Towards an innovative learning rationale for curricular justice

Nearly half a century or so of unsuccessful attempts to achieve structural equity in educational outcomes exposes the ultimate ineffectiveness of conventional educational practices. This is of great concern because in the era of ‘fast capitalism’ and the globally competitiveness of the ‘New Work Order’, educational achievement by working class and ‘minority’ group students, and therefore our commitment to ‘curricular justice’ is even more critical. Whilst much innovation has been unleashed on curriculum, pedagogy and assessment, without any lasting structural success, the theories of learning that underpin these practices have in essence received little critical attention from educational researchers, and even less so from practitioners. I consider that this generally unquestioning allegiance to the psychologist paradigm as the fatal flaw in attempts to produce socially just outcomes in education. Despite some recent innovative theorising by literacy educators and sociologists of education, most thinking about learning – and hence teaching are still firmly dominated by psychology, and often narrow forms of psychology at that. One consequence is that the critical relationship between the social world of learners and academic achievement never receives serious consideration. However, socio-cultural learning theories, though slow to evolve in terms of their systematic application, are increasingly contesting the many ways in which conventional psychologistic approaches to learning and teaching separate off our educational institutions from the real world. This insulation between the knowledge-worlds of working class and minority group students and the knowledge-worlds of school and university, embodied in curriculum, pedagogical and assessment practices what Bernstein (1975; 1990) terms the ‘three message systems’ of education represents a crippling barrier to many of these students. As long as the three message systems and its related institutional structuring are dominated by the psychologist paradigm, they will remain unable to deliver curricular justice to students from disadvantaged and disprivileged social groups. Building on this argument, structural equity is achievable when we (1) detach learning theory from its historical dependence on psychology, (2) adopt a socio-cultural learning paradigm which addresses the social, i.e. structural, institutional and interpersonal dimensions of learning, and (3) restructure the three message systems of education in line with an integrated educational knowledge code and socio-cultural praxis. Education and equity in New Times How would the least advantaged, that is, students from working-class and minority groups judge the quality of our education system as we enter the second century of Australian Federation? Why have conventional pedagogical practices failed them in achieving equitable educational and hence labour market outcomes? How might we redesign our educational message systems around socially just outcomes? These are provocative questions as we enter into ‘New Times’