Many educational researchers discuss policy implications of their work and aspire to have an impact on policy. However, shaping policy requires academics to step away from the "comfort zone" of critique in the academy and into the world of politics, where they must act in unfamiliar ways and understand their role and positioning as…

Creativity is a set of skills, a form of thinking, and a way of meeting and excelling in the demands of the 21st century. This article explores creative gaps and inadequacies that hinder the development of teacher and student creativity in classrooms. Drawing from various disciplines, this article explores the challenges schools face in nurturing…

This paper draws upon Foucault's problematisation of "governmentality" analysis to explore teacher interviews from Australian secondary schools, where student voice was 'enacted' within a teacher assessment reform strategy. By bringing teacher voices into relation with theory, it illustrates how the current 'sociality of performativity'…

This paper takes a 'networking of theories' approach to understand the complexity of the phenomenon of agency. We examine an episode, where a kindergarten teacher and nine children work on an addition problem, from three different perspectives: Valsiner's zone theory; Radford's theory of objectification; and Pickering's dance of agency. Our…

This article presents the case for a progressive education that embraces notions of democratic values in the classroom, and an education for democratic citizenship. Informed by John Dewey's and Martin Buber's philosophies of education, and Homi Bhabha's concept of 'third space' work, the article examines the problematic and contested issues of…

This article offers a framework for more equitable classroom reading assessment known as a Critical Assessment Practices (CAPS) approach. CAPS includes a set of four principles that teachers can use to partner with, and to empower, students to support more equitable and informative classroom-based reading assessment. Teachers can apply the CAPS…

Within middle schooling philosophy student voice is identified as a way to engage young adolescent students with learning and feelings of belonging at school. Teachers are encouraged to co-construct responsive pedagogy and curriculum with their students. However, locating student voice in classrooms, governed as these are by entrenched student and…

The study of human rights education has emerged in recent years, but few studies have addressed students' learning processes regarding children's human rights education (CHRE). This paper conceptualises the interrelated features of these processes in school, subsumed under three conceptual levels of analysis. The first highlights the individual…

In this article, we engage in a discussion about how we came to Torres' Rights of the Learner (RotL) and how these ideas can transform the way we teach mathematics and the ways our students learn mathematics. This article serves to introduce teachers and teacher educators to the RotL and to remind ourselves that before one can rehumanize our…

In response to school environments in which teachers and students feel disconnected from the learning process, we developed a three-part curriculum feedback system with the goal of creating a school-wide culture of engagement through participatory feedback processes. Here we describe the barriers to participation and ownership that are addressed…

This paper explores the use of Lesson Study in primary schools in England as a powerful tool for developing teachers' pedagogical knowledge, and for shaping teaching practices that encourage children's engagement. Through Lesson Study, a critical space for dialogic engagement is generated, wherein children contribute to, and shape, teaching and…

As strategies for co-creation in teaching and learning, the democratic classroom and students-as-partners pedagogies seek to empower students by equally distributing the responsibilities of decision-making across the students and instructors in a class. In this essay, we describe and analyze how students in a second-year interdisciplinary seminar…

Marketisation is rife in higher education. Asymmetries between consumers and producers in markets result in inefficiencies. To address imbalances, policy-makers pushing higher education towards a market model have a tendency to increase the market power of the student by increasing information or amplifying voice. One such policy in England is…

This article offers a theoretically based solution to faculty hesitation to engage in difficult dialogs on a campus in crisis. Using the constructs of Ratcliffe's language of rhetorical listening through the lens of Freire's interactive educational framework from the stance of second-wave whiteness studies, this paper argues that instructors can…

25 years ago, "TESOL in Context" published a paper on the ethics of TESOL. In this paper, Alan Williams, who was the ACTA Councillor and Policy Committee Convenor at that time, reminded the professional community of some moral predicaments in teaching English to others. On the one hand, he recognised the "productive and socially…