Social Justice In Education And Creating An Inclusive Classroom

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Six years after the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) has been implemented, it could be said that the curriculum is well and truly established within Scottish education (Call Scotland, 2017). However, there are many hurdles and inconsistencies which remain, particularly within education. Social justice is prominently an issue of our time: this is now the moment for humanity to be equal, in all areas. Equality is especially important within education, and since 1999 creating an inclusive classroom has been the government’s priority (Riddell, 2009). The first part of the essay aims to critically examine social justice, inclusion and accordingly the implications which exist for learning. The second part of the essay includes a reflection from the …show more content…

Malott (2015) defines social injustice, an inequality created by socio-economic factors, as unavoidable. As the schools we educate are small communities, they are not made up of children who share the same opinions, religions and other social factors. Therefore, these communities have social differences, which ultimately create unavoidable social issues, also regarded as inequalities (Matthews, 2006).
Social justice is the answer to tackling inequalities, according to the government, this viewpoint of social justice is compulsory in order to tackle the underlying issues (Department for Work and Pensions, 2012). Social justice will help the most disadvantaged families in the UK, suggests the government t(Department for Work and Pensions, 2012). Creating equality among society is currently a top priority for the government, so much so, that in 2014 the SNP government appointed the first cabinet secretary specifically for social justice, Alex Neil (Gov.scot, 2017). Social
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Definitively, recognition is a perspective of social justice which is based on a hierarchy. Fraser (1998) states that recognition should be solved by creating justice rather than the good. This is because recognition comes in many forms and can be represented in different ways: race, gender, sexuality, religion and so on. Therefore, various life opportunities are denied to people because of misrecognition. Treating someone with justice means it’s a social issue rather than a right for wrong (Fraser,1998). Similarly, Boyask (2016) takes the route of recognition and suggests that in order to create a socially just system we would require moving away from a hierarchical setting. Controversially, Hayek argues that social justice is impossible in the consumer economy and that it will always fall below other social values (Lister, 2013). Therefore, we should aim for an inclusive practice, which ultimately meets the needs of each and every child, one which is tailored for each individual