Lecture at Curtin University by Sue Ellis, University of Strathclyde

1. Education for Social Justice:
Issues and Futures
Lecture at Curtin University 13th Feb 2020
Sue Ellis
University of Strathclyde
sue.ellis@strath.ac.uk

2. Social Justice in Education
“Questions about social justice in education are
ultimately about who gets what from schooling
and what they can do with that. …[It is about] …
how inequities are produced and reproduced.”
Hill and Comber 2000

3. Who gets what from schools and
schooling?
Schools: a service for children, families and society,
but, sometimes for some, schools serve a different
purpose:
• Commercial companies
• Politicians
• Single interest pressure groups
• Academics and quasi-academics
• Journalists
• Employers
A complex complicated climate for balanced school
curricula and leadership for social justice in schools

4. We need complex understandings of what we
are asking teachers and schools to do and the
circumstances in which we are asking them to
work
Social justice in schooling
and
Social justice for schooling

5. Scotland
Small – 5 million people
First Minister: Nicola Sturgeon
Education is a devolved responsibility.
Aim of education: equity and excellence
Single outcome, integrated public policy model
premised on co-production, community planning
partnerships and 4 pillars of public service:
prevention, performance, participation,
partnership

6. Why social justice matters
Wilkinson and Pickett (2010): The Spirit Level -
Why More Equal Societies Almost Always
Do Better
• 23 countries
• 11 social and health outcomes
More equal societies: better outcomes for
everyone

7. Tackling social justice: The unintended
consequences of school systems – Matthew
Effects
• Children accumulate multipliers of advantage/
disadvantage through everyday experiences.
• Some enter an ‘upward spiral’ - success breeds
success.
• Others enter a ‘downward spiral’ where lack of early
success leads to a reductive curriculum that breeds
fewer formal and informal practice opportunities, low
esteem, intellectual, social and emotional
disengagement and even less practice.
Operates in many ways and at every level of education.
Social and emotional aspects influence learning outcomes.

8. Pedagogy of poverty (Martin Haberman)
Highly performative, teacher-directed, skills-based
pedagogies:
• Giving information and grades, directions,
assignments, tests & homework
• Asking questions
• Monitoring work
• Settling disputes
• Punishing non-compliance
BUT…
“Before we can make workers, we must first make
people, but people are not made - they are conserved
and grown“

9. Pedagogy of poverty
“The pedagogy of poverty does not work.
Youngsters achieve neither a minimum level of
life skills nor what they are capable of learning.
The classroom atmosphere created by constant
teacher direction and student compliance
seethes with passive resentment that sometimes
bubbles up into overt resistance. Teachers burn
out because of the emotional and physical
energy that they must expend to maintain their
authority every hour of every day.”
Haberman, M. (2010). The pedagogy of poverty versus good teaching. Phi
Delta Kappan, 92(2), 81-87.

10. Wider social experience also matters
Lareau (2011): The logic of middle class families is
concerted cultivation
• Organized activities require adults’ time/ attention/
labour.
• Structured, adult-mediated environment - same age
group
• Expected to hold the floor, interrupt, argue, express
opinions, discuss abstract topics, question, entertain
• Children pester and whine
• adults know how schools work; supportive but
questioning of schools & organisations; coached
children to be likewise

11. In working class and poor families:
natural growth
• No / very few organised activities
• greater autonomy in leisure time
• more independent – entertain themselves
• more biddable
• separate adult/child lives: less discussion & debate;
narrower range of topics
• more respectful to adults: no interruptions,
complaints, opinions
Adults less knowledgeable - of the world, of how
institutions work; do not challenge professional
recommendations & do not coach children on how to
get institutions to change

12. The difference?
Entitlement
Young middle class children expect adult
attention and help.
They expect the world to be organised to suit
them.
They expect to have a voice.

13. The difference: Entitlement
Poverty and working class children had:
• more respect towards adults (no pestering/
whining)
• Didn’t ask for stuff
• Didn’t offer opinions
• Didn’t even think of getting adults or
organisations to change to better suit them….
…and no practice to know how to do it.

14. And in School…
• Young middle class 5 year olds expect teachers to
help and actively seek help from teachers.
• Working class/ poor in the same classroom struggle
on, raise hands and wait.
• Middle-class parents provide direct and forceful
coaching to their children on how to intervene in
schools / colleges / universities
• M/C children speak, interrupt, ask for help, and
argue. They take the ‘talk time’. W/C are silenced,
with fewer opportunities to develop their language
skills
McCrory Calarco (2011) "I Need Help!" Social Class and Children's Help-Seeking
in Elementary School American Sociological Review,76, (6), pp. 862-882

15. University Education: Intergenerational
Mentoring for Social Justice
Alastair Wilson, University of Strathclyde:
• Young people; disadvantaged areas; can
qualify for university, but no knowledge of it.
• Knowledgeable, networked mentors (many are
retired alumni)
• Motivation, study habits, networks, breadth of
knowledge, prep for interviews, work
experience opportunities, making the most of
university experience – the unwritten social
rules (https://intergenerationalmentoring.com/
mentoring-stories/)

16. Social justice and literacy
• Once we are literate, we use literacy all the time
without even thinking about it, so we forget that what
we do is tied up with what we think it’s for.
• We think our own literacy practices are normal – but
actually they are specific, to us, our families, to the
communities we live and work in and our time.
• Teachers have different practices and assumptions
about why, when and what to read; their students even
more so.
• Some school literacy language, behaviours & activities
are unfamiliar to some children.
• Telling (direct instruction) is okay, but it is the social
and emotional experiences in school that can change
how people feel and what they do away from class.

17. Strathclyde 3 Domain Tool: Fewer
assumptions and different KINDS of evidence
& pathways
Cognitive knowledge skills, phonological aware; phonic/alphabetic;
Decoding cues & strategies, concepts of print; comprehension skills.
Personal/social identity:
aspirations; reader
Identity; friendships; view
of self as a reader& how
positioned by others;
entitlement
Cultural /social capitals:
home practices, values & beliefs;
funds of knowledge; texts/resources
available; ideas/ experiences/
people/ activities/ home literacies

18. Unpacking social justice & literacy
Cognitive knowledge and skills for reading
Families have different resources, beliefs & practices
around literacy Schools must explicitly bridge from these,
& balance the school literacy curriculum;
Children bring knowledge and experience of life, but
some find few opportunities to use it. “They may know
about bilingualism, non-English music, a family small
business, sibling care or kitchen duties but their teachers
do not draw on this when teaching or use it to drive
learning in class”; the curriculum and knowledge can
seem alien;
Identity: how children feel, believe about learning, what
they want to read/ write & be seen reading by others
affects learning – class environments teach, so change
the social fabric of classroom learning.

19. Good social justice outcomes
• Lightly specified – based on professional noticing & co-
production of curriculum to identify ‘best payoff in the
circumstances’.
• A complicated mix of kinds of evidence (Note:‘soft’
evidence is not soft at all).
• Attainment on standardised assessments went up (650
teachers/49 schools/13,000 children); gap narrowed;
‘tail’ of underachievement shortened. More effective
than commercial packs & cheaper;
• Sustainable.
• Inspectorate: Kinder & inclusive – Wellbeing
• Needs leadership; broad & practical professional
knowledge; tools to help

20. Challenges to social justice
• ‘Find and fix’ may not be most effective/ sustainable; it
ignores affordances of classrooms & communities
• Commercial companies & pressure groups manoeuvre
a place in the market – not about social justice.
• Funding cuts to public services, voluntary & third sector
charities mean we need to cooperate. Shared
documentation is not enough, need tools.
• Need practical and theoretical understandings of place-
based co-production - how it works and how it can go
wrong – for equity and social justice.
• Research can focus on tools that help

21. Maya Angelou
“My mission in life is not merely
to survive, but to thrive; and to do so
with some passion, some
compassion, some humor, and some
style.”