Studying educational inequality: Reintroducing normative notions.

In: Educational policy evaluation through international comparative assessments., S. 51-58

Abstract

The main argument of the paper is that studying educational inequalities is based on certain ideas about social justice that are often not sufficiently explicated. Some inequalities are irrelevant or less relevant than others when we think about educational justice. The central thesis is that the operationalization of justice, i.e. selection of an inequality from a set of alternatives, is a normative decision. Different normative assumptions lead to different operationalization. The metric of inequalities and the choice of an equitable distributive rule provide a conceptual framework with which to describe how inequalities are assessed in empirical studies. As researchers are obliged to be transparent about the entire research process, they should also reveal their normative accounts more explicitly and thereby empower the reader to evaluate the theoretical foundations of a study. (DIPF/Orig.).