This article considers the adoption of Western neoliberalism in Taiwan's higher education (HE) governance as a hybridisation process in which the influences of political democratisation, social liberalisation and Chinese cultural traditions intersect with contemporary Western norms and values. The paper draws on data from interviews with senior…

Teachers matter. They make a difference in the life of the individual and the society at large. Hence, their education and training has always been at the centre of any government's education policy. This paper focuses on teacher education in Albania. The narrative describes and analyzes the main milestones in teacher education during the four…

Well-being is realised through the interaction of the individual's desires and capacities, and external contexts. Contexts in postcolonial societies diverge from the assumptions of functioning liberal democratic states and capitalist economies often assumed in theories of schooling. Instead, these contexts are characterised by poverty and…

The aim of the article is to explore how pedagogues in Swedish leisure-time centres interpret and make sense of what may be meant by children's participation. We also focus on ambivalences and competing interpretations of participation and how pedagogues argue for or against divergent interpretations. The material consists of 18 digitally recorded…

Utilizing data from the 2009 IEA International Civic and Citizenship Study Asian Regional Module, this secondary analysis explores the relationship between traditional Asian values and democratic citizenship. Findings identify two dimensions of Asian values: Asian civic values and obedience to authority. Among South Korean students, Asian civic…

This study cross-culturally explored the way that East Asian lower-secondary school students perceive the peculiar matters of Asian civic values specific to Korea, Chinese Taipei, and Hong Kong using the Asian Regional Module data of the 2009 International Civic and Citizenship Education Study. Methodologically, exploratory and confirmatory factor…

This article examines the meanings ascribed to democracy by 74 township children in primary and intermediate schools outside Cape Town. The Xhosa children's racial and historical accounts form the qualitative substance to postulate democracy as "ubuntu" (respect). Embedded in a 'struggle for recognition', democratic belonging, being, and…

The social landscape of the United States can be mapped by using a series of cultural fault lines. This topography portrays conditions that descriptions of the surface fail to illuminate. Many of these schisms are the by-product of ideological positions that diminish personal responsibility and thoughtful civic discourse. If left unattended, these…

Despite persistent questions about the nature and purpose of social studies education in the United States, there exists general agreement that social studies should be about democratic citizenship. But much depends on how individuals view democracy, and the extent to which they think it has been, or could be, realized through education. This…

This is a critical response to the papers by Shusterman, Sartwell, and Stroud. I claim that Shusterman has missed the inter-human moral aesthetics of Confucianism, that Sartwell has misunderstood Taoism's idea of "receptivity," confusing it with anarchist "passivity," and Stroud has not overcome the "Gita's" injunction to sacrifice the self,…

The practical power of appeals to patriotism implies that patriotism in one form or another is here to stay. As such, arguments for the repudiation of patriotism cannot avoid seeming a bit utopian or ethereal. Practically speaking, we cannot repudiate patriotism and still have effective functioning states. To that end, political philosophers…

The recently introduced and compulsory citizenship education in English schools seeks to prepare children for life in a liberal democracy and is concerned with far more than the acquisition of skills and knowledge; it privileges particular forms of action, behaviour and ways of thinking. I argue here that education for democratic citizenship (EDC)…

The conceptualized view of American Democracy and civic values does not enjoy a standardized and uniform belief system throughout the nation's constituency. Many Americans appear to have differing interpretations of freedoms and rights; expressing an individualized view that appears to be ever morphing or changing due to numerous variances such as…

In this paper, the authors discuss the influence of democracy and law on music education in Sweden and Finland, and the potential for music education as training in democracy. The latter consideration can be instructive regardless of the nation, or its laws and paradigms of music education. The theoretical background is based on Jurgen Habermas'…

The winning of an artist representing the lowest level of Finnish musical taste during the 2006 Eurovision song contest marks not only the rebellious attitude towards the over-sanitized contest, but it was the result of a new practice--voting by text message. Recently, music-biased schools that were once selective of the music they teach are now…