Most educators enter the profession with a strong sense of purpose, often connected to a love of children and hope for the future, a desire to make a difference and give back to the community, or a belief in education as a catalyst for social justice. However, competing educational goals and purposes, as well as current educational reforms rooted…

Our essay provides a provocation supporting the special issue of the "International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education's" titled "Why antiracism and critical whiteness now?" As editors, we circulated its call knowing that the conditions of our work in race and whiteness studies had changed. In our essay, we work…

In this paper, the authors consider the intersections of philosophy and education. Extending the concept of a "minor pedagogy" first presented by Mazzei and Smithers (2020), the authors reorient thinking toward more equitable and just pedagogy as a cultivation of difference. This paper has three major sections. In the first two, the…

The beginning of 2020 marked the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and a new reality. Mainstream learning loss discourse emerged as young people faced new social challenges and rising inequities. However, how we define some of these challenges may pose new barriers to equity promotion. Deficit-based narratives often negatively construct youth…

In this article, we argue that mainstream science education is contaminated by neoliberal values and functions in the service of political domination and exploitation and that a neoliberal and exploitative science education does not contribute to the building of a sustainable and just world. The work from Paulo Freire and Enrique Dussel underpin…

The shift towards an ecological university may be the key to achieving greater levels of social justice within higher education. This assumes that we could change the root metaphor of higher education--away from the current industrial model that is infused with neoliberal ideology and towards a more sustainable ecological model. This change…

In this article, I explore the pedagogical function of #MeToo, highlighting what it might teach about gender-based mistreatment and mainstreamed feminism. I begin by reviewing linkages between adult education and social movements, then trace the development of #MeToo, drawing on both media and scholarly texts. Next, I apply the concepts of…

Addressing a research gap concerning the insufficient philosophical discourses on social justice from non-Western traditions, this article conceptualises social justice in education from a Daoist perspective. Drawing upon a Chinese classic "Daodejing," it is argued that Daoism is aligned with relational justice through its emphasis on…

Pupil behaviour in UK schools continues to be an obsession in policy and education debate. Conservative governments, especially since 2010, have pursued an illiberal agenda which, this paper argues, is entirely associated with their project to create an education system based on performativity and competition as part of a neo-liberal economic and…

Based on the authors' wide reading in the field, this article suggests the notion of the narrative as a fitting and meaningful way of conceptualising and mapping the field of comparative education. Four prominent narratives can be identified in not only the field of comparative education (and the scholarly discourse on education) but also the…

Neoliberalism continues to exacerbate systemic racism and restricts efforts to address racial and social justice issues. Consequently, there has not only been an increase of public concern, but students are constantly driven to organize around their experiences. Asian American students are currently and have historically been one of these…

This essay argues that educational practices are uniquely situated to mobilize antifascist resistance. Contemporary fascism produces through macro- and micropolitical movements. The author looks to how educational practices make molecular fascist productions sensible. Educators can resist the molecular and micropolitical productions of fascist…

Ecologically, lichen plays a significant role in the formation of flourishing ecosystems by breaking apart rock formations using small fungal threads to form fertile soil which supports a growing complexity/diversity of life. This essay uses lichen as a metaphor to describe fossilized constructs (colonial epistemologies and ontologies,…

Ideas about social justice are influenced by the ontological and epistemological assumptions of the worldview in which they are located. Since the seventeenth century, the dominant worldview in the western hemisphere has been shaped by the separatist and deterministic principles of classical Newtonian science. During the twentieth century, with…

This paper examines how neoliberal multiculturalism and racialized emotions function to inhibit racial justice in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd. To do so, I trace how the proliferation of the discourse of anti-racism in education alongside the rise in popularity of anti-racist books, contributes to a racial project that embraces…