One of the many facets of educational leadership is the emotional aspects of educational leadership itself. Leaders are regularly immersed in emotionally charged broad-based policy debates and political subjects like protests and voting policies. These are policy subjects that politically occur not only in schools where educational leaders…

In this article, we read together the work of two philosophers, Alain Badiou and Giorgio Agamben, as profound educational thinkers. This means that their philosophical approaches help us to articulate what is at stake in education today. As a starting point for this discussion we take their work on Saint Paul. This is because, throughout his…

This article explores the values that bridge democracy and community dance. Policymakers show an interest in promoting democracy, including the very values shared between community dance and democracy. Observing this, we propose that policy may benefit from examining the pedagogy and practices of community dance, and incorporate relevant aspects…

The Anthropocene is a site of domination and resistance for those opposed to the corporatised food regime. The peasant farmers' movement, La Vía Campesina, uses pedagogical techniques based on Freirian horizontal communication methodology to contest the structural and ideological elements of this regime. This article analyses these techniques,…

An exploration is presented of how education policy and practice may be used to transform society. Specifically, connections are made between Paulo Freire's teaching strategies and radically democratic organizing. The connections are contextualized within the prefigurative tradition, which explores how the democratic process is central to…

Henri Lefebvre (1901-91), philosopher and sociologist, is, together with Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin and Ernst Bloch, one of the most relevant representatives of the first generation in Western Marxism. His engagement with Marxism led him to analyse everyday life in post-war France in order to decipher the possibilities of,…

This article examines the so-called new school reform movement led by a host of right-wing ideologues, billionaires, and foundations. It argues that instead of being reformers, the latter are part of a counter-revolution in American education to dismantle public schools not because they are failing but because they are public and make a claim,…

This article presents, through a critical analysis, a reflection on a noticeable change that focuses on some aspects related to the assessment of different parts of the educational system. In particular, it concentrates on the assessment of teaching institutions which has been considered by authorities that are distant from the school life and…

The bloody First and Second World Wars awakened the dream of a cross-border peaceful territory supported by the Christian community principles of the clerics founding the first universities in the Middle Ages. Since the 1950s the European Union has been built up from six member states to reach twenty-seven, with more associate members. But…

The article identifies and discusses three stages in the critical policy methodology used in the sociology of education. These are: firstly, employing a political economy theoretical framework that identifies causal links between global forces and local developments; secondly, analysing educational policy within that theoretically conceptualised…

Positive political discourse is the heart of democracy. The purposes of political discourse include making an effective decision about the course the society should take and building a moral bond among all members of the society. A responsibility of social sciences within a democratic society is to provide the theory, research, and normative…

Taking the latest reform of Swedish teacher education as a point of departure, the aim of this article is to analyse the way Swedish teacher unions construct a knowledge base for teaching as a strategy of professionalisation. The analysis shows that the unions construct such a knowledge base from opposing points of departure. Their professional…

The demise of capitalism was theoretically prophesied by Marx who posited that the world would come to such a state of destruction and human suffering that no amount of coercion or concessions would suffice to stop the massive uprisings that would lead us into a new socialist alternative. Although the downfall of world capitalism may seem…

The transformation of South Africa from a deeply iniquitous apartheid regime to a more inclusive democratic dispensation remains a huge challenge for all South Africans and its social institutions. The university remains one institution that is under severe pressure to transform. This pressure is exacerbated by the deeply entrenched apartheid…

Bangladesh has introduced neoliberal policies since the 1970s. Military regimes, since the dramatic political changes in 1975, accelerated the process. A succession of military rulers made rigorous changes in policy-making in various sectors. This article uses a critical approach to document analysis and examines the perceptions of key…