A CAPABILITY APPROACH TO INDIGENOUS EDUCATION MOBILITY: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55197/qjssh.v7si4.1657Keywords:
indigenous education, mobility, social justice, spatial justiceAbstract
Mobility is vital in fulfilling fundamental human needs, enabling access to opportunities and services, including education. Mobility, including transportation, distance, and costs, have profound impacts on students' well-being and academic achievement. Nonetheless, Indigenous students continue to encounter barriers to education, underscoring deep-rooted inequalities in school access. Through theoretical synthesis, this paper finds that Indigenous children’s access to education is profoundly shaped by intersecting social and spatial inequalities. These compounded disparities highlight the need to engage with social and spatial justice perspectives in understanding the structural barriers constraining educational mobility. A critical issue in educational mobility concerns the extent to which students are both capable of and afforded equal opportunities to access schooling. This capability is shaped not only by social identities: gender, and household income, but also by spatial constraints. Therefore, this study extends the Capability Approach (CA) framework, by integrating the concepts of socio-spatial justice and inequality in analysing the persistent barriers that Indigenous students face in accessing education. This study further indicates that Horizontal and Vertical Equities could serve as effective strategies to mitigate mobility challenges, thus contributing valuable insights for future rural education policymaking.
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