This paper addresses the question "what is school?," and argues that the answer to this question has an essential political dimension. I focus on two very different attempts to characterize school--Ivan Illich's "Deschooling Society" and Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons's "In Defence of the School"--and demonstrate…

This article uses a well-received recent text--Hess and McAvoy's "The Political Classroom"--to suggest that democratic citizenship education today has a social accountability problem. I locate this discussion in the context of a longstanding conflict between the critical thinking approach to democratic citizenship education, the approach…

During period 1975 through to 1987 the Commonwealth ventured into curriculum development, hitherto an activity for states and territories. Unlike the ACARA Curriculum of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments, there was nothing mandatory about the CDC's curriculum development activities. Here, the dominant influence was coordinative federalism. This…

The American university is in transition, witnessing major changes to its institutional structures and processes. While the 1960s and 1970s were decades of progressive democratization in American higher education, today's university is more aligned with the economic theory of neoliberalism. Existing at the intersection of two dominant but…

With regard to improving higher education feedback practices, there is an increasing interest in using the efficacy of dialogue rather than the more traditional unidirectional approaches. We build on this impetus by considering how the ethics of care can be used to analyse the dialogical aspects of feedback. By diffractively reading insights of…

In my attempt to adhere to the request that I provide an interpretation of the theme for the session, "Critical Engagement, Innovation and Inclusivity", and cognisant of the primary audience, I weave student leadership responsibilities, challenges and possibilities into the address. Events since the plenary address have however…

As 2015 came to an end, education funders in Texas were reflecting not only on the results of their grantmaking over the past year but also on what the state legislature had (and had not) accomplished during its most recent session. Thirty-four Texas funders felt a particular sense of satisfaction because they had helped shape some of the new…

Means-ends decoupling implies that national policies and practices are disconnected from the state's core goal of creating public welfare. Employing sociological institutionalism, this article aims to explore how means-ends decoupling at the state level affects Ukrainian students' choice of university and study programme using semi-structured…

This paper explains the emergence of an MA in Culture and Creative Enterprise at a Scottish University by locating it within a policy context characterised by the attempt of the Scottish Government to establish 'temporal sovereignty' through 'fast policy'. The argument of the paper is that the MA is an outcome of the Scottish Government's attempt…

In this dissertation, I undertake a sequential analysis of an elaborate system of forces that contribute to the production of history textbooks in Pakistan. I review longitudinal series of data on education policies and history textbooks from 1938-2012, and examine the decision-making processes, which inform said policies and textbooks, at the…

"Liberal Education" spoke with two higher education policy experts on what they expect and hope for from the Biden administration. Viviann Anguiano is an associate director for postsecondary education at the Center for American Progress. Eric R. Felix is an assistant professor at San Diego State University, specializing in higher…

Chilean author Antonio Skármeta's picture book "The Composition" (2000), illustrated by Alfonso Ruano, focuses on the political involvement of 9-year-old Pedro. This essay brings together Maria Nikolajeva's concept of aetonormativity and Elisabeth Young-Bruehl's concept of childism to examine how "The…

This article examines how politics has shaped Hong Kong's education system and the curriculum 23 years after the British handover of Hong Kong to China. Particularly, through the concept of nationalism, the article examines how the education system is being shaped. The article is intended to provide international readers with a perspective of the…

Purpose: With the rise of the Latinx student population in the United States and the urgency to meet the needs of this diverse community, there has been an increased concern and interest in preparing more Latinx educators and school leaders. This study contributes to this knowledge base by centering the voices and experiences of four Latina school…

Reformers in developing countries increasingly seek to raise education quality. Yet we know little about the politics of improving education. One significant and instructive case of reforms designed to boost education quality comes from Chile, where in 2016 the government enacted a sweeping reform of teaching careers. This paper first uses a…