A growing number of climate activists and scholars argue that an effective climate movement needs the involvement of the trade union movement, to be able to push forward the radical social transformations required to address the global climate crisis. If workers are to be able to play this kind of role in a global climate movement, a sustained and…

This article offers a comprehensive thematic literature review on labour education, exploring the major contributions as well as some of the limits of this scholarship and future directions for researchers. Based on an analysis of 180 English-language publications from the 1960s until today, we find several general trends that we analyse as four…

This article argues for the importance of labor education in fighting the climate crisis, a vital form of education too often overlooked in the climate movement. Drawing on a case study of unionized culture workers in the United Kingdom, the article seeks to show the distinctive embedded nature of labor education. Success of labor education on the…

Social movement organisations and unions can be spaces of transformative learning in which organisers research, debate, create, and put into action frameworks for social change. In this article, I engage with themes from Aziz Choudry's writings to explore learning and knowledge-making within and through the United Caucuses of Rank-and-File…

The article focuses upon analysis of educational experiences of an international group of labor movement activists over a ten-year period. A key rationale for the research activity is to help rescue and revitalize the tradition of radical popular education and activist knowledge grounded in organized worker movements.

This study examines the role of critical professional learning in leading socially just schools. The study investigated the experiences of teachers who are the members of Egitim-Sen, an active teacher union in Turkey. The article first focuses on the relationship between professional development and teacher unions followed by the definition of the…

State policies regarding workers' education and the education and training of adults and communities have been hugely influenced by the political and ideological perspectives and approaches that have informed such policies from the onset of the post-apartheid period. These approaches have had pervasively negative effects on especially workers'…

This paper draws on data collected as part of the larger study of professional learning (PL) in Canada. The article specifically explores the work of teachers' organizations (also known as teacher unions) in leading and supporting high-quality learning experiences for their members. Adopting a progressive view of teacher organizations, the paper…

In South Africa, with few exceptions, scholarship on the modern labour movement which emerged after the Durban strikes of 1973 tends to focus on trade unions that constituted the labour movement, strikes, collective bargaining, and workplace changes. While all these topics covered by labour scholars are of great importance, there is less emphasis…

In this article, I argue that a concentrated focus on everyday informal learning about unions is critical not only to re-thinking union education programs, but to the overall project of union renewal. The article offers, by way of example, an inquiry into the grievance system as a routine (and central) union practice and a key site of informal…

For almost two decades, the Prairie School for Union Women (PSUW) has operated in Saskatchewan, Canada. Its use of feminist popular education, adult learning principles in facilitation, and mentoring and support for activist practices make it unique from other labour schools in many respects. This paper focuses on a community-based participatory…

This article explores the efficacy and cost effectiveness of New Labour's skills-based policies to help low paid workers adjust to the pressures generated by globalisation, of which the leading example was Train to Gain (T2G). It also analyses the more general issue of how, why and under what circumstances education, training and skills can help…

For the past decade, I have been observing, researching and reporting on a group of Scottish further education lecturers and schoolteachers, who, through their trade union activities, have had a significant impact on their colleagues' engagement with post-compulsory education and professional development. They are members of the Educational…

In this paper, I look into the papers of Fannia Cohn, an immigrant labour organizer, who served the Education Department of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) between 1918 and 1962 and became one of its few women vice-presidents. As an internationally recognized figure in the history of workers' education, Cohn left a rich…

Purpose: This paper aims to report on the author's recent research examining the meaning and practices of educating for solidarity, specifically from anti-racism and decolonizing perspective. The research is part of the critical exploration on new educational approaches on solidarity building among workers and trade union members in the broader…