Education and Social Justice in a Digital Age

In many countries the school curriculum oscillates between a focus on traditional subjects, such as mathematics and history, and a focus on skills, such as problem-solving. The skills-based curriculum is often linked to the needs of the 21st century digital age and is seen as eroding the boundaries between home and school. At the same time, access to digital technology can exacerbate existing inequalities in society. Rosamund Sutherland argues against a skills-based curriculum suggesting that, from a social justice perspective, the priority of schools should be to teach traditional subjects, such as mathematics and history, giving young people the formal knowledge they are not likely to learn outside school. She draws on the work of Michael Young, Lev Vygotsky, Amaryta Sen and David Olson in order to develop new theoretical and practical insights that offer ways of changing policy and practice to improve equality and life chances for young people. This timely book will be invaluable to academics, students, practitioners and policy makers interested in the ways in which the digital landscape transforms the nature of the debate about equity and social justice in education.