Based on an ethnographic study on studio teaching at five leading European architecture schools, the paper at hand identifies three repeatedly occurring deficiencies (as well as one related problem) in the teaching of architectural design. Drawing on empirical data, the paper describes how 'epistemic positions' are shifted without reflection, that…

This paper theorizes the affective and moral grounding of "best practice" policymaking, particularly how best practice operates as an affective regime that encourages certain affective norms. To illustrate this, the author takes up the example of best practices promoted by the CoE's "Digital Citizenship Education Handbook" for…

Educational research, and research in the Social Sciences more generally, has experienced a growth in the introduction of ethical review boards since the 1990s. Increasingly, universities have set up ethics review procedures that require researchers to submit applications seeking approval to conduct research. Review boards and the rules and…

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…

This paper discusses the comparative perspective of the European Modernity towards other civilizations, and the creation of comparative studies, and, for that matter, of comparative education. The paper argues that much of the debate on Eurocentrism neglects the fact that the European tradition includes also an inextricable self-reflective…

European/UNESCO interculturalism (IC) emerged as a critique of multiculturalism (MC) (complicated by the fact that there is an alternative interculturalism, not discussed here). I suggest that this relationship has gone through three phases. "Phase one" begins in the 1990s with a general dissatisfaction with MC from many political and…

After criticising the solutionist drift, this article argues for the need for three gestures, in order to build a more problematised Comparative Education: "estrangement," that is, the ability to see the unknown and therefore to distance ourselves from what is already known; "intercession," that is, the ability to perceive the…

Studies of europeanisation have made a significant contribution to knowledge about education and how it has respatialised since the turn of the 21st century. This line of inquiry initially historicised the 1990s as a means of researching the emerging European space of education, but then morphed into studies of governing through the field of…

Education in the nineteenth century witnessed a revival of classical Scholasticism brought to use by many educational institutions within Europe and North America. These institutions felt a burgeoning tension among contemporary church teaching, enlightenment thinking, and the new philosophical thoughts emerging from Europe. Although…

Laclau and Mouffe have long argued the democratic possibilities of 'left populism' underpinned by their agonistic critique of liberal democracy. We are currently witnessing the attempted application of their theories by European political parties. However, there remains very little international scholarship taking up the challenge of situating…

This paper argues that it is important for educators in democratic education to understand how the rise of right-wing populism in Europe, the United States and around the world can never be viewed apart from the affective investments of populist leaders and their supporters to essentialist ideological visions of nationalism, racism, sexism and…

In this UniCollaboration Plenary Session, Rodrigo Ballester, a cabinet member of the Commissioner of Education and Culture in the European Commission, presented on virtual exchanges. Virtual exchanges can serve many different purposes. They can be intercultural dialogues, languages, digital skills, teacher training, and soft skills, etc. He then…

This paper is on the paradox of a right, the right to education that is almost universally declared as compulsory. The reason for the compulsion seems to be in its nature as a right. Within a Hohfeldian framework, any claim-right has a corresponding duty. Given that making education compulsory equates to establishing a duty, the possible…

In this article, we analyse key policy documents on teacher quality produced by the OECD and the EU during the period 2005 to 2017 using an educational connoisseurship and criticism approach. The purpose of this article is to explore how Eisner's concepts of educational connoisseurship and educational criticism can be understood and used to…

In a recent paper, Simpson and Dervin (2019a) offer a radical critique of the Council of Europe's "Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture" (RFCDC). However, Simpson and Dervin's paper contains numerous factual errors, interpretative errors and category errors in its description of the RFCDC. We identify 12 such errors…