Search

Struggles for educational equity in the United States (US) and South Africa (SA), particularly with regard to race, class, and ethnicity, remain significant and have become even more critical during and following the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns. Many scholars have focused on the daily struggles of school-aged children, indicating that millions in each nation are homeless, food insecure, and without health care. Moreover, schools often serve critical social reproduction functions in addition to their primary role of advancing learning by providing feeding schemes, computers and internet connectivity, and, in many cases, essential childcare for workers. Since 2020, the pandemic and lockdowns negatively impacted the education delivery system in both countries by enhancing the socio-economic and digital divides. Both countries struggled to provide equitable access to quality education for all children, regardless of their socio-economic status (SES) or geographic location. Through a comparative lens, we analyze attempts by the US and SA to address racial and economic divides over the past decades, and particularly during the pandemic and its disruptions, to better understand the mechanisms education systems used to address stakeholder inequalities. After a brief overview of the historical paths to greater social and economic equality made by both nations the paper explores the significant roles that race, ethnicity, and SES continue to play in determining access to quality education, especially during times of disruptions such as the recent pandemic. It also asks if the economic divide has become the more powerful and consistent factor determining access to well-resourced schools. The paper concludes by asking if patterns of historical racial and ethnic inequalities are now being replaced by an even greater economic divide that continues to provide patterns of unequitable education for children based on their race, ethnicity, SES, and access to supportive resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work aims to analyze the social vulnerability of students in the disciplines taught in distance education in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a theoretical study, reflective analysis on the various issues of social vulnerability, focusing on how students experience distance learning within the social isolation obligation context. The following points are based on literature review with discussion: Distance learning as a realistic response on the fight against social isolation and social vulnerability, on higher education students, while aiming to avoid losing any semester topics. As a result, it is important to highlight the student's requirements in terms of preparation with information and communication technologies and, especially, those in a situation of social vulnerability who do not have all the necessary resources to access contents taught in this teaching modality, at a distance. There must be a perception of diversity, accessibility and the principles of inclusion so that the demands of students in situations of social vulnerability can be met in an equitable way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores social justice and equity in educational policies and systems in the European Union, and analyzes the significance within. Equity indicators of the European educational systems, Equity of the European Educational Systems: A set of indicators declared in 2006, introduces the debates on educational justice issues on one hand, and provides a reference framework for international comparison and educational policy-making on the other. In 2009, a strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training was agreed by member states of European Union lasting to 2020. Meanwhile, the European Council emphasized the objective of promoting social inclusion through the reduction of poverty and the need for quantification of education and social inclusion/poverty indicators. The target population is defined as the number of persons who are at risk-ofpoverty, material deprivation and in jobless households. Educational equity, transcending the traditional idea of equality and combining the Justice Theories of Rawls and Sen, not only focus on the resource distribution in education content or processes, but also identify individual capability, willingness and effort and respect the diversity of career development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 50th Anniversary of Brown provoked both celebration, and critical reassessment among social scientists and legal scholars. Legal experts re-examined the role of the courts, and the appropriateness of litigation as a strategy to obtain equality of educational opportunity (Joondeph, 1998). Similarly, academic reassessments of school desegregation have examined the role and adequacy of social science evidence in shaping educational policy, and, in informing the judicial process on matters of educational equity (Wells, Holme, Revilla, & Atanda, 2004; Welner, 2006). The academic analyses also reveal mixed assessments of the effectiveness of Brown in achieving educational equity, and of the role of social science evidence in furthering that cause. Whatever arguments are advanced, it is undeniable that the Brown decision had a tremendous impact on the education of African American and other minority student populations. Early proponents of school desegregation anticipated that school integration would, for African American students, result in equitable access to the full benefits of schooling. As Wells (2002) recently noted, in Brown, the plaintiff's emphasis was on the negative effects of not only the resource inequalities experienced in segregated schools, but also on students' exclusion from important social networks. Ironically, early social science research on school desegregation was not grounded in the same set of understandings that guided the plaintiffs and the Court (Clark, 1988; Wells, 2002). This paper examines why this occurred and analyzes the apparent disconnect between the problem of segregation, the aims of Brown, and the subsequent research on school desegregation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]