This is a phenomenological description of existential obedience, which draws out a contrast between it and "ressentiment" and existential envy, and compares it with pedagogical obedience. The discussion is developed with reference especially to the work of Erich Fromm, Emerson, and Nietzsche.

Followership is associated with many negative characteristics such as being passive, having a lower status, possessing less intelligence, receiving lower pay, order-taking, providing less value, or avoiding risk. And yet, leadership, followership, and context combine to form a coherent whole. We need to start by understanding followers in the same…

Talent of the practitioner is irrelevant if the person receiving support (or the person responsible for delivering support) does not follow through with the plan. This is true in applied behavior analysis (ABA), medicine, and allied health-care services. The cost of nonadherence and related nonoptimized interventions is a major contributor to the…

In an era of scripted curriculum and high-stakes testing, the latitude teachers have for making curricular decisions in their classrooms has significantly declined. The authors report findings from a literature review of teachers' principled resistance to curricular control. Principled resistance occurs when teachers reject curricular mandates…

Toxic giftedness is giftedness that is used for negative and even harmful ends. The field of giftedness has not been quick to recognize the importance to society of toxic giftedness, and its responsibility to combat it. This article defines the concept of toxic giftedness. Then it discusses two manifestations of toxic giftedness: gifted toxic…

Professionalism is an important issue for policymakers in post-16 education because of its established links to competence, morale and staff continuity. Arguably, it is the pursuit of professionalism that ensures high quality teaching and learning, satisfied students and stakeholders, and the ongoing esteem of the general public. However, despite…

Undergraduates report a variety of reasons for not reading assigned text(s), including confusion regarding instructors' expectations, while faculty report using reading as a major instructional tool and attest to the negative consequences of students' lack of reading. To bridge this divide, we propose Task-Oriented Reading Instruction (TORI) as a…

The question of whether dance education trains students to be obedient or self-disciplined has fundamental ramifications for students involved in dance activities as well as for the field of dance education. In order to explore this issue, I surveyed dance major and minor students, conducted in-class activities, and held discussions. The purpose…

Drawing from the tensions within non-representational and human practice perspectives on affect, this paper continues the task of re-conceptualising academic-hlevel resistance in the context of UK higher education. Such re-conceptualisation is underpinned by the belief that illustrating the breadth of resistant possibility within and between…

Lord Nelson was a master of leading fleets into battle. He was also a master of leading people, instinctively understanding the value of both leadership and followership. This chapter explores the leadership behaviors Nelson used to create a powerful leader/follower synergy between him and his captains, and introduces a model based on these…

COVID-19 shocked the education system, disrupting the policies and practices of special education over multiple school years. This essay brings together the institutional logics perspective and racialized organization theory to first examine aspects of special education and then describe how leaders and teachers can improve special education to…

In this article, I present the construct of scared leadership as a theoretical explanation for the gradual decrease in courageous behavior as educators move from the classroom to campus and district level leadership. Scared leadership is a construct that can be used in future work to better understand and articulate the relationship between fear…

Nearly every country today has universal primary education. But why did governments in the West decide to provide education to all children in the first place? In "Raised to Obey," Agustina Paglayan offers an unsettling answer. The introduction of broadly accessible primary education was not mainly a response to industrialization, or…

Long-time educator Dr. Sidney Trubowitz recalls his years as an elementary school student in the late 1930s. His teachers were rigid, students were taught to be quiet and compliant, and Trubowitz learned to follow instructions without questioning them. When one teacher went too far with her discipline, his mother, an immigrant, stood up for him --…

Student engagement is one of the most important factors of an effective classroom throughout the P-16 spectrum. Of late, many have attempted to define engagement and establish best practices for maximising it in the classroom. In the process, a number of sources have implied or encouraged a false dichotomy between engagement and compliance. This…