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Revue française de pédagogie, n°220/2023

Justice, éducation, démocratie : recherches sur les « droits pédagogiques » d'après Basil Bernstein

Edited by Daniel Frandji

Revue française de pédagogie - Recherches en éducation



Justice, education, democracy: research on "pedagogic rights" according to Basil Bernstein

This dossier builds on the model of "pedagogic rights" outlined by the British sociologist Basil Bernstein. The heuristic aspect of the model lies in the fact that, while it defends a three-dimensional conception of justice in education, it incorporates a central focus of reflection on the conditions of possibility for the cultural development, both individual and collective, of the powers to act and to think (the development of normativity, as the dossier proposes to reformulate the first of the three rights). This question constitutes an intrinsic dimension of justice as posed here and complementary to the two other dimensions relating to the issues of inclusion and, therefore, of "taking place" (second right), as well as to the possibilities of participation, and therefore of “taking part” (third right), in social mechanisms, structures and societies. From this point of view, the dossier shows how the model of pedagogic rights offers an opportunity to engage in debate with the best-known current theories of justice, which have trouble properly referring to the three rights (either through overemphasising or focusing on only one of the three) in line with the issues of redistribution and recognition. And how, above all, it provides the groundwork for a working tool likely to strengthen the empirical analysis of practices, doxas and educational policies and their evolution.