Despite the divisions within Northern Ireland's education system along religious and academic lines, it has managed to maintain relative stability, or at least a functional inertia, over the past four decades. The full potential, however, of this system and in particular, the Northern Ireland Curriculum (NIC), has yet to be realised. This paper…

This article explores how the new Curriculum for Wales offers an alternative to the traditional status quo in the schooling of industrialised societies by providing an opportunity for inquiry-led approaches. It argues that mainstream schooling is beholden to dominant discourses that have an alleigance to a factory-model of education. As a…

Since the publication of the first edition of "Understanding Academic Freedom," the never-ending struggle to defend academic freedom has entered a demonstrably new phase. Legislation determining what can and cannot be taught in schools in Florida, Texas, and other states has intensified governing board activism that impinges on widely…

This paper is about the politics of policy knowledge production. It calls for spaces to be forged to allow teachers' voices to have centre stage in knowledge creation and production. Specifically, this paper discusses the need for alternative ways of conducting educational research so that power in research design is utilised as a capacity for…

In works based on deprofessionalisation/proletarianisation theory, teachers are described by researchers as technically disempowered because of the entry of neoliberalism into the institutional environment of education. Technically disempowered teachers suffer not only from work stress but also from other kinds of negative emotional experiences.…

In this paper, I critique the ideology of competition in school music using the philosophy of Herbert Marcuse, including his concepts of the performance principle and "The Great Refusal," which he saw as defining aspects of what he termed a one-dimensional society. Under a one-dimensional neoliberal educational regime, as can be found in…

The way in which educators choose to engage with learners and to offer opportunities to share knowledge of both the physical world and the world of ideas is an ongoing area of international research interest but remains diffuse and difficult to systematise. This idiosyncratic quality underscores the privileged position of teachers as creative…

Teachers receive increasing attention as change agents within education reform policy discourses positioning their professionalism, identity, and agency as critical to implementation of reforms. However, identities either claimed by teachers or assigned by reform policies involve serious (re)negotiations on the part of teachers as they make…

This paper examines contemporary challenges for education and democracy in Brazil. In the past decade, conservative forces headed by the Escola sem Partido (ESP) movement have led a scaremongering campaign against teachers and public education, with Paulo Freire's critical educational philosophies as their main enemy. This study investigates the…

The primary goal of this chapter is to provide an overview of the Croatian education system and examine its evolution from the 1990s, focusing on (a) changes of institutions and education policies within 'Europeanisation' and globalisation contexts; (b) the limits and challenges to institutional and leaders' autonomy, as described both by…

This book explores changing practice in history classrooms from the autonomy of the 1980s through the introduction of GCSEs and the National Curriculum to the prescription of the National Strategies and the pervasive influence of league tables in the first decade of the twenty-first century. It uses individual narratives from history teachers to…

In a time in which teachers and teacher educators live under constant disparagement, authentic teacher research has the potential to give teachers a voice in ongoing professional development as well as school improvement. Two teacher educators share their experience implementing teacher research among pre-service teachers, acknowledging pitfalls…

In August, the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) released the grimmest "Nation's Report Card" in 20 years. Between 2020 and 2022, America's students dropped five points in reading and seven points in math. At a time when there is empirical evidence that America's students are struggling -- the NAEP scores are just one…

As a faculty dean, I was constantly surprised over the years by the number of female academics who expressed reluctance to do my job. Why were they so reluctant? Why did they cite intense argument and personal criticism as significant deterrents? Focusing specifically on academic argument, and the crucial role of autonomy in academe, this paper…

Guided by the "constructivism in practice" dilemmas framework developed by Windschitl (Rev Educ Res 72(2):131-175, 2002) we investigated the conceptual, pedagogical, cultural, and political barriers that 24 K-12 mathematics teachers working in a high-poverty urban school district in Texas encountered when trying to implement…