ABSTRACT

The use of narrative has been a time-honoured way of exploring complex ideas, and a valuable way to learn. An obvious example that epitomises this thesis, are the dialogues of Plato. Indeed, what gives significance to these dialogues is the way in which complex ideas are revealed through the struggles and conflicts of one or more characters. With this in mind, one of my aims is to present my own fictional dialogue that I have created between two academics who are in conflict over a student who is deemed to be ‘at risk’ by an educational institution as a means to explore notions of justice in education. Although there is much that can be learned about justice from formal arguments; however, I argue that narratives are useful devices to learn about complicated concepts, and at the same time, serve as a catalyst for debate about principles that are fundamental to education. Consequently, this article uses a narrative approach for the dual purposes of elucidating the concept of justice exhibited through the characters found in the narrative, which in turn offers the means in which to critically discuss and analyse the narrative in relation to justice in education.

摘要

叙事的使用一直是探索复杂思想的历史悠久的方式，也是一种宝贵的学习方式。体现这一论点的一个明显例子是柏拉图的对话。事实上，这些对话的意义在于通过一个或多个角色的斗争和冲突揭示复杂思想的方式。考虑到这一点，我的目标之一是呈现我在两位学者之间创建的虚构对话，他们因一名被教育机构视为“处于危险之中”的学生而发生冲突，以此作为探索教育正义。尽管可以从形式论证中学到很多关于正义的知识；然而，我认为叙事是学习复杂概念的有用工具，同时，作为关于教育基本原则的辩论的催化剂。因此，本文采用叙事方法来阐明通过叙事中发现的人物所表现出的正义概念，这反过来又提供了批判性讨论和分析与教育正义相关的叙事的手段。