This article situates the recent concept of 'sharenting' in relation to the literature on the 'parenting culture'. Jean Baudrillard's notion of the ecstatic is then introduced and used as a lens through which to understand and critique this contemporary parenting culture. The discussion that follows covers: (1) ways in which social media (Facebook…

Queer youth of color are critical and conscious observers of society. Despite limited representation in research and within mainstream gay media, there exists a legacy of queer youth of color contributing acts of resistance in the form of grassroots organizing, storytelling, music, performance, and revision of kinship networks. This article…

Accepting Newell's invitation to develop his interdisciplinary theory to address new developments, I first consider Newell's complex systems theory of interdisciplinarity. I then review developments of his theory before critiquing its merits and deficiencies. This critique is informed by recent critical realists' works that point to deficiencies…

With the increasing recognition of the importance of developing intercultural competence in foreign language education, there is now much discussion amongst scholars and teachers as to how to move beyond fact-based approaches to teaching culture by promoting more interpretive and reflective learning within a critical frame. Whilst study abroad is…

Sociomaterial theories, including actor-network theory (ANT), materialist feminism and posthumanism, are sometimes argued to not be addressing or unable to address sufficiently the political and are therefore dismissed as irrelevant to educational research. Through an extended discussion of writers across the social sciences, this article seeks to…

This article analyses how education is positioned in the current concerns about security and extremism. This means firstly examining the different meanings of security (national, human and societal) and who provides security for whom. Initially, a central dilemma is acknowledged: that schooling appears to be simultaneously irrelevant to the huge…

In recent years, historical events, issues, and characters have been portrayed in an increasing number of non-fiction graphic texts. Similar to comics and graphic novels, graphic texts are defined as fully developed, non-fiction narratives told through panels of sequential art. Such non-fiction graphic texts are being used to teach history in…

Within the background where education is increasingly driven by the economies of scale and research funding, we propose an alternative online open and connected framework (OOC) for building global learning communities using mobile social media. We critique a three year action research case study involving building collaborative global learning…

BBC ALBA is the first dedicated Gaelic-medium television channel in history. It launched in September 2008 and, in late 2010, announced that it would be carried on Freeview, in addition to Sky, Freesat, and BBC iPlayer, thereby widening access to Gaelic throughout Scotland. The channel is a BBC-licensed service that is presently operated as a…

In this paper we look at what the critical tradition in education has to offer to the phenomenon of social media. Through an overview and evaluation of the approaches advocated by practitioners of critical literacy and critical media literacy, we illustrate the limitations of applying these frameworks to the fluid and densely interwoven spaces of…

Social networking sites such as "Facebook" and "MySpace" have been subject to much recent debate within the educational community. Whilst growing numbers of educators celebrate the potential of social networking to (re)engage learners with their studies, others fear that such applications compromise and disrupt young people's…

This paper begins as an initial rejoinder to the ideas expressed by Ross (2000) in The Promise and Perils of E-Learning: A critical look at the new technology. In his article, Ross supports the traditional practices of pedagogy at the primary school level--face-to-face pedagogy--and then critiques what he describes as a "fetishisation"…