There is a Gary Larson Far Side cartoon entitled 'The Real Reason Dinosaurs Became Extinct'. It shows three dinosaurs surreptitiously smoking cigarettes. Why would such a peripheral habit like burning some leaves cause an extinction? Like dinosaurs, neo-liberalism has had a bad press. There have been plenty of critiques of neo-liberalism, and…

The article explores how different concepts of "nature" were applied in secondary education in Germany around 1900 by examining the discussions on and practices in particular boarding schools. It will first scrutinise Enlightenment debates on "human nature" and how they were perceived in German secondary education in general…

This article draws from a year-long ethnographic study documenting the use of comics in a school. Focusing on literacy work in a social studies classroom, it documents how comics were welcomed into and challenged classroom spaces. Comics were introduced, read, and engaged with collaboratively. While comics were able to support strategic practices,…

The widespread expansion of school choice policies has bolstered the consumer-education paradigm where parents compete for what they perceive to be a limited number of high quality schools. In this comparative case study, we examine advantaged White parents' perceptions of meritocracy in the context of a competitive elementary and high school…

Performativity is a dominant mode of regulation in many education systems that has caused a significant shift in teaching and teacher professionalism, yet minimal attention has been paid to understanding it in non-Western contexts. This study explores Singaporean teachers' perceptions of teaching within its unique and normalised performative…

The liberal and neoliberal world order is increasingly under attack. Global levels of democracy have been declining for over a decade, accompanied by rollbacks in some kinds of rights. We examine the implications of increasing criticisms of the (neo)-liberal era over time for educational reform discourse around the world by drawing on a unique…

Any enthusiast of classical liberal education will be much dismayed at the current state of education in America, both in K-12 schools and our colleges and universities. In this article, the author highlights how critics of American education have neglected the issues of procedure and pedagogy--the "hows" of schooling--and he argues that…

In this article, we use the zombies as a metaphor for reforms in the Polish academy and a description of how neoliberalism works. According to the interpretation of the production of zombies as a critique of late capitalism, we want to show, by using an autoethnographic method, how subjectivity, relationships with others and the world are changing…

This book explores how well teachers are prepared for professional practice. It is an outcome of a large-scale research and development program that has collected extensive data on the impact of the Graduate Teacher Performance Assessment on Initial Teacher Education programs and preservice teachers' engagement with the assessment. It contributes…

Purpose: The overall aim of this article is to discuss the conditions and character of collective protest in schools. When do pupils as a collective gain the ability to express critical views on the policies of schools, and what is that criticism about? Using Sweden as an example, I discuss this question by studying the collective organisation of…

In responding to John Raven's critique of the current situation in education and the role of evidence-based interventions, there are a number of observations that Steve Higgins makes, but he starts by supporting Raven's key argument about the damage that high stakes accountability has done to the system of teaching and assessment in schools. This…

In the past decades, neoliberalism has permeated (foreign) language education, as has been discussed by critical research in the fields of: curriculum theory, applied linguistics, discourse analysis, language policy, language assessment, to name a few. Despite the fact that research on foreign language education and neoliberalism is certainly…

More than a decade ago, critical ecopedagogue Richard Kahn expressed his fears and hopes regarding Education for sustainable development (ESD). He feared that ESD would be short lived and marginalized and would develop an instrumental pedagogy of one-sided transmission of knowledge, yet hoped for ESD to encompass three types of…

The role of schools in developing values is internationally recognised, with many systems grappling to identify and embed values in schools. Within an Irish context, the Education Act (1998) frames values from the perspective of 'characteristic spirit', giving responsibility to boards of management to uphold the characteristic spirit as…

Catherine Priggs and her history department colleagues were increasingly concerned that their curriculum was too narrow. They feared that major areas of history were being left out and that many of their own pupils were not seeing themselves, in their various ethnic, cultural and world identities, in the past. Priggs and colleagues decided that a…