Recent policy developments in England, particularly since 2021, have resulted in increased regulation and marketisation of Initial Teacher Training (ITT)/Initial Teacher Education (ITE). Although the origins of these developments go back much further than 2021, the current context in which ITE operates in England is, arguably, both challenging and…

This paper considers critical reflection as a pedagogical strategy in UK higher education at a moment of an amplification of populist, reactionary discourses. It draws on written reflections of foundation-level students in a case study cohort and offers insights into their lived learning experiences and perceptions of the value of reflection. This…

Educational institutions have an important role in the achievement of the United Nations' sixteenth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) to promote just, peaceful and inclusive societies. In Scotland, all teachers must meet Professional Standards, at the heart of which is a set of goods that include sustainability, democracy, equality, human rights,…

Demographics of public schools, in which minority students now make up the majority of the student body while the teaching force continues to be mostly White, indicate that many pre-service teachers will need significant training if they are to be prepared for the challenging task of filling knowledge gaps, interrogating dominant assumptions, and…

In this article, we situate the imminent extinction of educational foundations within larger macro contexts, including the corporate control of knowledge production, the marginalization of critical academics who challenge the social, economic, and political status quos, and the global (United States in particular) economic recession. We also…

This article describes America's descent into madness under the regime of neoliberalism that has emerged in the United States since the late 1970s. In part, this is due to the emergence of a public pedagogy produced by the corporate-owned media that now saturates Americans with a market-driven value system that undermines those formative…

In this article, William Ayers constructs his Phil Smith Lecture as a call to action. Grounded in democratic principles of equality and social justice, the author invokes a liberal conception of human worth and the universal right to educational opportunity. The author critiques the passivity of the American polity in the face of Barack Obama's…

Anti-intellectualism and political illiteracy are sweeping across the American media and cultural landscape, giving rise to discourses that are unabashedly nativist, racist, and reactionary. Populist sentiments drive the rabid individualism and anti-government rhetoric of right-wing groups such as the Tea Party movement. Underlying these…

Concerns about schoolboy "laddish" anti-learning and/or anti-school cultures are pervasive in current education discourses. Mandates to tackle laddishness frequently assume that there is a common understanding of what laddishness means, and also that teachers will know how to tackle it. This article explores these assumptions, drawing…