When the newly appointed professor of medicine at the University of Rinteln, Johann Peter Lotichius (1598-1669), delivered an oration entitled "Oratio super fatalibus hoc tempore academiarum in Germania periculis" ("Oration on the pernicious dangers to the universities of contemporary Germany") at said university in February…

This article challenges the dominant notion of the 'high-performing education system' and offers an alternative interpretation from a Daoist perspective. The paper highlights two salient characteristics of such a system: its ability to outperform other education systems in international large-scale assessments; and its status as a positive or…

Swedish preschool teachers must systematically document activities in the preschool in order to evaluate the quality of these activities. Pedagogical documentation is one form of documentation that is proposed. The aim of this article is to discuss and create knowledge of structures and tools based on different communicative aspects of pedagogical…

The author argues that despite demonstrable successes of public education, school leaders have not framed an effective defense against decades-long charges of school failure. Drawing on leadership literature from Aristotle through today's airport best-sellers, the author suggests that school superintendents have an obligation to make a case for…

The field of early childhood education is increasingly dominated by a strongly positivistic and regulatory discourse, the story of quality and high returns, which has spread from its local origins in the favourable environment provided by a global regime of neoliberalism. But though dominant, this is not the only discourse in early childhood…

National Qualifications Frameworks (NQFs) are a principal means by which governments seek to assure the quality of higher education. A body of critical scholarship has, however, emerged in the last two decades that challenges their philosophical and practical foundations. Stephanie Allais is prominent amongst the critics. She has published…

The "Practical 1" paper combines Schwab's abiding concern, for the nature and quality of educational experience with another abiding concern, for how we think about what we do. The Practical 1 is the first of a set of four "practical" essays. These in turn are the product of his thinking about college education and his…

Despite its ideological saturation, recent neo-liberal education policy has been deeply depoliticising in the sense of reducing properly political concerns to matters of technical efficiency. This depoliticisation is reflected in the hegemony of a managerial discourse and the decontestation of terms like "quality" and…

This essay examines critically the conceptual and normative underpinnings of various views about educational quality, emphasizing the centrality of different assumptions about educational aims. Two distinctions play a key role in the first part of the paper: that between transcendent justifications of educational aims, versus socio-cultural…

Criticizes the notion that the empiricism of economics is more valid (and therefore more valuable) to the field of political science than the more subjective efforts of area studies. Specifically responds to Robert Bates's categorization of area studies as "unscientific" and unduly "humanist." Briefly discusses significant works within area…

Extrapolates some of the basic epistemological and philosophical arguments of area studies supporters and their detractors within political science. Discusses a possible study of traditional political science "culture" by the area studies proponents. Concludes with a call for both disciplines to work together. (MJP)