At a time when extremist movements are gaining proportions on the world stage, it is relevant to reanalyse experiences that intended to establish democracy as a principle in school education. The School Republic was one of them, which was proposed by the Sampaio Dória Reform, in 1920, taking the New School as its context; the School Republic aimed…

Pedagogical reform is an institutional change that involves revising the rules of the game in practice, the legitimacy of which depends on political and legislative contexts. In the context of Myanmar's experience transitioning into a democratic society, this study discusses the changes in theoretical equilibria concerning pedagogical practices…

The Australian Early Years' Learning Framework aspires to put democratic participation at the centre of policy and practice by positioning children and families as able, and children as contributing citizens from birth. Examination of current pedagogical efforts to achieve this aspiration are needed to expand knowledge of the supports and…

In this theoretical article, we respond to a common education policy discourse that represents community participation in educational policy-making as an essentially rational solution to policy problems and as inherently progressive and democratic. We propose that conceptualising participatory politics as 'publics' challenges this discourse and…

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…

Globally, enduring skepticism around professionalism in education systems has questioned the efficiency in which teachers meet students' educational needs and their authority to do so. Presently, efforts toward professionalization in teacher education (TE) are threatened by neoliberal reforms promoting alternative pathways into teaching and…

From climate disaster to the specter of nuclear annihilation to the rise of fascism and destruction of democracy to the advent of AI and other potentially destructive technologies, a number of material threats are matched by symbolic threats that undermine the capacities of people to respond. The war on public and critical education and the public…

A long history of scholarship on teacher professionalism documents how different narratives about teaching animate education policy and practice. We bridge the Advocacy Coalition Framework with institutional logics to examine how beliefs about teaching unite and divide a state-level coalition pursuing teacher licensure policy reform and manifest…

This paper aims to make a conceptual contribution to the role of the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) in regard to global education within state global heritage (multicultural) schools -- using England as a representative example -- in an age characterised by epistemological, historical and cultural securitisation. This paper…

The article tracks key moments in teacher education policy and curriculum in South Africa from the 1970s to the present day. Political and social features of education in each decade are outlined, from a racialised and fragmented system of teacher education, to the imagining of alternatives, and the imperative for educational transformation. The…

"Reconstructing Democratic Education" was an international conference held virtually on June 22, 2024. This article uses the words of the speakers and the participants to present some of the stories and reflections that stimulated us that day. Speakers touched on a wide variety of challenges that democracy in general and schools in…

The bureaucratic precepts engendered by modern universities produce a slew of negative effects inimical to educational justice. Drawing on historiographical evidence from the 1968 Strax Affair, a little-known protest held at the University of New Brunswick, we identify the arts of discombobulation as a novel approach to challenge the intellectual…

Purpose: Taking the form of a report, the presented text aims to map the curricular changes in civic education and social science learning in basic and upper secondary schools after 1989. It seeks to identify the key features of undergraduate teacher training at universities, with an emphasis on field-specific didactics, and to provide a brief…

This article presents the results of a research on transformation processes for creating more democratic and inclusive schools. Through a multiple case study of four Spanish schools, the authors analyse how the actors involved in participatory action research processes mobilise knowledge on inclusive education. The authors explore the strategies…

Douglas Kellner's "Re-Visioning Education: Cultural Studies, Critical Media and Digital Literacies, and Democracy" provides a comprehensive account of his critical theory of education that combines his work in philosophy of education, cultural studies, and media and digital literacies aimed at a critical theory of education and radical…