This paper reports a small-scale qualitative inquiry in the discipline of Early Childhood Studies in Higher Education that explores how playfulness in pedagogy might create an environment in which people within the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) sector (including students) engage in dialogue about structural injustice. Participants in…

This article analyses approaches to listening when creating theatre using the words of real people via a recent tribunal play by Richard Norton-Taylor and Nicolas Kent, "Value Engineering: Scenes from the Grenfell Inquiry" (2021). The article considers the play in relation to transitional justice practices to reveal how listening…

This study aims to explore why and how the views of others are elicited and integrated within youth justice work, and how educational psychologists (EPs) may support this. Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) (United Nations, 1989) highlights the right for all children and young people to express their…

Based on autoethnographic descriptions of recent climate events in Germany, Greece, and England, three colleagues describe these events' impact on daily life and their implications for religious education in European schools. The argument oscillates between struggling for climate justice and enduring its aporias. In the aporetic (learning) space,…

This article, as coruscating as it is well-grounded, sketches the appallingly unfair state of contemporary education in England. It outlines the historical and contemporary drivers of that unfairness and the consequences that ensue in the lives of young people. It calls for a renewed movement on the left to call out the education system's shocking…

Access to higher education is often competitive, and much attention has been placed on the question of admission decision-making in such high stakes situations. We identify various approaches to distributive justice and consider these under the framework developed by Pike distinguishes between 'egalitaria' (everyone gets the same); 'necessitia'…

This paper presents findings from a review of 19 national curriculum policy frameworks (NCPFs) across the globe and discusses dominant and culturally specific discourses that shape early childhood education (ECE). We combine two frameworks of developmental universality and specificity and culturally contextualised pedagogy to explore whether and…

Philosophy for Children is a pedagogical approach practised worldwide. Although well known for its contribution to democratic teaching and learning its contribution to critical research is relatively unknown. In this paper we present the use of a Community of Enquiry (CoE), as conceptualised in Philosophy for Children, as a qualitative research…

Two problematics are exposed and explored within this paper which currently undermine the United Kingdom's international commitments to address racial inequality and injustice: (1) the routes to national, regional, and international intellectual authority via the academic profession, particularly the assigned leadership position of full professor…

In England, examinations for general qualifications (GCSE, AS and A level) were cancelled in summer 2020 and summer 2021 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and replaced with contingency measures involving teacher judgements. For summer 2020, the intention was to calculate grades using rankings provided by centres, prior attainment data for the…

Although all young people in England are entitled to a full-time, state-funded education suitable to their needs, every year some are without a school place and must be found one through local fair access protocols. This paper uses the enactment of fair access protocols in one local authority to examine the impacts of policy shifts to increase the…

Police forces in England and Wales have faced ongoing difficulties of engagement with minority communities leading to a loss of confidence and trust in policing. The paper reports on the results of a project to improve relations with communities with Humberside Police, UK by implementing key ideas relating to procedural justice that consider how…

While environmental education has been present in the field of education for decades now, only recently our particular subject areas of science and geography have started to pay more critical attention to specific concerns surrounding the intersection of environmental issues and social justice (also known as environmental justice) within the…

While several initiatives for justice-oriented pedagogies have been developed and implemented over the years, there is limited understanding of the ways in which teachers, and their practice, are impacted by these. This article presents data documenting the impact of a pedagogical approach -- the science capital teaching approach -- on a cohort of…

Declining levels of state provision of free legal advice and representation have led to increased demand for support from legal charities. This study evaluates a co-designed Open Educational Resource providing education and training for support workers volunteering for the UK legal charity Support Through Court. Addressing issues of domestic abuse…