Pedagogical justice and student engagement in South African schooling: working with the cultural capital of disadvantaged students
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Date
2012-12
Authors
Fataar, Aslam
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Faculty of Education, University of the Free State
Abstract
This article is a conceptual consideration of what could be regarded as pedagogical justice for
disadvantaged students in South African schools. Combining Bourdieu’s social reproduction account
of education with elements of Bernstein’s consideration of the internal dynamics that constitute the
pedagogic relay, the article considers the pedagogical terms upon which these students can meaningfully
be engaged in their school going. Such engagement, I argue, has to contend with the cultural resistance
displayed by disadvantaged students towards their schooling which they view as being against their classcultural
interests. The article suggests that teachers’ pedagogical practices at the site of the school present
one key space to leverage the socially just pedagogies necessary for productive school engagement. I
consider the conceptual bases upon which such a pedagogical approach can proceed. I advance the
argument that student engagement ought to proceed on the basis of a combination of a ‘social relations
of pedagogies’ orientation, on the one hand, and what I refer to as an ‘explicit pedagogies’ approach to
recontextualisation of work, on the other. It is the main argument of this article that pedagogical justice
for disadvantaged students lies in providing a pedagogical scaffold between their life world knowledge’s
and accessing the school knowledge codes. Such an approach supports induction into the vertical logic
of the school code as central to students’ school success, but it argues for pedagogical incorporation of
horizontal knowledge’s central to securing active engagement with their schooling.
Description
Keywords
Pedagogical recontextualisation, Socially just pedagogies, Life world knowledge’s, School code, Social relations of pedagogy, School engagement, Disadvantaged students
Citation
Fataar, A. (2012). Pedagogical justice and student engagement in South African schooling: working with the cultural capital of disadvantaged students. Perspectives in Education: Rethinking citizenship and social justice in education: Special Issue, 30(4), 52-75.