The disparity between excellence and equity is a key issue for education policy and practice. This book is an argument for equity and inclusion in education, based on a model of social justice which is grounded in relationships and learning rather than policies and structures. Countries that combine excellence with equity, where young people experience high levels of wellbeing, tend to be societies with a commitment to social justice, equity and inclusion. There is an increasing recognition that long term educational and social reforms have to focus on issues around social justice if they are to be more than palliative responses. Education for Social Justice looks at the role of relationships on many levels: personal meaning, group or team interaction, the school structure and culture, and cross agency and community involvement and development. The aim of this book is to find a paradigm that can be used to achieve greater social fairness, by finding individual/local solutions still in line with national policies and strategies.

The Handbook on Promoting Social Justice in Education explores social justice elements across the global human continuum in the field of education and offers the skills and ways of thinking to achieve a more equitable, caring and fair world. Education is not the sole or even the primary answer to social justice as this would assume educators have control over the complexity of one’s nation/states and multi or transnational organizations, and especially the diversity by context of family life. What education does offer are the skills and ways of thinking to achieve a more equitable, caring, and fair world in pursuit of achieving the ends of social justice. The handbook will look at three major themes—Political Inequality, Educational Economic Inequality, and Cultural Inequality. Editorial Board Khalid ArarKadir BeyciogluFenwick EnglishAletha M. HarvenJohn M. HeffronDavid John MathesonMarta Sánchez

A marked change in traditional thinking about children and childhood was promoted by the adoption by the United Nations (in 1989) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In the early 90s sociologists in the United States and the UK developed Childhood Studies to promote a holistic view of children's lives, recognition of their competence and agency, and the impact and value of their everyday experiences. As a result of this impetus, different thinking has emerged about the role and recognition of children, the institutions of childhood, and the way we view and treat children in modern societies. This book focuses on research emerging from Children's Rights and Childhood Studies thinking, which has important implications for developing policies and practices to improve children's well being and rights. The author presents the implications of children's rights for six contexts of children's everyday lives: families; early childhood education; schooling; child protection services; health services; and employment.

This new work argues that a broad Indigenous rights framework is crucial to achieving positive change in the socio-economic disadvantage into which Indigenous Australians are born. It explains why addressing problems in Indigenous communities at a practical level needs to be done in conjunction with rights protection.

Help change the world by bringing ideas of social justice into your group work practice! Social workers who use hip-hop music to reach out to troubled adolescents. Practitioners who compare First Nations talking circles with social work practice with groups. A retired professor who transforms the way her fellow senior living center residents participate in their world. Fathers of children with spina bifida who help one another through an online discussion group. These and other examples you’ll discover in Social Work with Groups: Social Justice Through Personal, Community, and Societal Change will help you to assist groups to gain a sense of empowerment and create change in their own lives and communities. In Social Work with Groups: Social Justice Through Personal, Community, and Societal Change you’ll also find: definitions of social justice within the context of social work a proposal to help focus on social justice in teaching guidelines for group facilitators making decisions about self-disclosure studies of innovative group work discussion of the challenges to achieving social justice in group work valuable ways to ground social group work in rich cultural traditions This new book rides the crest of the growing wave of justice in social work with groups. Culled from the proceedings of the 22nd International Symposium of the Association for the Advancement of Social Work with Groups, it gives you the innovations and current thinking of professionals who, while coming from different cultural and professional backgrounds, are focused on helping all people enjoy the same rights and opportunities. If you want to use group work to challenge social inequality, Social Work with Groups will be a welcome addition to your library. Social action that gets results has to start somewhere—let it begin with you!

The International Forum for Social Development was a 3 year project undertaken by the United Nations. Department of Economic and Social Affairs between 2001 and 2004 to promote international cooperation for social development and supporting developing countries and social groups not benefiting from the globalization process. This publication provides an overview and interpretation of the discussions and debates that occurred at the four meetings of the Forum for Social Development held at the United Nations headquarters in New York, within the framework of the implementation of the outcome of the World Summit for Social Development.

Technology, Activism, and Social Justice in a Digital Age offers a close look at both the present nature and future prospects for social change. In particular, the text explores the cutting edge of technology and social change, while discussing developments in social media, civic technology, and leaderless organizations -- as well as more traditional approaches to social change. It effectively assembles a rich variety of perspectives to the issue of technology and social change; the featured authors are academics and practitioners (representing both new voices and experienced researchers) who share a common devotion to a future that is just, fair, and supportive of human potential. They come from the fields of social work, public administration, journalism, law, philanthropy, urban affairs, planning, and education, and their work builds upon 30-plus years of research. The authors' efforts to examine changing nature of social change organizations and the issues they face will help readers reflect upon modern advocacy, social change, and the potential to utilize technology in making a difference.

This book assesses the role of social justice in legal scholarship and its potential future development by focusing upon the ‘leading works’ of the discipline. The rise of socio-legal studies over recent decades has led to a more interdisciplinary approach to the study of law, which prioritises placing law into its wider social context. Recognising the role that culture, economics and politics play in the development of law is important in order to fully understand the position and impact of law in society. Innovative and written in an engaging way, this collection includes leading and emerging scholars from across the world. Each contributor has been invited to select and analyse a ‘leading work’, a publication which has for them shed light on the way that law and social justice are interlinked and has influenced their own understanding, scholarship, advocacy, and, in some instances, activism. The book also includes a specially written foreword and afterword, which critically reflect upon the contributions of the 'leading works' to consider the role that social justice has played in law and legal education and the likely future path for social justice in legal scholarship. This book will be an essential resource for all those working in the areas of social justice, socio-legal studies and legal philosophy. It will be of wider interest to the social sciences more generally.

Assessment for Social Justice takes the established idea of 'assessment for learning' and extends it to consider how assessment contributes to social justice within and through higher education. Jan McArthur invites the reader to rethink familiar positions on assessment and fairness and seeks to explore the full complexity of a critical theory-inspired notion of social justice. She positions her work in contrast to more procedural approaches to social justice, such as John Rawls's influential theorisation of social justice. In contrast, McArthur draws on the work of third generation critical theorist, Axel Honneth, and takes inspiration from Honneth's three realms of mutual recognition in order to reconsider the nature of assessment relationships and practices. A further theoretical strand is introduced in the form of social practice theory, and particularly the work of Theodore Shatzki. McArthur provides a theoretically rigorous understanding of assessment as a social practice, and as a vehicle both for and against social justice. Together with critical theory, this work enables a realizable vision of an alternative approach to assessment in higher education, where the underlying aim is greater social justice. McArthur argues that students must be nurtured to recognise the social contribution that they can make as a result of engaging with knowledge in higher education, rather than defining their achievements in terms of a mark, grade or degree classification.

This thought-provoking book examines the role of social protection in reducing inequality and enhancing social justice. It assesses social protection’s impact on inequality in different parts of the world and shows that if carefully designed, adequately funded and effectively implemented, it can make a significant contribution to reducing income, gender and other forms of inequality. In this way, it can promote egalitarian ideals and enhance social justice.