Under the influence of the external policy pressure of donors such as the World Bank, higher education in Ethiopia has witnessed a series of institutional and system-wide reforms. This article reviews selected policy documents to show key neo-liberal policy agendas endorsed in the reforms and explicate how they have affected social equity in the…

This article is an exploration of ambiguity as it appears in various guises in philosophical, social, political, and educational situations. Among these situations is the experience of exile. The exploration is conducted by means of literary anecdotes and real-life instances, hence the use of vignettes. The suggestion is made that ambiguity can be…

Most research and policy discussions of education in the global city have focused on the ways in which globalization and the emergence of global or globalizing cities can create social, economic and educational inequality locally, within the global city itself. Global cities, however, are, by definition, powerful places, where the core…

This article stresses that current school improvement policy in the USA marginalizes development of the type of system of student support necessary for enabling student success and well-being at school. Then we discuss how education policy can be expanded and operationalized to correct this deficiency. Finally, we explore the implications of the…

This article deals with the current situation of the Australian education system--particularly the public schools in disadvantaged areas. Research undertaken in the last decade show that while Australia has developed intensively in economic terms in the last ten years, inequality has spread nonetheless. Furthermore, there are legal barriers for…

This article provides a consideration of the problem of equity in education. In the first part of the discussion, the author draws on philosophical and sociological literature to consider what equity means and its implications for education. Drawing on work by Burbules, Lord and Sherman, she looks to curriculum as a condition of access and the…

Neoliberalism has brought a privatization trend that has deeply affected the structure of the educational system of countries. While public schools lag behind, new forms of private schooling have arisen creating different forms of inequality. Nonetheless, in Chile the major inequality exists between schools attended by low and middle income…

Two groups of teacher candidates, enrolled either in a field-based or campus-based program, were measured before and after their first semester of teacher education courses and again at the end of their student teaching semester. The two groups were compared regarding their knowledge of multicultural education issues, dispositions towards diverse…

This article analyses the Communication of the European Commission (EC) devoted to efficiency and equity of European education systems. It shows the Commission's difficulties in integrating the multiple dimensions of education equity and the confusion between pedagogical and economical notions of efficiency. The authors also analyse the means…

Innovation is crucial to the competitiveness of the economies of Europe, and learning is crucial to innovation. The most important trend shift is not that knowledge is becoming more important but that it is becoming obsolete more rapidly than before, so that firms and employees constantly have to learn and acquire new competencies. This involves…

Higher education--particularly the research-intensive university, which is the focus of this article--is the subject of global/national/local effects, and is shaped by hierarchy and uneven development on a world scale. The article theorises social competition in higher education, and traces inter-university competition and stratification on the…

This article is a theoretical discussion that links Marcuse's concept of one-dimensional society and the Great Refusal with critical race theory in order to achieve a more robust interrogation of whiteness. The author argues that in the context of the United States, the one-dimensionality that Marcuse condemns in "One-Dimensional Man" is best…

This article examines recent trends in childhood and youth policy, political socialization, and civic education in the USA and Canada since 2000. It examines some of the current trends (such as political socialization and education research findings on children and youth) as well as policy initiatives (such as the landmark federal legislation…