Education, Citizenship and Social Justice current issue

Using testimonial novels to think about social justice

Bickford, D. M. — 2008-06-06

This article argues that testimonial novels are an important curricular addition in classrooms that take seriously the responsibility to educate students about social justice and civic responsibility in a global context. The addition of testimonial novels to our literature courses lets us internationalize our curriculum by including courses and texts that focus on social justice. I explore the ways in which thinking about our curricular and pedagogical choices through a lens of social justice achieves a number of important educational goals. It encourages critical thinking, allows the development of effective oral communication and writing skills, helps cultivate an appreciation of literature and reading, and creates possibilities for students to see themselves as effective actors in political arenas and social struggles, as global citizens with commitments and responsibilities.

Affluent parents' advocacy for special-education children's rights vis-a-vis placement-committees in Israel

Gvion, L., Luzzatto, D. — 2008-06-06

This article focuses on the strategies that Israeli parents of children with high functioning communication disorders apply in their negotiations with municipal placement-committees, in order to realize their right to be fully involved in matters concerning their children's schooling. Our claim is that the parents introduce into the negotiation process alternatives to the professional discourse inherent in the committee's working culture. The alternative discourse rests on the self-awareness of the parents to their cultural capital and their understanding of a democratic culture, which reinforces their perception of city officials' duties to grant them educational services which accord with their world view. Our study distinguishes between formal and informal strategies of action that assist the parents turning from passive subjects who accept the committee's decisions into active individuals who establish a culture of resistance.

Science for all: Empowering elementary school teachers

Plonczak, I. — 2008-06-06

This article addresses issues that are related to the empowerment of elementary teachers through teaching and learning science in socially and culturally meaningful contexts. It is based on the analysis of the attitudes and relationship to science of 10 elementary school teachers from inner city schools in Caracas, Venezuela. In the context of a workshop, teachers were asked to come up with a scientific explanation of a familiar physical phenomenon observed on a daily basis and related to their everyday tasks. The data were the teachers' discourse and were both written (a description of an ideal science class) and oral (semi-structured interviews). Academic/epistemic, professional, and social dimensions were used to analyze the discourse. These categories were based on two theoretical frameworks: an empirico-realistic one, held by the majority of teachers, and a socioconstructivist one, held by the researcher. The results illustrate how familiar contexts bring meaning and raise teachers' confidence to teach science, which contributes to the development of a more empowering attitude towards science.

A critical approach to researching social justice and school leadership in England

Taysum, A., Gunter, H. — 2008-06-06

This article investigates how school leaders in England understand and describe social justice in terms of their own lived lives. By this we mean how they understand equity issues by recognizing the ways in which they themselves have experienced inclusion or exclusion in their lives. We then go on to examine how this way of knowing shapes the way school leaders want to operationalize social justice in their schools. The research is based on semi-structured interviews with 14 school leaders. The empirical evidence was read through Cribb and Gewirtz' (2003) conceptual framework of social justice. Theorizing in this way revealed that handling challenging professional issues, such as the national curriculum, enabled school leaders to work for cultural justice, distributive justice, and associational justice in their school communities. It is argued such activity impacts on dimensions of quality and performance in working for change in educational institutions.

Book review: Becoming Other: From Social Interaction to Self-Reflection: Gillespie, Alex, Information Age Publishing, Greenwich, CT: 2006. A Volume in Advances in Cultural Psychology (series editor: Jaan Valsiner). 286 pp. ISBN-13 978--1--59311-- 230--1, {pound}20.50 (pbk), ISBN-13 978--1--59311231--8 {pound}42.50 (hbk)

Leitch, R. — 2008-06-06