What is Social Justice and Education - BongoCyber Blog

Social Media Justice Team

What is social justice?

While there shows up no single meaning of social equity, the writing recommends that the idea of social equity exists together with articulations of human rights, decency and fairness (Bates, 2007, Sturman, 1997). For Gale (2000) social equity isn't simply `making' yet `acting' and he draws on the 6th century Roman Justinian who alluded to social equity as ` the steady and ceaseless will to render to everybody their due' (Isaacs 1996 refered to in Gale, 2000). Lummis (1996 refered to in Gale 2000) looks at this as a reformist way to deal with social equity, which Gale names as a recognitive viewpoint on social equity.

Social justice and education:

Examining the literature on social justice and education is a complex process because it interfaces the development of society with the role of education and, in terms of purpose and outcomes, means that educational institutions are directly involved in and reflect the social, cultural and economic activity of society.  Gale (2000) and Gale and Densmore (2000) explore social justice from an educational perspective and classify explanations of social justice as distributive, retributive and recognition. The authors summarise these perspectives and differentiate distributive and retributive from cognitive justice arguing that recognition includes a positive consideration for social difference and the centrality of socially democratic processes in working towards its attainment. In essence, the cognitive perspective of social justice emphasizes process and action over state and form.

Social justice and education

 

While there has been little discussion of social justice in the Australian higher education literature, Gale and Tranter (2011) provide a comprehensive historical overview of social justice in Australian higher education policy detailing policy post-World War Two through to the 2008 Bradley Review of Australian Higher Education  (Bradley, Noonan, Nugent & Scales, 2008).  This account of social justice in higher education policy again illuminates the authors’ views of social justice as “distributive, retributive and recognition” (p.29). The authors suggest that these perceptions should be addressed by policy and practice embracing a cognitive perspective of social justice so that widening participation is not solely considered in terms of comparative representation.