Contributions from Social Justice for a Just Education. Pedagogical Identity in Initial Vocational Training

Abstract

A critical look at the educational system requires a social justice theory that allows us to assess to what extent the institution promotes educational practices that reinforce or undermine social justice. From a multi-dimensional conceptualization of social justice that considers redistribution, recognition and representation as those aspects needed to assess a practice as socially just, in this article we propose a model of analysis that allows us to describe the reproduction of social inequalities in the educational system. We focus this analysis on initial vocational educational training contexts, addressed to at-risk youth who are in a potential situation of educational exclusion, by relating pedagogical identities produced in these programmes to their differential participation in the social order. Institutional and structural conditions of the educational system and the differential social insertion of young people institutionalise a social injustice that consolidates situations of social inequalities. It is therefore necessary to develop a social justice model applied to education that promotes parity of participation in society