Australian vocational education has a history dating from the late eighteenth century. As Australian colonies and, later, federated states evolved each constructed its own version of vocational education provision. Generally the systems, consisting of community-based or state-controlled colleges for the training of operatives, apprenticeships and…

In his new book, popular author Patrick Shannon examines reading as agency--why reading critically is essential to civic engagement and a healthy democracy. We follow the author on a journey of self discovery as he practices "wide-awake reading" with a variety of everyday texts, from radio programs to legal documents to more traditional books and…

This article examines the political economic theories that informed the development of the first publicly funded art school in Britain, by the Select Committee on Arts and Manufactures of 1835/6. It begins by assessing these origins in the context of some recent experiments in art school pedagogy. It then responds to the challenge offered by…

Using interviews and participant observation at Pacific Northwest sustainable farming operations, this article analyzes the complex ways that class privileges and labor practices impact the social sustainability of sustainable agriculture. While the farmers in this study were highly aware of and reflexive about the class politics of sustainable…

This article uses the evolving understandings of commercial organic agriculture within two research programmes in New Zealand to address three problematic claims and associated framings that have underpinned analysis of the political economy of commercial organic agriculture. These three framings are: 1) that recent commercial developments in…

The paper focuses on the issue of children's political participation and considers the idea of political participation understood as a human right. Contingently it considers the question of children as agents or potential political actors, as well as the assumed limitations of their role. The paper begins by offering an outline of how children's…

The first part of this account of struggles over literacy begins with the later middle ages and follows issues in the construction of a literacy addressed to the lower orders through to the seventeenth century. After the suppression of the Lollard Bible had left the English peasantry without that spur to literacy, the sixteenth-century formation…

Competences are intensively discussed in the context of cross-curricular themes, such as Sustainable Development and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), especially in light of the United Nations Decade for ESD (2004-2015). Recent literature on ESD lists a number of competences for ESD in various fields with the exception of teacher…

South Africa is a highly mobile country characterized by historical displacements and contemporary mobilities, both social and demographic. Getting to grips with diversity, dislocation, relocation and anomie, as well as pursuing aspirations of mobility, is part of people's daily experience that often takes place on the margins of conventional…

The paper examines demographic information sources and utilization as determinants of educational policy making in South West Nigeria. Using validated and structured questionnaire, the study population of 398 officers in the ministries of education in the affected states were enumerated. The study establishes population census, vital registration,…

As it is in many countries in the world, in Turkey the effects of neoliberal ideology have rapidly increased since the 1980s, and social and economic structure has been transformed. Education, which is the basic dynamic of constructing social and economic structure and regeneration, stands in the center of neoliberalism. In this process, what…

This essay makes the case that Barbara Park's picture book "MA! There's Nothing to Do Here!: A Word from Your Baby-in-Waiting" (2008) adds another equal-parts absurdist and alarming item to the ever-growing responsibilities of expecting mothers: ensuring that their fetus is entertained. The messages that Park's narrative…

We need homeschooling to save education in a liberal democracy from taking a religious form--what I call Democratic Education. Democratic Education emerges when the democratic identity and narrative become elevated to the highest priority when thinking about educating human beings. This elevation becomes particularly dangerous when other…

Within the literature on teacher education in the United States, relatively little research has been conducted on how preservice teachers conceptualize popular depictions of the profession or issues related to the "extended professionality" of teaching. In this study, the authors explore the reactions of elementary, middle, and secondary…

This article reviews the impact of discourses on "New Public Management" (NPM) on compulsory schooling in Switzerland during the last two decades and traces its implementation in the Canton of Bern. The analysis suggests that while NPM reformers initially promoted increased school autonomy, the introduction of market elements and school…