New Zealand National Party's 2022-2023 policy of Social Investment, which if adopted, will legitimise the management of young unemployed in the name of correcting and helping them. Zygmunt Bauman's (1989) concept of 'rational bureaucratic culture' is used to examine the aims to bring the 'abnormal' citizen into the tax-paying fold. The policy will…

We present a review of higher education and education policy literature to understand better higher education institutions (HEIs) that serve sub-Saharan women in engineering. Our sub-Saharan women in engineering (SSAWE) literature-informed conceptual tool consists of five components to facilitate scholarly discussion about equity in higher…

Critical Race Theory (CRT) has recently been positioned as a serious problem requiring urgent policy response among partisan media outlets. Making a case for pressing policy demands, several policy makers have proposed federal, state, and local level legislation and other measures to restrict how race, racism, or American history in general can be…

One of the many facets of educational leadership is the emotional aspects of educational leadership itself. Leaders are regularly immersed in emotionally charged broad-based policy debates and political subjects like protests and voting policies. These are policy subjects that politically occur not only in schools where educational leaders…

In this article, we read together the work of two philosophers, Alain Badiou and Giorgio Agamben, as profound educational thinkers. This means that their philosophical approaches help us to articulate what is at stake in education today. As a starting point for this discussion we take their work on Saint Paul. This is because, throughout his…

This article explores the values that bridge democracy and community dance. Policymakers show an interest in promoting democracy, including the very values shared between community dance and democracy. Observing this, we propose that policy may benefit from examining the pedagogy and practices of community dance, and incorporate relevant aspects…

The Anthropocene is a site of domination and resistance for those opposed to the corporatised food regime. The peasant farmers' movement, La Vía Campesina, uses pedagogical techniques based on Freirian horizontal communication methodology to contest the structural and ideological elements of this regime. This article analyses these techniques,…

An exploration is presented of how education policy and practice may be used to transform society. Specifically, connections are made between Paulo Freire's teaching strategies and radically democratic organizing. The connections are contextualized within the prefigurative tradition, which explores how the democratic process is central to…

While most educational literature on space has tended to ask what spatial studies can offer education, this article works primarily to "educationalize" theories of space. It does so by homing in on Henri Lefebvre's theorization of the production of space as a potentially revolutionary activity. After spending some time situating…

Henri Lefebvre (1901-91), philosopher and sociologist, is, together with Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin and Ernst Bloch, one of the most relevant representatives of the first generation in Western Marxism. His engagement with Marxism led him to analyse everyday life in post-war France in order to decipher the possibilities of,…

Group dynamics in the classroom are a fundamental aspect of learning which, it is argued here, has not received sufficient academic interest. Increasingly, however, research on critical and alternative pedagogy is concerned with exploring the benefits of collaborative learning. This paper recalls the insights of two streams of French institutional…

This article examines the so-called new school reform movement led by a host of right-wing ideologues, billionaires, and foundations. It argues that instead of being reformers, the latter are part of a counter-revolution in American education to dismantle public schools not because they are failing but because they are public and make a claim,…

When citizens participate in policy production, the advantages go beyond policy outcomes--though the presumption is that participation leads to better public policy. Robust democracy characterized by agonistic exchanges among policy actors ought to encourage learning, dialogue, empow­erment, equity, and a shared spirit of inquiry. This article…

Current Norwegian curricular guidelines oblige schools to educate citizens with a critical perspective on society. From a discourse theoretical perspective, this obligation implies that various school subjects, and in particular social studies, offer discourses on social issues that allow for different points of view and critical evaluation.…

This article presents, through a critical analysis, a reflection on a noticeable change that focuses on some aspects related to the assessment of different parts of the educational system. In particular, it concentrates on the assessment of teaching institutions which has been considered by authorities that are distant from the school life and…