Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) in South Africa has undergone major institutional, structural and curricular changes over the last fourteen years. Drawing on figurational sociology by Norbert Elias, the study worked within a qualitative research paradigm and used open-ended interviews to investigate lecturers' experiences of…

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…

Background: The purpose of this article is to examine the contributions, gaps, and normativity problems in mainstream sociocultural theories, curriculum theory, and educational leadership studies, considering reflective education theories that provide a less normative alternative. Framework: Our framework introduces reflective education for social…

There is a good deal of ongoing debate about the effects and impacts of globalisation. Many educational theorists (e.g., Meyer et al., 1997) have argued that there is a world systems model at work (see Wallerstein, 2004). And we would agree that a convergent global rhetoric for education has emerged in the neoliberal period. However, whilst at the…

The current de-democratization process in which the world now apparently finds itself ". . .represents the longest continuous period of deterioration in the nearly 40-year history of Freedom House's annual assessment of the state of political and civil liberties in every country of the world". As Gilley (2010: 161) observes, ". . .the hottest…

This paper examines the pedagogical implications of the Occupy Movement from a Latin American decolonial theoretical perspective. Central to this analysis is a geo-political understanding of the ways in which capital and coloniality are historically "entangled." Building upon the notion of a "neoliberal revolution" advanced by various Marxist…

Irish society has experienced unprecedented demographic change since the turn of the twenty-first century, and increasingly, educators are facing the prospect of having to respond to the changing nature of cultural diversity in their classrooms. Traditionally characterised as"Catholic, white and Gaelic", Irish schools are said to be…

In this essay, the authors propose that there are certain psychoanalytic insights, at the intersection of the clinical and of critical social theory, which become crucial at precisely the point of recognizing the hidden curriculum. They contend that it is at this point that a political actor, and an educator or educational theorist interested in…

The influential policy work in education of the intellectual grouping formed by J. H. Oldham during the Second World War known as "Oldham's Moot" (1938-1947) has been discussed in recent publications. These have noted its general educational and university policy, its intellectual strengths, and the role of Sir Walter Moberly in relation to his…

In the elections of 2006 and 2008, progressive and liberal groups in the United States broke through key bulwarks of the Right to capture some of the highest hills on the political landscape. Although progressives and liberals now control key positions, the Right still holds wide swaths of terrain and still exercises considerable power in shaping…

The challenge of maximizing student learning has been paramount in many societies. This issue has become especially salient in the context of drastic social and political changes that have taken place in countries such as Kyrgyzstan. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, teachers and students are confronted with new ways of thinking, which are…

"Change Matters," written by leading scholars committed to social justice in English education, provides researchers, university instructors, and preservice and inservice teachers with a framework that pivots social justice toward policy. The chapters in this volume detail rationales about generating social justice theory in what Freire calls "the…

Beginning with an overview of the anthropological heritage of educational anthropology, the outgoing editor of this journal reviews the development of the field and comments on the implications of anthropology for research on educational policy. (Author/GC)

The reunification process in Germany and its effect on distance education policies and practices in the East provide an occasion to test the relevance of the Fordist framework. Discussion includes characteristics of a neo- or post-Fordist distance education system, the failure of Fordism as a theory of industrialized society, and the Fordism…

Reviews Cambodia's educational development, characterized by a series of successive crises since the country's independence from France in 1953. Examines various approaches of development discourse to the educational crisis, and suggests that previous analyses of Cambodia's educational development have failed to recognize the tensions generated by…