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Tebeje Molla, Deakin University, AustraliaAbstract
Although school education falls within the jurisdiction of state and territory governments, since the late 1980s, Australia has issued a national education declaration each decade to articulate shared national priorities for the sector. While these frameworks—Hobart (1989), Adelaide (1999), Melbourne (2008), and Alice Springs (Mparntwe) (2019)—consistently invoke equity and inclusion, their substantive commitments to social justice remain under-examined. This paper critically analyses how social justice goals are conceptualised in the declarations and how these framings have shifted over time. The paper distinguishes between two interrelated dimensions: socially just education, which concerns the creation of equitable and inclusive systems through fair resource distribution, culturally sustaining environments, and policies that remove systemic barriers; and social justice education, which focuses on developing students’ critical consciousness, ethical reasoning, and civic agency through engagement with issues of justice and democracy. Using critical policy analysis, the paper identifies both continuities and shifts in the framing of social justice over three decades, revealing growing rhetorical attention to diversity and equity, yet persistent limitations in addressing deeper, transformative demands of justice. The paper argues for future national frameworks to adopt a more integrated and explicit commitment to both structural equity and critical democratic education.
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Conference: ACE2025Stream: Education
This paper is part of the ACE2025 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Molla T. (2026) Australian National Education Frameworks: Tracing the Evolution of Social Justice Goals ISSN: 2186-5892 – The Asian Conference on Education 2025: Official Conference Proceedings (pp. 1265-1276) https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2186-5892.2026.98
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2186-5892.2026.98
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