Abstract
Schools are institutions that are created and sustained in social space. This means that schools, whether they acknowledge it or not, actually do stand for something whether that be good or bad. This chapter explores what an alternative to the dominant neo-liberal exams-driven, standards-based, managerialist version of schooling might look like. At the centre of the alternative, which I have come to refer to as the socially just school, lies the imperative to have schools that pursue intellectual rigour but in ways that are humanizing in that they exist foremost for students, and they see this as their raison d’etre. What follows from this basic supposition, is that a number of dispositions have to be spoken into existence, namely: the political will to imagine an alternative; the courage to speak back to dominant views of the way schools ought to be; and above all, an acknowledgement of the importance of relationships, respect, trust, dignity, and genuine voice—qualities that are noticeably in short supply in the dominant model.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Bartolome, L. (1994). Beyond the methods fetish: Toward a humanizing pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review, 64(2), 173–194.
Coffield, F., & Williamson, B. (2012). From exam factories to communities of discovery. London: Institute of Education.
Corbett, M. (2013). Improvisation as a curricular metaphor: Imagining education for a rural creative class. Journal of Research in Rural Education, 28(10), 1–11.
Corbett, M. (2014). Social class, the commodification of education, and space through a rural lens. In C. Howley, A. Howley, & J. Johnson (Eds.), Dynamics of social class, race and place in rural education (pp. 19–37). Charlotte: Information Age Publishing.
Evans, S., & Boyte, H. (1986). Free spaces: The sources of democratic change in America. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press.
Gatto, J. (2001). The underground history of American education: An intimate investigation into the prison of modern schooling. New York: Oxford Village Press.
Gewirtz, S. (2002). The managerial school: Post-welfarism and social justice in education. London/New York: Routledge.
Jay, M. (1984). Adorno. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Johnson, J. (2014). Grappling with constructs. In C. Howley, A. Howley, & J. Johnson (Eds.), Dynamics of social class, race and place in rural education (pp. 1–17). Charlotte: Information Age Publishing.
Kohl, H. (1994). “I won’t learn from you” and other thoughts on creative maladjustment. New York: The New Press.
Lareau, A. (2000). Home advantage: Social class ad parental intervention in elementary education. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Lareau, A. (2003). Unequal childhoods: Class, race and family life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Lazzarato, M. (2009). Neoliberalism in action: Inequality, insecurity and the reconstitution of the social. Theory, Culture and Society, 26(6), 109–133.
Macedo, D. (1997). An anti-method pedagogy: A Freirean perspective. In P. Freire, W. Fraser, D. Macedo, T. McKinnon, & W. Stokes (Eds.), Mentoring the mentor: A critical dialogue with Paulo Freire (pp. 2–9). New York: Peter Lang.
Mills, C. (1971[1959]). The sociological imagination. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Portelli, J., & Vibert, A. (2002). A curriculum of life. Education Canada, 42(2), 36–39.
Powell, A., Farrar, E., & Cohen, D. (1985). The shopping mall high school: Winners and losers in the educational marketplace. Boston: Houghton & Mifflin.
Reyes, M. (1992). Challenging venerable assumptions: Literacy instruction for linguistically different students. Harvard Educational Review, 62, 427–446.
Rist, R. (1973). The urban school: A factory for failure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Sawyer, R. (2001). Creating conversations: Improvisation in everyday discourse. Cresskill: Hampton Press.
Scott, J. (1998). Seeing like a state: How certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed. New Have: Yale University Press.
Smyth, J. (Ed.). (1993). A socially critical view of the self managing school. London: Falmer Press.
Smyth, J. (2004). Social capital and the ‘socially just school’. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 25(1), 19–33.
Smyth, J. (2013). Losing our way? Challenging the direction of teacher education in Australia and re-framing it around the socially just school. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 41(1), 111–122.
Smyth, J., & Fasoli, L. (2007). Climbing over the rocks in the road to student engagement and learning in a challenging high school in Australia. Educational Research, 49(3), 273–295.
Smyth, J., & McInerney, P. (2014a). ‘Ordinary kids’ navigating geographies of educational opportunity in the context of an Australian ‘place-based intervention’. Journal of Education Policy, 29(3), 285–301.
Smyth, J., & McInerney, P. (2014b). Becoming educated: Young people’s narratives of disadvantage, class, place and identity. New York: Peter Lang.
Smyth, J., McInerney, P., & Hattam, R. (2003). Tackling school leaving at its source: A case of reform in the middle years of schooling. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 24(2), 177–193.
Smyth, J., Hattam, R., Cannon, J., Edwards, J., Wilson, N., & Wurst, S. (2004). ‘Dropping out’, drifting off, being excluded: Becoming somebody without school. New York: Peter Lang.
Smyth, J., Down, B., & McInerney, P. (2010). ‘Hanging in with kids’ in tough times: Engagement in contexts of educational disadvantage in the relational school. New York: Peter Lang.
Smyth, J., Down, B., & McInerney, P. (2014). The socially just school: Making space for youth to speak back. Dordrecht: Springer.
Soja, E. (2010). Seeking spatial justice. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Wald, J., & Losen, D. (Eds.). (2003). Deconstructing the school-to-prison pipeline. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Winn, M. (2011). Girl time: Literacy, justice and the school-to-prison pipeline. New York: Teachers College Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Smyth, J. (2016). Space, Place and Neighbourhood in the Pursuit of the ‘Socially Just School’. In: Montgomery, A., Kehoe, I. (eds) Reimagining the Purpose of Schools and Educational Organisations. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24699-4_16
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24699-4_16
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-24697-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-24699-4
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)