MA Education for a Sustainable Environment

This course unit aims to extend students’ knowledge and understanding of social justice and education with an emphasis on the roles of poverty and place. Students will build a critical understanding of both orthodox and progressive responses to issues of social justice through examining policy and practice relationships as well as curricular and pedagogic innovations. Socially just educational theory and practice will be explored at the international, national and local levels in sufficient detail to allow students to gain knowledge of the various ways in which historical, social and economic contexts give rise to both socially just and socially unjust educational thinking and doing. The work of key scholars such as Nancy Fraser, Mike Apple and Paul Gorski will closely inform the teaching.

The unit aims to:

• Extend knowledge and understanding of key issues affecting how social justice is understood and enacted, or otherwise, across education systems internationally
• Critically examine policy and practice regarding poverty and disadvantage at a national and international level.
• Develop a better understanding of orthodox and critical responses to social justice issues through the investigation of school and community relationships. 
• apply analytical perspectives to the theory and practice of socially just educational provision at the national and international level. 
• Through a localised research project gain a critical understanding of social justice practice
   

Students will acquire key knowledge of different conceptualisations of social justice and be able to use and apply theoretical constructs to real world scenarios. They will evidence an understanding of the political, cultural and socio-historical contexts that shape current social justice responses in education from a variety of perspectives. Students will be able to demonstrate an ability to evaluate, critique and reflect on these responses and evidence an understanding of their impact in classroom and on students from low-income families.
Students, working independently and collaboratively, will be equipped with the knowledge of the global/national/local social justice policy contexts alongside diverse equitable and inclusive classroom practices that will be beneficial to them in employment in a variety of educational careers.

Syllabus (indicative curriculum content):

The unit will be delivered 
Stage 1: An introduction to Social Justice and how poverty shapes education globally 
Stage 2: Models and theories associated with poverty, education and place: the journey from collectivism to individualism
Stage 3:  This stage examines notions of social justice in practice. It explores teaching activity at the global, international and national level
Stage 4: This stage focuses on the local, lived realities and activity contextualized to the north west of England. It also prepares students for short research projects comparing educational practice in different contexts.
Stage 5: This stage will take place in local education setting in disadvantaged contexts. 
Stage 6: This stage provides a space to evaluate and showcase the learning and research from the students’ projects.

The course unit are delivered in a sequence of ten sessions built around two-hour lecture /workshops with additional two tutorial/seminar sessions reviewing the learning and preparing students for the assessment activities.  Workshops introduce and explore social justice policies and programmes using interactive elements throughout. These include digital resources, such as video and online websites that provide students opportunities to examine and analyse understandings of social justice in education and how it is implemented individually and in groups. Other workshop sessions focus on students engaging in group work using synchronous digital tools to help them identify, compare and evaluate social justice approaches as a means to help develop their knowledge and skills in preparation for summative assessment activities.   
The tutorial/seminar sessions will focus on literature associated with the unit as an opportunity to critically engage with ideological and theoretical perspectives. These sessions will also support the development or practical and critical skills in preparation for the assessment activities.

• Show an understanding of theory, literature sources and issues related to social justice and poverty in education
• Demonstrate an enhanced appreciation of the opportunities of, and barriers to, socially just, contextualised, policy and practice responses
• Identify the links between their learning and contextualized practice

• Develop critical thinking skills in relation to social justice and the challenges of teaching in high-poverty contexts
• Reflect on teaching and learning in a variety of contexts;
• Critically examine how approaches to teaching and learning fit with the contextual particularities of specific educational settings.

• Effectively contribute to debates about poverty and education and place-based research in education across a range of different contexts and from different perspectives, with a specific focus on social justice 
• Conduct a small-scale investigation in a systematic manner
  Present research effectively to others in the group
• Reflect on their own practice and think about how their learning might influence their future professional work

• Develop conceptual and analytical  skills;   
• Make effective use of electronic and other sources of information; 
• Demonstrate the ability to study independently, gather, handle and process information effectively, and engage in reflective practice.
• Apply conceptual knowledge about poverty and place as a social practice to the development of socially just practices in real situations.

Individual feedback on Tii 15 days after submission 

Gorski, P. C. (2012). Perceiving the problem of poverty and schooling: Deconstructing the class stereotypes that mis-shape education practice and policy. Equity & Excellence in Education, 45(2), 302-319.
Haberman, M. (2010). ‘The pedagogy of poverty versus good teaching’, Phi Delta Kappan, 92(2), pp.81-87.
Kerr, K., Dyson, A., & Raffo, C. (2014). Education, disadvantage and place: Making the local matter. Policy Press.
Lingard, B., Hayes, D. and Mills, M. (2003). ‘Teachers and productive pedagogies: contextualising, conceptualising, utilising’, Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 11(3), pp.399-424.
Lupton, R. (2004). Schools in disadvantaged areas: Recognising context and raising quality. CASE Paper 76. London: LSE.
Payne, R. K. (1998/2005). A Framework for understanding poverty (4th ed.). Highlands, TX: RFT Publishing
Raffo, C., Dyson, A., Gunter, H., Hall, D., Jones, L. & Kalambouka A. (2007) Education and Poverty: A critical review of theory, policy and practice.  York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation
Raffo, C. (2014) Improving Educational Equity in Urban Contexts. London:Routledge
Raffo, C., Dyson, A., Gunter, H., Hall, D., Jones, L. & Kalambouka, A. (2010) (Eds) Education and Poverty in Affluent Countries. London: Routledge.
Reay, D. (2006) The Zombie stalking English schools: social class and educational inequality. British Journal of Educational Studies, 54 (3), September: 288-307.
Whitty, G. (2001) ‘Education, social class and social exclusion’ Journal of Education Policy, 16 (4), 287-295