We explore social justice advocacy and education from the vantage point of elite theory as articulated in the works of Gaetano Mosca and Vilfredo Pareto. Elite theory is applied here to re-appraise the explicit and implicit educational means and ends inspired by contemporary social justice along three inter-related dimensions: the place of…

With increasing threats to democracy, we call for communication educators to renew and re-examine their commitment to advancing civic engagement in the basic course. Given recent scholarly criticism that civic engagement pedagogies falsely present democratic practice as neutral or apolitical and reinforce the status quo, we set an agenda for basic…

This study focuses on students' orientations towards multilingualism in a Swedish-speaking educational degree program in Finland. Swedish is one of the two national languages in Finland and basic education is provided separately in Finnish and Swedish, even if the current national policies strongly support multilingualism in education. We analyzed…

This essay explores new avenues towards challenging inequity in these dark times. In these dark times, neoliberalism has coopted discourses that once challenged inequality and systems of power. Social justice, diversity, and identity politics--once powerful discourses that challenged inequality--have now been adopted by those in power to sustain…

This paper explores how, in what ways, and with what outcomes, deep structural transformations have reconstituted higher education in England, and are deeply implicated in the rise of authoritarian populism. We focus particularly on the ways in which our understandings and lived experiences of class, social mobility, meritocracy, social…

Background: This paper explores traditional iterations of, and new challenges to, the tightly linked discourses of entrepreneurship and innovation within the maker movement. Methods: In a yearlong critical ethnographic study with 12 youth makers, we investigated how youth engaged with and redefined entrepreneurialism through their identity work as…

Recent calls for the decolonization of the academy demand recognition for diverse canons of knowledge. Asia's economic ascent also imparts rising confidence among Asian scholars and institutions to promote indigenous knowledge. While these global calls for emancipation are invigorating, decolonial scholarship is prone to sterile theorization,…

Exploring how school leaders address underrepresented student voices, meaning those of marginalized experiences along the continuum of social identity including though not limited to race, class, gender, immigration, and LGBTQ issues in schools is more essential than ever following the novel coronavirus of 2019 (COVID-19). Principals' social…

The assumption that students are differently talented often underlies the public and philosophical debate about the justice of school systems. It is striking that despite the centrality of the notion of 'talent' in these debates, the concept is hardly ever explicated. I will suggest two explications: First, philosophers who point to different…

In this article we introduce key concepts from critical psychology to explore their potential when operationalised in qualitative, empirically-based analyses of career guidance and counselling. Critical psychology is particularly concerned with understanding the concrete lines of action that can support generalised human agency -- a focus that is…

In this article I examine how teachers in a rural school in Australia produce social justice through their everyday teaching practices. Drawing on data from a qualitative study using focus groups and semi-structured interviews, I focus on teachers' enactments of social justice pedagogies amidst social class divisions in the community. I draw on…

For the past year, we have been co-facilitating Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) workshops across Pittsburgh, tailored specifically toward local educators and educational activists. The overarching intentions of these workshops were twofold: (a) to cultivate educators' understanding of and response to how power and privilege operate in educational…

In this conceptual literature review, the authors analyze research from the last 20 years to explore how social class discourses are reproduced, resisted, and appropriated within Kindergarten through Grade 12 classrooms in the United States. The findings challenge commonly held deficit discourses about students and families from economically…

The impact of self-fulfilling prophecy in education, and of attainment grouping on pupil self-perception, remain topics of longstanding debate, with important consequences for social in/justice. Focusing on self-confidence, this article draws on survey responses from 9,059 12-13 year olds who were tracked by subject ('setting'). They provided…

This paper reports a study coauthored with second-year undergraduate students that examines student experiences of undertaking real-life, client-set marketing assessments with an equality and inclusion remit. Students were set a marketing assessment with an explicit social justice focus, thereby prompting them to reflect on their own backgrounds…