Doing justice : young people’s representations of the Murray-Darling Basin

The business of helping children to grow up as ‘custodians’, or ‘future managers’ of the Murray-Darling Basin is not simple, and that single sources of information and ways of seeing the environment are not enough. Children (and adults) need to be able to relate individually, emotionally and aesthetically to their places if they are to learn to love them. However, they also need access to a variety of ways of thinking and seeing those same places if they are to be able to take action to sustain them – action that inevitably involves forms of communication with their fellow citizens. This chapter documents the writing and art program Special Forever, with its focus on communications, as an important intervention into promoting eco-social sustainability.

Sustaining the next generation of teacher-researchers to work for social justice

This chapter explores a research project involving teachers working with some of the most disadvantaged young people in South Australia, children growing up in poverty, in families struggling with homelessness and ill-health, in the outer southern suburbs. Additionally, there were particular children were struggling with intellectual, emotional and social difficulties which were extreme enough for them not be included in a mainstream class. The research project made two crucial interrelated moves to support teachers to tackle this tough work. First, the project had an explicit social justice agenda. We were not simply researching literacy outcomes, but literacy pedagogies for the students teachers were most worried about. And we wanted to understand how the material conditions of students’ everyday lifeworlds impacted on the working conditions of teachers’ schoolworlds. We sought to open up a discursive space where teachers could talk about poverty, violence, racism and classism in ways that would take them beyond despair and into new imaginings and positive action. Second, the project was designed to start from the urgent questions of early career teachers and to draw on the accumulated practice wisdom of their chosen mentors. Hence we designed not only a teacher-researcher community, but cross-generational networks. Our aim was to build the capacities of both generations to address long-standing educational problems in new ways that drew overtly on their different and complementary resources.

Acknowledging social justice and equity through good practice for monitoring student learning engagement in FYE

As higher education institutions respond to government targets to widen participation, their student populations will become increasingly diverse, and the issues around student success and retention will be more closely scrutinised. The concept of student engagement is a key factor in student achievement and retention and Australasian institutions have a range of initiatives aimed at monitoring and intervening with students who are at risk of disengaging. Within the widening participation agenda, it is absolutely critical that these initiatives are designed to enable success for all students, particularly those for whom social and cultural disadvantage have been a barrier. Consequently, for the sector, initiatives of this type must be consistent with the concept of social justice and a set of principles would provide this foundation. This session will provide an opportunity for participants to examine a draft set of principles and to discuss their potential value for the participants’ institutional contexts.

Researching for social justice: Contextual, conceptual and methodological challenges

Reforming schooling to enable engagement and success for those typically marginalised and failed by schools is a necessary task for educational researchers and activists concerned with injustice. However, it is a difficult pursuit, with a long history of failed attempts. This paper outlines the rationale of an Australian partnership research project, Redesigning Pedagogies in the North (RPiN), which took on such an effort in public secondary schooling contexts that, in current times, are beset with 'crisis' conditions and constrained by policy rationales that make it difficult to pursue issues of justice. Within the project, university investigators and teachers collaborated in action research that drew on a range of conceptual resources for redesigning curriculum and pedagogies, including: funds of knowledge, vernacular or local literacies; place-based education; the 'productive pedagogies' and the 'unofficial curriculum' of popular culture and out-of-school learning settings. In bringing these resources together with the aim of interrupting the reproduction of inequality, the project developed a methodo-logic which builds on Bourdieuian insights.

Developing a social justice framework to ensure good practice in higher education

As higher education institutions respond to government targets to widen participation, their student populations will become increasingly diverse, and the mechanisms in place to support student success and retention will be more closely scrutinised.

Developing ethical identities in young offenders through restorative justice practice in Australia

Restorative justice is firmly established in Australian juvenile justice. While the official language used to describe restorative initiatives varies across states and territories, the most common form is a meeting or conference between young offenders and their victims (most commonly known as a family group or youth justice conference). During the past decade, an impressive amount of empirical research has examined how the restorative justice process affects offenders, victims and other participants (such as supporters for young offenders and victims). Results from this line of research are remarkably consistent and show that participants generally regard restorative conferences as procedurally fair and that they are satisfied with the outcomes (eg what young offenders agree to do to make up for their offending behaviour, such as offer a sincere apology or perform work for the victim or the community). What is less common, however, is the perception among participants that restorative conferences achieve the key aim of restoration.By ‘restoration’ we refer to encounters where ‘offenders apologise, their apologies are accepted, victims offer forgiveness,and conferences conclude with a feeling of mutual good will’.

Offending Youth : Crime, Sex and Justice

Rates of female delinquency, especially for violent crimes, are increasing in most common law countries. At the same time the growth in cyber-bullying, especially among girls, appears to be a related global phenomenon. While the gender gap in delinquency is narrowing in Australia, United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, boys continue to dominate the youth who commit crime and have a virtual monopoly over sexually violent crimes. Indigenous youth continue to be vastly over-represented in the juvenile justice system in every Australian jurisdiction. The Indigenisation of delinquency is a persistent problem in other countries such as Canada and New Zealand. Young people who gather in public places are susceptible to being perceived as somehow threatening or riotous, attracting more than their share of public order policing. Professional football has been marred by repeated scandals involving sexual assault, violence and drunkenness. Given the cultural significance of footballers as role models to thousands, if not millions, of young men around the world, it is vitally important to address this problem. Offending Youth explores these key contemporary patterns of delinquency, the response to these by the juvenile justice agencies and moreover what can be done to address these problems. The book also analyses the major policy and legislative changes from the nineteenth to twenty first centuries, chiefly the shift the penal welfarism to diversion and restorative justice. Using original cases studied by Carrington twenty years ago, Offending Youth illustrates how penal welfarism criminalised young people from socially marginal backgrounds, especially Aboriginal children, children from single parent families, family-less children, state wards and young people living in poverty or in housing commission estates. A number of inquiries in Australia and the United Kingdom have since established that children committed to these institutions, supposedly for their own good, experienced systemic physical, sexual and psychological abuse during their institutionalisation. The book is dedicated to the survivors of these institutions who only now are receiving official recognition of the injustices they suffered. The underlying philosophy of juvenile justice has fundamentally shifted away from penal welfarism to embrace positive policy responses to juvenile crime, such as youth conferencing, cautions, warnings, restorative justice, circle sentencing and diversion examined in the concluding chapter. Offending Youth is aimed at a broad readership including policy makers, juvenile justice professionals, youth workers, families, teachers, politicians as well as students and academics in criminology, policing, gender studies, masculinity studies, Indigenous studies, justice studies, youth studies and the sociology of youth and deviance more generally.-- [from publisher website]

Making use of theories about literacy and justice: teachers re-searching practice

This article considers teachers’ work as they grapple with theories in practice in the everyday worlds of their classroom. It argues that Bourdieu’s theory of practice and the concept of habitus may be useful in moving past theory/practice dichotomies. After establishing the historical context for teacher research in South Australia, the work of two school-based literacy educators with an overt social justice standpoint is explored. The complexity of teachers’ intellectual work and identity formation over time is outlined and implications for teacher education are discussed.

Juvenile justice and truancy legislation : The move towards parental responsibilisation in Queensland

Much current Queensland media rhetoric, government policy and legislation on truancy and youth justice appears to be based on ideas of responsibilisation – of sheeting responsibility for children’s behaviour back onto their parents. This article examines the evidence of parental responsibility provisions in juvenile justice and truancy legislation in Queensland and the drivers behind this approach. It considers recent legislative initiatives as part of an international trend toward making parents ‘responsible’ for the wrongs of their children. It identifies the parental responsibility rhetoric appearing in recent ministerial statements and associated media reports. It then asks the questions – are these legislative provisions being enforced? And if so, are they successful? Are they simply adding to the administrative burdens placed on teachers and schools, and the socioeconomic burdens placed on already disadvantaged parents? Parental responsibility provisions have been discussed at length in the context of juvenile offending and research suggests that punishing parents for the acts of their children does not decrease delinquency. The paper asks how, as a society, we intend to evaluate these punitive measures against parents?

Applying a social justice framework to ensure good practice in monitoring student learning engagement

A current Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) funded action research project aims to provide a set of practical resources founded on a social justice framework, to guide good practice for monitoring student learning engagement (MSLE) in higher education. The project involves ten Australasian institutions, eight of which are engaged in various MSLE type projects. A draft framework, consisting of six social justice principles which emerged from the literature has been examined with reference to the eight institutional approaches for MSLE in conjunction with the personnel working on these initiatives during the first action research cycle. The cycle will examine the strategic and operational implications of the framework in each of the participating institutions. Cycle 2 will also build capacity to embed the principles within the institutional MSLE program and will identify and collect examples and resources that exemplify the principles in practice. The final cycle will seek to pilot the framework to guide new MSLE initiatives. In its entirety, the project will deliver significant resources to the sector in the form of a social justice framework for MSLE, guidelines and sector exemplars for MSLE. As well as increasing the awareness amongst staff around the criticality of transition to university (thereby preventing attrition) and the significance of the learning and teaching agenda in enhancing student engagement, the project will build leadership capacity within the participating institutions and provide a knowledge base and institutional capacity for the Australasian HE sector to deploy the deliverables that will safeguard student learning engagement At this early stage of the project the workshop session provides an opportunity to discuss and examine the draft set of social justice principles and to discuss their potential value for the participants’ institutional contexts. Specifically, the workshop will explore critical questions associated with the principles.

Developing a social justice framework to ensure good practice in higher education

The concept of student engagement is a key factor in student achievement and retention and Australasian universities have a range of initiatives aimed at monitoring and intervening with students who are at risk of disengaging. Given the aspirations about widening participation, it is absolutely critical that these initiatives are designed to enable success for all students, particularly those for whom social and cultural disadvantage have been a barrier. Consequently, these types of initiatives must be consistent with the concept of social justice and a set of principles would provide this philosophical foundation for the sector. An Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) project that involves ten Australasian universities, is designing of a suite of resources for the sector which will include: (1) a set of principles for good practice in MSLE, (2) a good practice guide for the design and implementation of institutional MSLE policy and practice, and (3) a collection of resources for and exemplars of good practice to be taken up by the sector. This workshop session will provide an opportunity for participants to examine the draft set of principles and to discuss their potential value for the participants’ institutional contexts. Australian Learning and Teaching Council Competitive Grant CG10-1730 2010-2012: Good practice for safeguarding student learning engagement in higher education institutions.

Human rights and environmental wrongs : achieving environmental justice through human rights law

The links between the environment and human rights are well established internationally. It is accepted that environmental problems impact on individuals’ and communities’ enjoyment of rights which are guaranteed to them under international human rights law. Environmental issues also impact on governments’ capacity to protect and fulfil the rights of their citizens. In addition to these links between the environment and human rights, it is argued that human rights principles offer a strategy for addressing environmental injustice. The justice implications of environmental problems are well documented, with many examples where pollution, deforestation or other degradation disproportionately impacts upon poorer neighbourhoods or areas populated by minority groups. On the international level, there are environmental injustices which exist between developed and developing states. Further, there are also potential injustices for future generations. This paper investigates the role of human rights principles in addressing these instances of environmental injustice, and argues that the framework of human rights norms provides an approach to environmental governance which can help to minimise injustice and promote the interests of those groups who are most adversely affected. Further, it suggests that the human rights enforcement mechanisms which exist at international law could be utilised to lend more weight to claims for more equitable environmental policies.

Improving self organizing capabilities of local communities for sustainable development in decentralized Indonesia : the roles of procedural justice and social learning

The development planning process introduced under Law No. 25/2004 is said to be a better approach to increase public participation in decentralised Indonesia. This Law has introduced planning mechanisms, called Musyawarah Perencanaan Pembangunan (musrenbang), to provide a forum for development planning. In spite of the expressed intention of these mechanisms to improve public participation, some empirical observations have cast doubt on the outcomes. As a result, some local governments have tried to provide alternative mechanisms for participatory local development planning processes. Since planning constitutes one of the most effective ways to improve community empowerment, this paper aims to examine the extent to which the alternative local development planning process in Indonesia provides sufficient opportunities to improve the self organising capabilities of communities to sustain development programs to meet local needs. In so doing, this paper explores the key elements and approaches of the concept of community empowerment and shows how they can be incorporated within planning processes. Based on this, it then examines the problems encountered by musrenbang in increasing community empowerment. Having done this, it is argued that to change current unfavourable outcomes, procedural justice and social learning approaches need to be incorporated as pathways to community empowerment. Lastly the capacity of an alternative local planning process, called Sistem Dukungan (SISDUK), introduced in South Sulawesi, offering scope to incorporate procedural justice and social learning is explored as a means to improve the self organizing capabilities of local communities.