Revista Iberoamericana sobre Calidad, Eficacia y Cambio en Educación (May 2016)
Teaching Social Justice in Childhood Education
Abstract
By providing a “fair beginning” to every children, it is possible to modify socioeconomic, cultural and gender inequalities. A world that recognizes that the best possible beginning in life depends on the quality of the first years of living, where it is understood that physical, emotional, psychosocial, cognitive, spiritual, and educational development is continuous and learning starts at the very moment of being born to all children, no matter their circumstances or capacities, is a just world. This document highlights the function that teachers of childhood can fulfill in times of changes facing the development of programs of improvements in schools, and the achievement of a fair education that overcomes the inequalities and discriminations that marginalize and exclude little children as a more vulnerable piece of the population. Educators of childhood are ideally positioned to actively perform a positive difference in children’s and their families’ lives. They must not only transmit information, but helping out interpreting and giving sense to it, making possible to children the real exercise of influencing and participating in the creation of their environment and their own learning. They are professionals who act on their beliefs in a socially just and equitable way in the classrooms and their lives.
