In 2014 I attended a symposium concerning Early Career Academics (ECAs) in the field of physical education and sport pedagogy. I was struck by the dominance of a particular theme at that symposium--that is, how to obtain a position and survive in academia. The aim of this paper is to use an inciting moment that occurred at this symposium as a…

Purpose: Class council has become a popular approach for character education and democracy learning in German schools. However, it is not clear if the expectations are met in social practice. Approach: The data was gained with an ethnographical multiple method approach within three contrasting secondary schools. The study is informed by practice…

Purpose: Increasing students' political interest has been a longstanding goal of civic education. One way to trigger students' interests in political issues is by engaging them first in an attention grabbing activity (i.e., assigning them to roles). Because it is important to examine not only how roles may trigger political interest, but also…

The neoliberal capitalist crisis of 2008 brought to light poverty and destitution in our societies. In Spain, 13 million people live in poverty, structural unemployment is over 20% and levels of insecurity have risen in all sectors and social groups. In the EU, 120 million live in poverty, while globally, wealth is increasingly concentrated in…

This study explores how the decentralization law of 1991 in the Philippines has provided the conditions for the interface of higher education and politics by virtue of Local Government Units (LGUs) establishment of Local Colleges and Universities (LCUs). Anchored on educational politics framework, it specifically looks at the experience of Mandaue…

This paper studies transformations in the role of higher education in Russia as represented in official Soviet and post-Soviet policy documents between the 1950s and 2013. The focus is on the categories defining the purposes and tasks of higher education in the larger context of society and economy. There is a basic dichotomy in relation to the…

In Turkey, the social and economic changes of the past couple of decades have facilitated a neoliberal reconstruction of the city and a concomitant reorganisation of its educational spaces. The interaction between the urban space economy and school spaces has been documented by various studies, most of which point to the interplay between…

A barrage of pro-privatization policies that cascaded into North Carolina education statutes during the 2013-2014 legislative session helped spark a series of organized protests known as the Moral Monday Movement. Powerful and strategic policy networks, such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), have made privatization and…

Since the recent global paradigm shift in the governance of higher education toward business and marketing, internationally competitive education is increasingly considered as an asset for governments. Consequently, governments started to invest in education branding and marketing their educational systems. In Finland, national interest in…

This article looks at the changes made to examinations in England over recent decades and asks about the politics behind the changes. It considers how increasingly centralised the assessment regime has become, moving from a system where teachers could have a say in how pupils are assessed to a regime dominated by government approved tests. It…

This chapter presents non-affirmative theory of education as the foundation for a new research program in education, allowing us to bridge educational leadership, curriculum studies and Didaktik. We demonstrate the strengths of this framework by analyzing literature from educational leadership and curriculum theory/didaktik. In contrast to both…

The plight of students in the United States has been one of repeated socialization toward dehumanizing divides trapped in policies with a history of reproducing oppression and social stratification. The voice of reason has left the educational policy debates as the idea of equity and access in schooling has been replaced and confused by neoliberal…

Academic work-based learning (WBL) has an over a century-long history in Nigeria. The current WBL programs are the Students' Industrial Work Experience Scheme (SIWES) and the Graduate Internship (GI). They are sponsored by the federal government with the aim to improve employment outcomes. However, there is still a gross mismatch between the…

Despite persistent class and race inequalities in educational attainment and achievement in the U.S., hegemonic cultural ideologies and urban education politics and policies continue to proceed from an insistence that education is the great equalizer. These ideologies do not take into account the ways that normative school culture and pedagogical…

Federal free-college policies are now at the center of the Democratic higher education agenda. Sen. Bernie Sanders helped move the idea into the mainstream during the 2016 presidential campaign, and other lawmakers have since worked to advance the policy in Congress. Joe Biden effectively put free college on the ballot in 2020 when he fully…