There is an ongoing debate about the omission of specific learners in modern learning theories. Most learning theories are derived from theoretical works by the dominant culture. This paper argues that despite the criticisms and shortcomings of Knowles' andragogical theory, the instructor can alter the framework as needed to meet the varying needs…

Culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris, 2012) has emerged as an essential way to value the evolution of culture among diverse learners. Discussions around teaching in a culturally sustaining manner in the English language arts classroom, specifically when teaching literary analysis, often address the need to incorporate multicultural literature so…

Hannah Arendt has been criticised for the sharp distinction she drew between the social and political realms, and her application of this distinction to schools. In this paper, I demonstrate that this distinction can be interpreted as a heuristic that Arendt developed to address a tension that she had encountered in her attempt to understand…

Recent debates among scholars in Literature education have led to polarizing views about the aims of the subject. The debate reignites ancient quarrels about the aesthetic and political values of literary study and relatedly, the different pedagogical approaches to teaching. In the first part of this paper, I explore the aesthetic-political divide…

Through the lens of an anticolonial (as opposed to postcolonial) analytical framework, this conceptual paper examines decolonising efforts (and failures) in Religious Education (RE) as a school subject in post-independent sub-Saharan Africa. It critiques the missionary/European epistemological hegemony that continues to render RE a colonial rather…

The teaching of Islam in Western and non-Western societies may be located along a continuum from critical to non-critical paradigms. Islamic religious education is dominated by the non-critical paradigm and a devotional discourse of religious education. This is true in both Islamic and non-Islamic countries and is relevant to the teaching of both…

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…

Learning in the arts has the potential to be a co-constructive means of inquiry for students, which enables experience of the self in relation to practice. This research explores a practice-based investigation of agency as self-definition, amid normative social constructions of the subject. The focus for data analysis is a project taught to BTEC…

In this paper, I critique the ways in which music education professionals--especially the privileged voices within our field--engage in dialogue through social media outlets such as Facebook. While social media has become a valuable and ubiquitous discursive tool within our field, especially in that it theoretically removes the "ivory…

In this paper, we provide a conceptual critique of the various constructs often used to justify policies and/or research to promote equity, diversity and social justice in science education. As research expands in these areas, we seek to provide some clarity to support researchers in deepening their work toward transformative goals in science…

This article traces the Council of Europe's work on teaching about religions and non-religious worldviews, regarded as an important contributor to intercultural education. It explains why studies of religions came late in the Council of Europe's educational work and traces the development of a project which led to a Recommendation from its…

Fénelon and Voltaire, the two French philosophers and pedagogues, influenced a wide range of people in the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe. The philosophers who followed were inspired by their work which contained ideological hints and promoted humanitarian awareness. We followed the historical analysis method, we intend to present through…

In this paper, I describe my theoretical and experience-informed re-conceptualisations of teaching educational leadership within an Australian Masters of Education program. I describe three phases of topic (subject) re-design, across four years, initiated by me, to respond to my discomfort in my first year, with the realisation that I had…

In 2006, Graddol predicted that numbers of "English as a foreign language" learners would begin to decline through the second decade of this century, as global English achieves basic skill status for children entering education in more societies across the world. As he further noted, having skills in additional languages may thus offer a…

The setting up of the Courtyard of the Gentiles by Pope Benedict XVI has provided the Catholic Church with an official forum for dialogue with atheists. The intellectual energy surrounding this initiative can be harnessed to focus on how the contemporary Catholic school addressed its responsibilities to the Catholic community while offering a good…