The purpose of this study is to analyze critically the two main categories of teachers' unions as progressive and aggressive teachers' unions and their positive and negative effects on students' achievements at secondary school level. The researcher therefore determined to find out the exact role of teachers' unions. All secondary school teachers…

Improving public education has long been a cornerstone of the Democratic platform. Because progressives understand that access to a quality education is the gateway to a better life, their decades-long struggle to promote equal rights and opportunity for all Americans has been deeply tied to their struggle to create an effective public school…

Since the introduction of workplace computers in the 1970s, policymakers have been racing to outpace the workforce demands of the information age. To address concerns, policymakers have promoted an expansion of skills training to help workers keep up in the changing economy. Because the way people learn, work, and live is transforming, so should…

In the history of vocational education and training, apprentices seldom feature as actors. They are also rarely mentioned among those affected by economic conditions and political measures. Studies of England and Scotland have shown that, over a period of decades, there was a widespread apprentice movement during the twentieth century. So far,…

Thirty years ago teachers in the NUT and NASUWT were involved in a protracted industrial dispute. The outcome of the dispute had huge implications for education policy in the years that followed (most obviously the introduction of the 1987 Education Bill), and has important lessons for teacher unionism today. The author offers a personal…

How did political factors and public health affect state and local education decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially the continuation of in-person schooling? Using an original data set of state policies, we find that governors ordered school closures in spring 2020 but left decisions to districts in the fall, regardless of partisanship.…

COVID-19 has become one of the greatest health crises ever to face the United States. Among other broad social and economic effects, the pandemic led to the closure of almost all schools to in-person instruction in spring 2020. Heated controversies emerged about whether to reopen schools in person in fall 2020, and the debate around reopening…

Guided by Honig and Hatch's (2004) conceptualization of bridging and buffering, we undertook an analysis of reduction in force (RIF) provisions from 546 Ohio teacher collective bargaining agreements. We asked the following question: Are the most disadvantaged school districts providing greater protections to tenured teachers when making RIF…

This paper examines what it means to be an activist and to do activist work in the Australian contemporary university. In a context of globalisation, massification and marketisation, what does academic or scholar activism look like? In a time of political uncertainty about fee deregulation, further cuts to public funding and changes to the…

This study looks at the experiences of pre-service teachers who began their student teaching assignments amidst the 2012 Chicago Teachers Union strike. Four yearlong student teachers reflected on their understandings of teaching, unionism, and activism before, during, and after the strike. Findings suggest pre-service teachers need greater…

Higher education institutions are increasingly focussed on improving the capacity and potential of their graduates to gain employment. Attempts to develop employability skills through both mainstream and extra-curricular activities create new demands and expectations for students. Despite these demands, little attention has been given to student…

This case study explores practice in four areas of student engagement activity which were developed in partnership between the University of Winchester and Winchester Student Union. The development, motivations, stakeholders, and challenges of activities built around the principles of representation, change, feedback, and research are discussed.…

Researchers claim that learner discipline has continued to be a problem in schools since corporal punishment was outlawed in public schools in South Africa. It is evident that teachers have a vital role to play in the improvement of learner discipline in schools. An interpretivist qualitative approach was adopted to investigate learner discipline…

This article explores the possibility that the recent #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall student protests at South African universities may be partially underpinned by grief over a dying essentialist assemblage in the wake of the 2012 Marikana massacre--which saw the assemblage severed from the State Apparatus in a way that spelled its doom.…

This paper draws on the concepts of settled expectations and the educational racial contract to provide an analysis of the current social movements calling for the improvement of teacher salaries and work conditions in K-12 schools. This paper argues that some teacher unions' lack of centering race in their advocacy to ameliorate educational…