After more than a decade of democratic citizenship education in public schools in South Africa, the Department of Basic Education (DoBE) has still not produced sufficiently plausible ways for how democracy and citizenship ought to be taught in classrooms. I argue that the recent "practical guide" on how to cultivate "responsibility…

This paper discusses the implementation of a university teaching module, based on Lucy Green's (2008) informal music learning model. The synergy between Green's model and Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy is addressed through explanation of the module and its practices. The module was offered six times, from 2011 to 2016, as an action research…

Humane education (HE) is a specialized niche in higher education and adult learning. HE provides a curricular framework positioning environmental ethics, animal protection, human rights, media literacy, culture, and change processes as the nexus for understanding and inspiring social change. Research-derived experiences illuminating how educators…

This article uses an auto-ethnographic approach to explore the reflections and insights that occurred during my teaching of a subject in adolescent development on the Thai Burma border. This paper adopts a relatively descriptive style to a personal reflection of teaching on the border and how it transformed the way I teach and made me look at the…

The objective of this work was to promote a closer relationship between students who never had contact with a scientist. Two simple questions were selected to be answered experimentally in the school laboratories: How important are the pigments in plants? Which molecules make up the food? Two Scientists from UFRJ, who research in these areas,…

This article examines the importance of doubt in Western philosophy, with particular attention to the work of Søren Kierkegaard and Miguel de Unamuno. Kierkegaard's pseudonymous author Johannes Climacus ventures down the pathway of doubt, finds it perplexing and difficult and discovers that he is unable to return to his pre-doubting self. In…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of coherent alignment of current theory from cognitive psychology with practice and policy in training and education institutions developing e-learning materials and present recommendations emphasising the human factor within processes. Design/methodology/approach: In this paper a…

Discussion of the relationship between higher education (HE) and public good can be traced to Kant's argument that universities critically held society to account. Mill, Newman and Arnold suggested knowledge itself was a public good. In the twentieth century, economists argued education could drive national technological progress. More recently…

The problem of unsafe schools, in the sense of schools being afflicted by incidences of violence, crime, and general anti-social behaviour, is a worldwide problem. Not surprisingly, the literature on the subject tends to centre on two issues: understanding the problem, and avoiding or combating the problem. This paper focuses on the second by…

Paulo Freire consistently upheld humanization and mutuality as educational ideals. This article argues that conceptualizations of knowledge and how knowledge is sought and produced play a role in fostering humanization and mutuality in educational contexts. Drawing on Mary Shelley's novel "Frankenstein," this article focuses on the…

What are the conditions required for becoming better human beings? What are our limitations and possibilities? I understand "becoming better" as a combined improvement process bringing persons "up from" a negative condition and "up to" a positive one. Today there is a tendency to understand improvement in a one-sided way as a movement up to the…

Seeking to deepen current scholarly engagement with vocational exploration in both theory and practice, "At This Time and In This Place" champions the themes of calling and vocation as key elements of effective undergraduate education. Growing out of a year-long seminar sponsored by the Council of Independent Colleges and its Network for…

This study seeks to challenge the uni-dimensional way care in school is written about by highlighting an often overlooked aspect of care--the kind that students do for each other. Data is drawn from focus groups conducted with the youth participants and founder of Umoja Network for Young Men (UMOJA), an all-male, school-based mentoring program for…

In this study, we examine how the standardizing effects of federal and state education policies in the United States reflect particular ways of understanding the structure and function of education and schooling. This understanding impacts how policies affect schools and those who work and depend upon them. We argue that the disparity between how…

This on-going ethnographic study examines how a counter-space, La Libertad, introduces Latin@ students to a liberating pedagogy of praxis which counters dehumanization they experience in their high school. This study used Paulo Freire's dehumanization concept as a guide to reveal how Latin@ youth encounter oppression, injustice, and exploitation…