Educators are central to the implementation of Britain's Prevent Strategy, through the 'Prevent duty'. This mandatory reporting responsibility, shared with professional practitioners in health and welfare, requires educators to spot and refer individual students potentially 'vulnerable to' or 'at risk' of radicalisation. The Prevent duty…

The issue of violent extremism has given rise to new policy debates in Norway. A key limitation of these debates, often grounded in naïve assumptions about the peacebuilding effect of education, is the downplay of emotions and dissent in democratic engagement. This article analyses how selected educators in Norway describe encountering and…

This paper analyses the emotional governance of responses to terrorist attacks and examines the extent to which affective pedagogies in civic education may contest the emotional norms that are institutionalised in society. This analysis is important, not only because it makes visible how forms of violence (especially terrorism) have an emotional…

Currently, threats to societal security from extremist groups are high on the political agenda in many countries. Politicians, policymakers at various levels and communities are searching for methods to counteract recruitment to violent organizations. These efforts are often referred to as Prevention of Violent Extremism (PVE-programmes). One of…

The UK Government's PREVENT strategy to counter radicalisation and extremism has been the subject of criticism. Concerns arise over clarity of purpose, clarity of terminology used and potential human rights impacts. Where the policy engages with schools, one human right potentially engaged is the right of parents to transfer their religious…

School responses to the Prevent agenda have tended to focus primarily on 'safeguarding' approaches, which essentially perceive some young people as being 'at risk' and potentially as presenting a risk to others. In this article, we consider evidence from secondary school students who experienced a curriculum project on terrorism, extremism and…

This article explores the positioning of a sample of Arabic complementary language schools in the context of the UK government's discourse and promotion of so-called Fundamental British Values. While there is considerable social and political debate about radicalisation in Arab communities, teachers in the sample are deeply committed to a form of…

This article examines the growing relationship between security and education, particularly in the light of the UK government's Prevent Duty that seeks to tackle radicalisation in a variety of milieus, including universities. However, rather than seeing this process as being merely one-way, through a so-called securitisation of education (in the…

Global citizenship education (GCE) within schools in England is increasingly being reoriented to address a statutory duty to promote fundamental British values (FBV). This multi-method study investigates the influence of critical GCE within initial teacher education in reshaping awareness, understanding and disposition towards FBV amongst…

This paper outlines some of the implications of counterterrorist legislation, including Prevent, for the pedagogical relationship and for educational institutions. The concept of "radicalisation", central to the Prevent Strategy, is one that is contested in the field of counterterrorism, yet educators are now expected to identify and…

The British Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 appears to have drawn universities into the security apparatus of the state. Academics and administrators have been compelled to comply with measures aimed at monitoring the activities of mostly Islamic student societies. While it is not inconceivable that universities are exploited as sites for…

Students of homeland security need to grasp a diverse body of knowledge and have a keen understanding of the variety of events and issues that impact how they can apply that knowledge. The goal of higher education should not just be about imparting knowledge but also about giving students tools and skill sets to "think interestingly" to…

This article analyses how education is positioned in the current concerns about security and extremism. This means firstly examining the different meanings of security (national, human and societal) and who provides security for whom. Initially, a central dilemma is acknowledged: that schooling appears to be simultaneously irrelevant to the huge…

This study questions whether the perspectives of security and intelligence serve educators well enough in the early stages of radicalisation. Assigned to signal deviant behaviour, educators are unwittingly drawn into a villain-victim imagery of their students. This imagery seems to impede a genuine educational outlook on radicalisation. Key…