Educational Social Responsibility (ESR): foundations for a new paradigm of institutional legitimacy
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.34624/7qs8c665Keywords:
Educational Social Responsibility, Institutional Legitimacy, Social Justice, Sustainability, Critical PedagogyAbstract
This article presents the original proposal of the Educational Social Responsibility Model (ESR), developed by the authors through a theoretical–conceptual methodological process integrating epistemic cartography, dialogical tension analysis, and normative model-building. The ESR model is advanced as a critical alternative to forms of social responsibility frequently transferred into the educational field, particularly Corporate Social Responsibility (Carroll, 1999) and University Social Responsibility (Vallaeys, 2014), whose uncritical adoption has contributed to fragmentation across social justice, sustainability, pedagogy, and governance. The guiding research question is: how can social responsibility be reconceptualised within education so as to overcome such fragmentation, resist corporate colonisation, and affirm a grammar proper to the educational mission in the twenty-first century? Grounded in critical epistemologies—specifically Freire (1970), Sen (1999), and Fraser (2003)—the article develops an analytical framework culminating in the formulation of the ESR model, structured around six interdependent pillars: inclusion and equity; curricular and pedagogical innovation; institutional sustainability; teacher empowerment; participatory governance; and ethical digitalisation. By positioning social responsibility as a constitutive principle of education rather than an external requirement, the model contributes to reconfiguring the institutional legitimacy of contemporary educational organisations. Although conceptual in nature, the proposal outlines practical implications that may inform educational policy, governance processes, and institutional development strategies.
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