About
Network 4: Justice through education (JustEd)
Justice through education (JustEd) is a multidisciplinary network dedicated to the questions of equality and social justice and its multiple facets in education, especially in the Nordic context.
The network aims at supporting research that highlights the challenges that the Nordic educational systems are currently facing, both within the Nordic area and in relations with other international and global areas (eg. EU, US). The network will support research that compare the impact of policies, such as school choice and public accountability, on teaching and learning cultures, as well as on the marginalization and engagement of learners. An overall aim is to contribute to the re-formulation of what the project of democratic, inclusive education for justice can be in the middle of current political, economic and cultural transformation. The main focus would be on how systems, cultures and actors in education enable and constrain justice in the context of globalizing Nordic welfare states.
The network offers an open forum for researchers focused on equality, equity and social justice in education and welcomes educational researchers representing various disciplinary backgrounds and research fields, such as education, philosophy, sociology, social psychology, gender studies, immigration studies, disability studies as well as multiple methodological approaches.
The research of the network members’ might focus on macro level issues ranging from analyzing educational politics and policies to exploring to what extent global issues (e.g. human mobility, asylum seekers) intervene in educational policies, and to the interaction between national and supra-national policy levels (e.g. to what extent the educational agendas of EU and UN interact with both national and local educational policies).
At the meso level, the interest could be on implementations and effects of the politics and policies (e.g. investigating how various ways to deal with student enrollment or school choice influence educational equality). At the micro level there could be an emphasis on cultural processes and actors’ perspectives on the educational system, when the focus is on everyday life in formal and informal educational institutions. Moreover, theoretical and conceptual analysis of questions of equality, cultural pluralism and justice will be encouraged.
In short, the aim of the network is to help identify and describe political, social and cultural processes in relation to educational equality and inequality by making visible complex power relations that are usually taken for granted. The network is also inviting analysis and discussion of multiple differences, diversities and intersectional meanings in educational contexts.