Right-wing populists have recurrently created moral panics internationally about the supposed need to 'protect free speech' in higher education (HE), and 'protect children' from progressive speech in schools. This paper presents the first systematic analysis of how such dynamics function with respect to race and faith equality in a national school…

Social media has significantly transformed how political discussions and deliberations occur, mainly by providing a digital realm for the public sphere. This study aims to analyse the extent of polarised opinions across Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom regarding COVID-19 during 2020 within social media. To do this, we examined YouTube comments…

Institutional ethics review procedures aim -- in principle -- to minimise harm and evaluate risks, providing an important space to consider the safety of participants and researchers. However, literature has questioned the effectiveness of the process, particularly for reviewing 'risky' topics in a risk-averse environment. This article reports the…

The research brief, "Parliamentary Privilege", looks at the educational backgrounds of candidates in winnable seats. The study included candidates selected by mid-December 2014 who were replacing serving MPs for the same party or in target seats with a reasonable possibility of winning. More than half of the candidates attended Russell…

We have used a role-play exercise to help students understand the role of the whips in British parliamentary politics, a subject with which students often struggle. In itself, this proved a valuable learning and teaching tool, but we found it became even more useful when we incorporated a practitioner into the exercise. This overcame some of the…

Sarah Black wanted to remedy Year 9's lack of knowledge about nineteenth-century politics. With just five lessons to work with, she decided to devise a sequence on Gladstone and Disraeli, shaping the sequence with an enquiry question that invited argument about change and continuity. Black analyses the status and function of different layers of…

In education policy, as in many other policy fields, well-designed policy reforms may fail to get enacted because policymakers may suddenly become confronted with a public backlash against their reform agenda. Thus, understanding the dynamics of public opinion is important in order to be able to assess the chances of successful reform. There is a…

This article elaborates a model of social democratic and conservative discourses in relation to access, financing, management, and results of higher education. The model is contrasted with the position of the Conservative Party and the Labour Party in the United Kingdom from the late 1970s to 2010 as expressed in their electoral manifestos. The…

Little is known about the association between measured intelligence and how people participate in democratic processes. In the 1970 British Cohort Study, we examined the association between childhood intelligence and, at age 34: whether and how people voted in the 2001 UK general election; how they intended to vote; and whether they had taken part…

An analysis of voting behavior toward women candidates in the 1979 general election in Great Britain determined whether public opinion has shifted against an equal political role for women. A total of 104 Labour, Liberal, and Conservative female candidates were measured against a control group of the same number of male candidates. The research…

Provides a case study on the introduction of political education at Repton, an English public school, from 1916-1918. Discusses the origins, progress, major supporters and opponents, and eventual demise of political education at Repton. Concludes with a discussion on the relationship among political education, liberal idealism, and patriotic…

"Chronicle of Higher Education" presents an abundant source of news and information for college and university faculty members and administrators. This November 26, 2004 issue of "Chronicle for Higher Education" includes the following articles: (1) "A Question of Degrees" (Contreras, Alan); (2) "Democratize the…