Education,Citizenship and Social Justice

This article argues that high-stakes educational testing, along with the attendant questions of power, education access, education management and social selection, cannot be considered in isolation from society at large. Thus, high-stakes testing practices bear numerous implications for democratic conditions in society. For decades, advocates of high-stakes educational testing have argued that testing would result in meritocracy, ensuring that everyone would be afforded the same opportunities to find success in adulthood. Examined from a critical perspective, however, we learn that testing is also extremely well designed as a bulwark against opposing or alternative outlooks and opinions, because testing is a complex tool requiring highly specialised knowledge to administer effectively. This article sets out to investigate the relation between high-stakes educational testing and democracy drawn from the experiences of 20th-century high-stakes educational testing practices in the Danish history of education. Among other things, the article concludes that a combination of different evaluation technologies – some formative and some summative – might be the safest way to go from a democratic perspective.

The purpose of this study is to explore the journey of one large urban inner-city school district with a high population of Hispanics in South Texas as it worked to implement Positive Behavior Intervention and Support into primary (elementary) schools. We questioned, ‘How does a large urban inner-city school district serving a majority of Hispanics, and low income population, implement PBIS into its schools?’ First, we describe Positive Behavior Intervention and Support for the purpose of this article and provide a historical and demographic overview of the school district. Then, a thematic analysis of the processes, practices, and changes is included to describe what the school and central office administrators underwent to successfully implement Positive Behavior Intervention and Support into their school and include behaviorally challenged students and students of color in the general education program.

In post-conflict countries such as South Africa, some university students to know anything about the conflict-ridden past. As in other parts of the world that suffered from pasts of discrimination and conflict, it is easier for some students than others to argue like this since an unfortunate past does not concretely affect them any longer. Many students are, however, still benefitting or suffering from a privileged or disadvantaged past, and thus subconscious feelings of guilt or resentment prevail. When triggered by critical citizenship education, some students seem to want to avoid confronting issues. Such avoidance, however, can perpetuate and worsen the existing gap between social differences and/or academic performance. Against this background a critical citizenship module was included into a Visual Communication Design curriculum at a university in South Africa. Through fostering social justice, the module constructs a safe environment where historical and current realities can be unravelled. It also allows for dealing with these issues through art and design – a process that triggers the imagination and hence involves participants to see and experience that which cannot necessarily be seen or experienced in any other way. Through written reflections and interviews the project involved students, lecturers and high school learners in a township to whom art was taught by university students. Results showed that a less hierarchical and more self-motivated approach to critical citizenship education in art, which becomes part of the formal curriculum, results in addressing some of the avoidance and difficulties that were experienced earlier.

To what extent does social origin impact the disposition of students toward becoming politically involved in their future adult life? Using Chilean data from Civic Education Study, 1999 (N = 5688), and International Civic and Citizenship Education Study, 2009 (N = 5192), the present research analyzes, on the one hand, the impact of socioeconomic variables on attitudes toward future political participation and, on the other hand, explores to what extent the association between social origin and participation has changed over time. The analysis is performed in a multilevel framework, to account for both family socioeconomic status and individual school characteristics. The results support the hypothesis that social origin continues to have a strong influence on students’ attitudes toward political participation, in the context of the two measurement points. The resulting discussion focuses on the role of schools in reducing socioeconomic differences, an issue that acquires additional relevance in societies with high inequality such as Chile.

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.

Today, almost a century after gaining access to the country’s most prestigious secondary schools, determining the academic achievement of African Trinidadian students remains a challenge as neither Trinidad and Tobago’s Ministry of Education nor the Caribbean Examination Council, the regional agency responsible for administering standardized testing in the Caribbean, collect school data based on student ethnicity, race or socio-economic class. Public reporting is done at the aggregate student level and school reports for each examination subject are issued and are publicly available online. This article situates the education of African Trinidadians within the social and historical context of Trinidad and Tobago by first providing a brief overview of the history of education and cultural formation in the country since emancipation followed by a theoretical discussion which attempts to explain the educational achievement of African Trinidadians. A comparative look at the situation in Fiji and the way that affirmative action might address underachievement is also presented. The authors also call for the collection of empirical data on student ethnicity and socio-economic class in order to determine and address any educational disparities that may exist.