Towards an understanding of curricular justice and democratic schooling

Abstract

Curricular justice, achieved through a counter-hegemonic curriculum that serves the needs of the least rather than most advantaged members of society, plays a central role in providing more equitable access to meaningful education for all young people. We contend that the defining features of the contemporary schooling context in many parts of the globe, including Australia, are growing inequality and increasing disparity between students who have access to educational opportunities and outcomes, and those who do not. We take Connell's claimsmade in Schools and Social Justice, published in 1993-of the centrality of social justice in schooling and consider its relevance nearly 30 years later. In particular, we argue that curricular justice must sit at the heart of schooling that fosters democratic participation and meaningful opportunities for civic participation and belonging within society.The issue of social justice is not an add-on. It is fundamental to what good education is about. (Connell, 1993, p. 15

Curricular justice and contemporary schooling: Towards a rich, common curriculum for all students

“…While we do not have the space here to consider teachers' role in curriculum making, we would contend, as we have elsewhere (e.g. Mills et al, 2022;Mayer & Mills, 2021), that a socially just approach to curriculum would see teacher professionalism and teacher voice as being central to decision-making regarding curriculum. Our focus here is on what students receive.…”

“…In particular, we have argued that students are best served by a rich, common curriculum (Mills et al, 2022) rather than being segregated or siphoned off to other alternative learning programmes and schools. When an impoverished curriculum based on low expectations is provided to students in place of meaningful, high-quality opportunities for connecting young people to their learning, 'there is a serious injustice in making education central to life chances without making access and outcomes available to all' (Brennan & Zipin, 2018, p. 180).…”

“This Is Not Gym”: Enacting Student Voice Pedagogies to Promote Social and Emotional Learning and Meaningful Physical Education

“…Reflecting trends in education and societies more broadly (Gonzalez et al, 2017 ; Cook-Sather, 2018 ; Mitra, 2018 ; Mills et al, 2021 ), the last decade has seen considerable scaling up of research and advocacy for enacting youth/student voice within and across physical education (PE), physical activity, and youth sport settings (Hooper and Sandford, 2021 ; Iannucci and Parker, 2021 ). Encouragingly, such work is increasingly exploring the enactment of youth/student voice pedagogies (SVP) with historically disengaged, underserved, and marginalized youth also.…”