Early childhood has become a priority in national and international political agendas. In the last decade, states have elaborated social policies and launched a variety of programmes for young children. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, this research explores the most prominent conceptualisations of children and childhood underpinning official…

This article argues that in pluralistic, secular, democratic schooling we need a concept of critical character education. There are substantial challenges to the theory and practice of character education, which indicates that character education is a "problem" in the philosophical sense. The way forward is to cultivate a critical theory…

This article examines the democratic hopes for the community of philosophical inquiry (CPI), a mode of deliberative discussion, when social justice is both the topic and the goal of discussion. It shares insights from a CPI that was used as an intersubjective research method (Golding, 2015) to enable the authors to interrogate their assumptions…

This paper reports on a research study in which seven New York City high school mathematics teachers participated in a professional development opportunity around the teaching of mathematics for social justice. The teachers saw value in teaching math for social justice and were philosophically aligned with the pedagogy. Despite this and despite…

Education systems in the United States (US) increasingly experience disagreement over how to address cultural and societal injustices. At the heart of these debates includes the role of the rural sociocultural experience -- which in the US is based on racial and spatial isolation, the idea of whiteness as the norm, and more recently economic…

Service learning and short-term missions represent one of the many habits disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The disruption imposed a break from routine that may also offer opportunities to push back on habits that hinder the flourishing of our students and our host communities. This article critically analyzes the practice of these trips to…

Research has indicated that minoritized students have much to contend with in classrooms where educational practices devalue diversity and where traditional teaching practices dominate to create barriers within the school and social structures. These approaches tend to exclude minoritized learner populations from pursuing STEM careers by ignoring…

Policies to promote high participation in Higher Educations (HE) systems aim to deliver social justice and economic development through widening participation of under-represented groups. "Degrees of Success" provides a critical test of this through examination of participation and success of learners progressing to HE with a vocational…

Engaged scholarship promotes contribution to the academic body of knowledge through equal partnership between academic scholars and community representatives in education, research, and public service or intervention. Such partnerships can expand our notions of service learning and applied research. In this article, the authors discuss the…

This paper reflects and supports the focus of my doctoral research that aims to identify, underscore and examine some of the key challenges and policy barriers that are shaped or hindered by socio-political, ethno-cultural and economic factors that subsequently impede immigrant students' transition and future academic and social success in their…

This paper suggests that, in contrast to the great reports such as Crowther, Newsom Robbins and Plowden, recent government papers relating to education in England pay little attention to values that should shape the standards to be achieved, the knowledge to be transmitted and the virtues to be nourished. Whilst legislation over the past 60 years…

"Educating for Diversity and Social Justice" foregrounds the personal stories of educators who are engaging the space of schooling as a site of possibility for realizing the goals of social justice. It is a book inspired by a vision of education as a practice of freedom where young people--especially those who are marginalized--can learn…

In this article, we illustrate and grapple with the challenges of doing social justice work in a neoliberal academic environment. Specifically, we consider our experiences of creating a social justice concentration in a graduate program where higher education serves as the focus of study. In so doing, we draw on information from a number of…

When environmental education manifests itself in schools, it is usually a simple matter of the insertion of an environment-related activity into the science, or perhaps social studies, curriculum. However, if one finds a teacher who has "the ethic," the entire school might be "green." The fact that this ethic is spreading…

As the title of this book suggests, how one understands, perceives and experiences democracy may have a significant effect on how he/she actually engages in, and with, democracy. Within the educational context, this is a key concern, and forms the basis of the research presented in this volume within a critical, comparative analysis. The Global…