Special Interest Group
This SIG promotes dialogue on educational policies and practices at all levels in terms of supporting or inhibiting social justice. We are committed to developing a range of theoretical understandings of the concept of social justice and the interaction of particular axes of discrimination in education. Particular attention is given to discourses and material effects of social class, gender, citizenship and human rights, and the ways in which these interrelate. In addition we help to develop an understanding of the opportunities and spaces that social actors in education have to promote inclusion and social justice (as well as the limits and constraints they face), and the ways in which action can be taken.
We contribute to the evaluation of research methodologies for investigating social justice. We consider the processes by which academic critique can or should influence political agendas locally, nationally and globally. Fundamentally, we provide an arena for debate, discussion and dissemination for researchers whose work addresses a wide range of social justice issues. Thus, the SIG’s intention is to bring together research from a range of specialist yet related areas to a general forum to further social justice in education. SIG events Past activities have included:
Reader in Interdisciplinary Practice and Research with Families at Birmingham City University
Carolyn is a Reader in Interdisciplinary Practice and Research with Families in the Centre for the Study of Practice and Culture in Education at Birmingham City University. She is also a Churchill Fellow, a Visiting Fellow at the University of...
Lecturer at Bishop Grosseteste University
Sheine Peart has worked in schools, colleges, local authorities and youth and community settings. She taught in Further Education for fifteen years teaching on various vocational programmes and working with challenging students. She held the...
Reader in Education at Edge Hill University
Vicky’s research and teaching spans over two decades, in this time she has developed a national and International reputation for research in Adult Education and Literacy. As such, Vicky has developed considerable expertise in Adult Education...
This episode of the BERA Podcast discusses the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the climate crisis school strikes, and how schools can work to acknowledge and facilitate...
Many children in the United Kingdom, and elsewhere in the world, have been away from their regular school and early year settings, spending lengthy periods of time at home since the beginning of...
Continue readingThe island of Zanzibar where I was born was famous – or infamous – on two accounts: clove plantations and slavery. From the 17th century until 1909, spice plantations were worked by Black...
Continue readingWhile we have seen a justified focus upon schools during the Covid-19 crisis, relatively little attention has been paid to how teacher-educators are adjusting their practice. In the UK in...
Continue readingIn pre-Covid England, early childhood education and care (ECEC) was already in a state of uncertainty. A maelstrom of structural conditions and an onslaught of initiatives had manifested as...
Continue reading‘The ability to collaborate on both a small- and large-scale is becoming one of the core requisites of postmodern society’ (Fullan, 1993, p.5). Yet it is ‘still relatively rare for children...
Continue readingIn October 2019 I travelled to the US to explore the benefits of oracy-centred teaching strategies and expeditionary learning for the development of the speaking, listening, reading and writing...
Continue readingThe United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) (UN, 1989) includes 54 articles outlining rights and freedoms for children. The UNCRC provides formal acknowledgement of the rights...
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