A major factor influencing the potential for schools to address inequalities is the freedom that teachers have to reflect and to act to address those inequalities. This article describes how an education system that emphasises the informal and qualitative can leave greater room for teachers to develop themselves and to focus on the direct task of…

This article, based on a keynote presentation given at a conference in Tasmania, examines the notion of "attainment" and argues that a narrow focus on standardised test scores is highly problematic for those concerned with social justice. Using examples from the Freedom to Learn Project, this article presents two case studies of schools…

To prepare their students for the increasingly demanding workplace of the 21st century, business schools resort to using experiential learning techniques to make explicit connections between knowledge and experiences students already have, encouraging them to make their own interpretations. In this case study, 50 multilingual students participated…

Service learning is experiential education that encourages students as socially responsible and active citizens working in and with members of the community. We consider how these ideas illuminate the ambitions of a unique service-learning opportunity known as "Converge", a university partnership with a health care provider that brings…

"Doing Justice to History" challenges everyday racism in society and offers counter-stories to the singular narratives that still prevail among national historians and in school curricula. It will be a key resource for the annual Black History Month in both the UK and the US. But the book's key purpose is to argue for deeper and…

This paper presents comparative case studies of non-formal development education by non-profit organisations in two European countries. The study aimed to explore the extent to which such activities provide opportunities for transformative learning. The research was qualitative and began with interviews with educators across 14 organisations in…

The struggle to establish more democratic education pedagogies has a long history in the politics of mainstream education. This book argues for the significance of the creative arts in the establishment of social justice in education, using examples drawn from a selection of contemporary case studies including Japanese applied drama, Palestinian…

This paper reports data from a study investigating distributed leadership (DL) and its relationship to social justice and democratic values. The research comprised a case study of a UK secondary school, which describes itself as having a finely distributed leadership culture, and involved teaching staff, non-teaching staff, senior leaders and…

Botanic gardens have been evolving, responding to the changing needs of society, from their outset as medicinal gardens of monasteries and university gardens to more recently as organizations that contribute to the conservation of plant genetic resources. Considering that social and environmental issues are deeply intertwined and cannot be tackled…

This article is based on research undertaken between 2009 and 2012 into the former Labour government's extremely ambitious "Building Schools for the Future" (BSF) Programme and its withdrawal by the Coalition government. The project, which utilises analysis of policy documents, case studies in six local authorities (LA) and…

Educational policy-makers around the world are strongly committed to the notion of "scaling up". This can mean anything from encouraging more teachers to take up a pedagogical innovation, all the way through to system-wide efforts to implement "what works" across all schools. In this paper, I use Bourdieu's notions of…

Existing international research suggests that widespread performative pedagogy has contributed to producing educational inequalities for "disadvantaged" learners. There have also been calls for alternative pedagogies, which can be characterised as child-centred. This paper analyses pupils' hierarchical positioning in a contemporary,…

This article draws on data collected from a series of semi-structured interviews with headteachers and other stakeholders on the use of the Pupil Premium in Ofsted-rated outstanding schools. It has a focus on the significance of fundamental principles in determining how effective use is made of additional resources. In particular, the importance…

This paper takes as its focus the contradictory discourse of widening participation (WP). We argue that given the conflicting accounts of WP it is highly unlikely that higher education staff will be able articulate a coherent definition of WP practice. We illustrate our thesis with an institutional case study which analysed policy documents and…

University-community partnerships offer synergistic spaces for communities to address difficulties and universities to meet their missions. Geographers are well positioned to participate in these partnerships, owing to the discipline's integrative nature, spatial perspectives and analytic approaches, and its attention to social and environmental…