This paper is an attempt to connect the Brazilian Paulo Freire's well known educational thinking with the "philosophy for children" movement. It considers the relationship between the creator of philosophy for children (P4C), Matthew Lipman and Freire through different attempts to establish a relationship between these two educators. The…

The opt out movement represents a dramatic public challenge to today's school reform agenda, yet little empirical research has examined the political impact of this parent activism on local school communities. To address this gap, this paper uses survey, interview, and document-based data to explore the political impact of opt out activism in four…

While most of the press around the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) has focused on how it signals an end to No Child Left Behind, the implications of ESSA for students experiencing homelessness have been largely overlooked. Garnering organizational insights from Kingdon's (Agendas, alternatives, and public policies, Pearson, Glenviiew, 2011)…

An ongoing debate in K-12 education policy has been between the "reform" agenda, including charter schools and school vouchers, and advocates of traditional public schools, led by educator unions. A similar split has emerged in higher education, particularly community colleges. Using California as an example, this paper: 1) summarizes…

Black students account for 15.1% of public school students, yet represent 38.2% of out-of-school suspensions, 28.7% of referrals to law enforcement, and 31.6% of school arrests (U.S. Department of Education, 2021). Suspended and expelled youth are less likely to complete high school or attend college (Rosenbaum, 2020), and more likely to be…

While limited research on inclusive education in sub-Saharan Africa and Tanzania focuses on the perspectives of preservice and practicing teachers, this case study features those of governmental and non-governmental national policy actors. To analyse these influential voices shaping inclusive education, key education sector policy actors working…

The paper aims to explore how head teachers and other education service leaders and their teams have been experiencing shifts in their identities during the last decade of education cuts in Catalonia (Spain), and the possible effects during the current COVID-19 crisis on educational leaders. Our exploratory hypothesis covers the crisis years…

In the last four decades, many Latin American governments have positioned English learning and teaching as a national priority and incorporated it into state-supported "políticas sobre lenguas extranjeras" (foreign language policies) that position the English language as a desirable characteristic of their citizenry. I argue that this…

Illustrating the rising trend across education systems, the article examines the socio-historical constitution of the "politics of pupil self-evaluation" in the case of Finnish compulsory education assessment policy discourse. By studying self-evaluation as a 'politics', which, drawing on studies in governmentality, engages in the…

This paper adds to the growing literature that critically examines the cultural politics of the OECD's framework of global competence by turning our attention to the 'affective ideology' underlying this framework, namely, how affect is used ideologically to produce specific subjectivities and moralities in students. Building upon the work of…

Partisanship influenced learning modality after the pandemic's onset, but it is unknown whether partisanship predicted other aspects of educational operations. We study the role of partisanship, race, markets, and public health in predicting a range of operations--from modality to family engagement to social-emotional support to teacher…

This study investigates to what extent activist-scholars in U.S. public universities are reassured by the safeguard of academic freedom when considering whether to express their politics publicly. Drawing from 31 in-depth interviews with a diverse pool of faculty from multiple institutions, this study interrogates activists-scholars' sense of…

This article employs event history analysis to explore the factors that were associated with the rapid uptake of teacher evaluation reform. We investigate three hypotheses for this rapid adoption: (a) downward diffusion from the federal government through Race to the Top (RTTT), (b) upward diffusion from large school district policies, and (c) the…

We are five early childhood researchers, from across Canada, thrown together amongst a series of alarming discourses, where developmental, economic, and neuroscientific rationales for ECEC drown out alternative theoretical perspectives, as well as personal experience, values, subjective knowledges, and the fierce passion we feel for our work. In…

Policy elites use rhetoric in speeches and press releases to provide framing that is intended to influence public opinion. These rhetorical events can be treated as instances in which speech usefully promotes particular discourses. Indeed, elected officials are able to influence how individuals think about problems and solutions through speeches…