Social Justice SIG Invited Expert Seminar Series

The Social Justice SIG is pleased to announce the launch of its upcoming Social Justice Seminar Series, designed to provide international, interdisciplinary, and intersectional insight on addressing inequities, advocating for marginalized communities, and promoting inclusive practices within the context of education. We invite you to join us in this timely discussion from key experts in the field. 

Schedule:

Session 1 - in collaboration with Children and Student Voices Across All Sectors SIG - Dr Angelique Howell (Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of Teacher Education and Leadership, Queensland University of Technology)

  • Focus: Social justice through Youth-Adult Participatory Action Research
  • Fri 24th May, 2pm to 3pm AEST
  • Online via Zoom

Session 2 - Professor Sherry Marx (Professor of ESL, Multicultural Education, and Qualitative Methods, Utah State University)

  • Focus: Social justice and equity through research methods
  • Fri 21 June 2024, 11am to 12pm AEST
  • Online via Zoom
  • Please bring along a pen and paper to engage in a mapping activity.

Video

Session 3 - Professor Gregory Noble (Professor at the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University)

Abstract

Doing diversity differently: multicultural education for a culturally complex world 

Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University 

What’s the point of (multicultural) education? Multicultural education policies and programs have provided a set of practices which frame how Australian schools respond to cultural diversity. Yet, despite its benefits, multicultural education as it is currently practised in schools doesn’t always adequately address the challenges of the complex world in which we live. This is partly because of the competing ‘logics’ which pull teachers’ practices in divergent ways (cultural maintenance v equity) and partly because multiculturalism is governed by perceptions of cultural difference shaped by assumptions about distinct and unchanging ethnic communities. Drawing on case studies from the Rethinking Multiculturalism/ Reassessing Multicultural Education (RMRME) Project, this presentation examines the ways target schools developed projects which addressed issues in their school communities. It suggests that the ‘professional vision’ embedded in multicultural education fosters an ethos of respect and celebration which ironically promotes an unreflexive civility at the expense of the intellectual interrogation of cultural complexity. Returning to the opening question, this presentation argues for the development of a critical cultural intelligence which develops teachers’ and students’ intellectual capacities for negotiating the social relations and cultural complexities of a globalised world.

  • Focus: Social justice and doing diversity differently
  • Fri 2 August 2024, 10am to 11am AEST
  • Online via Zoom

Video

Session 4 - Associate Professor Christina Ho (Associate Professor in Social and Political Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney)

Abstract

Expanding Opportunity? Class, Ethnicity and Educational Aspiration

This paper examines educational aspiration among working-class migrants and the mismatch between their definitions of success and those of the mainstream education system. It explores the educational aspirations and practices of Lebanese-Australian families in a disadvantaged area of Western Sydney. Despite their large numbers within Sydney schools, Lebanese-Australian students are dramatically under-represented in high achieving schools. They are a key target of a new initiative of the state government to increase the number of students from disadvantaged communities in academically selective schools and classes. The initiative is designed to shift parents’ views on their children’s education, to ‘raise aspirations’ and encourage them to consider applying for a selective place. This paper examines whether there is a ‘lack’ of aspiration among disadvantaged migrants, why they are under-represented in high achieving schools, and how the education system can better recognise and cater for diverse aspirations. It also provides a brief comparative analysis with Asian migrant families, who, on average, have had a vastly different experience of the Australian education system.

  • Focus: Asian Australian education cultures, Australian multiculturalism and social justice
  • Fri 27 September 2024, 1pm to 2pm AEST
  • Online via Zoom

 

Session 5 - Professor Tracey Bunda (Professor of Indigenous Education, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit, The University of Queensland)

  • Focus: First Nations representation and storying research in education 
  • Feb 2025 (date and timing TBC)
  • Online via Zoom

Session 6 - Professor Arathi Sriprakash (Professor of Sociology and Education, University of Oxford)

Abstract

Reparations and Reparative Justice in the field of Education

It is almost a truism to say that schooling systems are structurally unjust. Inequalities of opportunity are a feature of education systems across the world. This seminar explores the possibility of reparative frameworks to address the structural injustices of education systems – particularly relating to racial and classed dispossession. The idea of reparation requires us to understand the interconnections between past, present and future in both the formation of injustice and its repair. Arguably, until injustices are actively addressed, they can endure in social institutions – such as education – which also shape lives-to-come. But what does reparation in education look like? A new five-year participatory research project – Reparative Futures of Education (Repair-Ed) – seeks to explore this very question, focusing on the city of Bristol, England and its histories and geographies of inequality. I argue that injustice is not an inevitability in reparative futures of education: these are new, if challenging, horizons for the politics and practice of education.

  • Focus: Reparations and reparative justice in education
  • Monday 10th February 2025, 4pm - 5pm (online), 4pm - 6pm (in-person)
  • Blended in-person and over Zoom (event registration with venue details and Zoom link will be sent out closer to the date)

Registration:
Please register via the links provided for sessions 1 to 4. Further details for sessions 5 and 6 will be provided in the near future.

Feel free to extend this invitation to interested colleagues. Should you have any questions or require further information, please contact Aaron Teo (aaron.teo@unisq.edu.au).  Look forward to seeing you there!