Personal autonomy and educational justice
department or school: Education, Faculty of
department or school: Education, School of (Okanagan)
data provider: DSpace
degree campus: UBCO
creator: England, Christopher
issued: 2021-05-21T16:54:46Z
issued: 2021
related degree: Master of Arts - MA
degree grantor: University of British Columbia
description: This study sets out to answer two questions: 1) What do all students living in liberal democracies deserve when it comes to their education? and 2) How can we ethically pursue educational justice in liberal democracies? This study analyzes how social justice is currently promoted through education. Current efforts to promote social equality though equity, inclusion and diversity are put into policy, sometimes without careful consideration of their ends. This lack of clarity is a potential source of unethical educational policies and practices. The task of social justice is to ensure that all citizens get what they deserve. Scholars and educationalists have argued that citizens of liberal democracies deserve equal opportunities, equality of outcomes or other measures of social equality. I argue that these approaches to justice are misguided. Instead, I argue that educational justice requires universal access to the conditions required for individual freedom. After an analysis of the idea of social equality, I argue that social equality is a problematic aim because 1) it is redundant, 2) it masks underlying aims, 3) it distracts from other aims, 4) it is only instrumentally valuable, and 5) it is used metaphorically but interpreted literally. I present Raz’s (1986) account of personal autonomy, which requires personal access to certain skills, adequate options and independence, as the most complete conception of individual freedom. Further, I argue that current movements promoting social justice (which are understood as promoting social equality), like equity, inclusion and diversity, rely on the foundations of critical theory. As such, these movements are better understood, not as promoting social equality, but as promoting human emancipation (freeing people from their unfair disadvantages). I argue further that the promotion of human emancipation should be only part of a broader aim: the aim to promote individual freedom. In conclusion, I argue that ensuring all cit…
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/78400
note: PERSONAL AUTONOMY AND EDUCATIONAL JUSTICE by Christopher England B.A. University of British Columbia, 2012 B. Ed. University of British Columbia, 2014 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE COLLEGE OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Interdisciplinary Studies) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Okanagan) May 2021 © Christopher England, 2021 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the College of Graduate Studies for acceptance, a thesis/dissertation entitled: Personal Autonomy and Educational Justice submitted by Christopher England in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts . Christopher Martin, Associate Professor, Faculty of Education (UBC-Okanagan) Supervisor Sabre Cherkowski, Associate Professor, Faculty of Education (UBC-Okanagan) Supervisory Committee Member Andrew Irvine, Professor, Irving K. Barber Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (UBC- Okanagan) Supervisory Committee Member Krassimir Stojanov, Professor, Faculty of Philosophy and Education (Catholic University Eichstatt-Ingolstadt) University Examiner Click or tap here to enter text. iii Abstract This study sets out to answer two questions: 1) What do all students living in liberal democracies deserve when it comes to their education? and 2) How can we ethically pursue educational justice in liberal democracies? This study analyzes how social justice is currently promoted through education. Current efforts to promote social equality though equity, inclusion and diversity are put into policy, sometimes without careful consideration of their ends. This lack of clarity is a potential source of unethical educational policies and practices. The task of social justice is to ensure that all citizens get what they deserve. Scholars and educationalists have argued that citizens of liberal democracies deserve equal opportunities, equality of outcomes or other measures of social equality. I argue that…
has type: Thesis/Dissertation
date issued: 2021-09
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0398118
language: eng
degree discipline: Interdisciplinary Studies
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: University of British Columbia
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
scholar level: Graduate
contributor: Martin, Christopher
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/78400