This article considers the politics of adoption of a testing regime in South Africa. While the broad features of this regime are similar to those in developed countries, there are features specific to the South African context. These emerge from a combination of external and internal pressures. External pressures derive from international testing…

The price tag to win a seat in this week's primary election for the Los Angeles school board climbed to unprecedented levels, as a massive influx of outside cash has turned a local campaign into a national showdown pitting the long-standing influence of teachers' unions against the expanding imprint of deep-pocketed education activists. The high…

The purpose of the university should be grounded in the concept of citizenship rather than the promise of increased future earnings and research consultancy work. However, this conception of citizenship should be republican rather than liberal. British higher education institutions have suffered at the hands of mechanisms intended to promote…

The election of Barack Obama appeared to signal a shift in U.S. policy toward the Left, particularly since Obama has been framed as a "socialist," but the education discourse and policy pursued under Obama and voiced by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has shown that education reform remains in the midst of a powerful corporate model. This essay…

By nearly all accounts, the staff and students at Sandy Hook Elementary School did everything right on Dec. 14--and with the security measures they took before that day--when a young man armed with powerful weapons blasted his way into the school. But the deadliest K-12 school shooting in American history, a day that President Barack Obama has…

Sweden has commonly been regarded as a striking example of a social democratic welfare-state regime (Esping-Andersen 1996), characterized by strong state governance and active involvement in welfare matters. In the last two decades, however, the Swedish public sector and education system have been radically and extensively transformed in a…

Karl Popper's falsificationist epistemology that all knowledge advances through a process of conjectures and refutations carries profound implications for politics and education. In this article, I first argue that, on a political level, it is necessary to establish and maintain an open society by fostering not only five core values, viz. freedom,…

Toxic Release Inventory facilities are among the many environmental hazards shown to create environmental inequities in the United States. This project examined four factors associated with Toxic Release Inventory, specifically, manufacturing facility location at multiple spatial scales using spatial analysis techniques (i.e., O-ring statistic and…

This paper investigates the interference of local politics with a peace education initiative in Greek-Cypriot education and the consequent impact on teachers' perceptions and responses. Focusing on a recent educational attempt to promote "peaceful coexistence", the authors explain how this attempt was seen by many teachers as being a…

Preparing teacher candidates for their roles in 21st century schools calls for direct experiences with inquisitive, linguistically diverse, and often technologically savvy students across global and economic contexts. This article presents the lessons learned from a practicum experience during a semester abroad in Italy, where faculty, teacher…

The issue of language, specifically access to English, has emerged as a key concern for both U.S. policy-makers and immigrant communities alike. Many of these debates are framed by neoliberal and human capital perspectives, which view English as a set of skills and linguistic capital that are inextricably tied to employment opportunities and…

This case study outlines the struggle for desegregation and the adoption of culturally responsive curricula in the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) as it attempted to balance state politics and federal court oversight. The case offers a detailed illustration of the political and legal events that led up to the adoption, elimination, and…

The past five years have seen significant changes to the structures and content of routes to Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) in this country, and to the balance of contributions to these routes between schools and higher education (HE). Such developments do not always address emerging knowledge about the needs of beginner teachers; further, changes…

Transnational education (TNE) is becoming a phenomenon in the world of education in many countries. Morocco is included. The flourishing and spreading of many foreign educational institutions, products, and activities is becoming noticeable. As an Islamic nation, Morocco has long maintained its business and educational ties with different foreign…

This paper theorises the field of symbolic control and reflects on the critical literature of policy studies, exploring the possibilities that the former might offer to the analysis of global policy discourses and their up-take in specific national and local contexts. Starting from the rapidly expanding literature on the "globalising"…