Educating for Diversity and Social Justice

Amanda Keddie

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136465444
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Multicultural Education

Educating for Diversity and Social Justice foregrounds the personal stories of educators who are engaging the space of schooling as a site of possibility for realizing the goals of social justice. It is a book inspired by a vision of education as a practice of freedom where young people – especially those who are marginalized – can learn that they have a voice and the power to change their world for the better. Drawing on the work of US philosopher Nancy Fraser, the book examines issues of justice and schooling in relation to three dimensions: political, cultural and economic. While its focus is on research within three Australian case study schools, the book provides an international perspective of these dimensions of justice in western education contexts as they impact on the schooling performance of marginalized students. Towards greater equity for these students, the book presents a comprehensive scaffold for thinking about and addressing issues of schooling, diversity and social justice. Through practical examples from the case study research, the book illustrates the complexities and possibilities associated with schools providing inclusive environments where marginalized voices are heard (political justice), where marginalized culture is recognized and valued (cultural justice) and where marginalized students are supported to achieve academically towards accessing the material benefits of society (economic justice).

1 Against the Grain

[W]e need to retain an emancipatory vision of education, one that reflects the will to contribute to the creation of a world which . . . is less ugly, less cruel, less inhumane. (Mayo, 2003, p. 42)

Educating for diversity and social justice necessitates an emancipatory vision—a belief in the significant role schools can play in transforming the ‘ugly’, ‘cruel’ and ‘inhumane’ aspects of the world. These aspects are clear in the enduring and rising inequity, discrimination and social disharmony that characterise contemporary global societies. In western contexts such as the US, the UK and Australia, despite unparalleled affluence for some, there is a growing gap between the rich and poor (OECD, 2011). In these contexts, unprecedented diversity, transient populations and shifting concentrations of group and community identities are associated with heightened social polarisation and xenophobia towards minority groups. Particularly in the post-9/11 era, difference is equated with fear, instability and danger (Gilroy, 2004; Giroux, 2002). In this climate supporting and retaining endeavours to further equity are increasingly important—especially given the strong evidence aligning greater social equality with enhanced well-being and peace for all (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2009). For Giroux (2003, p. 6) pursuing equity through schooling requires educators to ‘think and act against the grain’—to contest and resist the current social arrangements that constrain social justice. Such a pursuit for many progressive educators is premised upon a ‘notion of utopianism’ where education can be a practice of freedom and hope that opens our minds and hearts as we collectively imagine ways to transgress the ugly, cruel and inhumane boundaries of society (hooks, 1994; Giroux, 2003; Mayo, 2003).

Such a vision of education frames this book. It is a vision that is reflected in the book’s three case study schools. In these schools acting against the grain is about transgressing the boundaries of the social world that compromise schooling success for marginalised students. For the educators at ‘Lavender High School’ this entailed challenging the racist and colonial discourses that silence and inferiorise Indigenous voices and identities. At ‘Peppermint Grove High School’ it involved problematising the discourses of privilege that essentialise ‘other’ refugee student culture, and at ‘Blackberry Primary School’ it involved challenging deficit constructions of refugee students and narrow understandings of the purposes of schooling.

Mobilising spaces of possibility and hope was equally important within each school’s enactment of this vision. At Lavender, a whole school ethos of ‘unconditional positive regard’ fostered the respectful relationships, intensive social support and high expectations necessary to assist Indigenous students to achieve educational success. At Peppermint Grove, educators’ centring of marginalised students’ perspectives and experiences generated positive and empowering spaces for these students. And at Blackberry the explicit teaching of values engendered critical learning that encouraged an understanding and embracing of diversity.

It is important not to overstate the role schools can play in transforming the inequities of the social world. Schools are not a panacea for all social ills and cannot alone compensate for the inequities of society. As Condron’s recent research (2011) argues, schools fare less well (in relation to student performance) in less egalitarian societies—that is, the width of social inequality affects what schools can achieve. As he explains (2011, p. 54)

Schools are embedded within the economic systems of their societies, and where economic systems have high inequality, overcoming the impact of this inequality on students’ learning will be more difficult.

Certainly, then, efforts to support equity in schools must be accompanied by complementary social policies seeking to overcome poverty and inequality (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2009; Anyon, 2005).

Notwithstanding, it is clear that schools can make a difference in creating more equitable societies (Hayes et al., 2006). Indeed, this positioning of schooling has long been an important mandate of mass education and is reflected in equity policy across the globe. A key concern within western policy discourse relates to raising the schooling participation and achievement of marginalised groups. A familiar theme within such policy is to ‘close the gap’ in educational outcomes between disadvantaged students and their more advantaged peers. In the US, for example, meeting the needs of ‘diverse’ (i.e., non-mainstream) learners is a central platform of the federal government’s 2010 blueprint to reauthorise the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (US Department of Education, 2010). In New Zealand, the Ministry of Education’s Maori Education Strategy 2008–2012 is focused on ensuring Maori students realise their potential and enjoy education success. In the UK, closing the gap in educational achievement between advantaged and disadvantaged groups is a key priority in the The Children’s Plan, which aims to build brighter futures for children through education (DfCFS, 2007). In Australia, a key equity focus within the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians is improving educational outcomes for Indigenous students and students from low socioeconomic backgrounds (MCEETYA, 2008). In all of these policy documents, groups targeted for support are those students who are marginalised on the basis of economic, political and/or cultural inequity.

In light of these policy mandates, it is incumbent on teachers and schools to address issues of social justice, marginality and disadvantage. However, this pursuit remains fraught and difficult within a context where teachers and schools are under siege. For Giroux (2003), and many others (see also, Apple, 2005; Gillborn & Youdell, 2000; Lingard, 2010), this ‘siege’ relates to the current premise within mainstream policy discourse—reflected par excellence within closing the gap rhetoric—that more testing will equate to enhanced equity for marginalised students. The legitimacy of this premise has been amplified by the forces of economic globalisation. The negative impacts of these forces on public institutions like schools are well recognised. Reduced centralised funding for education systems and greater accountability and compliance attached to funding for government schools have narrowed school priorities to a focus on raising academic performance on ‘legitimised’ (i.e., state/centrally imposed) literacy and numeracy standards (Apple, 2005). For some time, in Australia as with other western nations, there have been significant social and political penalties associated with the public hierarchical ordering of schools according to their performance on such standards. For many, these priorities compromise (especially social) learning—a competitive emphasis on schools’ academic performance through high stakes testing has generated a focus on management and basic skills, rather than pedagogies and learning. The reductive teaching to the test and scripted pedagogies that such a focus produces are highly inadequate in addressing issues of student marginality and disadvantage. In particular, this focus sidelines the moral purposes of schooling (also a key mandate in many of the equity policies mentioned above) and stifles the social critique necessary for schools to teach about the values of democracy, equity and justice.

Amid this reductive emphasis and the growing and unprecedented diversity within western classrooms, teachers remain ill-equipped for addressing issues of student marginality. It prevails that schooling practices generally do not value and work with student diversity in just and equitable ways. In western contexts such as the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand this is reflected most prominently in the enduring lower achievement of marginalised students relative to their more mainstream counterparts. Despite many years of equity policy targeted at improving the achievement of minority groups such as Indigenous students in Australia, New Zealand and Canada, racially marginalised students in the US and the UK and economically deprived students in all these contexts, these students continue to ‘under-perform’. Current practice is clearly inadequate in providing the political, cultural and economic support necessary for these students to thrive. In particular, although contemporary western classrooms are characterised by diversity, they tend to be undifferentiated in their privileging of dominant cultural (western) norms. In these classrooms marginalised students tend to not be accorded a voice; their cultural backgrounds tend not to be respected or given status; and there are insufficient human and material resources to support their achievement (Fraser, 2010). As such, classrooms and schools continue to perpetuate the inequities of the broader social world.

Educating for Diversity and Social Justice provides a positive thesis within this broader constraining picture. The focus is on the personal stories of educators within schools that are productively and justly working with student diversity. These educators are engaging the space of schooling as a site of possibility for realising the goals of social justice. They recognise the political nature of education, the importance of linking education to social change ‘and connecting critical learning to the experiences and histories that students bring to the classroom’ (Giroux, 2003, p. 6). While their progressive view of education is often at odds with, and hindered by, the material forces schools encounter, these educators are working against the grain of the discourses that impede marginalised students’ schooling success. In so doing, they necessarily engage with the Freirian (1970) notion of Conscientizacao (critical consciousness). Critical consciousness is defined as ‘coming to a consciousness of oppression and a commitment to end that oppression’ (Weiler, 1991, p. 454). As Enns and Forrest (2005, p. 6) explain,

Critical consciousness is the process by which individuals recognise the systems of oppression in which they exist, articulate their roles and places in these systems, and develop concrete strategies to empower themselves and others to engage in social action.

Of course such consciousness is far from simple and unproblematic. It demands a critical engagement with the highly complex politics of difference. It generates questions around what kinds of difference are significant and how these might be recognised and addressed by teachers and schools. Such questions are all the more complex in the present era where there is a lack of shared understanding about issues of justice. As Fraser (2007a) argues, developments such as transnational migration, global media flows and transnational politics continue to generate disagreement around, for instance, who is entitled to consideration in matters of justice and how injustices should be remedied. Within the context of schooling, such disagreement is evident in relation to how marginality, cultural diversity and justice are differently approached. For instance, while recognising difference is a central platform in teaching for diversity and social justice, there is a lack of common understanding in terms of how this might be productively realised. As is well established, equity work in schools is shaped by moral imperatives—i.e., educators’ views about what might constitute the social good shape the ways in which they understand and address issues of equity. These moral imperatives will, of course, shape equity outcomes differently in terms of how student diversity is represented, interpreted and valued. For example, some educators might choose to value and legitimise particular elements of group culture that others do not value and legitimise. Moreover, while, on the one hand, valuing culture may support a sense of positive group identity and affiliation for marginalised groups, and thus support justice for these groups, on the other, it may impose essentialised and hierarchical notions of difference, and thus generate injustices for these groups (see for example, hooks, 2003; Banks, 2007; Darling-Hammond et al., 2002; Osler & Starkey, 2005; Hayes et al., 2006). These problematics, in relation to the how of justice bring to light the imperative of critically interrogating the ways in which educators understand and pursue equity for minority students.

Such issues are the key focus of this book. For the educators at Lavender, Peppermint Grove and Blackberry, their critical consciousness—that is to say, their thinking and acting against the grain of the boundaries compromising schooling success for marginalised students—supported greater equity for these students. This involved creating positive and supportive schooling environments where these students’ voices are included and heard (political justice); generating social critique in relation to both privileged and marginalised cultural knowledges (cultural justice); and providing extra human and material resources to ensure educational achievement (economic justice) (Fraser, 2010). The book deliberately focuses on the positive ways these dimensions are supported in the three case study schools. This positive focus is not intended to generate an image of these schools as faultless and beyond critique—they are not. It is, rather, intended to generate useful and comprehensive insight into productive and just ways of supporting marginalised students.

These areas of justice (political, cultural and economic) are drawn on to explore issues of student marginalisation in relation to poverty and race. In Australia, as in other western contexts such as the US and the UK, race and poverty are the most accurate predictors of educational disadvantage—thus racially and economically marginalised students are those who are targeted for support in policy that seeks to ‘close the gap’. There are, of course, many identity groups that suffer racial and economic injustice, for example, migrant and refugee groups from Africa in the US and the UK and Indigenous students in Canada and New Zealand. The focus in this book is on Indigenous and refugee students and injustices associated with race, class, gender and religion. Some of the particularities of marginalisation for these students, while resonating with other western contexts, are specific to Australia’s history. For example, at one of the case study schools, Lavender High School (where most of the students identify as Indigenous Australian), there was a focus on cultural learning around the ‘Stolen Generations’. The Stolen Generations were a product of assimilationist policy in Australia geared towards ‘breeding out’ the Indigenous population. Such policy (especially administered before the 1960s) forced the dissolution of countless Aboriginal families and communities. For example, family connections were destroyed through the government-sanctioned removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander¹ children from their families without parental consent or a court order to live in White-governed institutions or with White families. During the administration of this policy between 1909 and 1969 it is estimated that ‘between one in three and one in ten Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and communities’ (Wilson, 1997, p. 37). These children came to be known as the Stolen Generations (Reconciliation Network, 2007). At Lavender, cultural learning in relation to these issues involved observing and holding activities in relation to ‘Sorry Day’—an initiative to commemorate the official apology offered by the Australian government to the Indigenous people of Australia for the Stolen Generations.

This book pays attention to these sorts of contextual specificities and the new equity challenges they represent for schools. While noting the specific areas of disadvantage and injustice confronting Indigenous and refugee students, this focus is not intended to deny the significance of the justice issues confronting other groups of students who are marginalised on the basis of identity categories not mentioned in this book such as sexuality, ethnicity and disability. The aim of this book is not to separate and isolate issues of marginality on the basis of an individual’s membership to a particular identity category. The main aim of the book, rather, is to articulate key frames of reference and understanding that are useful in addressing issues of justice with all marginalised students. Especially relevant to western schooling contexts, these frames and understandings seek to support schools to respond to the new equity challenges of the contemporary global era.

The Study

The book draws on data from a study conducted over a period of three years that sought to identify productive approaches to addressing issues of cultural diversity in three schools situated in Queensland (Australia). Broadly, the study’s focus was on (1) how issues of cultural diversity and justice are understood and practised in schools and (2) the conditions necessary to support schools to more equitably address issues of cultural diversity. The methods of data collection involved a cultural audit of each school’s information resources; interviews with key personnel and students; and observations of classroom practice. The three schools selected for the study were Lavender High School (an independent non-traditional school for girls most of whom identify as Indigenous Australian), Peppermint Grove High School (an intensive English Language school that caters to refugee and immigrant students) and Blackberry Primary School (a mainstream school with 30 percent of the student cohort from immigrant or refugee backgrounds). These schools were chosen in light of the disadvantage and marginalisation confronting their students and their outstanding reputation for addressing issues of diversity and social justice. Comprehensive detail about each of these schools is included in the chapters that follow. Such detail draws on the study’s cultural audit within each of the schools, which involved consulting demographic information about the school and the broader community as well as information to do with the school’s philosophies and policies particularly in the area of equity and diversity. The purpose of these audits was to ‘paint’ a comprehensive social picture of each school within which to locate the interview and observation data.

The study’s equity focus guided the selection of participants who were subsequently invited for interview. Individual interviews were conducted with key staff responsible for addressing equity at each of the schools including principals, deputy principals, department heads/coordinators, classroom teachers, student counsellors, teacher aides/youth workers and liaison officers. A total of twenty educators were interviewed. Specific detail about these staff members is included in subsequent chapters. Interviews (of between 45 to 75 minutes) and follow up conversations with most of these participants occurred on at least two occasions. Some of the participants who were more involved in equity work at the schools participated in a greater number of interviews and conversations. An initial interview sought to gather information about, and explore the respondent’s specific role at the school; descriptions of the school (its purpose, philosophy, climate, etc.) and its students; key cultural concerns within and beyond the school; how such concerns were addressed; structures and strategies of support for students and staff; and personal philosophies about difference, equity and justice. A second interview focused more explicitly on issues of student difference and marginality in relation to specific equity initiatives at each school. Follow-up conversations sought to clarify meaning and representation concerning issues raised in the interviews and observations. They were also a key element of the study’s reflexivity in relation to data interpretation and representation (explained below).

Individual interviews with students were also conducted—their selection and invitation to participate were made in consultation with key staff as students whom they thought would feel comfortable in commenting on the issues examined in the study. A total of twenty students were interviewed ranging in ages from 5 years to 28 years. Further detail about these students and their selection is included in the relevant chapters that follow. Interviews with students occurred on at least one occasion. These interviews lasted between approximately 10 and 60 minutes and sought to gather information about students’ school and family backgrounds and their thoughts about their school including particular practices or structures that they found helpful in supporting their education. The interviews also gathered information about relationship issues—for example, students’ friendships, their interactions with other students and their teachers and their views on issues of student difference and div...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Against the Grain
• 2. Removing Barriers in Students’ Lives: An International Perspective on Issues of Justice and Cultural Diversity
• 3. An Inclusive Environment of ‘Unconditional Positive Regard’
• 4. Issues of Cultural Justice and Political Agency
• 5. ‘Valuing’ Minority Student Culture: Interrogating Constructions of Difference
• 6. Religious Discourses, Gender Identity and Issues of Empowerment
• 7. A Whole School Vision and Values Framework: Fostering Positive Social Outcomes
• 8. Whole School Values, Philosophy Education and Embracing Diversity
• 9. Educating for Diversity and Social Justice
• Notes
• References
• Index