This article reflects on findings from a qualitative evaluation of the Narnian Virtues Character Education English Curriculum (NV) in the context of critical engagement with the field of character education. We recognise many people argue for or against character education based on ideological positions. This article will reflect on how those…

This article explores possibilities for challenging liberal humanism, often expressed through cosmopolitanism, in global citizenship education (GCE) in European contexts, specifically England. Thinking with Sylvia Wynter's genealogy of the creation and universal imposition of "Man" as the dominant descriptive statement for the human and…

The student as consumer has emerged as a common motif and point of contestation in educational philosophy over the past two decades, as part of the critique of the neoliberal educational reform agenda that followed Lyotard's (1984) mapping of the postmodern condition. In addition, the consumer-orientated student has assumed a problematic presence…

This article examines the potentiality, acceptability and ethical considerations of a mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) for supporting pupils' mental well-being in a junior school. To date, research has predominantly focused on the psychological or behavioural benefits of MBIs rather than broader and more philosophical issues of implementation.…

The aim of this article is to explore the worth of a materialist/posthumanist approach to ethics, specifically affirmative ethics (Braidotti, 2018, 2019a), within the field of education. I work empirical material that 'does' this ethics in classrooms and draw on Deleuze's (1988) ethically guided materialism as taken up by Braidotti (2019b), to…

The main role of an elite school is to produce future leaders and this paper examines how four elite schools in different parts of the Global South are engaging in this process. Despite the critiques of global citizenship education (GCE) being a vestige of the colonial project, we analyse closely how it is being actively and productively…

This paper offers insights into the referencing of Singapore within the US Obama Administration educational discourse, underscoring the political-material-discursive nexus of international educational benchmarking. Using critical discourse analysis, we find that an objectified Singapore functions as a rhetorical tool of US policymaker agendas,…

This article explores the effects of neoliberalism and performative educational cultures on secondary school drama classrooms. We consider the ways Deleuze and Guattari's schizoanalysis and Butler's concept of gender performance enable us to chart the embodied, relational, spatial and affective energies that inhabit the often neoliberal and…

Education policy ambitions or presumptions in most countries are being accused of turning schools into social factories to supply humanpower to produce commodities. This is apparent bureaucratic education policy imposition on school-actors which promotes class division and conflict in sharing resources. Using the Marxist-critical-lenses, this…

From the perspective of the world-systems theory and post-colonial studies, the 1989 transition in Hungary was a part of the re-integration of former Soviet countries into an inferior position in the world system. The political-economic transition was in no sense a revolution, but a replacement of dictatorial/totalitarian state capitalism with…

College for All approaches to secondary education have gained prominence over recent decades. This trend has resulted in scholarly criticism. College is inappropriate for many students, and insisting that all students attend ensures failure, frustration and debt. The College for All policy, intended to enhance democratic equality and undermine…

This paper examines school principal responses to the policy discourse of widening participation in higher education. As a critical analysis of how policy is produced, read and responded to by principals [Bacchi, C., 2009. "Analysing policy: what's the problem represented to be?" New York: Pearson], the paper questions the assumptions…

Contemporary meritocratic education discourse in England positions schools as 'engines of social mobility', responsible for enabling students' educational 'success' regardless of their circumstances. Building on critiques that characterise meritocracy as a neoliberal cultural motif that legitimates inequalities, and the capabilities approach, this…

In 1970, education theorist Paulo Freire (1970) sharply critiqued dominant pedagogy--or what he called the banking model of education--for stripping students of their agency. In the banking model, he wrote, instructors are empowered as narrating subjects as students who become alienated as passive listening objects. In the decades since, research…

Scholars who document neoliberal trends in education argue that privatization and corporatization in schools is dehumanizing and discourages democratic participation. These scholars assert that neoliberal education policies heighten social inequity by emphasizing individualism, marketability and colorblindness without interrogating social…