The planetary crisis facing humanity makes essential the incorporation of learning about climate change and sustainability in the university curriculum. Yet the ooting of climate change in values, knowledge systems and societal structures means that this incorporation must be more than just addition of knowledge content into a pre-existing…

This paper describes how critical realism was operationalized to provide an explanatory framework for a small-scale qualitative study in the field of teacher education in a sub-Saharan African context. Critical realism combines a realist ontology (there is something to find out about) with a relativistic epistemology (different people will come to…

The aim of this study is to empirically investigate the reasons for regional disparities in educational expansion in Germany (i.e., rising rates of general university entrance qualification) on the basis of theoretically relevant influencing factors: changes in school policies, changes in social structure, or general social modernization…

In this article, I offer a critical reading of the higher education field-imaginary and its orienting assumptions, inspired by decolonial and abolitionist critiques. These critiques identify the constitutive and ongoing violence that underwrites modern institutions of higher education and, thus, the higher education field itself. In so doing, they…

Since the mid-twentieth century, higher education has been subject to spectacular growth. While the expansion of higher education is undoubtedly a general trend, its actual characteristics in terms of its specific conditions and driving forces vary by context. In this article, our aim is to develop such a socio-political historical narrative of…

The article analyzes the latest steps taken by Russian authorities in reforming the system of education, and substantiates society's strongly felt need for the reforms to be liberated from bureaucratic dictatorship and secrecy. It demonstrates the close connection between the reform of education and the rapidly dropping quality of education,…

Calls for improvement of undergraduate science education have resulted in numerous initiatives that seek to improve student learning outcomes by promoting changes in faculty teaching practices. Although many of these initiatives focus on individual faculty, researchers consider the academic department to be a highly productive focus for creating…

In recent years, the concept of transformation has become more prevalent in the social work literature; however, its use is quite varied. In this article, I attempt to disentangle some of these uses. I then propose a conceptualization of transformation and discuss its relevance for social work education. In this conceptualization, transformation…

The youth-led revolutions that rocked the Arab world earlier this year have refocused attention on the region's 100 million-strong youth demographic and its critical role in the transformation of existing political, economic, and social structures in the Middle East and North Africa. Youth under the age of 25 represent an estimated and…

Although the American system of higher education has been concerned with developing its own unity as a social institution, this book demonstrates that the system has always remained sensitive to three societal factors. There are the changing needs of society; the struggles for control over the sources of culture, knowledge and power within…

Presents the conditions for promoting a nonviolent social order (participation, freedom, justice, distribution of wealth, and cultural life) and how changes in the method, structure and content of education can help to attain this nonviolent order. (PG)

In this dissertation, I study how Taiwanese vocational students as an oppressed group within the higher education system perceive, interpret, adapt or resist, and struggle to change the inequitable social structure. The theoretical framework in this research is constructed from Paulo Freire's ideas in "Pedagogy of the Oppressed,"…

This essay is an attempt to view American higher education as a social system with a discernible structure and characteristic ways of functioning. Chapters 1, 2, and 3 describe the system as a whole, its units, and the functioning of the system in comparison with other systems of higher education. Chapters 4 and 5 deal with undergraduate…

When the problems to be solved are structural problems of society, it is argued, blaming teachers is simply shifting the focus. Also discussed are potential effects of the Holmes Group proposals on who enrolls in teacher education, who is hired by school systems, and what is the science of education. (MT)

Reform of social and educational structures is essential to realize the full educational potential of telecommunications, which can be used to help that reform, to cement prsent inadequate structures in place, or to build a human civilization on a technological base. (AD)