Abstract
This article examines (a) the official policy for social justice as developed by the Ministry of Education and Culture and its policy-makers, (b) the ways in which school leaders (head teachers) and school actors (teachers) understand education policy for social justice, and (c) the impact of this process on school leaders’ and actors’ action or inaction for social justice. Data collection was based upon the analysis of policy documents related to education and social justice. Moreover, interviews were carried out with officials working within the Cyprus Ministry of Education and Culture and head teachers and teachers from five participant schools in Cyprus. The political culture fostered an access-based social-justice orientation. Across levels, the interviewees prioritised equity of access, suggesting all children’s right to access and participation in the school community. Nonetheless, as their values were exclusive of outcome-oriented definitions of equity, they impeded action on social justice.
Introduction
Since 2004, the Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC) in Cyprus launched an educational reform. The MEC highlighted Cyprus’ participation in the European context and, by extension, the turning-into-multicultural character of the Cypriot society as the most important reasons which necessitated such a reform. Nonetheless, the educational reform itself ‘was not substantially re-initiated until the summer of 2008 (after a change of government in March 2008) to involve the development of new curricula for all subject-areas in both primary and secondary education’ (Philippou, 2010: 11). The philosophical and ideological pillars of the ‘new’ curriculum were publicised in December 2008 via a policy document entitled Curriculum for the Public Schools of the Republic of Cyprus (MEC, 2008). However, the MEC presented the ‘new’ curriculum itself in 2010 (Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC), 2010).
Discourses of social justice appear to emerge in the ‘new’ curriculum. Nonetheless, the prevailing discourses, which underscore educational policy, are formed within the broader socio-political context. Corollary to this observation is the examination of the socio-political evolution of the issue of social justice in Cyprus education. In a highly centralised system, the state via its agency, the MEC (2010), has gradually adopted the rhetoric of ‘human’ and ‘democratic’ schooling as the preferable goals of education in Cyprus. With the discourse of a ‘democratic’ school which does not exclude, the MEC promulgated the provision of equal educational opportunities for access, participation and success for all students. The MEC’s definition of the term ‘democratic’ school is ‘the school in which all children sustain the qualities characterising the educated human today. It is the school which provides educational goods adapted to each child’s zone of proximal development. While it refuses to assign students to categories, it draws upon the fundamental principle that every child is different and needing appropriate confrontation’ (MEC, 2010: 6).
Arguably, the MEC has envisioned the creation of a school system that respects diversity and cultural, linguistic and religious pluralism, while arguing that education becomes a process accessible by all students. Thus the school system should become conducive to the success of all students despite their diversity. In addition, the MEC (2010) has defined the discourse of a ‘human’ school, as ‘the school, in which no child is excluded, marginalised, stigmatised, despised or becomes unhappy because of any individuality (p. 6). It is the school of the absolute respect of human dignity and the school, in which all children can become happy’. In sum, the MEC declares its willingness to promote a social-justice agenda while eradicating stereotypes and prejudices. The development of a ‘human’ and ‘democratic’ school focuses on the re-conceptualisation of educational norms in order to meet all students’ individual needs such as different starting points, interests and learning styles.
However, previous research in the field concludes that despite the presence of a social-justice discourse within the Cyprus socio-political environment, social justice is often accompanied by witting or unwitting inaction at the school or classroom levels (Angelides and Karras, 2009; Zembylas, 2010). We should acknowledge that in the study of policy for social justice, the micro-politics of policy implementation at the school and classroom levels are of equal importance to the macro-politics of policy formulation at the system level. Therefore, the implementation of education policy for social justice cannot be examined in isolation from the policy trajectory. Educational research for social justice should not be located as a single level of analysis (i.e. the state or the school or the classroom) but it should gain an insight into policy dynamics across all levels.
Ozga (2000) proposes that educational researchers should link the micro-politics of actors’ agency and personal relations to a systemic analysis of power structures. To this end, policy analysis for social justice should also provide an insight at
the lowest level of implementation and backs up through the policy structure, examining the decisions that each level makes, the incentive structures that operate on the targets of the policy, and bargaining relationships among actors at various levels of the implementation process. (Goertz, 2006: 705)
Drawing upon Ozga’s (2000) conceptualisation of policies as authoritative allocations of values, the current research aims to examine the values of key stakeholders regarding social justice, across all the levels of the Cyprus education system. In more detail, this research examines (a) the official policy for social justice as developed by the MEC and its policy-makers, (b) the ways in which school leaders (head teachers) and school actors (teachers) understand education policy for social justice, and (c) the impact of this process on school leaders’ and actors’ action or inaction for social justice.
Conceptualising social justice
Fraser (1997) explains that (in)justice has two facets, namely, socioeconomic and cultural or symbolic. Socioeconomic (in)justice is rooted in the political–economic structure of the society and refers to exploitation and economic marginalisation. Cultural or symbolic (in)justice stems from social patterns of representation, interpretation and communication and points to cultural domination, non-recognition and disrespect. In this context, conceptions of social justice are not fixed, stable or uncontested across time, place and political context. Nonetheless, Lingard and Garrick (1997) identify three dominant traditions of social justice within the political theory: the liberal democratic; the liberal individualist; and the social democratic.
The liberal–democratic tradition promulgates an activist role of the state which endorses a continuum of affirmative action and redistributive policies. Thereafter, ‘each person should have the most extensive personal liberty for all that primary social goods’, including education, ‘should be distributed equally, unless unequal distribution benefits the least advantaged’ (Lingard and Garrick, 1997: 162). The liberal–individualist tradition focuses on the competition for the accumulation of social goods instead of the distribution process. The state plays a minimal role, just about to ensure fair competition. Lingard and Garrick criticise the first and second traditions as arbitrarily assuming that all individuals act in their own personal interest. On the other hand, the social–democratic tradition reinforces a more collectivist conception of society, pointing to a different relation between social justice and the market; the achievement of social justice necessitates state intervention within the market.
Within the education context, policy should provide for individual benefits while it should also emphasise the collective good by establishing relationships of equality and reciprocity within the context of a ‘truly civil society’ (Lingard and Garrick, 1997: 175). The re-conceptualisation of such a society along with collective well-being brings together a politics of recognition and a politics of redistribution (Lingard and Garrick, 1997: 176). A politics of redistribution indicates the ‘unequal treatment of people in different ranks’ in order to achieve the ‘same’ outcomes (Stone, 1997: 44). Stone argues in favour of rank-based rather than group-based (re)distributions. She suggests that group divisions across society in terms of demographic characteristics, such as ethnicity, race, gender or religion, which are often perceived as identity characteristics, fail to visualise the actual experience of marginalisation, disadvantage or discrimination.
The role of values in education policy for social justice
Values are assumptions describing both the current state of affairs and the desirable state of affairs that we want to achieve. Stone (1997) argues that social-justice values play a key role in the development and implementation of public policies, in general, and educational policies, in particular. Policy actors (i.e. policy-makers, school leaders and school actors), who operate across all the levels of the education system, have a range of social, ethical and political values. Policies develop through the (in)actions of these individual actors, across all the levels of the education system, which in turn are constrained by their values of social justice (Bell and Stevenson, 2006). Thus, valuing all students equally in a context of cultural diversity may often be compounded by diverse meanings and values of social justice.
Similarly, Bell and Stevenson (2006) propose that policy actors’ values regarding social justice and their normative expectations from education are ‘not wholly the product of deliberate rational calculation … but could vary culturally’ (p. 63). They suggest that through cultural and ideological struggles actors construct their own assertions, interpretations and axioms of social justice in education. Actors are educated, persuaded and socialised through ideas to support or oppose certain values regarding social justice. Therefore, their social-justice values become ‘the prism through which new policy proposals are filtered’ (Bleich, 1998: 93). Nonetheless, individual values for social justice are bounded upon the socio-cultural and educational context. In the next section, we briefly describe the socio-political and educational context of Cyprus.
The context of Cyprus
The administration of the education system in Cyprus is highly centralised. The MEC has control over the national policy, curriculum and textbooks. The MEC is responsible for the organisation, management and supervision of the operation of schools and their supervisory and teaching personnel. Local school boards, which are funded by the MEC, exist but their role is limited to the construction, maintenance and equipment of school buildings. Therefore, public education is generally funded by the state and local school committees. As the state subsidises the salaries of school personnel, compulsory education is free. As a result of the Act of 1999, the MEC provides the right of all children to freely attend their neighbouring school (Cyprus Republic, 1999). Thus, children registered as having special needs can attend mainstream schools. In addition, according to the decision of the General Attorney of the Cyprus Republic, immigrant students can enrol in public schools, even if their parents are not legal immigrants to the country.
Within this context, it is notable that research on education for social justice has been scarce. What little research has been done has revealed the barriers to the development of policies for social justice that mainly derive from the content and structure of the educational system (i.e. Angelides and Karras, 2009; Zembylas, 2010). The UNESCO appraisal study, which was conducted in 1997, initiated a debate on social-justice issues in Cyprus (UNESCO, 1997). The study revealed that the lack of teacher motivation and the inadequate and inappropriate in-service training provided to teachers hindered teaching in mixed-ability classrooms. Petrou et al. (2009) argue that the MEC has since developed educational policies for social justice which brought about some improvement. However, they contend that marginalisation still persists in schooling. Moreover, Angelides and Karras (2009) have completed a comparative study on the provision of equal opportunities in Greek and Cyprus classrooms. Their study provides mounting evidence that the implementation of educational strategies promoting equity is not an easy affair. On the contrary, it is a difficult, complex and beset-with-obstacles procedure. In the Cyprus context, specific factors acted as barriers in the teachers’ efforts to provide equity, including the school culture and the policies of the MEC.
In this context, Zembylas (2010) has attempted to examine the interrelationship between social-justice issues and school leaders’ emotions. Zembylas’ research suggests that efforts to enact leadership in the field of social justice entailed intense emotional development. To this end, Zembylas maintains that leadership for social justice should become conducive to collaborative and distributed leadership, meaning the development of teamwork not only within the leadership group of the school but within the broader educational community. In a similar study, Zembylas and Iasonos (2010) pointed out that most efforts to promote social-justice agendas in schools are often not encouraging, as school leaders usually focus on the effectiveness and efficiency of schools while sidestepping uncomfortable issues that might be emotional and value-laden, such as privilege, meritocracy, affirmative action, gender, race, ethnicity and sexuality (Rusch, 2004). Having these considerations in mind, we carried out our research using the methodology described below.
Methodology
Our analysis drew upon policy documentary and data derived from interviews conducted with Greek–Cypriot policy-makers and education officers, head-teachers and teachers. Given the scant literature examining the field, policy documentation was a crucial data source. Interview data were also essential, as we regarded ‘the information yielded through the spoken world as a matter of “filling the gaps” left by an incomplete documentary record’ (Gardner and Cunningham, 1997: 38). Triangulating these data through a comparison process provided an insightful understanding of intercultural policy, its contradictions and transformation.
We first examined a wide range of official documents from the MEC published within the last decade. In our selection of policy-related documents, we included (a) documents conducted by policy-makers, including legislation, recommendations and directives; (b) external documents, such as circulars sent to schools; and (c) internal documents such as reports and meeting minutes. Thereafter, we examined the website of the MEC and its archives to identify policy-related documents using their search engines and electronic archives. Although our sample was not exhaustive, we gathered a large data corpus. In order to select a sub-sample for further in-depth analysis, we followed a purposive selection of the policy documents, taking into consideration ‘their importance within the ongoing debates and historical configurations’ through which the Greek–Cypriot state is reconstructing intercultural education (Lindblad and Popkewitz, 2001: 32). We thus selected documents directly relating to diversity and social justice.
Second, we conducted interviews with five policy-makers, working in the MEC, who were selected purposively according to the level of their involvement in the development of education policy for social justice. The small size of the Greek–Cypriot education system, numbering less than 400 schools, explains the restricted manpower working in the central education authorities. In the event, we interviewed three male and two female participants. In order to gain insight into school actors’ beliefs and values, interviews were carried also at the school level. Cyprus has six districts, namely: Nicosia, Limassol, Larnaca, Famagusta, Paphos and Kyrenia. In order to identify potential participants, we conducted contact visits to various primary schools within all the districts expect Kyrenia, which is currently not under control of the Greek–Cypriot government because of the Cyprus problem. Within each district we selected one school, thus a total of five schools. The schools were located in mixed local areas, which had a heterogeneous cultural profile. We carried out interviews with the head-teacher and four teachers from each of the selected schools. The final sample included five head-teachers (3 male and 2 female) and 20 teachers (9 male and 11 female).
The duration of the interviews was approximately 40 minutes. The interview questions focused on the interviewees’ definitions of social justice and their understandings of the development and implementation of policy for social justice. The interviews were tape-recorded and fully transcribed. To maintain credibility, we adopted a member check measure (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005).
In our analysis of the data, we followed the six stages suggested by Creswell (2003). In the first stage, we organised and then studied the data organised according to the category of interviewees they were collected from (policy-makers, head-teachers and teachers). In the second stage, we read our data in order to understand them better and in parallel we kept notes about our thoughts. After that, we began examining our data for groups of meanings, themes, assumptions and behaviours and tried to locate how these were connected within a theoretical model (Creswell, 2003). In the third stage, we continued the process of analysis and we divided the data into categories. Each part was named. In the fourth stage we put all the names together in big groups to create areas of analysis. Finally, in the fifth and sixth stages of analysis, given that the categories were set and they seemed to be connected to the research questions, we began looking at our data in order to substantiate these categories with raw data.
In trying to establish the trustworthiness of the data, we examined and triangulated our data from multiple angles and different perspectives, continually looking for alternative possibilities and different explanations, trying to develop a richer understanding of them (Creswell, 2003).
Findings
In the following sections, we analyse the themes that emerged from our analysis and we substantiate them with data. The first theme ‘Education policy for social justice’ examines the policy developed by the MEC and the ideas of key policy-makers for this policy. The second theme ‘From official policy to school leaders’ explores the ways in which the participant head-teachers conceptualise social justice. Finally, the theme ‘From school leaders to school actors’ examines the participant teachers’ conceptualisations and underlying values regarding social justice. All names used are pseudonyms.
Education policy for social justice: access-oriented definitions
The development of educational policy for social justice was presented as a mere contribution to the pursuit of an agenda on equity. In line with this, the MEC and its officials deployed a language of equity in legitimating the different discourses underpinning their proposed policy. Accordingly, the Cyprus state and, by extension, the MEC adopted a major role in securing social justice by tackling inequalities. A substantial question raised by this agenda is: How did the MEC and its policy-makers understand the concept of equity? As equity implies a distributive conflict (Stone, 1997), we examined how the Ministry depicted the distribution of educational entitlements to students. Remarkably, the analysed policy-related documentation illustrated that the MEC’s equity concerns were singularly focused on issues of access and opportunity:
The state is responsible to sustain equal opportunities for access to education at all levels to people who come from minorities. (MEC, 2004a: 8) The MEC aspires to the protection of rights and equal opportunities for access to education for all members of the Cypriot society. (MEC, 2007: 1)
The MEC articulated its dedication to ensure the protection of rights and equal opportunities for access to education for all the members of the society. Moreover, a considerable number of the analysed documents explicitly referred to education as the constitutional right of all children, regardless of their ethnic origin, religion or gender:
The right to education is secured by the Constitution of Cyprus and therefore all students may enrol to public schools, according to the place of their residence. (MEC, 2004b: 12) Human rights that are discussed in Part II of the Cypriot Constitution, including the right to education confirmed by Article 20, are not delimited to the citizens of the Republic but confer to immigrants. (MEC, 2011: 5)
It is noteworthy that all children’s access to education has not been always granted in the Cyprus context. In 2004, a tension arose between the MEC and the Aliens and Migration Unit, which is a department of the Cypriot Police. The Migration Unit demanded from schools to provide feedback to the Unit in the form of demographic information about immigrant students. Their demand emanated from their interest in tracing all illegal immigrants in the country. The Unit argued for the postponement of immigrant students’ enrolment in schools until the completion of investigations regarding their legal status. In order to overcome this tension and secure its own interests, the MEC turned to the Attorney-General of the Republic. The Attorney-General is the legal adviser of the Republic, the President of the Republic, the Council of Ministers and the Ministers and has the power to institute, take over and continue or discontinue any proceedings or order the prosecution of any person in the Republic for any offence. The MEC and the Attorney-General formed a powerful coalition that undermined the Migration Unit’s counterclaims:
According to the August 6, 2002 judgment by the Attorney-General of the Republic … investigations carried out by the Aliens and Migration Unit in regards to the Aliens and Migration Act are not a legally accepted rationale for the deferment of immigrant students’ enrolment in Cypriot schools. (MEC, 2002: 4)
The MEC’s strong concern for protecting all children’s right to education appears to have been facilitated by economic incentives coming from the European Union (EU). During the same period of time, the EU launched the programme, ‘Human Rights in Education’, in the Cyprus context (November 2002–November 2003). It seems reasonable to suggest that the MEC would not have been able to continue to receive the funds for this programme while denying immigrant students’ fundamental right to education. This is particularly important as Cyprus was still to become a full member of the EU and therefore it had an interest in proclaiming its loyalty to the Union. Furthermore, we would argue that the MEC deliberately manifested its concerns for all students’ right to education as a concrete expression of the abandonment of its highly criticised segregating and/or exclusive policies (i.e. by Angelides et al., 2004; Hajisoteriou, 2010). Consequently, the MEC maintained its concerns in the years to come. We would contend that both internal (the MEC’s conflict with the Aliens and Migration Unit) and external (EU monitoring) factors helped to justify the MEC’s exclusive focus on social justice in terms of all students’ access to education.
Since Cyprus’ accession in the EU in 2004, the MEC launched an educational reform. The MEC highlighted Cyprus’ participation in the European context and, by extension, the turning-into-multicultural character of the Cyprus society as the most important reasons, which necessitated such a reform. Nonetheless, the educational reform itself ‘was not substantially re-initiated until the summer of 2008 (after a change of government in March 2008) to involve the development of new curricula for all subject-areas in both primary and secondary education’ (Philippou, 2010: 11). The philosophical and ideological pillars of the ‘new’ curriculum were publicised in December 2008 via a policy document entitled Curriculum for the Public Schools of the Republic of Cyprus (MEC, 2008). However, the MEC presented the ‘new’ curriculum itself in 2010 (MEC, 2010).
Discourses of social justice appeared to emerge in the ‘new’ curriculum, through the notions of the ‘democratic and humane school’, which are set to be the cornerstones of the curricular reform. As defined in the official curriculum, the democratic school is a school that includes and caters for all children, regardless of any differences they may have, and helps them prepare for a common future. It is a school that guarantees equal educational opportunities for all and, most importantly, is held responsible not only for the success but also for the failure of each and every individual child. The democratic school is organised in such a way that will provide to all children the opportunity to achieve all the goals of education, without any concessions on the quantity and the quality of the so called ‘cultural goods’. On the other hand, the humane school is a school that respects human dignity. It is a school where no child is excluded, censured or scorned. It is a school that celebrates childhood, acknowledging that this should be the most creative and happy period of the human life (MEC, 2010: 6).
All the policy-makers were asked to comment upon the ways in which the new curriculum could potentially reinforce education for social justice. Policy-maker 1 (PM1) criticised the pillar of the curriculum, suggesting the creation of the humane school as misconceived and misleading. She argued that the term ‘humane’ should refer to the recipients of education (i.e. students) and not to the qualities of education provided in school. On the other hand, the 2010 curriculum offered a distinctive definition for the term:
By the term ‘humane’, we mean the school, in which no child is excluded, marginalised, stigmatised, despised or becomes unhappy because of any individuality. It is the school of the absolute respect of human dignity and the school, in which children become happy. (MEC, 2010: 6)
It seems reasonable to suggest that the 2010 curriculum conceptualises the ‘humane’ school as an inclusive school, in which everyone is equally valued. Arguably, the curriculum is not exclusively oriented towards ‘difference’ but has a much broader impact on a human-relations approach fostering respect. The second pillar of the curriculum refers to the creation of the ‘democratic’ school:
The ‘democratic’ school is the school in which all children sustain the qualities characterising nowadays the educated human. It is the school which provides educational goods adapted to each child’s ‘zone of proximal development’. While it refuses to assign students to categories, it draws upon the fundamental principle that every child is different and thus needing appropriate confrontation. (MEC, 2010: 6)
The new curriculum seeks to transform schooling in order to meet everyone’s needs. It aims at the development of democratic citizens ‘who are characterised by democracy, militancy, frankness and social responsibility and who are actuated by the values of social justice and solidarity’ (MEC, 2010: 5). However, the 2010 curriculum does not refer to any specific groups of students, including immigrant and/or minority groups, neither their distinctive needs emerging from their group membership. On the other hand, the curriculum refers to all students, whose needs have to be catered without any exemption (MEC, 2010: 6). PM1 argued that a group-specific approach may ‘return as a boomerang’ by perpetuating categorisation. Drawing upon Modood (2007), we assert that the MEC should recognise the individuals’ affiliations with their communities, but also the relationships formed between communities that shape public life.
Beyond the curriculum reform, PM3 contended that the reform of education should encompass all three levels of the educational system: ‘the level of national policy, the level of the school unit and the level of interpersonal relations between the teacher and the students and within the student body’. On a similar route, PM4 suggested that the reform of education policy for social justice is not an instantaneous procedure, rather a ‘time-consuming procedure that should elaborate on evaluation and re-evaluation’:
If we are interested in the surface, change has come: we have developed new curricula, which adhere to a new philosophy referring to social justice. However, the actual reform is what happens in the classroom. (PM4)
PM4 emphasised the importance of implementing the national curriculum at the classroom level. She suggested that a curriculum reinforcing social justice can exist, but without the reinforcement of policy statements into practice and the monitoring of its implementation, the curriculum may also be nonexistent. It is remarkable that Rizvi and Lingard (2010) argue that implementation may differ from a planned policy or its adoption, meaning the decision to employ this policy. In school settings, many policies are never implemented or they are implemented poorly. PM4 argued that in periods of educational reform, school inspectors are the ones responsible for monitoring the implementation of new educational programmes or curricula by the teachers. PM4 argued that school inspectors’ role is of great importance as ‘education for social justice is shaped equally by the official and the unofficial policy; that is the hidden curriculum, which often militates against educational goals for equity and democracy’.
Nonetheless, PM1 explained that ‘marking teachers’ quality overthrows their primary role to provide guidance to teachers and head-teachers’. She also added that as marks are used as indicators for teachers’ promotions to the positions of assistant head-teacher and head-teacher, school-inspectors are in position of power with regard to teachers. When asked about school inspectors’ roles in promoting the implementation of social-justice policies, PM2 argued that school inspectors do not specifically look at the way the schools promote equality, while PM3 explained that apart from oral notices there are no other sanctions for schools that do not follow the official policy. Therefore, it is also important to examine the ways in which schools, and particularly school actors such as school leaders and teachers, interpret and mediate the MEC’s policy on social justice.
From official policy to school leaders: difference-blind approaches
We have already argued that in understanding social-justice issue formation, we should explore the beliefs on equity of actors operating across all the levels of the educational system and their consistency with the prevailing political culture of access-based equity. Bell and Stevenson (2006) conclude that policies also develop through the actions of the individual school actors, which in turn are constrained by their values of social justice. Within the context of all the participating schools, values driven by a social justice agenda had a high profile. Values were often explicitly stated by the interviewees, regardless of the type of the school from which they came or their position within the hierarchy. The majority of head-teachers frequently cited values concerning equity, respect and tolerance of diversity:
Social justice policy should promote tolerance of diversity. Teachers should teach their children to become tolerant and respect diversity […] Our primary goal is to demonstrate our acceptance and respect of all children. (Head-teacher (HT), School-B) Equality is one of our major considerations. There should be no discrimination in terms of religion, culture, language or disability. All of our students are equal to their peers. (HT, School-E)
However, valuing all students equally in a context of cultural diversity is often compounded by diverse meanings of social justice (Stone, 1997). In order to understand how values of equity were implemented in the five schools, it was vital to see how they were interpreted by the participant head-teachers and teachers. Social justice was rarely equated with distributive justice suggesting the equal distribution of outcomes. Instead principles of access-oriented equity came into play, indicating equal access or treatment. Three of five inspectors and four of five head-teachers argued for equity of access in education. The quotes below are indicative of interviewees’ premises about the provision of equal educational opportunities:
Our objective is to promote equal educational opportunities to all children regardless of their origin. (HT, School-C) We should ensure by all means that we provide to all of our students equal opportunities to learn despite of their characteristics or needs. (HT, School-A)
The interviewees’ conceptualisations of equity were in congruence with the dominant language deployed by the MEC to legitimise their proposed policy. In presenting the social-justice agenda that underpinned educational policy, we argued that the MEC and its officials prioritised equal treatment by propagating equity of access. It may be argued that the participant head-teachers adhered to the dominant languages and discourses that permeated the Cyprus socio-political context. Nonetheless, language promoting equal treatment to a large extent influenced their professional value systems concerning social justice.
On the basis of their access-oriented conceptualisation of equity they argued that there was no need for differential treatment in favour of culturally diverse students:
A child presenting cultural or other differences should not be treated differently from another child. Such differences gradually disappear and then the school operates smoothly. (HT, School-D) They are taught what the other students are taught; they behave as the other students behave; they do not feel alienated but they are part of their classroom; they are not marked out because of their language, religion and culture. (HT, School-E)
Both head-teachers in School-D and School-E did not acknowledge the distinctive situation in which their schools found themselves as a result of culturally diverse students’ presence. Their values took a business-as-usual approach, as they did not acknowledge their students’ cultural background in the values and goals guiding their school policies. In keeping with that approach, they claimed that teachers should not see any cultural features in their students. Banks and McGee Banks (2009) would contend that those head-teachers ignored institutional practices by refusing to recognise the variety of ‘problems’ faced by diverse students. We discuss the former value proposition in relation to the concept of a difference-blind approach that refuses to acknowledge cultural and other diversity.
However, school leaders should abandon difference-blind approaches and demonstrate cultural and/or difference awareness as a result of their personal experience of marginalisation or their individual relationships with minority groups (Banks and McGee Banks, 2009). If school leaders were to recognise cultural diversity, as Modood (2007) suggests, they would challenge power relations and promote school and social change. Similarly, Cambron-McCabe and McCarthy (2005: 201) urge school leaders to ‘critically inquire into the structures and norms that result in inequitable schooling for many students and to undertake an advocacy role to influence educational policies to achieve social justice’. Nonetheless, refraining from being conservative towards leadership for change is a daunting task that bears implications on preparing school leaders for social-justice critique and activism (Cambron-McCabe and McCarthy, 2005).
From school leaders to school actors: business-as-usual approaches
Education policy for social justice does not include fixed and unambiguous mandates that derive from a single level of the educational system. It is rather ambiguous and unstable and ‘encompasses all parts of the system’ (Ozga, 2000: 38). On this account, teachers are more than policy implementers; they are decision-makers. The way they organise social relationships and teaching practices aggregate, prevent or distort the implementation of education policy for social justice. Teachers’ perceptions of social justice affect their action or inaction towards the implementation of social-justice programmes in their classrooms. Therefore, teachers were asked to discuss their understandings of the concept of social justice in the context of their classrooms. Most teachers referred to tolerance, respect and equity as the values related to social justice, which informed and guided their teaching. They suggested that the major objective of their teaching was to promote equity by providing equal educational opportunities for all of their students:
I do not differentiate any of my students. I treat everyone in equal terms. They are all the same in my eyes. (Margarita, Teacher, School-B) I aim to make my students understand that we should all have the same opportunities despite of our colour, age, gender and ethnicity. (Panayiotis, Teacher, School-D)
Most teachers were concerned about the provision of equal opportunities and resources for all children. However, they also argued that cultural or other diversity did not create a distinctive educational ‘reality’. In all, 14 of the 20 teachers, regardless of school and other characteristics, claimed that diversity was not an issue in their classrooms. They argued that cultural or other characteristics were of minor importance to them and their students. Because of teachers’ difference-blind accounts, it appeared that the formulation and implementation of specific equity or social justice practices was not necessary; thus they adopted a business-as-usual approach.
It is interesting to see that teachers echoed their head-teachers’ value positions, which, in turn, reflected the access-oriented definitions of social justice that were articulated at the macro-level of the MEC and its officials. As discussed, the participant head-teachers also suggested difference-blind conceptions that pertained to business-as-usual approaches. Nonetheless, it is worth mentioning that only two teachers referred to all students’ school success in order to access the labour market:
All students should acquire equal competencies with their peers to become employable in Cypriot labour market. (Nicos, Teacher, School-E) Regardless of any differences, they should all become competitive as future employees in the labour market. The role of education is to provide them the means to succeed to this end. (Elpida, Teacher, School-A)
Across all the levels of policy actors and out of all the participants, only these teachers held distributive outcome conceptions of social justice. However, their understanding of equity may be imputed to their educational background, including not only a university degree in primary education but also postgraduate studies related to sociology in education and/or special needs education.
Conclusion
It is striking that the large majority of policy-makers, head-teachers and teachers, despite their demographic characteristics, referred to equity in terms of access and provision of equal educational opportunities. Simultaneously, their accounts were exclusive of outcome-oriented definitions of equity. It may be argued that the participants of this study did not legitimate social justice as an issue to be acted on, but their definitions of equity fostered equal access discourses. Their conceptualisations and underlying values of equity appeared to fit the existing political culture as outlined in the official policy developed by the MEC. We may suggest that the congruence between policy actors’ beliefs and the political culture fostering an access-based social justice orientation impeded action on social justice. The social justice discourse has been merely rhetoric, as social justice was accompanied by inaction at the phases of strategic direction, organisational principles and operational processes of educational policy.
Education policies for social justice as active citizenship need to shift to successful policy implementation, which presupposes communication between the different levels of the school system. Policy goals should be in congruence with implementers’ cognitive or value systems. Accordingly, agreement on policy and its underlying values between policy-makers, school leaders and teachers implies strong organisational structures that facilitate policy implementation. On the other hand, the inconsistency between the national policy, school policies and implementers’ personal and professional value systems may lead to policy slippage. Bevan-Brown (2006) defines policy slippage as the implementers’ resistance to policy implementation. The reasons for their resistance may be rooted within their personal or group interest, which is affected by the policy; the inconsistency between the policy and their personal and professional value systems; and/or poor decision-making processes.
It is noteworthy that detrimental social and individual beliefs and values often disrupt the implementation of education policies for social justice. Head-teachers and teachers, whose values and beliefs are inconsistent with redistributive definitions of social justice may mutate such policy initiatives or deliberately delay policy implementation. policy-makers should critically listen to and analyse the implementers’ objections, as legitimate objections can potentially suggest policy modifications through mutual adaptation between the policy for social justice and the setting. Otherwise, policy-makers should persuade implementers for the benefits of the developed policy for social justice. Changes in the policy-making and in the practice of social justice should be accompanied by a shift of beliefs, preferences and values related to social justice (thick learning) across both the macro- and micro-levels, rather than the adoption of adaptation and coping strategies in response to external stimulations, such as political pressure (thin learning).
The accumulated findings of this research point out a disjuncture between policy discourses that aim to promote social justice and school actors’ (in)action at the level of school practice. The failure to promote the values ‘supposedly’ embedded in the policy for social justice seems to suggest that the priorities themselves may not be important, or that other policies receive more attention. Although, school inspectors are responsible to promote new policy initiatives in schools, social-justice issues seem not to be inspected in this way, while no sanctions apply when social-justice policies are not implemented. Accordingly, it appears that policy-makers themselves do not value their own policy rhetoric for social justice, thus failing to get schools to take such policy priorities seriously.
What appears clear from this analysis is that the approach of school inspectors does not favour the successful implementation of social justice policies for a number of reasons. Although the educational debate in Cyprus is actively seeking social justice education (Allan, 1999) the Ministry of Education and its inspectors seem to be amiss in implementing it. Its whole policy has to be carefully reconstructed if we are interested in harmonising with the new developments in the area of education. In our opinion, the reconstruction of the implementation policy should be based on two areas:
Make the policy clear to all. The policy should be presented in an accessible form to all involved in social justice education (inspectors, head-teachers, teachers)
Preparation for social justice education. Training of inspectors, head-teachers and teachers in the philosophy and practice of social justice education would create a good infrastructure
A methodological and mindful initiative in these areas can create a well-knit infrastructure on the basis of which a long-term plan on social justice education can be grounded. It is important to recognise, however, that this is neither an easy task nor is it straightforward. It involves profound changes in the traditional and rigid organisational arrangements of the Ministry of Education, which might arouse animosity. However, deep changes are needed if we are interested in bringing about improvement and in transforming the existing arrangements of schooling.
Footnotes
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.