How children participate in democracy has shifted toward more communicative, networked, and creative models than before. In political science and political theory, however, surprisingly little is understood about what if anything children can contribute to democracy and how they would do so. Traditionally, children have been considered as mere…

Democracy and capitalism are two of the most consequential institutional systems in the world. However, their dynamic complexity, current turmoil, and evolution make them challenging to study. High-engagement teaching can bring the subjects alive, motivate student exploration, inform choices, animate sensible policy recommendations, and make a…

Recent calls by legislators to exclude "divisive concepts" and histories from our curricula pose a challenge to the development of students' epistemic responsibility and agency in classrooms. In this paper, Martha Perez-Mugg examines the classroom as a space for the development of epistemic responsibility, ultimately suggesting that…

This paper explores the implementation and evaluation of Imagination Agents, a mixed-methods case study, with young people aged 12-13, funded by a Royal Society of Arts Catalyst Award. The project was grounded in a flexible theory that imagination enables the necessary originality for creativity, enabling learners to construct personal…

In the context of calls to decolonise education in European contexts, this paper draws on coloniality-based critiques of Eurocentric modernity to take up the links between democracy, slavery, and colonialism in education. Starting from the position that modernity requires epistemological support to sustain racism and white supremacy in European…

After the Second World War, the Italian educational context in Italy was distinguished by a network of different democratic and antiauthoritarian pedagogical ideas and educational experiences, developed as heterogeneous forms of New Education. The "Movimento di Cooperazione Educativa" (MCE), inspired by Freinet's popular pedagogy and…

Just over a decade on from a spike of interest in Jacques Rancière's writing within educational philosophy and theory, I revisit his interventions on democracy and education to make the case for (re)engaging with Rancière's writing "now" to address important questions about contemporary education policy, the role of schools in democratic…

This article outlines a series of lessons the author led to help students understand gerrymandering, which is the practice of drawing district boundaries to favor a particular group or party and which undermines the fairness of a representative democracy. These lessons were developed to capture student interest and engagement by linking…

This paper presents how language-in-use, and its political features, shapes our world(s) and the potential or limitations of our agency in it. It proposes that, with the democratic relational practices of Action Learning, we can, together, enhance social justice and wellbeing for all.

This essay places David Graeber's consistent focus on imagination and possibilities into conversation with social studies education. In a sociopolitical climate characterized by neoliberalism, militarized borders, and political censorship of social studies teaching and learning in P-12 schools, it is crucial that social studies teachers and…

This paper considers 'democracy' with reference to education in the (neo)colonial context of Aotearoa (New Zealand). It discusses impacts of the western project of colonisation, arguing for the need to counter damaging hegemonic discourses such as white supremacy and racism that have underpinned and fuelled its operation. It identifies…

The Bolivian Marxist René Zavaleta (1937-1984) is considered Bolivia's most notable political thinker of the 20th century, an eminent figure in Latin American Marxism, since he produced critical thought anchored in the concrete history of our societies, and developed a set of theoretical and conceptual approaches relevant to understanding the…

This study analyses how "active democratic participation" is conceptualised by sixteen teacher educators from eight institutions of higher education across four Nordic countries and how these conceptualisations are translated into their own teaching. Teacher educators' strong adherence to a liberal discourse on democratic education may…

In the context of the rise of right-wing populism, new debates on democratic education have emerged which focus on the role of affect. The paper puts forth a postfoundational perspective on affects and emotion, proposing an analysis of how democratic education practices mobilize certain feelings. In the empirical analysis of argumentation…

This article explores how Third Way policies have weakened class consciousness in education and how a Marxist model of education offers a powerful alternative to this weakening. By blending neoliberal approaches with social democracy, the Third Way promotes individualistic and market-oriented reforms in education, which have been found to deepen…