BA Education, Leadership and Culture

The unit tackles the pressing international issue of educational inequalities within urban areas, placing a strong emphasis on social justice. With a multifaceted approach, the unit addresses distributional, cultural, and representational inequities that hinder the educational progress of disadvantaged individuals/groups. By understanding the comparative influence of urban environments and neighbourhood effects, the unit examines strategies to overcome these challenges. The unit’s curriculum incorporates powerful theoretical perspectives, including sociological, psychological, and critical race/feminist theories, providing valuable insights into the dynamics of structure, culture, and agency as in the way that urban educational disadvantage is explained. Moreover, the unit analyses and evaluates the theoretical and empirical efficacy of educational policies, such as Area Based initiatives, for impactful change. Engage with the unit to explore urban educational inequalities and ways of developing transformative, socially just educational landscape within urban communities.

• Introduce comparative urban educational disparities and inequities based on commonly accepted norms and standards.
• Explain the reasons for the existence of these disparities and inequities based on a synthesized theoretical and empirical understanding of the issues
• Provide a historical and current overview of key international educational policy responses
• Outline heoretical underpinning of policy approaches and examine  the extent to which they have mitigated urban educational inequalities

• Document the different and comparative normative elements of social justice in education that account for distributional inequalities (experiences/outcomes) and relational inequities (processes)
• Document key comparative urban educational inequalities as they pertain to different groups of young people and the urban places in which they live.
• Document key comparative urban educational inequities that reflect issues of cultural misrecognition both within and beyond the school for educational disadvantaged young people and their families in urban educational contexts
• Document epistemic injustices and representational inequities associated with disadvantaged urban  young people and family lack of ‘voice’ in urban educational contexts internationally 
   

URBAN EDUCATIONAL INQUALITIES 
Patterns of inequality/inequity
The spatial distribution of inequalities/inequities
Urban inequalities/inequities – economic/ethnic/residential segregation
Different kinds of urban contexts

Concepts of social justice & inequality  – issues of redistribution, recognition and representation

What is the purpose/outcomes of schooling / education re- social justice?

Explanations of urban educational inequalities – issues of structure and agency

• psychological notions of resilience
• sociological conceptions (e.g., Bourdieu's field, habitus, and capitals), 
  critical race/feminist theory
• transactional social/ecological conceptions (e.g., Bronfenbrenner's social ecology, Dewey’s pragmatism),

Neighbourhood effects

• Qualitative differences between different urban places
• Development of urban places over time
• Urban infrastructure and how this affects school population / resources / ability to attract staff etc 

Urban phenomena:

• Housing and gentrification
• Market place competition in the school system

Urban policy responses:

1. De-contextualised responses - school improvement and individual intervention strategies to generate success against the odds
2. Urban area-based approaches

• Arrival cities
• Anchor institutions
• Academies and charters
• School choice and busing
• School-to-school collaborative networks – Greater Manchester Challenge
• Harlem Children Zone

Theoretical underpinning of policy approaches and the extent to which they have mitigated urban educational inequalities 
 

Teaching and learning mainly to be delivered via a flipped classroom approach with indicative reading and focused questions acting as the substantive foundation on which to build both didactic and dialogic teaching extension activities that will emulate wherever possible seminar style student engagement. Padlet activities will support an immersive pedagogical experience. 

• Document the different and comparative normative elements of social justice in education that account for distributional inequalities (experiences/outcomes) and relational inequities (processes)
• Document key comparative urban educational inequalities as they pertain to different groups of young people and the urban places in which they live.
• Document key comparative urban educational inequities that reflect issues of cultural misrecognition both within and beyond the school for educational disadvantaged young people and their families in urban educational contexts
• Document epistemic injustices and representational inequities associated with disadvantaged urban  young people and family lack of ‘voice’ in urban educational contexts internationally 

• Synthesise and critically evaluate different theoretical explanations for urban educational inequalities and inequities that focus on issues of structure, culture and agency and that strongly pertain to place
• Critically evaluate historic and current international policy efforts to ameliorate urban educational inequalities and inequities utilising a synthesized understanding of the various theoretical and empirical explanations.
• Comprehend, document and evaluate how urban phenomena and neigbourhood effects impact educational attainment for different groups of urban young people
• Critically and comparatively evaluate the extent to which schools can fully respond to and ameliorate educational inequalities and inequities in disadvantaged urban contexts
   

• Undertake electronic search strategies via appropriate educational research databases to generate supporting empirical evidence and theoretical explanations for key problem inquiries

• Utilise data search skills   

Brighouse, T. & Fullick, L. (Eds.) (2007). Education in a global city. Essays from London. London: Institute of Education.

Bright, G. (2011). ‘Non-servile Virtuosi’ in Insubordinate Spaces: school disaffection, refusal and resistance in a former English coalfield. European Educational Research Journal. doi: 10.2304/eerj.2011.10.4.502

Dillabough, J., & Kennelly, J. (2010). Lost youth in the global city: class, culture and the urban imaginary. London: Routledge.

Emery, C., Raffo, C. & Dawes, L. (2022) The local matters- working with teachers to rethink the poverty and achievement gap discourse, Education Policy Analysis Archives

Evans, C. (2016). Framing young people’s educational transitions: the role of local and contemporary economic contexts. British Journal of Sociology of Education. doi: 10.1080/01425692.2016.1150154

Flessa, J., Ketelle, D. (2007). Persuasive, Pervasive, and Limiting: How Causal Explanations Shape Urban Educational Research and Practice. In: Pink, W.T., Noblit, G.W. (eds) International Handbook of Urban Education. Springer International Handbooks of Education, vol 19. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-5199-9_42

Gonzalez, N., Moll, L., Amanti, C. (2005). Funds of knowledge: Theorising practices in households, communities and classroom. London: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Grace, G. (2007) Urban education theory revisited: from the urban question to the end of the millennium. In Noblit, G., Pink, W. (eds) International Handbook of Urban Education, Springer International Handbooks of Education, Vol 19. (p. 959-978) Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.

Grace, G. (2006). Urban education: confronting the contradictions: an analysis with special reference to London. London Review of Education, 4(2), 115-131

Gulson, K., & Symes, C. (2007). Knowing one's place: space, theory, education. Critical Studies in Education, 48(1), 97-110

Hodgson, A., & Spours, K. (2013). An ecological analysis of the dynamics of localities: a 14+ low opportunity progression equilibrium in action. Journal of Education and Work. doi:10.1080/13639080.2013.80518

Kerr, K., Dyson A., Raffo, C. (2014). Education, disadvantage and place: Making the local matter. Bristol: Policy Press.

Lipman, P. (2011). The New Political Economy of Urban Education: Neoliberalism, Race, and the Right to the City. New York, NY: Routledge

Lupton, R. (2016). Re-Thinking Values and Schooling in White Working Class Neighbourhoods. In  Timmerman, Christine, Clycq, Noel, McAndrew, Marie, Alhassane, B., Braeckmans, Luc, Mels, Sara (Eds.), Youth in education: The necessity of valuing ethnocultural diversity (pp. 233–248). New York: Routledge.

Maguire, M., Wooldridge, T., Pratt-Adams, S. (2006). The urban primary school. Maidenhead: Open University Press.

Noblit, G. & Pink, W. (2017). International Handbook of Urban Education, Springer International Handbooks of Education. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. 
 

Raffo, C., Kerr, K. & Dyson, A. (2020) Urban education – challenges and possibilities in Denise Egea (ed) Education in Central Asia, Springer

Raffo, C. (2014). Improving educational equity in urban contexts, Abingdon: Routledge

Raffo, C., Dyson, A., Kerr, K. (2014). Positive discrimination in European education and training systems - lessons from the implementation of area-based initiatives for policy and practice (an independent report authored for the European Commission by the NESET network of experts). http://www.nesetweb.eu/news/neset-report-lessons-area-based-initiatives-education-and-training)

Raffo, C. (2011). Educational Equity in Poor Urban Contexts: Exploring Issues of Place/Space and Young People's Identity and Agency. British Journal of Educational Studies, 59 (1), 1-19

Raffo, C. and Dyson, A. (2007). Full service extended schools and educational inequality in u