University Continuing Education Units: Agents for Social Change?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21225/D5VP48Abstract
Many commentators have argued that Canadian university continuing education has gradually abandoned its historical commitment to social justice in educational programming in favour of a market-oriented approach. Although such literature clearly expresses a deeply-felt sentiment among continuing educators, it has tended to have two problems. First, many proponents of this view have not explained what they mean by social justice, which makes informed discussion of this issue difficult. Second, in praising historical adult education as a social justice movement, many commentators have neglected to provide coherent and pragmatic alternatives for the present. This article addresses these two problems by providing a dialogic theory of social justice, derived from political philosophy, as a conceptual framework to examine ways in which a new understanding of social justice could be practically applied in both strategic and program planning for university continuing education. This conceptual framework is then used to guide and inform a discussion of how information and communications technologies (ICT) can be used by university-based continuing education units to develop and implement learning opportunities designed to empower persons and organizations working for social justice.Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).