This article re-visits contestation and critique over the nationwide introduction of comprehensive secondary schools in post-war England. In so doing, it considers the contribution of scholar-activist Caroline Benn (1926--2000) and a network of progressive educators who were challenging ideas about fixed ability or potential and aspiring to build…

Debates over curricula can be understood as struggles over the power to define symbolic representations of the world. Although this tension is particularly visible in discourse around textbook adoption, this is not the only site of contestation; other aspects of the classroom environment, such as the posters on the walls, also contain implicit…

In this article, the author highlights how systemic forces both fuel assaults on scholar-activists in the present day "and" how oppressive systems can lead to scholars responding in ways that (sub)consciously amplify and spread this systemic violence. In doing so, he demonstrates how an increased understanding of these processes might…

Along with its unprecedented economic rise over the past several decades, debates about China's soft power push have become heated. Yet, consensus on what exactly constitutes China's soft power has not been reached. Findings of how resources of Chinese soft power play their roles in the national strategy for global rise are conflicting and lacking…

Few studies have examined the growing trend of teacher-legislators, specifically teachers' trajectory to elected office. Drawing on qualitative data and raced-gendered frameworks, this article examines how three female teachers of color in one Southwest state leveraged their teaching experiences to shape their policy priorities and how they…

In this article, I position federal policy as a shaper of familial life capable of capacitating new forms of relationality. I review three key child and family provisions in the "Build Back Better" social policy package proposed by the Biden administration: the expanded child tax credit, universal pre-K, and the expansion of federal…

In this paper, we draw upon in-depth interviews with teachers and administrators in 18 unionized charter schools around the country to investigate teachers' motivations for unionization. Our results suggest that while mismanagement and distrust are often the proximate cause of charter unionization efforts, both material and purposive…

The trend toward continuous expansion of U.S. post-secondary enrollments was reversed in the 2010s. Using pooled state-level data in between-within models, we examine public higher education enrollment trends during the 2009-2019 period. We emphasize variation in the net associations of covariates by tiers. State economic conditions showed…

The Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) has instigated domestic policy debate aimed at improving education systems' quality and efficiency. Its high performers are often described as knowledge-based legitimation tools that have become reference societies. This article analyses if and the extent to which PISA affects the choice of…

Activists fed up with school closures, masking policies, and curricular choices interrupted school-board meetings around the nation. The parental protests, together with school responses to the COVID pandemic, acquired a partisan edge. Republican and Democratic governors regularly disagreed about the necessity of mask wearing, social distancing,…

United States public schools post-Coronavirus Disease 2019 are experiencing a crisis as teachers leave the profession in record numbers, and enrollments in teacher preparation programs across the country continue to decline (Pelika, 2022). Simultaneously, Latinx students' populations continue to grow while Latinx educators struggle to stay in the…

School boards remain one of the most powerful forces in American education, helping to set curricula, evaluate teachers, and direct hundreds of billions of dollars in education funding. Yet teachers' unions play an outsized role in determining who serves on these boards. If the interests of teachers are perfectly aligned with those of students,…

Recognizing that the American right, and specifically the Christian right, has achieved disproportionate power over shaping the landscape of education policy and political culture, the following engages in a twofold analysis of schooling in the United States. We consider the structural transformations that are being enacted as a result of the…

Adoption of Maker programs entails deep cultural and structural changes within schools. In this case study, we interviewed a principal and seven faculty members in a high school in the United States, after the first year of implementing making-centered curricula. We report how faculty members responded to the reform, their motivations and beliefs,…

In "Discredited," education scholars Lauren Schudde and Huriya Jabbar illuminate the successes and failures of the systems that support student transfer among postsecondary institutions. Summarizing the key challenges of various transfer pathways, Schudde and Jabbar show how the current decentralized, bureaucracy-ridden, and often…