In this paper, I address Biesta's notion of world-centred education via a special focus on the school as a site of teacherly gestures. To begin with, I interpret 'world-centredness' -- qua that which goes 'beyond learning' -- through a deployment of tenets from Arendt and her appropriation of Marx's and Heidegger's motifs. Within this horizon, I…

This article discusses a problem in the field of giftedness--the meaning and deployment of giftedness in authoritarian systems, or in declining, failing, or pseudo-democracies. This problem exists for much of the world's population yet seems to be relatively little discussed. The article opens with a consideration of what the problem is. It then…

This article suggests a sophistical autonomous practice in response to Platonian Aristotelian philosophy's domination over education. It shows the dangers of empty education in which education is reduced to schooling the perfect citizen in the image of a perfect state. An example is given in which schooling in empty education is reduced to a tool…

The focus of this response to Arthur Galamba and Brian Matthews's 'Science education against the rise of fascist and authoritarian movements: towards the development of a Pedagogy for Democracy' is to underpin a critical pedagogy that can be used as a counterbalancing force against repressive ideologies within science classrooms. Locating science…

After the Second World War, the Italian educational context in Italy was distinguished by a network of different democratic and antiauthoritarian pedagogical ideas and educational experiences, developed as heterogeneous forms of New Education. The "Movimento di Cooperazione Educativa" (MCE), inspired by Freinet's popular pedagogy and…

The article is a report on a qualitative study conducted among 703 students from Warsaw/Poland public universities. The purpose of the study was to identify projected behavior in the face of the threat scenario--the so-called "neo-totalitarianism," created by experts of the Polish Academy of Sciences. The survey was carried out using a…

It is often argued, rightly, that critical thinking is a necessary condition for democracy. This essay looks at the other side of that relationship, how certain democratic conditions are necessary for critical thinking to flourish. In turn, this dynamic, interactive account of democratic culture, institutions, and dispositions has implications for…

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…

According to Thomas Falk, an authoritarian insurgency against the institutions of liberal democracy operates along both political-economic and phenomenological axes. By corrupting language and stimulating vigilance, this insurgency endeavors to diminish the perceptual and communicative capacities that allow us to articulate a shared reality and…

The purpose of this essay is to revisit the notion of indoctrination in education by providing a summary of the field and highlighting the role of affects and emotions in the aftermath of the 'affective turn'. It is argued that "affective indoctrination"--defined as the emotional coercion or manipulation that, arguably, any form of…

In this polemical piece, we begin by arguing that the Schools White Paper (2022) is framed within, and seeks to promulgate, a right-wing 'regime of truth'. We interrogate the vocabulary of the Paper to reveal and challenge its 'truths' -- about the curriculum and its 'delivery'; the testing and examination regime; behaviour; and initial teacher…

The COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with an increasingly authoritarian presidential administration, is challenging the nation, institutions, even individual citizens with a fundamental stress test, raising the question whether basic principles, institutions and values will survive this crisis intact. The rule of law, and the respect citizens have for…

In light of decades of formal denouncement of Deweyan ideas in China and the increasingly authoritarian practices under its current leadership, the recent revival of engagement with Dewey's work among Chinese educators and intellectuals appears extraordinary as well as paradoxical. How is it possible that a project as ardently democratic as…

This article uses a critical analysis of liberal democracy and its ties to a re-emergent fascism to call for a Marxist feminist pedagogy of anti-fascism.

This paper examines the contribution that Martin Thrupp made to educational policy and teachers' practice in the light of the present threat to democracy presented by the authoritarian right. Martin's work on school composition is extended to an analysis of the prospects and practice for a education for democratic citizenship. It focuses on the…