Educational Justice: A Multidimensional Account

Submission note: A thesis submitted in total fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Department of Politics, Media and Philosophy, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, College of Arts, Social Sciences and Commerce, La Trobe University, Victoria, Australia.

Achieving a fair or just distribution of education is widely considered important in modern liberal democratic societies. However, there is no consensus over the meaning of educational justice in the philosophical literature, and the concept is often used in ambiguous ways in public discourse and policy documents. This thesis aims to bring greater clarity to these discussions by developing a systematic and normatively compelling account of educational justice. In doing so, the thesis engages with the most prominent existing approaches in the literature, developing an original critique of egalitarian, prioritarian, sufficientarian and relational conceptions of educational justice. The thesis argues that although each of these theories has some appeal, none of them are satisfactory as standalone accounts of educational justice. The thesis also draws attention to a neglected value in current philosophical debate over educational justice, highlighting the role education can play in helping children develop their potentials. The thesis contends that this is a valuable aspect of education that deserves greater attention in the literature on educational justice, particularly because it draws attention to the fact that education can be valuable in ways that go beyond its role as a positional good. The thesis concludes by drawing on the preceding analysis to propose a multidimensional account of educational justice that incorporates a number of different principles, and develops a hierarchy to explain which principles should take priority in cases where they pull in different directions. The thesis argues that this multidimensional account of educational justice is normatively compelling and provides much greater clarity about what educational justice requires than any of the existing conceptions developed to date.