Political scientists have long studied the use of direct democratic ballot initiatives--proposed directly by citizens and put before a statewide vote--as currently allowed in 24 U.S. states. Despite the application of ballot initiatives to legislate education policy, however, education scholars have not yet adequately investigated this phenomenon…

The purpose of this article is to examine the problem of possible but unintended collusion between business schools and their Master of Business Administration (MBA) students, specifically as it relates to the recent need to promote ethical behaviour in business practice in a global context. The focal point of the article is on the relationship…

This article is a contribution to a special issue of "Teaching Public Administration," which offers teachers with many years' experience the opportunity to reflect on changes over time. The context for this paper is teaching public administration in Northern Ireland, a region of the UK that has a sizeable public sector but a distinctive…

Sixty-seven school finance reforms (SFRs) in 26 states have taken place since 1990; however, there is little empirical evidence on the heterogeneity of SFR effects. We provide a comprehensive description of how individual reforms affected resource allocation to low- and high-income districts within states, including both financial and…

Our aim in this paper is to examine how standards-based reforms (SBRs) relating to teachers and teaching are being constituted in Australia and the US. Our focus is not the specific impacts of these policies as enacted practices in schools or teacher training institutions, but rather the dynamics of policy production, with a specific focus on how…

The international higher education sector has been witnessing an economic and soft power competition by the nation-states and has become a part of global power competition. It is worth inquiring about the role of international education in future diplomacy after the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak as there are likely to be substantial changes in the…

This study explores the intersection of arts-integration teacher development and organizational learning in schools. Four frames rooted in organizational learning theory--structural, political, symbolic, and human resource--consider the roles of organizational culture, leadership, and structure in school change efforts. Analyses explored variation…

Purpose: Principals are considered central in initiating and mobilizing changes in schools; however, their political behaviors in the course of school changes are underexplored. The present research investigated the influence tactics used by school principals to induce teachers to join a process of second-order (deep and wide) change in the school…

Language learning happens across many sites of social interactions; those scarred by injustices, conflicts and structural violence as well as those characterized by conviviality of human encounters and acts of welcoming the stranger. This article outlines new directions for language teacher education in this age of ambiguity. I propose that its…

Chicago, the third-largest school district in the country with 355,000 students and 638 schools, was forced to close its buildings on March 17 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. At that time, COVID caseloads were growing rapidly in the city, especially among its low-income populations and residents of color. District leaders spent the first few weeks…

The bourgeoning scholarship on community organizing for educational change suggest positives outcomes when it comes to countering failed school reforms. Early reports on community organizing across the United States have shown an exponential grow since the 1990s and by 2010 there were 500 of 800 community organizing groups were working in the area…

Purpose: Environmental social work (ESW) is an approach and a perspective in social work focusing on ecological and environmental sustainability and justice within the context of sustainable development (SD). This study aims to analyse students' reflective tasks on challenges for ESW education and practice from a critical theory perspective. The…

Since the late 20th century, the Solidarity breakthrough of the Polish social movement has been a huge political success. Solidarity, as a specific idea, has become not only a social and political power, but also a more profound category of ethical discourse. Therefore, especially in terms of Polish public awareness, solidarity is one of the most…

The paper "American democracy is distress: The failure of social education" presents several "symptoms of democracy's dysfunction in the United States". These include the extreme reliance on campaign contributions, giving the donors--economic elites and groups representing business, frequently operating at a transnational…

This article draws on the conceptualization of love as ethico-political practice and a nonidentitarian strategy for political communities to present possibilities for thinking pedagogically about what the late Moroccan writer and philosopher Abdelkebir Khatibi called "aimance". Khatibis's constructed term for affinity, affection,…