This article argues for the need of a new, pragmatic response to claims of indoctrination in public school classrooms across the United States. While attempts at defining indoctrination and moral arguments for and against certain pedagogical practices may be worthwhile, the article maintains that claims of indoctrination, whether substantive or…

Social media has become a core feature in policy development and enactment. This article extends current features of digital policy sociology to include the entanglement of education policy development processes with new media, paying particular attention to how two conservative think tanks in Australia have strategically used social media in…

In this opening lecture for the 2022 Budapest Conference on "Building Community in Fractured Societies: Challenges for Christians in Higher Education," an overview is given of recent societal developments, (geo-) political, economic, ecological, sociological, psychological, and spiritual. A basic framework is presented on how to analyze…

While schools are necessary spaces for democratic education, more analyses are needed that unpack their limits. Drawing from ethnographic research in U.S. Government classrooms in two predominantly White schools in politically conservative communities in central Ohio, findings show that teachers and students idealize a politically neutral…

This paper performs a critical examination of the Ofsted Education Inspection Framework (EIF), which was accompanied by an Inspection Handbook for Further Education and Skills, and argues that this policy document reinforces the neoliberal project in education. Drawing on concepts from Michel Foucault's analysis of the nature and effects of…

Through discourse analysis, this article explores strategies used in the speeches and public statements of former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos (2017-2020), as she employed marketing tactics in service of a neoliberal educational agenda. I identify DeVos's framing and lexical choices deployed to increase memory and attention salience, thereby…

The United States retains many aspects of a healthy open society, but there are indicators of trouble and deep divisions around the meaning and importance of democratic values. This debate has significant repercussions for universities and their academic communities. In the most-simple terms, there is a red and blue state divide over the role and…

This chapter presents empirical results of an analysis of the content of education reform globally in nine policy areas during the recent wave of neoliberal reforms between 1970 and 2018. It draws on data from the World Education Reform Database (WERD), the most comprehensive database to date of education reforms around the world. The results show…

International collaboration in higher education and research is considered crucial for economic growth and development. The policy pursued for international research collaboration depends on conditions in other geographical regions and countries, such as trade interests, conflicts, security, and pandemics, hence the term geopolitics. These…

Despite the increasing focus on incorporating the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into education through curriculum mainstreaming, related research remains lacking. This study explored the representation of SDGs in Taiwan's national curriculum in terms of selection and organization. Through a content analysis of the social studies and natural…

This article offers a current perspective on George Orwell's 1984 (1949) utopian society in the context of 2022 and implications for higher education and society in the United States. Societies have experienced numerous issues portrayed in 1984 including power struggles and censorship, and identity politics and cancel culture are impeding an open…

This paper seeks to address the wider questions of populism and its seeming contemporary rise within the specific context of the Philippines, regarding education. Starting from the assumption that neither politics nor education sits above cultures or spaces autonomously acting upon them but instead emerges with/because/against particularities;…

Education policy has long been analyzed as a cycle where various actors influence different stages. However, few such studies have focused on identifying and interrogating the specific moments that shape an education policy's overall equity trajectory. This article uses Bowe, Ball, and Gold's policy cycle as an exploratory theoretical framework,…

There has been an increase in political policies banning diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in colleges and universities in the United States. In the current research, I focused on examining how two different types of communication strategies influence White people's attitudes toward political policies. The first communication…

The transformation of higher education provision by neoliberal values has been well documented. However, recent criticisms and even attacks upon higher education indicate a new politics extending beyond neoliberalism. This article draws on the sociology of conventions to unpick the distinctions at work in these new criticisms of universities. By…