Policy Press Education and social justice in a digital age

Review This is the most refreshing book about education I have read for many years. Any teacher or future teacher, indeed anyone involved in or interested in education, will learn much from reading it. It deftly illustrates that the only way to a more just system is when knowledge is placed at the heart of all we do as teachers.--Michael Young, Institute of Education "Journal of Social Policy" "Throughout this short, highly readable, and highly enjoyable book . . . there is perhaps surprisingly relatively little space devoted to digital technologies themselves. Sutherland, drawing upon her extensive research experience, focuses her work here very sharply upon her more personal experience. . . . In essence then, this is a book with an 'it's the curriculum stupid' message that is far removed from the evangelical approach to the 'transformative' power of digital technologies in education that I feared it might have been. Digital technologies will not, Sutherland argues, make schools irrelevant, or even, in their current form, anachronistic. . . . It is, frankly, a long-time since I enjoyed reading an academic book as much as this one. . . . A clear and powerful introduction to an important set of ideas. The warmth, passion and humanity in the writing are evident."-- "Journal of Social Policy" Product Description In many countries the school curriculum oscillates between focusing on traditional subjects and focusing on skills that are linked to the needs of the 21st-century digital age. Rosamund Sutherland argues against such a skills-based curriculum, maintaining that, from a social justice perspective, the priority of schools should be to give young people access to the knowledge that they are not likely to learn outside school. She draws on the work of Michael Young, Lev Vygotsky, Amartya Sen and David Olson to develop new theoretical and practical insights that offer ways of changing policy and practice to improve equality and life chances for young people, while acknowledging the potential transformative role of digital technologies. About the Author Rosamund Sutherland is Professor of Education at the Graduate School of Education, the University of Bristol. Her research has been concerned with teaching and learning with ICT, young peoples use of digital technologies outside school, and mathematics education. She has led a wide range of research projects funded by the ESRC, and collaborated with colleagues in Latin America, Europe and Africa. In this book she brings together the previous strands of her research, with a particular focus on social justice.