1. What do educational science and the public good mean in the context of educational research for social justice?; Alistair Ross -- 2. Snake oil or hard struggle? Research to address the reality of social injustice in education; Ian Menter -- 4. Accountability, social justice and educational research; Merryn Hutchings -- 4. Who gets to be creative in class? Creativity as a matter of social justice in secondary English lessons; Andrew McCallum -- 5. Between home and school: Mobilising ‘hard to reach’ white British parents to engage with their children’s education; Nathan Fretwell -- 6. Ability to learn, or ability to pay? How family and finance influence young people’s higher education decisions in Scotland; Sarah Minty -- 7. Inequality, social mobility and the ‘glass floor’: How more affluent parents secure educational advantage for their children; Merryn Hutchings -- 8. In pursuit of worldly justice in Early Childhood Education: bringing critique and creation into productive partnership for the public good; Jayne Osgood -- 9. The masculinisation of the teaching profession or gynophobia as education policy; Marie-Pierre Moreau -- 10. Gender and the politics of knowledge in the academy; Barbara Read and Carole Leathwood -- 11. Curriculum diversity and social justice education: From New Labour to Conservative government control of education in England; Uvanney Maylor -- 12. The construction of political identities: young Europeans’ deliberation on ‘the public good’; Alistair Ross -- 13. Can educational programmes address social inequity? Some examples from Europe; Nanny Hartsmar, Carole Leathwood, Alistair Ross and Julia Spinthourakis -- 14. The problem of the public good and the implications for researching educational policies for social justice; Alistair Ross. .

This book presents a series of analyses of educational policies – largely in the UK, but some also in Europe – researched by a team of social scientists who share a commitment to social justice and equity in education. We explore what social justice means, in educational policy and practice, and how it impacts on our understanding of both ‘educational science’ and ‘the public good’. Using a social constructivist approach, the book argues that social justice requires a particular and critical analysis of the meaning of meritocracy, and of the way this term turns educational policies towards treating learning as a competition, in which many young people are constructed as ‘losers’. We discuss how many terms in education are essentialised and have specific, and different, meanings for particular social groups, and how this may create issues in both quantitative survey methods and in determining what is ‘the public good’. We discuss social justice across a range of intersecting social characteristics, including social class, ethnicity and gender, as they are applied across the educational policy spectrum, from early years to postgraduate education. We examine the ways that young people construct their identities, and the implications of this for understanding the ‘public good’ in educational practice. We consider the responsibilities of educational researchers to acknowledge these issues, and offer examples of researching with such a commitment. We conclude by considering how educational policy might contribute to a socially just, equitable and inclusive public good.