Thinking sexuality education and religion together often results in antagonisms that pit religious and secular values against each other. Political theology provides new insights into this tendency by showing how modern concepts of political legitimacy are based on secularised Christian theology. Neoliberal schooling, public sexual health and…

Many approaches to political education take it to involve the construction of particular sections of the curriculum in which political matters are addressed -- named perhaps "civics" or "citizenship education". While these approaches have often been beneficial, they are all also problematic and controversial in some degree.…

The Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 places a specific duty on clearly identified actors to prevent terrorism. This paper adopts a poststructuralist approach to deconstruct the Prevent Duty's ideology and discourse. Using Foucauldian terminology, Prevent is conceptualised as a proactive "dispositif" to manage the risk of extremism…

The article interprets changes in human rights education in English school policy on values which have increasingly been framed by PREVENT and a move from international to national expressions of values. It reveals the extent of the impact and nature of this change on human rights education in school policy for the first time. It reports changes…

In a rapidly expanding academic literature on gratitude, psychologists, philosophers and educational theorists have argued that gratitude is not just of great psycho-social importance but also of moral significance. It would therefore seem to follow that the promotion of gratitude is also of moral educational significance. In this regard, recent…

The duty to monitor "the failure to uphold British Values" in the "Prevent" strategy, introduced in the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015, is itself an attack on British democracy. This article explains the contradictory nature of the "Prevent Duty." First, the current state of democracy in Britain is examined…

This paper examines the political and historical antecedents of the absent presence of "race" in successive policies for citizenship education in contemporary Britain. It questions the possibility of embracing an emerging cosmopolitanism and politics of difference, within the limiting frame of the nation state and its overarching appeal…

Human Capital Theory has been an increasingly important phenomenon in economic thought over the last 50 years. The central role it affords to education has become even more marked in recent years as the concept of the "knowledge economy" has become a global concern. In this paper, the prevalence of Human Capital Theory within European…

This article explores to what extent citizenship education for lifelong learning should be based on a more "political" or civic republican conception of citizenship as compared to a liberal individualist conception, which emphasizes individual rights, or a communitarian conception, which emphasizes moral and social responsibilities. It…

In order to understand better the way in which the emerging field of citizenship education is being characterised we reflect on work emerging from a higher education network (citizED) for citizenship education. Three of the four authors of this article are closely involved in that network. CitizED was established with funding from the Teacher…

The paper reviews the assembly of the Country Code and its wider project circulated to reify a particular construction of countryside citizenship. The Code can be read as an attempt to pursue a particular moral project and an effort to influence behaviour through the design of a particular regime of conduct. Numerous alterations, most recently in…

This article demonstrates that while the more obvious and visible forms of citizenship education (such as introducing it as a new subject on the timetable and a public examination option) are being endorsed and promoted in official discourse, less visible forms (such as attending to ethics and values across the curriculum or the impact of…

Citizenship enables young people to learn about their rights and responsibilities, to understand how society works, and develop knowledge and understanding of social and political issues. Through citizenship education young people are encouraged to take action on issues of concern to themselves and to play an active part in the democratic process,…

This article argues that, in the United Kingdom, the discussion of quality in higher education reflects a conceptual confusion and is generating practical consequences that may be catastrophic for higher education. A distinction is made between two approaches to policy concerning quality, based on selection of appropriate ethical standards. (MSE)

The importance of motivational beliefs and, more specifically, religion, is identified as central for both citizenship and citizenship education. Whether they take an expressly religious form, or appear in a purportedly more open form, such as faith or world view, beliefs are at the core of human being. The tendency to speak more of shared values…