The reformed Finnish vocational education and training (VET) system is a competence-based, customer-oriented educational programme with two overarching aims: to develop a skilled labour force and to promote social inclusion. Support and guidance have become increasingly important in Finnish VET in recent decades. This study focuses on how…

The European Union (EU) plays a dominant role in coordinating the responses to the massive inflow of refugee-migrants into Europe; consequently, the conceptions of citizenship and future integration which are embedded in its policies are significant. We explore and analyse the key EU education policy documents that refer to immigrants to identify…

Kazakhstan's decision to transition its Kazakh language from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet has serious implications for language policy, communication, education, inclusion, and social cohesion. This critical qualitative study, underpinned by a discourse-historical approach, employs critical discourse analysis to analyze statements of…

Research to date has criticised the policy on education that evolved under a federal Labor government during the period 2007-2013. These analyses suggest that a global neoliberal agenda dominates, with the effect of constructing limited and damaging concepts of equity and social justice. The research presented here offers an alternative…

This essay investigates the challenges involved with enacting bell hook's vision of education as the "practice of freedom" in the midst of the current growth of societal inequality for immigrants. Based on their scholarly analysis of the current political and educational setting, and on their experiences, the authors organized the essay…

This article examines social practices within classroom discourse in two different Finnish religious educational contexts. The article critically observes the construction of certain positions and identities as part of the school discourse and the inclusive vs exclusive practices of language. The research material consists of classroom…

This article draws on data from an ethnographic study that begins with the experiences of educational professionals doing the "work" of educationally supporting students with long-term health conditions in a paediatric health-care setting in Victoria, Australia. The study was conducted over the same period of time but separately from the…

Whilst in government, New Labour defined social exclusion as a state of "disadvantage" resulting from individual psychology: namely, low aspirations, a lack of self-confidence or moral deviancy. Engagement in lifelong learning was considered a means of promoting social inclusion and of overcoming such disadvantage. This policy review…

Moroccan Immigrant Children in a Time of Surveillance: Navigating Sameness and Rooted in twenty months of ethnographic fieldwork in Southwestern Spain, this dissertation analyzes the socio-cultural and linguistic lifeworlds of 8-11 year-old Moroccan immigrant children as they navigate family, school institutions, and peer groups in Spain. To…