Using data from a case-study school as a springboard, this article explores how enactments of democratic education might both problematise and illuminate new possibilities for the way we conceptualise social justice in education. Nancy Fraser's tripartite framework of social justice is used to analyse in-depth interviews with students aged 14-16…

This paper has as its focus the life and thinking of the educational theorist and schoolmaster J. H. Simpson (1883-1959), who was not only a reforming teacher at Rugby School but was also the first headmaster of the progressive Rendcomb College. His ideas around education were outlined in a number of books. At the heart of his thinking lay…

This article addresses the life and educational thinking of Victor Lytton, second Earl of Lytton, who not only involved himself in a wide number of social causes but was instrumental in contributing to the development of progressive education in the early decades of the twentieth century. This he did through his work with the New Ideals in…

The New Education movement was a remarkable coalition of national reform movements that emerged at the turn of the twentieth century. As a heterogeneous movement that was united only in its opposition to the schooling system at the time, its structure and boundaries in the UK have remained a matter of academic debate. This article implements the…

One strand of historical research in education that sails on the waves of the visual turn in history concerns the progressive image of education. A major reference point is an article written in 2007 by Burke and Grosvenor, who, on the basis of the photographic archives of two progressive schools in England, constructed a visual typology of…

Enhancing learner agency in urban schools is seen as increasingly important in educational policy for narrowing existing attainment gaps. However, notions of learner agency are contested and require conceptual clarity. To help generate such clarity a conceptual synthesis of the field was undertaken that resulted in a mapping framework around three…

This article explores the wider critical and creative powers of education to bring about a society where no one person is valued more than another and where each person is celebrated for their differences -- this the author calls the 'society of equals'. It is argued that discourses of equality are not only co-extensive with democracy; they are…

This article reviews the adult literacy campaign in the 1970s in the United Kingdom (UK) and the influence of Paulo Freire's thinking on how we worked. We argue that much adult literacy provision had been designed to 'domesticate' rather than 'liberate'. The mid-1970s 'Right to Read' campaign in the UK rejected this approach (BAS, 1974). The use…

As neo-Aristotelian character education approaches have become more popular, the list of objections has increased too. This paper focuses on the objection that while character education proponents claim to be 'progressive' and 'reformative' they seem to maintain the educational status quo. This paper examines what happens to neo-Aristotelian…

This paper examines the positioning of the Welsh education system within contemporary policy debate and analysis. It begins by outlining some of the ways in which education policy and provision in Wales differs from that of its neighbour, England, and then goes on to critique how these differences have been represented in both the media and by…

The narrowing of the school curriculum in the USA, the UK and Australia to support subjects of perceived economic importance has seen a renewed interest in the educational philosophy of John Dewey (1859-1952), (Elliott, 2012; Englund; 2016, Woodford, 2012). An ever-increasing number of secondary school students, especially in the USA, are now…

Focusing on British graduates from Gipsy Hill Training College (GHTC) in London, this article illustrates transnational history's concerns with the reciprocal flows of people and ideas within and beyond the British Empire. GHTC's progressive curriculum and culture positioned women teachers as agents of change, and the article highlights the lives…

Whereas the previous government, regarding education primarily as a means to an end, showed little interest in questions of curriculum content, Gove's counter-revolution involves the enforcement of a deeply authoritarian politics of knowledge. An adequate response to such cultural and curricular conservatism needs to expose the falsity of Gove's…

The global rise of 'neo-populism', culminating in the election of the populist Republican candidate Donald Trump to the US presidency, has been accompanied by a notable backlash and resistance to what has been categorised as governing/dominating 'elites', including HE academic institutions. Populist critiques centre on a perceived climate of…

"Structures of Participation" concerns a recent media arts project, the University of Local Knowledge (ULK). ULK is simultaneously a critique of established academic institutions and disciplines and a system for self-organized learning among the residents of Knowle West, an area of south Bristol (UK). Beginning in 2009, the Knowle West…