The doctorate, as a ritualised form of evaluation, has existed for more than eight centuries--initially linked to Western medieval forms of knowledge production framed by religion, and to the professional training of lawyers and doctors. It nearly disappeared at the end of the modern era. Recast as a requirement for academic professions, it…

Over the past two decades, efforts have been made to enrich curriculum studies internationally. Among the field's new theories which have emerged in recent years is "itinerant curriculum theory" (ICT), proposed and developed by João Paraskeva. Its aim is to free curriculum from the dominance of Western discourses and make room for…

Despite the ongoing 'globalization' of higher education, the curricula of most contemporary universities continue to be based upon epistemological assumptions deeply rooted in the Western philosophical tradition. Critiques of this lingering hegemony are evident in the growing calls for the decolonization of knowledge to make way for indigenous and…

The 'Learning Compass 2030' was released by the OECD in 2019 as their new policy framework for the compulsory schooling sector. This framework takes the bold step of asserting that access to disciplinary knowledge is central to schooling, putting it in stark contrast to previous OECD reports which have advocated instead for more generic skills and…

In this article, I offer my observations of the epistemological shifts that have taken place in the TESOL discipline as a result of the inexorable forces of globalisation. Specifically, the article highlights how the multicultural, multilingual, and multimodal nature of communication in the 21st century has disrupted various assumptions on how…

People's enamoured preoccupation with "change" is as old as civilisation itself. Making changes for a multitude of various reasons has been an on-going process for centuries. This paper explores changing landscapes and shifting perspectives in a glocalised learning environment. It looks at how societal changes, brought about…

In this interview Craig Calhoun talks about universities, the Humanities and his own research. Universities reinvent themselves in the face of societal and technological change. In the midst of this change, however, universities are charged with maintaining old ideals, with informing the public and creating opportunities for human development. The…

In this interview, Professor Boaventura de Sousa Santos addresses, on the one hand, the process of transnationalisation of universities and the neoliberalisation of the classical model of the European university. On the other hand, he stresses that the recognition of difference and internal pluralism of science, which have pervaded the…

Democratic management as a way of organizing the public school can be translated in its contemporary historicity as a collective action that demands changes in the autocratic and hierarchical structure of the school unit. In this article, we analyze the process of constructing legislation on democratic school management in contexts of local…

Epistemicide happens when globalizing West-centric discourses and practices dominate non-Western societies, suppressing and killing the latter's cultural systems of knowledge production. Though scholars worldwide are starting to recognize this fact, China is still forcefully transplanting Western policies and practices in the name of "going…

Background: This article explores the increasing prevalence of security themes in higher education policy. Aim: Addressing neglect in security studies on the role of the university in the processes of securitisation, this article shows the integral relationship between securitisation theory and the securitised university. Setting: Drawing on…

This paper takes a longue durée look at universities at the core of the world economy, where the modern idea of intellectuals as trustees of the reflexive structures of society has achieved its most enduring institutional form. To wrest thinking away from a conformism that makes us see universities as nothing more than organisations amongst…

Globalization is profoundly altering the education policy landscape. It introduces new problems in education agendas, compresses time and space in policy processes, and revitalizes the role of a range of supra-national players in educational reform. This deterritorialization of the education policy process has important theoretical and…

Taking the evolution of the quality agenda in the UK as its centrepiece, this article analyses the politics of legitimation accompanying the emergence of quality assurance and the contribution of quality enhancement to the power play therein. This article argues that over the last 25 years the quality agenda has been used as a proxy--a state…

Drawing upon tenets of critical theory, cultural capital, global epistemologies, decolonization, Indigenous ways of knowing, mobility and translanguaging, ethics, and global citizenship, this article proposes a model of cross-cultural meaning making and worldly reading as a foundation for global epistemological eclecticism in our research and…