On the 9th of May 2020 "The Lancet," the leading medical journal, published an editorial referring to the current situation of the pandemic in Brazil, which is short of being disastrous, and describing Jair Bolsonaro, the Brazilian president, as the biggest threat to Brazil -- we would add to the world. In this paper, we enquire the…

One of the challenges contemporary societies faces is resistance to sharing the world. Investments in 'extremist' or 'identitarian' identity positions that desire purity and are intolerant of pluralism and difference undermine education. I explain why it is important to explore 'how ideas feel', understanding the affective investments in these…

In 1940, John and Morag Aitkenhead set up Kilquhanity School in rural Galloway, inspired by the writings of A.S. Neill and the practices at Summerhill School. In 1962, Aitkenhead wrote that he had swallowed 'hook, line and sinker' Neill's theories and that 'but for him and his example, there could never have been this free school in Scotland'.…

This paper uses six common aspects of utopias to evaluate the theory of Wild Pedagogies. Individuals--and especially writers--generate utopian ideas in times of upheaval and change. The climate crisis has created a need for exactly this kind of radical thinking. In an education system that is designed to uphold the neoliberal consensus, the…

This paper explores the implications of a radical republican conception of freedom as non-domination, rooted in the anarchist tradition. In discussing both the non-statist theoretical frameworks and the practical educational experiments associated with this tradition, I suggest that it can add a valuable dimension to recent critical work in…

Marxist philosophy of education plays a key role in contemporary education in China, serving as an important theoretical foundation for reforms. With a history of more than one hundred years in China, Marxist philosophy of education has gone through three major historical stages: emergence (before 1949), localization (from 1949 to 1979), and new…

Pandemic disruptions to schooling threw into sharper relief the entanglements of economy, gender norms, and education that had been there, and throughout the modern world, all along. The particular entanglement this paper aims to unravel is the reliance of education on a certain kind of attentiveness, historically provided by a feminized teaching…

Tensions between constructivist learning theories and objectivist learning theories in online courses implicate a need for a theoretical balance. This article describes organizing and enacting tasks that elicit constructivist learning of mathematics in an online mathematics teacher education course. The results focus on a conceptual framework that…

Learner-teacher relationships have a profound impact on teaching and learning quality with many universities focusing on relationship-rich educational experiences. Engaging students as partners (SaP) has emerged as a way of enhancing learner-teacher relationships with research reporting numerous benefits and challenges. In this article, we address…

Since the beginning of the 21st century, the appropriation of the sociocultural perspective by the physics education research community has represented a linguistic turn in the field, pointing out a promising path to overcome the dominance of the "individual paradigm," both in terms of student learning and initial and continuing teacher…

This essay reflects on the longer-term challenges posed to societal, political and educational sectors following the imposition of a shutdown of schools and universities by many governments around the world in response to the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Using Rene Girard's analysis of festivals as concealing originary violence, it reflects on the…

For modern universities in China, becoming international has long meant to tread in Western steps in the face of the overweening West. Central to China's higher education development has been the promise of a successful synthesis of knowledge drawn from the best of China and West. As China's international engagement in higher education stimulates…

How do we style ourselves and others as scholars in the field of critical education? What parts of ourselves and others do we regard as salient (or not) in our accounts? And what are the forces that underlie such decisions? In this article, I submit that secularisation is a persistent epistemic and ontological condition that shapes the study of…

Yinyang philosophy encompasses an essential understanding of the mechanism and laws of nature, cosmos, and human society in Chinese culture, and reaches to many other parts of Asia and around the world. The purpose of this article is to explore how yinyang philosophy can serve as a philosophical underpinning of mixed methods research (MMR). In…

This article explores intercultural education research about intercultural encounters as aesthetic phenomena. I will argue that Gadamer's notion of "hermeneutical identity" when encountering an artwork can enrich intercultural education studies' (IES) conceptualisations of an event-based research and pedagogy, conceived as a mode of…