This article focuses on attempts to understand how the curriculum and pedagogy can help to reduce inequalities in the outcomes of schooling between those from higher and lower socio-economic backgrounds. In the 1970s, the author was involved with Michael F.D. Young and others in the development of the so-called "new" sociology of…

This article explores the attitudes of writers within the tradition of critical pedagogy towards disciplines in higher education. With particular focus on Henry Giroux's work, it contrasts his portrayal of disciplines as closed, limiting and elitist with an alternative one of disciplines as complex, permeable and contested spaces. Critical…

In November 2009 the current Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, gave a speech at the Centre for Policy Studies in which he set out the Conservative Party's priorities for education. This article explores some of the proposals in his speech, with particular references to initial teacher education and his attraction to Nordic and US…

Drawing on interview data from reading policy actors in California, Michigan, and Texas, this study applied Kingdon's (1984, 1995) multiple streams model to explain how the issue of reading became prominent on the agenda of state governments during the latter half of the 1990s. A combination of factors influenced the status of a state's reading…

Responding to the recent work of Andrew Gamble, the article discusses the extent to which the British situation can be described in terms of crisis. It suggests that an essential element of crisis is that of political and social contestation, and explores the terms on which contestation is taking shape in and around British education.

In 2007, a Judicial Commission of Inquiry was established by the Government of Hong Kong to investigate allegations that senior officials had interfered with the academic freedom and institutional autonomy of the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd). It concluded that a former minister had requested the President of that institution to curb…

In this paper, I argue that many recent interpretations of John Dewey's vision of democracy distort that vision by filtering it through the prism of contemporary deliberative democratic theories. An earlier attempt to defend Dewey's theory of moral deliberation is instructive for understanding the nature and function of this filter. In James…

A rapidly changing postmodern working world demands revised conceptualisations of the self. Recent scholarship in discourse analysis invites an investigation into how selves are constructed and fabricated within a complex matrix of social discourses, and how this may impact on the field of career counselling and development. This paper examines…

The disestablishment clause of the U.S. Constitution has led educators in the United States to establish guidelines about addressing religion in the classroom. As a basic rule, districts have allowed teaching about religion without encouraging or supporting a particular religion. This article suggests that patriotism and patriotic expressions are,…

Uganda has received considerable international attention for being the first and, to date, only African country to adopt a policy of free universal secondary education (USE). However, the policy was adopted with little attention to system capacity or involvement of secondary head teachers, even though there is considerable research documenting the…

This case, inspired by a real school district scenario, was developed for use in a graduate-level course in school finance. James Spencer had just been selected as the new superintendent of a low-income, 400-student, rural school district in need of many capital improvements. The previous superintendent had refused to hold a bond election because…

People dislike the Common Core for several different reasons, and so it is important to disaggregate the sources of opposition and to assess and then to dispel some of the myths that have built up around it. It also is important to understand the unusual political alliances that have emerged in opposition to Common Core implementation and how they…

This study focused on the federal and Illinois State the reform legislation titled the Performance Evaluation Reform Act and Senate Bill 7. The Performance Evaluation Reform Act or "PERA" was created from collaboration between stakeholders as Illinois competed in a federal competition titled "Race to the Top." The legislation…

This article presents the Quebec ministry of education's (MELS) strategy for diversifying the national historical narrative that is transmitted in the province's History and Citizenship Education program as well as the manner in which Francophone national history teachers put this strategy into practice. In bringing research on their social…

Certainly, teaching about politics can be daunting, especially as the political climate in the United States becomes increasingly partisan as a result of heated political rhetoric amplified through a variety of media outlets. However, elementary teachers can help students develop the respectful dispositions they will need as young adults living in…