Democracy, Social Justice and Education

There is general agreement that democracy is, or should be, an important component to the educational project. However, it is difficult to ascertain what democracy is, and how it should be understood, developed, cultivated and implemented. The research in the paper takes the posture that how educators experience democracy themselves, especially in and through education, may have a significant impact on how they actually do democracy in schools. Based on studies of teacher-education students in Canada (English- and French-language samples), the USA and Australia, the presenters highlight the potential for transformative, critical, democratic educational change. We argue that extending critical engagement toward thicker democracy is still a possibility, despite the strictures of neoliberalism, globalization and colonization, which are formidable obstacles. This paper: a) discusses the meaning of democracy in and through education; b) examines how teacher-education students experience democracy in education; c) interrogates the potential for democracy in and through education; d) develops models and analysis to highlight thicker forms of democracy that are informed by critically-engaged and epistemologically diverse concerns. The same instrument and methodology were employed by the researchers, seeking to understand how participants experienced democracy during their own educational experiences, how they understand democracy at present, and how they feel that democratic education should be cultivated within students and schools. The instrument includes open- and closed-ended questions, with the analysis having qualitative/narrative and quantitative components. The findings include an often extremely thin democratic educational experience for teacher-education students, and a relatively narrow definition of democracy as well as serious concerns related to social justice, addressing controversial issues, and the ability to align democratic educational work with educational reforms that seem to favour neoliberal objectives. The paper engages with sociological theory and concepts to further tease out the potential for education for (thicker and more critical) democracy.