Syllabi and Social Justice

Many academics assert a link between the principles that ought to determine the selection of teaching material in higher education and the principles that ought to govern a just society. This article considers five models of this relationship: (1) Identification , in which good syllabus design is part of social justice; (2) Isomorphism , in which a good syllabus takes the same form as a just society; (3) Instrumentalism , in which a good syllabus is a means for achieving social justice; (4) Isolationism , which seeks to protect syllabus design from undue social influence; (5) Interdependence , in which the quality of a syllabus and the justice of a society depend on each other in a variety of complex ways. I conclude that Interdependence incorporates the most important insights of the other four models while avoiding their individual limitations.