Social or distributive justice refers to just distributions of income and wealth. Because social justice is an essentially contested concept, it has no true or core meaning, only several conflicting interpretations. This pluralism creates a problem for teachers who must explain to students how the various interpretations differ and underlie policy…

Drawing upon a broad concept of inclusion, the first section of this article is dedicated to a critical discussion of the principle of "equal opportunities," which currently dominates the social justice discourse in Germany. Specifically, this section examines how far this principle, which focuses on the role of the individual in…

Since Indonesia's transition to democracy in 1998, wealth inequality has increased significantly with a dramatic rise in the wealth of the rich and stagnating income growth among poorer citizens. Similar to many developing countries, the issue of child workers in Indonesia is a critical problem. The "2015 National Labour Force Survey"…

College for All approaches to secondary education have gained prominence over recent decades. This trend has resulted in scholarly criticism. College is inappropriate for many students, and insisting that all students attend ensures failure, frustration and debt. The College for All policy, intended to enhance democratic equality and undermine…

Despite persistent class and race inequalities in educational attainment and achievement in the U.S., hegemonic cultural ideologies and urban education politics and policies continue to proceed from an insistence that education is the great equalizer. These ideologies do not take into account the ways that normative school culture and pedagogical…

A human right to higher education was included in the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), which came into force in 1976. Yet the world has changed significantly since the ICESCR was drafted. State legislation and policies have generally followed a neoliberal trajectory, shifting the perception of higher…

This is a result of a pilot study undertaken to explore the key influences shaping the schooling and education of Thai ethnic students living in rural mountain villages in one of the poorest and least educated regions of Vietnam. This study used a qualitative multiple case study approach and gathered information using multiple semi-structured…

This paper illustrates how critical use of Basil Bernstein's theory illuminates the mechanisms by which university knowledge, curriculum and pedagogy both reproduce and interrupt social inequalities. To this end, empirical examples are selected from the findings of the ESRC-funded project "Pedagogic Quality and Inequality in University First…

African Americans have historically championed education as a vehicle for community enrichment (Anderson "Education"; Cooper "Voice"; Giddings). Among African Americans, education has long served as a mechanism to facilitate societal transformation--the form of transformation that addresses social inequities. For many African…