Men continue to outnumber women at the secondary head teacher level. This article reports on some of the preliminary findings of a larger study exploring the ways in which women deputy head teachers, as potential aspirants to headship, perceive the secondary head teacher role. Using an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis methodology,…

By the year 2000, the management of education in England had lost much of its capacity to ensure the commitment of headteachers and teachers. As market forces engendered competition among schools, the bureaucratic monitoring of schools by agencies of government increased on the grounds that objective and comparable data about schools should be…

Purpose: This paper considers the relevance of critical and decolonial approaches to global education in northern Europe through theoretical and empirical research. Methodology: We present a case for an approach that engages the modern/colonial dynamic (Mignolo, 2000; Andreotti, 2014) and pluriversality (Mignolo & Walsh, 2018). We conducted a…

In this appreciative discussion paper I provide an overview of the reforms made to education in England, and engage with the politics of education through examining the simultaneous and inter-related processes of politicisation, depoliticisation and repoliticisation of educational matters. I engage in a discussion of the papers in this special…

In this article, the author strengthens and develops the theoretical platform for her concept of little public spheres. Hickey-Moody does so in order to present the concept as a tool for theorists who want to consider the political significance of marginalized youth. The concept of little publics is a theoretical frame the author developed to show…

This paper provides an analysis of inclusive education policies across international, and Anglo-American national and provincial/state jurisdictions to reveal how policies discursively construct inclusion under current, increasingly neoliberal conditions. In making this case, the paper draws upon primary UNESCO and Organisation for Economic…

This article explores the implementation of the English model of teachers' centres in the context of 1980s Spain. Originally it was a top-down plan initiated by a national government. However, from the very beginning its fate was dependent on a bottom-up educational project carried out by pedagogical social movements. The first part of the article…

We discuss oral history interviews with academics who laid the foundation of research and pedagogies in daycare for under three-year-olds in Europe and North and South America since the 1970s. Their work is clearly embedded in the social-political context of their country: the left-wing programmes for disadvantaged families in the U.S.A.;…

In January 2012, Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond announced a radical measure that would see every Scottish school student study a Scottish text from a prescribed list. In 2010, Michael Gove announced that "Our literature is the best in the world" and that every pupil should study particular authors. The "cultural…

The research reported in this article contributes new understanding of leadership in the context of change, by investigating how the views, values and professional practices of those in leadership roles were revealed, interplayed and changed during a period of turbulence in a school in England. The governors of the school proposed changing the…

Divisive rhetoric and heated political discourse surround the identification and education of gifted students and lead to opposing philosophical issues of egalitarianism versus elitism. Researchers have long chronicled the ambivalence in the United States over the concepts of giftedness and intellectual talent (Benbow & Stanley, 1996; see also…

This paper considers the implications of UK policy approaches to ICT (Information Communication Technology) in education by exploring the views of early years (0-8 years) educators about their ICT CPD (continuing professional development) needs. UK policy approaches to ICT may be visualised as a "house that Jack built." The policies are…

Game-centred approaches (GCAs) were designed for the effective integration of skills into contextualized situations. Despite a plethora of research, few studies explore the articulations between pre-service teachers' experiences, conceptual understanding, pedagogical practices, the wider cultural and political realities of teaching and their…

This paper focuses on the Conservative-Liberal coalition government's policy in teacher education in England and its implications for the work of teacher educators. It does this by considering, for example, policy documents and the speeches of key politicians responsible for policy formulation. It argues that policies influenced by the neoliberal…

This article compares the English tradition of active citizenship education with the US tradition of service learning. It starts by outlining service learning and noting some of the defining characteristics as well as some of the tensions. It then discusses the model of active citizenship that has been promoted in England's secondary school…