While the project of consolidating democracy into a durable and highly esteemed value in American culture has always been difficult to sustain, especially within the public schools, the struggle now assumes the character of a grave and inescapable need. Given the authoritarian and fascist resurgence across the globe, democracy and its accompanying…

Education is a moral enterprise, and higher education has the accountability to produce skilled learners with cognitive, psychological, and social-emotional competences. Formal and informal approaches of character education increase in demand. On the one hand, students should be guided to gain character strength and moral compass to confront the…

Democracy and capitalism are two of the most consequential institutional systems in the world. However, their dynamic complexity, current turmoil, and evolution make them challenging to study. High-engagement teaching can bring the subjects alive, motivate student exploration, inform choices, animate sensible policy recommendations, and make a…

This paper explores how democratic educational practices and action learning are applied in an MSc Human Resource Management Enhancement Programme (HRMEP) in a UK higher education context. Using a triple-layered model of reflective learning, the programme emphasises a participatory approach, critical reflection, and practical application of HRM…

Pedagogical methods shape students' grasp of democracy. Cooperative learning, by fostering democratic values in classrooms, empowers students for active civic participation. This approach is seen as ideal, suggesting pre-service teachers using it will hold positive democratic attitudes. This study seeks to determine how attitudes towards democracy…

College campuses have become flashpoints of the current culture war and, consequently, much ink has been spilled over the relationship between universities and the cultivation or coddling of young American minds. Philosopher Sigal R. Ben-Porath takes head-on arguments that infantilize students who speak out against violent and racist discourse on…

What is democracy? We asked this of our pre-service teachers but, instead of soliciting a response via more traditional methods, we assigned them a collage and artist's statement. The overarching goal was to model curricular applications of art that they may carry into their own p-6 classrooms to enable engagement with complex concepts. In…

The formation of students' moral character is a critical part of civic engagement programs in US higher education. This is especially evident in Catholic, Jesuit education, which emphasizes pedagogical practices at the intersection of faith and justice. Advances in the fields of moral psychology and civic education, particularly service-learning,…

Is assessment a top-down bureaucratic mandate, an undertaking that seems to have little to do with improving practice, an inauthentic activity that frustrates and disempowers, an afterthought? Or is it a process embraced and enacted together by all stakeholders as a means to learn and grow and enact change in the world? The authors of the…

This essay provides a grounded critical discussion of why a professor might limit their undergraduate students' sovereignty of educational decision-making to promote an opportunity for a democratic dialogic culture in the class situated in a conventional university. On the one hand, both democracy and dialogue require voluntary participation by…

This study explores the synergy between Action Learning (AL) and democratic practices within organisations, positioning Action Learning Sets (ALSs) as microcosms of representative democracy. It emphasises the pivotal role of trust-building -- particularly swift trust in virtual settings -- in fostering collaborative environments where democratic…

Scholars have documented a tendency of (semi-)authoritarian regimes to undermine university autonomy, mainly through organizational (de jure) changes. This paper presents a case study of a publicly triggered plagiarism investigation by the University of Belgrade into the doctoral thesis of the Serbian Minister of Finance, one of the key members of…

British higher education is ranked among the best in the world, but some of its core values are under strain. Knowledge and critical thinking can be undermined by biased mind-sets, especially when engaging with the social media. Research demonstrates that false news goes viral much more quickly than true news. Political correctness and the woke…

This article reports on Higher Education student experiences of engaging with the concepts, values and activities in an adapted pilot version of the Council of Europe's Portfolio of Competences for Democratic Culture. Our aim was to explore how this portfolio could serve as a learning tool in an internationalized context for higher education…

Background/Context: Scholars have long critiqued the antidemocratic forces at work in education, advocating for a more equitable, liberating, and democratic vision of schooling, with teacher education taking on a central role. Mainstream teacher preparation obstructs democratic education, as evidenced by the failure to disavow and dismantle white…