Purpose: This article responds to the topic of 'postcolonial social science education' by exploring strategies for decolonizing the social science 'archive'. Design/methodology/approach: The paper takes a decolonial-critical social science approach to explore the limit and test cases for decolonizing social science education, using two examples: a…

In the chapter we wrote 10 years ago for "Critical Library Instruction: Theories and Methods" we asked instructors to free themselves from the stifling heritage of positivism that privileged tools and instrumentality above meaning. Drawing on Henry Giroux and Oscar Wilde, we urged our peers to embrace dialogue that respects the…

This article considers some theoretical resources for resistance to neoliberalised schooling and develops principles for reimagining the common school. Whilst relevant internationally, it is situated in the particular context of England, as a global epicentre of school reform -- a marketised and largely privatised system where the net of…

The research focuses on the complexities associated with contemporary rural primary school leadership. The paper draws on in-depth ethnographic research undertaken in two contrasting English rural primary schools and their surrounding community over a period of three years and in particular the experiences and perspectives of the two head teachers…

In this paper, we offer a critique of neoliberal power from the perspective of the gendered, sexualised, raced and classed politics of motherhood in English universities. By using dialogical auto-ethnographic methods to examine our own past experiences as full-time employed mother-academics, we demonstrate how feminist academic praxis can not only…

Globalization has become one of the most recurrent concepts in social and political sciences. More often than not, however, the concept is handled without much of a properly articulated theory capable of explaining its historical origin and expansion. For education researchers attempting to elucidate how global changes and processes affect their…

This paper examines some critical accounts of emotional life shaped by neoliberalism. A range of literature concerned with neoliberalism and emotional experience in educational contexts is reviewed. I argue that neoliberal "reforms" in public institutions create an ever-increasing demand for emotional performance. Neoliberals often refer…

In this article Paul Warmington examines the dystopian analyses pervading recent work by David Blacker, John Marsh, and Pauline Lipman. Their unsettling depictions of education under late capitalism bear witness to irreversible economic and environmental malaise, the colonization of education by neoliberalism, and the unsustainability of faith in…

This lecture argues that the politicisation and instrumentalisation of the university caused by neoliberal frames has as a result the depoliticisation of knowledge and of the academic as individual. This depoliticisation has turned academic freedom into a right to disengage not only from the political fight around these issues but also from the…

This paper uses Deleuzoguattarian schizoanalysis to interrogate concepts of social justice in relation to the crisis of neo-liberal capitalism by referring to the work of the Situationist International movement, the posthuman philosophy of Giles Deleuze and Félix Guattari as well as Afrofuturism. Providing an array of new theoretical responses as…

In this article, I endeavor to explore the historical dimensions of "Bildung" by first focusing on the German linguist and philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt and his theory of "Bildung." The article then addresses the transformation of Humboldt's neo-humanistic ideal into a governmentrun institutionalized "Bildung"…

This article explores activism, education, and the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Using critical race theory (CRT), I analyze what this emergence of primarily youth-led activism means in the context of decades of neoliberal education reform. I raise specific questions about how youth-led activism, which has its genesis in and is largely shaped by…

Simply put, charter schools have not lived up to their advocates' promise of equity. Using examples of tangible civil rights gains of the twentieth century (e.g. "Brown v. Board," "Lau v. Nichols") and extending feminist theories of invisible labor to include the labor of democracy, the authors argue that the charter movement…

Across the United States, a counter-network of teacher activists is engaged in the development of grassroots organizing structures to advocate for social justice, resist the privatization of public education, and increase union democracy. The United Caucuses of Rank and File Educators (UCORE) is a national network of more than 20 union reform…

This article traces the emergence of the world culture theory in comparative education using critical discourse analysis. By chronicling the emergence and expansion of world culture theory over the past four decades, we highlight the (unintended) limitations and exclusive regimes of thought that have resulted. We argue that the theory's…