A fundamental element required for positive systemic change in our further education sector is the need to take influence and inspiration from the theory of cognitive justice – and this is particularly the case when we attempt to navigate the impact of poverty on our classrooms.
The term “cognitive justice” was first coined by the Indian scholar Shiv Visvanathan in 1997 to dispute the forceful impressing of Western scientific knowledge and processes onto developing and non-Western countries. Professor Visvanathan argued that the hegemonic enforcing of greater value upon Western knowledge was causing the destruction of traditional knowledge that were closely tied to communities and the working lives of individuals (Visvanathan, 1997). It was proposed instead that decision-makers embrace a common practice of cognitive justice; valuing equally a plurality of knowledge, experiences and values within the spaces they occupied.
The theory of cognitive justice was brought into education by Catherine Odora-Hoppers, and reflecting on my own positionality within my teaching practice in further education, there is a deep discomfort as I connect the behaviours and knowledge that we endeavour to establish in our learning spaces. Not, hopefully, through historical practices of colonial brutality, but through much quieter and less tangible pressures in our classrooms. The normalisation of a carefully-considered, white, middle-class culture extends into our spaces of education; a presumed and promoted “normality” that values an unspoken, socially contracted system of knowledge and experience.
