Social Justice and Sustainable Development in the Spanish Educational Legislation

Abstract

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) represent a new way of addressing contemporary challenges. With their declaration, a variable that must accompany growth is established: social justice. This article explores the implications of this for economic and human development, as well as its impact on Spanish educational legislation. The objective is to identify the inclusion of descriptors related to sustainable development and social justice, born from the SDG targets, in the last three Spanish educational laws. Therefore, a longitudinal comparative study will be carried out, using the five dimensions that Colom (1998) used to defined the sustainable development. It includes subsequent conceptual updates to adapt them to current needs. The results show how Spanish educational legislation has been incorporating and updating contents and sensitivities about sustainable development. Likewise, and considering the multidimensional nature of social justice, Spanish education has been able to address its challenges from different angles. However, Spanish educational legislation has room for improvement in terms of its capacity to meet the current challenges.