This article is about exposing and countering racism through critical pedagogy in the context of a Japanese EAP (English for academic purposes) program. Relevant issues are first raised through: (1) a review of academic work concerning Japanese constructions of language, race and culture commonly found in "nihonjinron" writings, a genre…

This article examines the legal and political significance of teacher unionization in rural and suburban school districts between 1960 and 1975. While most historians focus on the growth of unions in urban areas, strikes in outlying districts played a determinative role in the development of public sector labor law, particularly in the arbitration…

For 20 years, charter schools have held a precarious existence in Canada. Implemented in the province of Alberta in 1994, only a handful of charter schools remain in the entire nation. In this article, I explore the ideas of school choice and charter schooling and how they have largely disappeared as educational policy issues for Canadians. While…

English education has recently experienced radical policy reform in the areas of school autonomy and accountability. The key focus of this paper is on how schools might best navigate through these policy moves. It highlights how these moves have constructed schools, teachers and students in problematic ways but also how they are offering…

Recent contributions have argued about the depoliticisation of citizenship education (CE), mainly through theoretical and documentary analyses, and based on the European context. Nonetheless, there is a lack of field studies which can provide empirical evidence about how does the depoliticisation of CE actually operate. Based on a mixed-method…

Other than trips to government offices, political science has generally not used field experiences as part of the undergraduate curriculum. To illustrate the possibilities of such experiences, we discuss field-based courses and curricular units at three sites. Each uses a national park to teach students about environmental politics and policy…

In today's Turkey, the problems faced in the provincial regions have several causes and dimensions. At first glance we can count a set of them: insufficiency of the resources allocated to education and the inability to use the education budget effectively with proper planning; frequent central restructuring of the education system without taking…

Although Namibia has been independent for more than two decades (1990--2014), the school curriculum remains essentially Eurocentric despite rhetoric on educational reform. Similar to other African countries, Western ideological power continues to dominate postcolonial education, even though political power rests in the hands of African leaders.…

This paper provides insights into teacher and school-based administrators' responses to policy demands for improved outcomes on high-stakes, standardised literacy and numeracy tests in Australia. Specifically, the research reveals the effects of the National Assessment Program--Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), and associated policies, in the state…

The present study explores a local initiative to develop parent support services through the school system. In focus are the discourse on home-school relations and parent support and the interplay between discourse and practical occurrences. Official documents, interviews and notes from municipal meetings and informal conversations were obtained…

This article considers the experiences and perceptions of practising English headteachers and the tensions that they face when juggling government prescription and government initiatives, which may be antagonistic to their educational values and beliefs. Managerial control over teachers work has been particularly acute and destructive to…

The United Kingdom (UK) has dramatically increased the supply of graduates over the last four decades. The university system has successfully produced a huge increase in mass higher education over the last 40 years to meet an increased demand for skilled workers. It is one of the UK's most successful export industries in terms of attracting…

The impacts of poverty in this country cast a long shadow over the issues of education, social mobility, and global competitiveness. Although national conversations regarding income inequality have increased, the topic of poverty in America has not had as much attention. We seem to be at a loss about specific solutions that could address this…

This 2015 report is third in a series of annual reports on virtual education in the U.S. It is organized in three major sections: Section I examines the policy and political landscape associated with virtual schooling and describes the current state of affairs related to finance and governance, instructional program quality, and teacher quality.…

In several enigmatic passages, Paulo Freire describes the pedagogy of the oppressed as a "pedagogy of laughter". The inclusion of laughter alongside problem-posing dialogue might strike some as ambiguous, considering that the global exploitation of the poor is no laughing matter. And yet, laughter seems to be an important aspect of the pedagogy of…