Civics courses have a great significance -- they are supposed to train new cohorts of citizens to engage in multiple public roles in (democratic) society. How it is done depends on a multitude of factors, and teachers' performance and program contents are among the most important. In post-authoritarian order like Poland, civic contents of…

A confluence of circumstances in US public life, including the proliferation of digital media outlets, the diminished role of information gatekeepers, and entrenched ideological polarization, have made one of the core competencies of political engagement -- staying informed about current events -- an increasingly fraught endeavor. Fears about…

The policy landscape around curriculum selection and implementation is thorny: the federal government cannot mandate any state or local curricula, state policy varies widely, and local schools and districts often lack the capacity to support and sustain detailed reviews of materials and ongoing teacher training in quality curricula. Cultural and…

Contributing to the debate on decolonising the curriculum, this reflective article questions: What does a safe space in a decolonised classroom mean? For whom is it safe? And at what cost? Must we redraw the parameters of 'safe'? Prompted by a real-life 'n-word incident' in the classroom, this article unpacks the collision of decolonising the…

This article addresses the "National Common Core Curriculum" in Brazil, focusing both on its "Introduction" and the sections dedicated to music teaching. The paper draws on contributions from broad critical curricular perspectives, arguing for the access to "powerful knowledge" as a means of achieving social justice…

The aim of this article is to offer an approach that can be used to develop Decolonial Critical Awareness (CDA) and Decolonial Critical Reflection (CDR) in student language teachers at post-Primary level as part of their Initial Teacher Education (ITE). The article contextualises the rationale for such provision in ITE programmes in the wider…

This book employs a critical discourse ethnographic approach to map the production of social meaning in digital media in education, drawing on insights from Switzerland to unpack the disconnects that arise in thinking postdigitally and ways forward for rethinking socio-cultural approaches. Grounded in Foucault-influenced, linguistically-oriented…

In the context of both rising antisemitism in the U.S. and the increasing popularity of states mandating the teaching of the Holocaust in K-12 schools, William Smith asks, are such legislative mandates effective? Can states achieve ambitious goals like preventing future genocides and reducing antisemitism by requiring that students learn about the…

This article explores the 'burden of compliance' experienced by providers and teachers in the Adult Migrant English Program (AMEP), a large national English as an Additional Language (EAL) program in Australia. It shows how compliance requirements have been shaped by the relationship between two groups, those who make and operationalise relevant…

Recognizing that the American right, and specifically the Christian right, has achieved disproportionate power over shaping the landscape of education policy and political culture, the following engages in a twofold analysis of schooling in the United States. We consider the structural transformations that are being enacted as a result of the…

This article considers some theoretical resources for resistance to neoliberalised schooling and develops principles for reimagining the common school. Whilst relevant internationally, it is situated in the particular context of England, as a global epicentre of school reform -- a marketised and largely privatised system where the net of…

Citizenship education being central to the process of nation-building, changing political regimes promote a re-imagination of the 'ideal' citizen. A perusal of the successive national curriculum frameworks introduced by the NCERT (1975-2005) shows how curricula and textbooks have been repeatedly re-designed to suit the requirements of changing…

As an overview in connection with the 50th anniversary of the "Journal of Curriculum Studies" (JCS), this article begins with John Dewey's notion that all educational actions carry philosophical implications. The tension between different education-research philosophies, between non-social and social education philosophies in Dewey's…

We are five early childhood researchers, from across Canada, thrown together amongst a series of alarming discourses, where developmental, economic, and neuroscientific rationales for ECEC drown out alternative theoretical perspectives, as well as personal experience, values, subjective knowledges, and the fierce passion we feel for our work. In…

Crisis occupies an ambiguous place in the writings of Hannah Arendt. Not only does crisis undermine categories of judgment, but in doing so it eliminates prejudices as well, forcing us to judge without them. Although Arendt never had an opportunity to fully develop her understanding of judgment, we know that she considered it to be 'the most…