A key aspect of the educator's responsibility as understood by Hannah Arendt is its dual character. Educators are responsible for both the life and development of the child and the continuance of the world, as Arendt puts it in "The Crisis in Education." Moreover, these aspects of responsibility are in tension with each other. Arendt's…

Sociologists recognise research or other constructions of society are not neutral. Ideologically generated 'fact', or 'findings', can reproduce elite vested interest. There is a lacuna in our knowledge about educational research policy, including inherent ideological leanings, giving cause for concern about 'findings' that are congruent with…

Bildung has lost its critical potential, some thinkers worry, but I put forward that this might not necessarily be the case. Jan Masschelein and Norbert Ricken argue that modernity has seen Bildung and bio-power grow complicit, effectively negating Bildung's critical edge by turning criticism into a necessary aspect of contemporary society.…

This paper interrogates the fundamental logic of data-driven decision-making (DDDM) as it has taken hold in education and argues for a critical analysis of data-driven education via an attitude of historical ontology. Though influenced by Foucault's understanding of this concept, I center Colin Koopman's recent analysis of the 'informational…

This case study examined how a 14-year-old youth and eighth-grade student named Kendra (pseudonym) mobilized restorying to (re)center her experiences in horror fiction. I asked how she conceptualized horror and monstrosity in a 6-week English language arts unit, and how she (re)centered her life experiences within horror fiction through restorying…

Projecting itself as the inheritor of China's past greatness, the CCP regime increasingly seeks to boost politico-cultural confidence in education and society and turn students and ordinary people into self-confident Chinese. This article identifies the oscillation of focus from victimhood to confidence in state nationalism and patriotic education…

Higher Education (HE) constitutes a space that calls urgently for new understandings in the contemporary political moment. One way of establishing such an understanding of HE is to consider more fully the work of political theorists in relation to questions of power in the modern nation-state, particularly as these impinge upon the key problem of…

This collective article discusses the philosophy of modern higher education in Iran, which in this case, optimistically, its history dates back to the founding of "Dar al-fonun" (1851)--if we consider "Dar al-fonun" as a university. Otherwise, its origin can be traced back to the University of Tehran (established in 1934).…

This paper discusses insights from a larger study of popular educators' deployment of Freire's pedagogical principles during facilitator training. The paper focuses on data from two facilitators and attempts to examine how popular education principles are applied in two different socio-economic and political contexts, Canada and South Africa.…

The bulk of research on academic rankings is policy-oriented, preoccupied with 'best practices', and seems incapable of transcending the normative discourse of 'governance'. To understand, engage, and properly critique the operation of power in academic rankings, the rankings discourse needs to escape the gravity of 'police science' and embrace a…

This paper examines the utility of youth participatory action research (YPAR) and critical media literacy as strategies to promote the sociopolitical development (SPD) of Black youth. We use the case example of Our Voices, an afterschool program implemented with Black high school students in which participants analyzed the representation of Black…

Purpose: This article presents the place and the role of Sociology teaching in the current Brazilian context, marked by the rise of extreme right ideologies and practices, more specifically by its ultraliberal economic bias and moral conservatism. Design/methodology/approach: Organized in three parts, it outlines, respectively, the macro political…

Recent reforms to Initial Teacher Education in England are a continuation of a decades-long political project, aiming to change the whole social complex around teachers' professional education. But the most recent frameworks present some new inflections to the construction of learning, pedagogical relationships and difference. Positivist versions…

The purpose of this narrative qualitative study was to explore how politics affects the ethical decision-making processes of elementary principals. Participants were comprised of five elementary school principals, with varied years of experience, across neighboring suburban public school districts in eastern New York. Data was collected through…

Education acts as an important catalyst for socioeconomic and democratic evolution in society and is a critical tool for building an equitable system. In our paper, we have historicized one of the most important educational policies, viz. Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (SAMSA) in India that carries large expectations to minimize the educational divide.…