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Vincent, Carol (2003). (Ed.). Social Justice, Education
and Identity. New York: Routledge/Falmer Press
Pp. 227
$129.95 (Cloth) $39.95 (Paper)
ISBN: 0-415-29695-1
Reviewed by Eric Jabal
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the
University
of Toronto
October 18, 2004
Much important ground is covered in Social Justice,
Education and Identity. Edited by Carol Vincent, a senior
lecturer in educational policy at the Institute of Education
(University of London), it assembles 12 essays from members of
the British Educational Research Association's Special Interest
Group in Social Justice to examine how the organisation and
practices of educational systems structure (un-) just social
outcomes that affect how individuals and groups acquire and
assert subject positions. Though the proven grounds are
exclusively the UK’s, there is plenty therein to enlighten
all researchers, academics, and policymakers with an interest in
social justice, education, and identity formation; in half of the
essays, K-12 practitioners may also glean insights for their
classroom work with students.
Vincent addresses the relationship among the three key themes
in her introduction, asserting that the “effect of
structural forces and individual agency combine to shape
identities” (5). She favours a mediated view of the
structure/agency distinction, and its implications for identity
formation and the socio-politics of social justice, which draws
from Anthony Giddens’ notion of “structuration”
and Stuart Hall’s conceptualisation of social identities
– i.e., (1) what we are not informs our sense of who we
are; and (2) identity as “becoming” as well as
“being”. So framed, the book’s twin foci of
identity formation and individual/institutional responsibility
for pursuing social justice are important ones for educators, as
“[o]ur understanding of who we are, the others with whom we
identify and those with whom we do not, how the social groupings
to which we belong are perceived, these factors are now
understood to be key in understanding and interrogating the
concept of social justice” (2). Although the essays mostly
treat the overlap among the titular triumvirate, social
identities represent the collection’s main organiser: five
chapters discuss class, three gendered/sexual identities, and two
race/ethnic identities. The final two chapters take a policy
focus to treat parental/professional identities in the context of
special educational needs, on the one hand, and the social
justice implications of the current UK government policy of
school diversification, on the other.
Cribb and Gewirtz enrich Vincent’s conceptual portico
with a theoretical analysis of social justice in chapter 1, which
they define as “a concern with the principles and norms of
social organisation and relationships necessary to achieve, and
act upon, equal consideration of all people in their
commonalities and differences” (18). Their emphasis
extends the traditional, Rawlsian theory of
“distributive” justice (i.e., equitable distribution
of opportunities and resources rather than equalization) to argue
for its “cultural” and “associational”
aspects (i.e., recognition of difference, diversity, and equity
in participation). Inherent in their plural view of justice is
the taking of individual responsibility for the promotion of
social justice in everyday living. Further, they challenge
researchers to combine critical perspectives with meaningful,
action-oriented practices: “we need to try and ensure that
our work is of practical help to those struggling to do their
best to advance the cause of social justice in challenging
circumstances” (21). The balance of chapter 1 shows how a
modified “reflective equilibrium” perspective can
promote sociological praxis that exposes socio-cultural
reproduction and injustice, interrupts such processes, and
informs local struggles for social justice. With the conceptual
and theoretical building blocks in place, the remaining 11
chapters treat issues of social in/exclusion with respect to
educational choice, access, opportunity, and outcome.
In chapter 2, Ball draws from two case studies of school
choice and ethics in practice to examine how middle-class
families decide between state (i.e., comprehensive) and private
(i.e., selective, independent) schools for their children. He
presents the educational arena as a marketplace that formatively
influences the values-in-use of its participants, whose dilemmas
of school choice involve interplay among public principles and
private interests, individualism and communitarianism.
Heuristically, he uses a dynamic relational model to depict how
policy, locality, risk, family and social network, child
characteristics, parents’ experiences of school, and cost
inform decision-making processes of school choice. Ball’s
analysis reveals that the situated principles of his middle-class
participants are bound within their liberal social identities
(i.e., derived from political and economic individualism). He
shows how in making school choices that “achieve maximal
positional advantage for their child" (33), they may
“privilege certain sorts of selfish, or at least
short-sighted individualism” (34).
The next three essays widen the focus to include those who
face additional psycho-socio-educational hurdles because of their
(perceived) lack of “familial habitus”. In chapter
3, Reay explores the psychic struggles stemming from
dis-identification processes in working-class experiences of
upward mobility into the more privileged and differentiated field
of higher education. Interviews with young and mature
working-class students reveal the complexity of their double
bind: of overreaching and failing; and/or of ending up in low
status, stigmatised “working-class” universities.
Their “two opposing shames” underscore how
“[w]orking-class fears and anxieties about the move into
higher education are interwoven with desires to ‘fit
in’ and feel ‘at home’” (56). In chapter
4, Bhati reports on two studies that explore how social class,
race/ethnicity, and gender interrelate for “probably the
most disempowered students in the British university
system” (73) – mature students from a working-class
background; and Bangladeshi and Pakistani women from low
tertiary-level participation areas. Relatedly, Tett discusses in
chapter 5 how a ‘Health Issues in the Community’
university course in Scotland brings in from the margins the
socially excluded, helping them to overcome a deficit view of
themselves and their environment and to improve their
psychosocial well-being and health. Collectively, the
“class-cultural alienation” of these non-traditional
participants in the mainly middle-class arena of the university
compels Reay, Bhati, and Tett to argue for social justice that
brings together its redistributive and cultural aspects.
In chapters 6 to 9, the focus shifts to identity formation and
social justice in the secondary school context. Arnot’s
critical (feminist) re-reading of Paul Willis’ 1977
Learning to labour, a seminal sociological investigation
into why working-class ‘lads’ get working-class jobs,
relates contemporary concerns about identities, culture, and
social change to current projects on social identities, social
justice, and education. Taking a different approach to the
complex interface between social structure and culture, Epstein
et al. examine the conditions produced by the lack of (effective)
policies around homophobia at two single-sex and four co-ed
London secondary schools. They uncover significant homophobic
bullying and harassment that is treated inconsistently by
students and teachers, which has significant consequences for
social justice and identity in schools. They surmise that the
contemporary climate, in which the dominant middle-class norms
and attitudes treat homophobia differently to other, class-,
race-, sexist-based equal opportunities issues, has important
bearing on how schools approach homophobic abuse. In chapter 8,
Paechter takes a curricular focus to show how PE and
gender-differentiated school sports (re)produce dominant
masculinities and femininities that restrict the future
possibilities of boys and girls. In chapter 9, Reiss highlights
how science education can nurture social justice beyond the
classroom. By including sample activities for 8-11 (i.e., food),
12-14 (i.e., nuclear power), and 15-16 (i.e., individual
differences) year-olds, Reiss demonstrates how classroom
educators can approach issues of diversity, social justice, and
scientific activity with their students.
I found chapter 10 the book’s most unsettling.
Connolly’s discussion of two case studies, which examine
the awareness of cultural markers of differences and the
development of racial/ethnic prejudice among young Catholic and
Protestant children in Northern Ireland, reveals disturbing
findings regarding the formation of “ethnic
habitus”. Specifically, his survey and interview data show
that children as young as 3 acquire and reproduce the divisive
cultural predilections of their families/communities –
e.g., for flags (Union Jack vs. Irish tricolour) and authority
(twice as many Catholic youths than Protestant expressed a
dislike for the police). That’s frightening. Although his
youngest participants could not speak to the cultural-political
reasons for their preferences, such beliefs towards cultural
symbols point to the beginnings of prejudicial identities. Hence
Connolly suggests that schools “complement conventional
anti-racist education with a critical multiculturalism that can
help children to reflect upon their attitudes and misconceptions
and to understand the open, fluid and complex nature of cultural
identities” (167).
In chapter 11, Riddell conducts comparative case analyses of
several jurisdictions in England and Scotland to consider the
different subject positions parents and educators occupy in the
context of special educational needs (SEN) practice. Guided by a
typology of procedural justice (i.e., bureaucracy,
professionalism, legality, managerialism, consumerism, markets),
her analysis probes how the process of identity formation plays
out under the various policy frameworks used to administer SEN
provision. Riddell concludes that inadequate resources impair
how professionals (i.e., educators, school psychologists)
communicate with each other and involve parents in the assessment
and statementing/recording of SEN students; she also finds that
“social class clearly plays a key role in determining which
parents will be cooled out of the system” (206).
Social capital theory is used in chapter 12 to examine school
diversification policy under the New Labour government, which is
“intended to support individual students’ different
abilities and talents, satisfy parental demands for quality
education, and to institutionalize and celebrate diversity of
credentialed educational identities” (214). Gamarnikow and
Green consider the impact of this educational policy by focusing
on its two pillars: specialization (i.e., increase
system’s horizontal diversity by institutionalizing
differentiated school identities – e.g., of the arts,
science and technology, sports, languages, business) and
beaconisation (i.e., increase vertical differentiation of schools
on the basis of excellence, managerial and/or pedagogic). Given
that such principles undergird charter school doctrine in New
Zealand, Canada, and the US, this paper’s conclusion will
serve as grist for the mill of those averse to such institutional
diversification: “It is difficult to envisage how a system
of stratified schools, located in education markets and
articulated with the wider processes of power, can produce
anything but unequal outcomes, disguised as organic diversity and
specialization, while in reality consolidating further the
already existing social class and education hierarchy”
(220).
As a set, the 12 essays encourage a shift from approaching
social exclusion mono-causally towards a multi-dimensional,
relational, and distributional understanding of its intersective
forces. In bringing together a collection that conveys this
important message so comprehensively, Vincent should thus be
excused for referring erroneously to Northern Ireland as a
“country” (11) rather than a state. On the other
hand, given that much of the book focuses on learner identities
and experiences to examine issues of social justice in/through
education, the title’s head word should arguably have been
‘identity’; the title should probably have also noted
the text’s UK-centricity. With that said, the essays
include useful endnotes that explicate, wherever necessary, the
UK parlance to those unfamiliar with the context. The
book’s detailed index also enhances its referencing
capacity, making it a useful addition to the bookshelf of those
with an interest in educational sociology in general, identity
and social justice in particular. In sum, Vincent should be
commended for assembling a wide-ranging selection that engages
the ways in which individual subjectivities are constructed in
educational discourse and practice; focuses on the crucial role
of power/domination in the creation of social (in-) justice
within structures; and attends to the positional consequences of
differential socio-cultural (dis-) advantage for
education’s increasingly heterogeneous constituents.
About the Reviewer
Eric Jabal is PhD candidate in Educational Administration at
the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University
of Toronto. His research interests focus on the intersective
dynamics of background, context-dependent identities, and
institutional practices for students at international schools.
Previously, he worked as a secondary school teacher and
administrator in France, Hong Kong, and Beijing.
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