, and that it violates children’s autonomy. Against the first, I claim that political liberals have no grounds for thinking that reasonable citizens will seek to inculcate disrespect. Finally, I argue that there is no conception of autonomy that can sustain the second. (shrink)

‘Undermatched’ is the name education researchers have given to the surprisingly large number of students who attend post-secondary institutions which are less selective than their academic credentials would permit, or who simply fail to even apply for college when they are qualified to do so. At first, this might seem like an obviously bad trend, especially as rates of undermatching are much higher among students from low-income backgrounds. This article argues, however, that individual cases of undermatching are sometimes morally acceptable (...) when the choice is made autonomously. Some readers will have trouble calling this situation just, as it is one in which a disadvantaged person has decided on a course of action which will likely perpetuate this disadvantage. To address this, the article considers alternate ways in which we might distinguish between autonomous and non-autonomous choices in undermatching cases. The article concludes with some indications about how this analysis should affect future theory and policy intended to protect against unjust undermatching. (shrink)

The basic principle of educational equality is that each child should receive an equally good education. This sounds appealing, but is rather vague and needs substantial working out. Also, educational equality faces all the objections to equality per se, plus others specific to its subject matter. Together these have eroded confidence in the viability of equality as an educational ideal. This article argues that equality of educational opportunity is not the best way of understanding educational equality. It focuses on Brighouse (...) and Swift's well worked out meritocratic conception and finds it irretrievably flawed; they should, instead, have pursued a radical conception they only mention. This conception is used as a starting point for developing a luck egalitarian conception, pluralistic and complex in nature. It is argued that such a conception accounts for the appeal of equality of opportunity, fits with other values in education and meets many of the objections. Thus, equality is reasserted as what morally matters most in education. (shrink)

While there is a substantial conceptual literature on equality in education, there has been little clarificatory discussion on the term equity, despite its frequent use in policy and planning documents. The article draws out some different ways in which equity can be understood in education. It distinguishes three forms of equity, looking at the social context when major shifts in the meaning of the term took place in English—the fourteenth century, the sixteenth century and the eighteenth century. Terming these equity (...) from below, equity from above, and equity from the middle, the analysis highlights how each helps clarify aspects of the concern with diversity within the capability approach. The conclusion drawn is that all three forms of equity need to be placed in articulation to expand capabilities in education. (shrink)

In his writings on school choice and educational justice, Harry Brighouse presents normative evaluations of various choice systems. This paper responds to Brighouse's claim that it is inadequate to criticise these evaluations with reference to empirical data concerning the effects of school choice.

School choice is most often viewed through the lens of provision: most of the debate on the issue searches for desirable ways to offer vouchers, scholarships or other tools that provides choice as a way to achieve equality and/or freedom. This paper focuses on the consumer side of school choice, and utilises behavioural economics as well as ethnographic and network studies to consider ways to structure choice which respond to actual cognitive and social processes of choice. These empirical studies give (...) scholars and policy-makers who grapple with school choice a perspective that should affect the principled design of these programs as well as their execution. The paper considers the ways in which actual choice processes should affect current visions of school choice. It concludes with recommendations concerning the design of choice sets and the accessibility of information regarding choice, which together can assist school choice policies in better fulfilling their promise of equality and freedom. (shrink)

This paper focuses on an especially urgent challenge to the legitimacy of the common school ideal—a challenge that has hardly been addressed within contemporary debates within liberal philosophy of education. The challenge arises from claims to accommodation by queer people and queer communities—claims that are based on notions of queerness and queer identity that are seriously underrepresented within contemporary liberal political and educational theory. The paper articulates a liberal view of personal autonomy that is constituted by a conception of practical (...) reasoning rooted in thick communal experiences. It is argued that common schools concerned with equal concern for the autonomy of all children must attend to the specific communal requirements needed to developing the autonomous practical reasoning of queer children—requirements for what is termed a sense of ‘futurity’. Five practical recommendations for common schools are briefly outlined. The paper concludes with some reflections on the divergent and convergent interests of queer theory and liberalism, and considers some possibilities for a partial reconciliation of the two theoretical perspectives. (shrink)

Many people object to genetically engineerehd (GE) food because they believe that it is unnatural or that its creation amounts to playing God. These objections are often referred to as intrinsic objections, and they have been widely criticized in the agricultural bioethics literature as being unsound, incompatible with modern science, religious, inchoate, and based on emotion instead of reason. Many of their critics also argue that even if these objections did have some merit as ethicalobjections, their quasi-religious nature means that (...) they are entirely irrelevant when interpreted aspolitical objections regarding what public policy ought to be. In this paper, we argue that this widespread view is false. Intrinsic objections have much more political import than has previously been recognized, and indeed the requirements of political liberalism and its associated idea of liberal neutrality, once properly understood, protect intrinsic objections from many of the most common objections. That is, policy-makers may not legitimately base public policy on grounds that are inconsistent with intrinsic objections, even when they believe those objections to be flawed in the ways mentioned above. This means that in the context of a political debate about GE food, the discussion should not center on the substantive merits of the intrinsic objections themselves but rather on the appropriate political norms for achieving democratically legitimate policy on issues that touch people’s deepest religious and moral beliefs. (shrink)

Con frecuencia la teoría política trata a la familia como un hecho incuestionable de la vida social. Sin embargo, y especialmente en el marco del liberalismo político, vale la pena preguntarse por su justificación. En el presente trabajo analizo la teoría de la justicia de John Rawls buscando reconstruir no sólo lo que efectivamente dice sobre esta cuestión sino también el potencial que encierra para propocionar respuestas más contundentes. Rawls parece suscribir una explicación puramente instrumental del valor de la familia, (...) centrada en su utilidad para la reproducción y estabilidad de una sociedad bien ordenada. Sin embargo, como señalaré, aunque Rawls no explora esta alternativa, una aplicación consecuente del “primer principio”, que pauta la distribución de libertades y derechos básicos de los individuos, abre el camino para una justificación normativa más concluyente. (shrink)

In societies that have failed to confront past injustice, the most common justifications for the inclusion of history education within the school curriculum invoke the idea that those who cannot learn from the past are doomed to repeat it; or they appeal to goals such as reconciliation, or to the importance of recognizing and morally redressing the harm done to victims. These justifications are all sound and important. However, they must be supplemented with a justification of a different kind, one (...) that appeals to a different kind of value, namely that of personal and political autonomy. When historical injustice is left unaddressed in school, so this paper argues, all children and adolescents are wronged, including those who were not involved in, or were directly affected by, past injustice. This is not simply because as a result they run the risk of repeating, or of being the victims of, behavior that caused past violence; or because without history education the harm done to their predecessors is left unacknowledged. They are wronged because ignorance of past injustice curtails the full exercise of their autonomous agency. It does so by denying them access to information that is crucial for evaluating their values and commitments. History education in schools can avoid this scenario, promoting autonomy instead. (shrink)

Justice is a contested concept. There are many different and competing conceptions, i.e. interpretations of the concept. Different domains of justice deal with different fields of application of justice claims, such as structural justice, distributive justice, participatory justice or recognition. We present a formal conceptual structure of justice applicable to all these domains. We show that conceptions of justice can be described by specifying the following conceptual elements: the judicandum, the community of justice including claim holders and claim addressees, their (...) claims, the informational base for the assessment, the principles of justice, and on a more practical level, the instruments of justice. By specifying these conceptual elements of justice, it is possible to analyse and compare different conceptions of justice, to assess their internal consistency, to explore new definitions of justice in an analytical way, and to explicate an idea of justice in a manner that provides concrete links to the relevant context. (shrink)

There is an increasing call for preventive state interventions in so-called families at risk—that is, interventions before any overt harm has been done by parents to their children or by the children to a third party, in families that are statistically known to be liable to harm children. One of the basic principles of liberal morality, however, is the citizen's right to be free from state intervention so long as no demonstrable harm has been done. On the other hand, Joel (...) Feinberg interprets the harm principle as a harm prevention principle, so that the risk of harm also might be a reason for interference. The question that needs to be asked, therefore, is whether enforced preventive intervention in the cases where families are judged to be at risk can be justified within the limits of liberalism. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to consider, in principle and at the most general level, a particular possible approach to educational policy‐making. This approach involves an education‐specific application of the notion of hypothetical markets first developed in Ronald Dworkin's book Sovereign Virtue: The theory and practice of equality . The paper distinguishes the concept of the market from the operation of any actual market, and from the operation of ‘market forces’ in any generalised sense. It continues by arguing that (...) hypothetical markets of the kind identified by Dworkin are not only distinct, in both their nature and purpose, from actual markets operating in education, but also—in the face of continuing widespread debate about the value, at particular times and places, of such actual markets—a potentially valuable theoretical tool for educational policy‐making. The paper then briefly considers a particular instance of such debate about actual markets in education. (shrink)

Many consider play a natural part of childhood, and although there is disagreement in the literature on what essentially defines “play” in childhood, philosophical theories of play tend to support this initial consideration. But is childhood play also something we owe each other within a framework of educational justice? This is a question yet to be addressed. In this paper, I answer this question affirmatively. I take off from a generic account of educational justice and argue that childhood play should (...) be considered a central entitlement of this account. I then argue in line with the capability approach that if we ought to protect childhood play, it should be children’s capability for play rather than the functioning of play that needs protection. I end by offering an account of the capability for childhood play. (shrink)

Cyber charter schools are online schools that deliver educational content to students in Kindergarten through 12th grade. These programs provide the entire schooling experience through remote access to a virtual learning environment. Since cyber charters are a new educational platform, there is limited scholarly research discerning if they promote or detract from social justice in education. In mainstream dialogue, supporters hail cyber charters as providers of a quality education to students dissatisfied by their traditional school settings. For opponents, the schools (...) are framed as providers of inadequate academic outcomes with a lack of social opportunity. To synthesize these disparate arguments, the authors examine Pennsylvania cyber charter website content and news stories in the popular press. The authors then discuss how these arguments relate to a social justice framework, considering potential implications for both Pennsylvania and outside entities who may wish to implement cyber charter schools in their local context. (shrink)

In Free Market Fairness, John Tomasi defends classical-liberal principles not because of real-world considerations but on ideal-theoretic grounds. However, what constitutes a sufficiently “ideal” ideal theory is debatable since, as Tomasi shows, regimes that range from laissez faire to heavily interventionist can all be classified as legitimate from the perspective of ideal theory. Conversely, if ideal theory can allow for realistic constraints, as Rawls does, then we should recognize that even under ideal-theoretic conditions, political actors face logistical, epistemic, and motivational (...) challenges that only intensify in the real world, where questions of feasibility become paramount. (shrink)

John Rawls claims that the kind of citizenship education required by political liberalism demands ‘far less’ than that required by comprehensive liberalism. Many educational and political theorists who have explored the implications of political liberalism for education policy have disputed Rawls's claim. Writing from a comprehensive liberal perspective, Amy Gutmann contends that the justificatory differences between political and comprehensive liberalism generally have no practical significance for citizenship education. Political liberals such as Stephen Macedo and Victoria Costa maintain that political liberalism (...) requires a form of citizenship education that is far more demanding than that suggested by Rawls. Gordon Davis and Blain Neufeld, in contrast, defend Rawls's position. These different views have implications for the content of mandatory citizenship education, understanding of the ‘common school ideal,’ and the scope for educational choice within the framework of political liberalism. However, the differences between Gutmann, Macedo, and Costa, on the one hand, and Davis and Neufeld, on the other, might be attributable, at least in part, to their different foci. Gutmann, Macedo, and Costa focus on non-ideal theory, specifically the contemporary American context, whereas Davis and Neufeld begin, as does Rawls, within ideal theory, and consider non-ideal circumstances from that perspective. (shrink)

This paper argues for a conception of autonomy that takes social oppression seriously without sapping autonomy of its valuable focus on individual self-direction. Building on recent work in relational accounts of autonomy, the paper argues that current conceptions of autonomy from liberal, feminist and critical theorists do not adequately account for the social features of belief formation. The paper then develops an alternative conception of relational autonomy that focuses on how autonomy contains both individualistic and social epistemic features. Rather than (...) consider autonomy to reside in an impenetrable inner citadel, a place immune from external influences, the paper argues that we must acknowledge the hermeneutic relationship between individual and social processes of belief adjudication. Taking such an argument seriously results in the need to alter our conception of autonomy and the schooling needed to foster its growth. (shrink)

Existing conceptions of autonomy tend to fall to one of two criticisms: they either fail to capture our intuitive understanding that autonomy implies an ability to act congruently with the demands of justice and equality, or they are unclear as to whether particular actions must be good by some standard to be considered autonomous. In this article I propose a conception of autonomy that is clear on both these fronts, and I show how this description is useful for both clarifying (...) what educators must do to teach for autonomy, and for resolving currently problematic issues in the literature on autonomy. (shrink)

The paper explores challenges for the interpretation of the ideal toleration that arise in educational contexts involving children. It offers an account of how a respect-based conception of toleration can help to resolve controversies about the accommodation and response to diversity that arise in schools.

A citizen is a member of a political community who enjoys the rights and assumes the duties of membership. This broad definition is discernible, with minor variations, in the works of contemporary authors as well as in the entry “citoyen” in Diderot's and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie..

This article challenges the widespread and influential claim – made by many liberals and non‐liberals – that cultural membership is a prerequisite of individual autonomy. It argues that liberals like Joseph Raz and Will Kymlicka, who ground autonomy in culture, underestimate the complex and internally diverse nature of the self, and the extent to which individual agents will often be shaped by many different attachments and memberships at once. In ‘selectively elevating’ one of these memberships (culture) as the most important (...) to one’s autonomy or identity, culturalist liberals present a skewed and simplistic account of individual autonomy and, hence, of liberalism. Instead, autonomy should be seen as arising not out of any particular membership or attachment, but out of the interaction between those different memberships which shape the individual’s understanding of themselves and the world in which they live. This alternative account holds important implications for liberal theory, particularly the tensions between ‘political’ and ‘comprehensive’ liberals about the scope of liberal principles and the nature of public reasoning about justice. (shrink)

Social justice is a key concept in current education policy and practice. It is, however, a problematic one in its application to schooling. This paper begins with a critique of the account of social justice offered by Gewirtz followed by an alternative philosophical notion based on the perfect world argument and the just society where equality is to the fore. This leads on to an exploration of what it is to be an educated citizen, consideration of the just school and (...) discussion of the place of the school as an instrument for attaining social justice. The conclusion draws attention to the importance of the policy web as a way of developing coherent and unified policy designed to achieve social justice for all. (shrink)