This paper aims to address the relation between epistemic quality and equitable learning. Thinking about didactics – learning and teaching in the global context foregrounds the challenge of inequality as a core challenge for contemporary societies and for educational systems. The crucial role of education in relation to this challenge is highlighted by Sayed (2013), who stresses education as a “fundamental human right in itself as well as an enabling right, fostering the accomplishment of all other social, cultural, economic and political rights”. This report calls for two main education specific goals to be addressed as part of the future development framework, which are equitable access and equitable quality education (Sayed, 2013: 36). The paper will consider how to redress the extent to which educational systems, as well as everyday teaching practices and classroom interaction reproduce inequality, i.e. unequal preconditions and chances of autonomous participation and success. In doing so it uses the guiding framework discussed in Hudson et al., (2016) to consider equity, equality and social justice as key issues at the societal, institutional and practical/didactical levels. The work of Stojanov (2011) is of particular relevance that gives an account of the ways in which many students have experiences of defiance, contempt and humiliation and even degradation that hinder the development of their self-identity and autonomy. Accordingly equitable learning is defined as learning that produces educational justice (“Bildungsgerechtigkeit”), that enables students to overcome societal and familiar limitations of access to and success in education, that fosters subject autonomy and that allows for the development of participatory competences for life in all societal fields. Central to achieving this is the need to consider the epistemic quality of the content involved (Hudson et al., 2015: 377) and also the potential for associated processes of alienation (Lakatos, 1976).

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