Teaching for Social Justice and Sustainable Development Across the Primary Curriculum

Anne Marie Kavanagh, Fionnuala Waldron, Benjamin Mallon, Anne Marie Kavanagh, Fionnuala Waldron, Benjamin Mallon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367434151
• eBook ISBN: 9781000360233
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Sustainable Development
• Index: Economics

This volume supports educators in integrating meaningful education for social justice and sustainability across a wide range of curricular subjects by drawing on educational theory, innovative pedagogical approaches and creative ideas for teaching and learning. Both practical and theoretical in its approach, it addresses subject areas ranging from mathematics to visual arts to language teaching. Chapters provide subject entry points for teachers seeking to embed social justice and sustainability principles and pedagogies into their work.

Transferable across various areas of learning, a range of pedagogical approaches are exemplified, ranging from inquiry approaches to ethical dilemmas to critical relational pedagogies. Ready-to-use teaching exemplars, activities and resources address issues which are of interest and relevance to children's lives, including gender stereotyping, racism, heterosexism, climate change and species extinction. Practical guidance is provided on how to engage children in dialogue and reflection on these complex issues in a safe and ethical way.

This accessible and unique volume is essential reading for student teachers, teachers, educational leaders, teacher educators and anyone interested in inspiring children to work towards creating a more socially just and sustainable world.

Chapter 1

Teaching for social justice and sustainable development across the primary curriculum

An introduction

Anne Marie Kavanagh, Fionnuala Waldron and Benjamin Mallon

Introduction

While the mobilisation of youth-led movements is not a new phenomenon, we are currently experiencing a resurgence in young people agitating for social change. Much of this is driven by the social conscience of Millennials (Chong, 2017) and, arguably, based on recent protests, of Post-Millennials too. We are, for example, increasingly seeing young people’s street protests agitating for social and political change, from the March for Our Lives protests in the United States to the global School Strike for Climate Action protests which took place in countries all over the world in March and September 2019. Inspired by Swedish teenager, Greta Thunberg, the September School Strike for Climate Action was the largest environmental protest in history. An estimated six million people in over 150 countries took to the streets over a period of a week to demand action on climate change (Taylor, Watts & Bartlett, 2019). Greta’s initial protest clearly demonstrates the power of youth voice but also how action at local level can effect global change.

The motivations for these protest movements are grounded in social or environmental injustices, highlighting the importance of exploring social and environmental justice issues in contemporary classrooms. While adults must bear significant responsibility for taking action to combat social and environmental degradation, children and young people are not powerless witnesses. Rather, they are active agents of social change, capable of exercising agency and envisioning more socially and environmentally just futures. It is essential to provide them with opportunities to critically engage in informed discussion and debate on the issues and problems facing society locally and globally and to provide opportunities for them to take action to challenge inequality and promote human rights, solidarity and justice.

This edited volume supports educators in thinking about the meaning of justice and how just practices can be enacted inside and outside the classroom so that children have access to fair outcomes and new ways of thinking critically about and acting in the world. It specifically focuses on integrating social and environmental justice issues into pedagogical approaches and curricular subjects or areas of knowledge in a sensitive, informed, deliberative and critical way. Grounded in theories of social justice education (SJE) and education for sustainable development (ESD) and acknowledging the transformative power of human agency, this book provides guidance for teachers and student teachers on how to enable children to connect with, and engage critically and meaningfully with, the key social and environmental issues of our time. Recognising the imperative of avoiding superficial or unidimensional approaches, it focuses on education about, through and for social justice and sustainability. More broadly, for teachers who are new to these areas but want to infuse a justice dimension into their practice, the book provides an accessible entry point and a multiplicity of pedagogical approaches suitable for classroom use. It also supports the development of teachers’ professional identities and practices (planning and teaching) as they negotiate the challenges associated with the practical, ethical and political dimensions of this type of education. For school leaders, it provides a case study example of a real school’s approach to SJE. Drawing on this framework, it provides guidance on how to adapt and mediate school structures, policies, practices and interactions so that schools promote equitable recognition of and outcomes for all children and young people.

This chapter commences by considering education as a purposeful endeavour. It then offers a critical perspective on how systemic, institutional and individual forms of oppression reproduce and perpetuate injustice and inequity and examines how issues of justice intersect with environmental degradation, climate change and species loss, presenting an existential threat to humanity’s future. This is followed by delineations of SJE and ESD and a critical exploration of how they relate to each other. Acknowledging the constraints imposed by systemic and institutional factors, it then explores teachers and children’s capacities to effect social change through critique and action. Finally, the chapter presents an overview of the book’s aims, structure and chapter content.

The purpose of education

The idea that education provides a neutral or disinterested space in which children develop skills, gain knowledge and learn to be creative, productive members of society is challenged by theorists that highlight the extent to which schooling acts to reproduce existing unequal relations (see, for example, Luke, 2010; Lynch, 1989). Historically, education served to provide a skilled workforce, and to socialise children into expected and required behaviours as members of society. Depending on class, it may have aimed to instil the capacity for leadership, or a sense of duty and responsibility towards others. Rather than providing a neutral or disinterested space in which all children had equal opportunities to develop, its role was to support the status quo and reproduce existing social and economic relations. This traditional conception of schooling was challenged somewhat by more progressive educational philosophies, such as those associated with child-centred education. From the perspective of this book, however, perhaps the first meaningful challenge came in the form of Dewey’s education for democracy (Dewey, 1916). Here ideas about critical questioning, democratic participation and prosocial intentions in education went beyond issues of wellbeing and development. More recently, radical educational philosophies of social transformation, such as those associated with the work of Paulo Freire, have revolutionised how we think about the nature of education and its role in challenging inequality (see, for example, Freire, 1972). Neither education for the status quo or education for democracy could be considered neutral. They are both purposeful and intentional. Accepting that education is always education for or education towards a purpose, the question is, what should that purpose be? Should it be to support existing structures and relations, regardless of injustices and inequities, or should it be questioning and critical of those structures, supporting children and young people to challenge systems of inequality, racism, global injustice and to fight for a more just and sustainable world? This publication is premised on the view that education is inherently political and that choosing not to engage with these issues is still a choice; it is not neutrality.

Systemic, institutional and individual oppression

Paradoxically, then, education can act simultaneously as a great liberator and a pernicious oppressor. Which role it plays is contingent upon a range of factors. One of the most significant is the socially constructed group to which people are allocated or “belong”. These groupings include categories such as “race”, social class, gender, sexuality, native language, ability and so on. While these categories of perceived difference are artificial human constructs, Bell (2016) argues that they become real in practice through people’s beliefs and social practices and are used to justify “differential treatment or allocation of resources and to explain social reality in ways that make inequitable outcomes seem inevitable” (p. 7). Real or not, they have significant implications for how people experience the world. How the group you belong to fares and whether you experience advantage and privilege, or disadvantage, marginalisation and exclusion depends upon the group’s hierarchical positioning. Again, this is socially constructed and constantly enacted and made real by people’s beliefs and social practices. These hierarchies “privilege Euro-western knowledges, languages, and values and justify the exploitation and impoverishment of indigenous and racially minoritized peoples” (Sprecher, 2013, p. 33). Those in the advantaged categories tend to be white, male, middle class, heterosexual, cisgender, able-bodied and to speak English as their first language; those in the disadvantaged categories tend to be people of colour, female, working class, LGBTQ+, to have some form of disability and not to speak English as a first language. The latter are portrayed as inferior to and of less value than the former but often also as untrustworthy, deficient and even deviant. Because groups are hierarchically ranked, it creates inequities and injustices as groups have differential access to power, resources, status and so on. According to Bell (2016), “Dominant groups hold the power and authority to control, in their own interests, the important institutions in society, determine how resources are allocated, and define what is natural, good, and true” (p. 9). This system of oppression is maintained through the normalisation of the dominant group’s elevated positioning and the belief that it is deserved rather than something that has been bestowed upon them through systems of inequality and oppression (Bell, 2016). Such is its power that even those oppressed by it accept it as normal and are complicit in its reproduction. Both dominant and subordinated groups reinforce it by simply acting as usual and going about their everyday lives (Bell, 2016). This form of oppression is subtle and covert and usually unconscious.

Manifestations of oppression are generally conceptualised on three levels, structural, institutional and individual. These levels interact to maintain the hierarchical social order. Individual levels refer to the oppressive attitudes, dispositions and behaviours of individuals and can be conscious or unconscious, overt or covert. Similarly, institutional oppression can be conscious or unconscious, overt or covert and is generally manifested through institutional policies and practices which privilege dominant social groups and disadvantage marginalised groups. Structural oppression is when the underpinning societal principles are inherently oppressive, for example, society’s economic, cultural and political institutions. These structures in turn justify and legitimise the inequitable treatment of non-dominant groups through various mutable forms, including, racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, ableism, linguistic imperialism and so on. The assumptions, beliefs and practices which underpin these systems make oppression an everyday reality for non-dominant groups and require an educational response.

Baker, Lynch, Cantillon and Walsh (2009) argue that within the context of education, there are four major equality problems. These are equality of (1) resources, (2) respect and recognition, (3) power and (4) love, care and solidarity. Equality of resources is concerned with the fair distribution of social, political and economic assets. Equality of recognition and respect relates to recognition of diversity, including marginalised groups’ historical experiences, language, cultural practices, traditions, and ways of making meaning and knowing. Equality of power requires access and opportunities to exercise power, including full inclusion and participation in decision-making and the power to shape the institutions, policies and processes that affect our lives. Equality of love, care and solidarity relates to relationships of mutual concern and support, collectively working together and taking action to eliminate injustice. The chapters in this book are collectively underpinned by these concepts. Furthermore, this book recognises that whilst the questions of resources, distribution, traditions and power are pivotal in the pursuit of justice between humans, these issues can also be viewed within wider frameworks of justice, such as climate and environmental justice (Mohai, Pellow & Roberts, 2009; Schlosberg & Collins, 2014). Human activities have exacerbated climate change, leading to significant environmental impacts which will increase threats to health and wellbeing, disproportionately affecting the most poor and vulnerable (Philipsborn & Chan, 2018). Intertwined with the impacts of climate breakdown is the significant loss of biodiversity, and subsequent damage to ecosystems, caused by human actions (Cardinale et al., 2012).

Historically, industrialisation itself is premised on extractive, socially unjust and racist systems. The concomitant systems of oppression and injustice built up over time have developed as mutually dependent and reinforced each other. Our response needs to also tie them together. If we want to have a future that is sustainable and a future that is environmentally and socially just then they need to be addressed together ensuring from the outset that systems are built on both socially just and sustainable practices and processes.

What is social justice education (SJE)?

SJE is diversely conceptualised as being an educational reform movement, a goal, a process and a set of practices (Bell, 2016; Adams, 2016; Storms, 2012). The task of defining SJE is far from straightforward. However, most conceptualisations share common principles, including the pillars of equity, activism and social literacy (Ayers, Quinn & Stovall, 2009).

Equity is based on the principle of fairness and refers to the equitable distribution of access to high-quality educational resources and academic outcomes for all children (Ayers et al., 2009, Bell, 2016; Storms, 2012). It involves restructur...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of exemplars
• List of contributors
• Foreword by Michael D. Higgins, President of Ireland
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Teaching for social justice and sustainable development across the primary curriculum: An introduction
• PART I: Critical enquiry: A pedagogy for social justice and sustainability
• PART II: Creative and relational approaches to social justice and sustainability education
• PART III: Challenging dominant frameworks through critical discourse
• PART IV: Social justice education in real contexts
• Index