In Sweden, and most Western countries, pervasive neoliberal policies have dramatically transformed the entire education sector in a matter of decades. As teacher educators, we have experienced how neoliberal currents have pushed Swedish teacher education towards a teacher training paradigm which may risk undermining the foundations for professional judgement. Moreover, the Bologna Process and the introduction of New Public Management have had significant consequences for what it means to be a teacher educator. In this study, we present our (...) everyday experiences of being teacher educators, immersed in a teacher education culture in Sweden which has evolved under the pressures of neoliberalism. To address these complex lived experiences we engaged in a phenomenological first-person account. Three main themes emerged from an analysis of lived experience descriptions: Alignment Slaves; Audit Puppets; Techno Phobes. These themes reflect different lived dimensions of being teacher educators confronted with neoliberal agendas. The paper concludes with a call for resistance to bring about change within teacher education. (shrink)

This paper explores the concepts of commons and commoning from an educational vantage point. These concepts point to places and activities that are shared, communal and un-privatised, in other words they point to places and practices not yet enclosed or appropriated by capital and market logics. Education is certainly a place and an activity that is increasingly being enclosed and appropriated by these logics, but at the same time education seems to always find ways of escaping this enclosure, and (...) teachers and students find ways of being that escapes appropriation. Exploring the concepts of commons and commoning from an educational vantage point is thus an attempt at describing schooling as an activity that takes place in common and makes something common. By sharing and introducing a subject matter to the students, the teacher offers a shared space of exploration and study that can escape the instrumental and proprietarian framework of the neoliberal education agenda. (shrink)

This article challenges the assumption underlying most education reforms that constructivism is politically neutral and intrinsically democratic. It makes this argument by examining the curriculum reform in Spain during the 1980s and 1990s in light of the neoliberal politics that the country was experiencing at that time. This study employs the poststructuralist analytical lens of governmentality developed by Foucauldian scholars. Accordingly, it claims that, the psychological version of constructivism adopted by the official curriculum reform failed to deliver promises for (...) democracy because it was crafted within the same neoliberal political rationality that redefined the terms of government in the late 1980s, a redefinition that decontextualized the learner from his/her social context and adopted the logic of the market. (shrink)

Just over a decade on from a spike of interest in Jacques Rancière’s writing within educational philosophy and theory, I revisit his interventions on democracy and education to make the case for (re)engaging with Rancière’s writing now to address important questions about contemporary education policy, the role of schools in democratic societies and public debate over the curriculum. Specifically, I argue that Rancière’s interventions on the Platonism that characterises both ‘progressive’ and ‘traditional’ arguments about school curricula in such contexts (...) offer a vital tool for understanding the shifts in education policy and educational debate that animate our current political moment. Building on work that has applied Rancière’s writing to analyse neoliberal education policy, I argue that Rancière’s writing provides a distinctive analytical lens for interpreting a recent shift towards neo-conservative education policy agendas, and the imbrication of schools within the ‘culture-wars’ that characterise the contemporary political landscape in several national settings. Taking recent policies concerned with the teaching of values in England as an example, I argue that a Rancierian perspective on such policy is helpful for revitalising research concerned with education and the role of public schooling in societies that wish to maintain some claim to democracy. (shrink)

Slovak education policy is an example of the kind of transformations occurring in the education spheres of postcommunist countries. While at the end of the 1990s, it seemed that education policy was still attempting to ensure that Slovakia caught up with education levels in western countries, the period that followed brought with it a shift towards neoliberalization of the education sector and towards the economization of education. Slovakia’s entry into the EU was accompanied by the total assimilation of the (...) class='Hi'>neoliberal agenda within education and since then it can be said that Slovak education policy has followed a path towards so-called perpetual neoliberalism. The aim of this article is to show how education policy has developed within Slovak politics, in terms of how it is gradually adapting to neoliberal ideas. The article analyzes government documents from 1998 onwards, particularly Slovak government programs, which document the process of neoliberalization in education. (shrink)

This article examines shifts in educational and social governance taking place in Queensland, Australia, through Education Queensland's Industry School Engagement Strategy and Gateway Schools program. This significant educational initiative is set within the context of Queensland's social investment agenda first articulated in its education policy framework, Queensland State Education-2010. The article traces the historic extension of this overarching governmental strategy through establishment of the Gateway Schools concept, brokering state-wide industry-school partnerships with key global players in the Queensland (...) economy. Industry sectors that have formed partnerships in Gateway projects include Minerals and Energy, Aerospace, Wine Tourism, Agribusiness, Manufacturing and Engineering, Building and Construction and ICT, with more industries and schools forecast to join the program. It is argued that this ‘post-bureaucratic’ model of schooling represents a new social settlement of neoliberal governance, which seeks to align educational outcomes with economic objectives, thereby framing the conditions for community self-governance in Queensland. (shrink)

This article examines shifts in educational and social governance taking place in Queensland, Australia, through Education Queensland's Industry School Engagement Strategy and Gateway Schools program. This significant educational initiative is set within the context of Queensland's social investment agenda first articulated in its education policy framework, Queensland State Education‐2010. The article traces the historic extension of this overarching governmental strategy through establishment of the Gateway Schools concept, brokering state‐wide industry‐school partnerships with key global players in the Queensland (...) economy. Industry sectors that have formed partnerships in Gateway projects include Minerals and Energy, Aerospace, Wine Tourism, Agribusiness, Manufacturing and Engineering, Building and Construction and ICT, with more industries and schools forecast to join the program. It is argued that this ‘post‐bureaucratic’ model of schooling represents a new social settlement of neoliberal governance, which seeks to align educational outcomes with economic objectives, thereby framing the conditions for community self‐governance in Queensland. (shrink)

This article examines shifts in educational and social governance taking place in Queensland, Australia, through Education Queensland's Industry School Engagement Strategy and Gateway Schools program. This significant educational initiative is set within the context of Queensland's social investment agenda first articulated in its education policy framework, Queensland State Education‐2010. The article traces the historic extension of this overarching governmental strategy through establishment of the Gateway Schools concept, brokering state‐wide industry‐school partnerships with key global players in the Queensland (...) economy. Industry sectors that have formed partnerships in Gateway projects include Minerals and Energy, Aerospace, Wine Tourism, Agribusiness, Manufacturing and Engineering, Building and Construction and ICT, with more industries and schools forecast to join the program. It is argued that this ‘post‐bureaucratic’ model of schooling represents a new social settlement of neoliberal governance, which seeks to align educational outcomes with economic objectives, thereby framing the conditions for community self‐governance in Queensland. (shrink)

Through expert analysis, this text proves that John Dewey's views on efficiency in education are as relevant as ever. By exploring Deweyan theories of teaching and learning, the volume illustrates how they can aid educators in navigating the theoretical and practical implications of accountability, standardization, and assessment. The Contemporary Relevance of John Dewey's Theories on Teaching and Learning deconstructs issues regarding accountability mechanisms, uniform assessment systems, and standardization processes through a Deweyan lens. Connecting the zeitgeist of the era from which (...) Dewey's ideas emerged and current global political, social, and economic contexts, the book emphasizes the importance of resilient systems in reconciliating the tension between standardized assessments and individual student development. Contributors provide insights from a range of settings across Pre-K, primary, secondary, and higher education and address topics including teacher agency, voice, leadership, and democracy. The volume will be of interest to scholars, researchers, and academics with an interest in philosophy of education, education policy and the impact of neoliberal agendas, as well as teaching and learning more broadly. (shrink)

Parental activism in education reform, while often portrayed as an exemplary manifestation of participatory democracy and grassroots action in response to entrenched corporate and bureaucratic interests, is in fact carefully cultivated and channeled through strategic networks of philanthropic funding and knowledge. This paper argues that these networks are characteristic of a contemporary form of neoliberal governance in which the philanthropic “gift” both obligates its recipients to participate in the ideological projects of the givers and obscures the incursion of market (...) principles into education behind a veneer of progressive activism. Drawing on archival research as well as personal interviews with Seattle-based reform advocates, representatives of philanthropic organizations, and school administrators, the paper points to the need to critically evaluate the “roots” in grassroots movements and trace their connections to larger institutions and agendas. (shrink)

There is an apparent contradiction between the widespread moves towards a uniform and instrumentalist standards‐based approach to teaching on the one hand and recent research‐based insights into the complexity of effective pedagogies. The former tendency reflects a politically driven agenda, the latter is more professionally driven. Tensions reflecting such a contradiction are evident in the debates over initial teacher education policy and practice in many parts of the world. This article examines aspects of ITE policy in two contiguous parts (...) of the United Kingdom, England and Scotland. The authors draw on a comparative study carried out during 2002–2004, particularly on an analysis of key contemporary policy documents, in order to consider some of the similarities and differences that are apparent in these two countries. It is argued that while features of national culture, tradition and institutional politics have a significant role to play in the detail of the approaches taken, there is nevertheless evidence of significant convergence between both countries in one aspect of the determination of initial teacher education, the definition of teaching through the prescription of standards, which set official parameters on professional knowledge required for entry into the profession. This, it is suggested, reflects trends associated with neoliberal ‘globalisation’. (shrink)

Simply put, charter schools have not lived up to their advocates’ promise of equity. Using examples of tangible civil rights gains of the twentieth century and extending feminist theories of invisible labor to include the labor of democracy, the authors argue that the charter movement renders invisible the labor that secured civil protections for historically marginalized groups. The charter movement hangs a quality public education—previously recognized as a universal guarantee—on the education consumer’s ability to navigate a marketplace. The authors conclude (...) that the neoliberal agenda of positioning choice as the best mechanism for securing an education rolls back the rights that were already secured through the labor of democracy. (shrink)

My concern in this essay is not so much with the invisible work or hidden labor produced by neoliberalism, but rather with what Joseph Pieper describes as an emerging culture of “total work”. More than the sheer number of hours of work, Pieper diagnoses a transformation in the way we view work. Work has become the exclusive point of reference for how we see and define ourselves. We are, Pieper feared, increasingly incapable of seeing beyond the working self. The human (...) being has become the human worker. Historically, the ideal of leisure offered a counter vision to this tendency. Michael Oakeshott notes that while human beings must attend to the necessities for survival, they are most especially distinguished by their capacity for leisure—by an ability to pursue questions, conversations, and explorations that transcend the realm of production and consumption. To overlook and exclude leisurely pursuits is to diminish our humanity. (shrink)

An educated guess about the future of academic bioethics can only be made on the basis of the historical conditions of its success. According to its official history, which attributes its success primarily to the service it has done for the patient, it should be safe at least as long as the patient still needs its service. Like many other academic disciplines, it might suffer under the present economic downturn. However, in the plausible assumption that its social role has not (...) been exhausted yet, it should recover as soon as the economy does. But if, as this paper tries to argue, the success of academic bioethics should be attributed first and foremost to the service it has done for the neoliberal agenda, then its future would have to depend on the fate of the latter. The exact implications of the downturn for the neoliberal agenda are obviously impossible to predict. Among the various options, however, the one of going back to 'normal' seems to be the least likely. The other options suggest that the future of academic bioethics, as we have known it, is bleak. (shrink)

In this article Clayton Pierce reviews three books representative of the recent neo-Marxist literature on education: David Blacker's The Falling Rate of Learning and the Neoliberal Endgame, John Marsh's Class Dismissed: Why We Cannot Teach or Learn Our Way out of Inequality, and Pauline Lipman's The New Political Economy of Urban Education: Neoliberalism, Race, and the Right to the City. His analysis of these books focuses on how each author remains consistent or advances traditional Marxist interpretations of the role (...) of education in capitalist society. In addition, he puts the arguments of each author into conversation with W. E. B. Du Bois's analysis of schooling in a racial capitalist society — what he called caste education — as a way to generate discussion around some of the inherent limitations of Marxist studies of education. Here, Pierce is particularly concerned with the ability of neo-Marxist analyses of the neoliberal restructuring of education to articulate how white supremacy is preserved even in revolutionary critiques of capitalist schooling. (shrink)

In this article I analyze the class- and cultural-based exclusion produced by the Chilean neoliberal educational reform, carried out during the period from 1990 to 2010. This educational reform follows the same neoliberal model applied to the economy of the country. Although some indicators improved in relation to coverage and public spending in education, the performance gap among social groups increased. In addition, at a cultural level, the reform promoted the value of individual productivity negatively affecting (...) some of the cultural behaviors developed by low-income groups as a consequence of and as reaction to the exclusion they suffer. Namely, by stressing the notions of human capital and quality education, the reform has tended to reinforce these students? fatalism, and limit the scope of the organizations they form to improve their academic and social opportunities. (shrink)

Although universities have undergone changes since the dawn of their existence, the speed of change started to accelerate remarkably in the 1960s. Spectacular growth in the number of students and faculty was immediately followed by administrative reforms aimed at managing this growth and managing the demands of students for democratic reform and societal relevance. Since the 1980s, however, an entirely different wind has been blowing along the academic corridors. The fiscal crisis of the welfare states and the neoliberal course (...) of the Reagan and Thatcher governments made the battle against budget deficits and against government spending into a political priority. Education, together with social security and health care, were targeted directly. As the eighties went on, the neoliberal agenda became more radical—smaller state and bigger market—attacking the public sector itself through efforts to systematically reduce public expenditure by privatizing public services and introducing market incentives. At the same time the societal relevance of the universities demanded by critical students was turned on its head to become economic relevance to business and industry in the knowledge society. (shrink)

Science and technology policy is both faced by unprecedented challenges and itself undergoing seismic shifts. First, policy is increasingly demanding of science that it fixes a set of epochal and global crises. On the other hand, practices of scientific research are changing rapidly regarding geographical dispersion, the institutions and identities of those involved and its forms of knowledge production and circulation. Furthermore, these changes are accelerated by the current upheavals in public funding of research, higher education and technology development in (...) the wake of the economic crisis. The paper outlines an agenda for science & technology policy studies in terms of a research programme of a ‘cultural political economy of research and innovation’ (CPERI). First, the implications of the overlapping crises for science policy analysis are discussed. Secondly, three rough constellations of contemporary approaches to science policy are critically compared, namely: a techno-statist Keynesian governance; a neoliberal marketplace of ideas; and co-productionist enabling of democratic debate. CPERI is then introduced, showing how it builds on the strengths of co-production while also specifically targeting two major weaknesses that are of heightened importance in an age of multiple crises, namely neglect of political economy and the concept of power. (shrink)

Shifts in technology and ideology blur distinctions between people and machines, nations, and multinationals. Neoliberal economic policies in Mexico clashed with the national identity traditionally fostered by the official educational system. Calling for dialogue not imposed truths, historians rejected at tempts to align textbooks with the new agenda during a 3-year controversy. [Curriculum is] a specially constructed information system whose purpose, in its totality, is to influence, teach, train, or cultivate the mind and character of youth. —Neil (...) Postman (cited in Brosio, 1994, p. 243). (shrink)

This book explores questions concerning personal identity and individual conduct within neoliberal academe. The author suggests that neoliberal academe is normal academe in the new millennium though well aware of its contested nature and destructive capacities. Examining higher education through a number of ideals, such as austerity and transparency, brings readers on a journey into its present as well as its past. If some of these ideals can be identified and critiqued, there is a chance that the foundations (...) of neoliberal academe can be weakened. This book actively pursues pathways out of the neoliberal abyss--and offers that demanding a role for pleasure in higher education may be one of them. (shrink)

The global community, from UNESCO to NGOs, is committed to promoting the status of women in science, engineering and technology, despite long-held prejudices and the lack of role models. Previously, when equality was not firmly established as a key issue on international or national agendas, women’s colleges played a great role in mentoring female scientists. However, now that a concerted effort has been made by governments, the academic community and the private sector to give women equal opportunities, the raison d’être (...) of women’s universities seems to have become lost. This paper argues otherwise, by demonstrating that women’s universities in Japan became beneficiaries of government initiatives since the early 2000s to reverse the low ratio of women in scientific research. The paper underscores the importance of the reputation of women’s universities embedded in their institutional foundations, by explaining how female scientific communities take shape in different national contexts. England, as a primary example of a neoliberal welfare regime, with its strong emphasis on equality and diversity, promoted its gender equality policy under the auspices of the Department of Trade and Industry. By contrast, with a strong emphasis on family values and the male-breadwinner model, the Japanese government carefully treated the goal of supporting female scientists from the perspective of the equal participation of both men and women rather than that of equality. Following this trend, rather contradictorily, women’s universities, with their tradition of fostering a ‘good wife, wise mother’ image, began to be highlighted as potential gender-free institutions that provided role models and mentoring female scientists. By drawing on the cases of England and Japan, this paper demonstrates how the idea of equality can be framed differently, according to wider institutional contexts, and how this idea impacts on gender policies. (shrink)

In order to re-make the world in its own image, neoliberal expansionism is predicated on the dominance of a particular regime of reason. The dominance of economic-juridical rationality relies in no small part on education to reproduce itself. In this sense, how and why a populace is educated in the law becomes a locus of struggle and of alternative and competing constructions of normative and political orders. Over the last decade the United Kingdom’s justice policy has become more attentive (...) to the role of citizens’ knowledge of the law in the context of a reinvigorated drive toward competition in the legal services market. Reformism in legal services thereby emerges as a strategy geared toward the economisation of the state by propagating specific types of legal knowledge. This reorientation of legal education is considered through, on the one hand, the insights of recent theories of neoliberalism and, on the other, a wider lens relating the intersection of legal education to the juridical-political realm. Finally, the paper outlines alternative strategies of community-based educational practices rooted in resistance to legal and economic orthodoxies. (shrink)

In this essay, David Meens examines the viability of John Dewey's democratic educational project, as presented in Democracy and Education, under present economic and political conditions. He begins by considering Democracy and Education's central themes in historical context, arguing that Dewey's proposal for democratic education grew out of his recognition of a conflict between how political institutions had traditionally been understood and organized on the one hand, and, on the other, emerging requirements for personal and social development in the (...) increasingly interconnected world of the early twentieth century. Meens next considers Dewey's ideas in our contemporary context, which is dominated by a neoliberal ideology that extends the economic logic of Smithian efficiency to all domains of modern social and political life. He argues that the prevalence of neoliberalism poses two challenges to Deweyan democratic education: first, Dewey's emphasis on general education and a resistance to specialization is economically inefficient; and second, Dewey's strong, democratic conception of the “the public” is anathema to the neoliberal vision of the public as a conglomeration of individual agents. These challenges, he concludes, significantly stack the deck against Deweyan education by ensuring that the latter will be neither economically practicable nor widely understood. (shrink)

Brenda Watson asks where moral and religious indoctrination ends and education begins, and tackles the arguments of some liberals.

In her 2018 book, What the Eyes Don’t See, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha wrote that it is the duty of doctors to speak out against injustice. In fact, no other physician or institution in Flint had done the research and spoken out, as a whistleblower, against the poisoning of Flint’s children by Michigan government. Why had Dr. Hannah-Attisha? Unfortunately, in the absence of a medical education system that teaches community-oriented primary health care in the tradition of the 1978 Alma Ata Declaration, (...) there is little reward in doing so. This article focuses on three movements that are challenging medical education orthodoxy: 1) primary health care 2) the medical humanities and 3) “Study Up your Town” medicine. How can we create a radical health pedagogy – one that draws the links between several pandemics raging across the planet: capitalist collapse, climate disruption, Covid-19, racism, and an emergent neoliberal fascism – to enable doctors, health professionals and citizens to see them as all of one piece? Medical educators must employ critical pedagogy to create legions of “constructive troublemakers” who challenge the social-structural obstacles that are driving millions to premature death. We have reached the “end times.” A new “planet medicine” is finally emerging. (shrink)

"Educating in Ethics for the Professions: A Compendium of Research, Theory, Practice, and an Agenda for the Future" offers a state-of-the-art discussion on the part of applied ("professional") ethics educators who describe the teaching of ethics for their professions and who collectively represent a wide-ranging array of professions. The volume begins with an overview of the topics, contested ideas, and challenges confronting applied ethics educators in any generation, providing a foundation from which the concept of ethics education as an (...) integral formation frames each contributor's historical overview identifying how research, theory, and practice have evolved in each profession to this day. These discussions then turn to the topics, contested ideas, and challenges emerging in contemporary discourse. Each discussion then culminates with suggestions regarding what ethics educators must consider for the future. The volume closes with a synthesis of the commonalities among and differences between the discussions representing diverse professional perspectives, yet framing this history as well as identifying an agenda for teaching applied ethics in the future. (shrink)

The study aims to review the literature that analyses the history andcurrent situation of Higher Education, henceforth known as HE, in Turkeyand to review HE agenda of the Government of Turkey in order to identify theextent to which it has responded to the sustainable development agenda. Thispaper recommends ways to improve and develop HE in Turkey so as to makeit a significant sector which prepares its stakeholders to achieve sustainabledevelopment goals. Multiple sources of information: documents onthe agenda (...) of Turkey with regard to the objectives of HE; the findings ofprevious studies undertaken on different aspects of Turkish HE system; anddocuments prepared by organizations such as YÖK, MEB and the World Bank.The analysis of relevant literature suggests that Turkey aims to upgrade theHE system in line with its goals of becoming a more powerful player in theworld. The initiatives to enhance enrolment of students at HE institutions;strengthen HE Education Curriculum, internationalise the Turkish HE arein line with the directions that support the attainment of SDGs. The findingsprovide an account of the HE system in Turkey, both strengths and weaknesses.It enhances understanding on the current situation of HE in Turkey vis a vis theSustainable Development Goals. The study does not only describe the TurkishHE system, but it provides a case which can be used by HE researchers to studyHE in different contexts. (shrink)

This paper provides a reinterpretation of Paulo Freire’s philosophy of hope and suggests that this interpretation may function as a fruitful ground for democratic education that aims to contest the prevailing neoliberal ‘common sense’. The paper defines hope as a democratic virtue required for resisting the discursive practises and affective mechanisms associated with the contemporary neoliberal ethos—those, which Carlos Alberto Torres characterizes as the “neoliberal common sense” and Lauren Berlant as “cruel optimism”. Conclusively, the paper constructs three (...) principles for democratic education –´history as possibility´, ´the ethics of intervention´, and ´democratization’—which are intended to function as a foundation for democratic education through which the virtue of hope can be fostered. These principles are argued to form a basis for reviving the political dimensions of education and thus allowing collective transformative action. (shrink)

(2006). Acting Neoliberal: Is Black Support for Vouchers a Rejection of Progressive Educational Values? Educational Studies: Vol. 40, No. 3, pp. 265-278.

Problematizing the production of gender -and specifically of the feminine in the school context- is particularly complex. For some time now, it has been the students themselves who have pointed out the disagreement with an educational system that persists in implementing both institutional and daily actions that shape and produce sexist differences in a significant way. The school has thus become a space of dispute and territory in conflict, where new perspectives of girls and young women coexist in relation (...) to the demands for rights, to make their voices heard and to publicly express their disagreement, in the current context of mobilizations that question the prevailing neoliberalism. From the above framework and context, ethnographies conducted in two educational establishments, during 2014-2018, will be analyzed. In them, it is possible to identify two relevant argumentative axes that account for the production of women as second-class subjects, accentuating the analysis in the crossing between the forms of economization of life in a neoliberal key, and the implications of this from a gender perspective. (shrink)

Problematizing the production of gender -and specifically of the feminine in the school context- is particularly complex. For some time now, it has been the students themselves who have pointed out the disagreement with an educational system that persists in implementing both institutional and daily actions that shape and produce sexist differences in a significant way. The school has thus become a space of dispute and territory in conflict, where new perspectives of girls and young women coexist in relation (...) to the demands for rights, to make their voices heard and to publicly express their disagreement, in the current context of mobilizations that question the prevailing neoliberalism. From the above framework and context, ethnographies conducted in two educational establishments, during 2014-2018, will be analyzed. In them, it is possible to identify two relevant argumentative axes that account for the production of women as second-class subjects, accentuating the analysis in the crossing between the forms of economization of life in a neoliberal key, and the implications of this from a gender perspective. (shrink)

With growing public health and health equity challenges brought to the forefront — following racialized health inequities resulting from COVID-19 and a national reckoning around the deaths of unarmed Black victims at the hands of police — an antiracist health equity agenda has emerged naming racism a public health crisis.

ABSTRACTSustainable Development Goals will guide the global development agenda for the coming years. Under this premise, this article explores the role which higher education has been assigned in contributing to sustainable human development, and concludes that the vision of HE offered is too narrow and unable to capture the essence and full meaning of sustainable human development. Moving away from problematic indicators and thresholds that understand HE as a producer of human capital, the article proposes placing the concept of (...) human development at the centre of HE. Particularly, the article argues that its main elements can provide a valuable and sound footing for a more transformative institution. (shrink)

Educational institutions increasingly rely on digital platforms to deliver content and learning, monitor attendance, communicate with stakeholders, and evaluate institutional performance. Despite the efficiency and accessibility gains they offer, digital platforms are powered by personal data which, through a process of datafication, can be used to track, monitor, and profile staff and students. The insights drawn from this data can be used to shape educational and professional futures. This article examines how datafication has become a social justice issue (...) in education, discussing the implications for well-being, decision-making, governance, and power in education. Using Hintz and colleagues framework for data justice, it applies and explores the three dimensions of data justice to the context of education, including: (1) infrastructures (2) regulation, and (3) informed and knowledgeable stakeholders. The paper discusses the unique challenges to achieving data justice in education and concludes by outlining the key questions for a future research agenda. (shrink)

This article focuses on the production of children’s literature in New Zealand. It problematizes the current practices of releasing and distributing children’s literature, and explores these practices as technologies of control through processes of censorship and classification set by government agencies such as the Office for Film and Literature. Decisions about what is and what is not acceptable for children’s development, it is argued, are not neutral and are instead driven by a neoliberal image of the ‘happy’ uncomplicated child. (...) The article takes the example of the state-funded and distributed My Feelings series as a widely accessible text that is embedded in neoliberal ideology. As this series is distributed to all New Zealand early childhood centres and kindergartens, this article explores understandings of how politics of government influence children’s literature. The work of Václav Havel and Michel Foucault are drawn upon to demonstrate the mechanisms of ideologically driven forms of governmental power that directly impact on the constitution of certain types of childhoods. An example from a contrasting historical and political discourse in the form of communist Czechoslovakia suggests unexpected synergies between neoliberal and socialist ideological frameworks. This analysis further problematizes notions of power in the distribution of children’s literature, and illustrates the influence that political agendas have on the production of idealized political childhood subjectivities. (shrink)

In this essay, I examine both the neoliberalization of higher education, as well as a powerful alternative which is implicitly sketched out in the work of Hannah Arendt. This paper is divided into three parts. In part one, I briefly discuss important neoliberal features of contemporary American higher education, with a specific focus on the ways in which neoliberal ideology is transforming contemporary higher education along vocational and utilitarian lines. In the second part of the essay I argue (...) that there are ways in which thinking (as Arendt describes it) is an especially powerful ideal for proponents of the liberal arts to seize upon in order to establish a contrast with the demand that we reconfigure higher education along vocational and corporatist lines in order to fulfill neoliberal imperatives. In the third and final part of the paper, I will attempt to address objections to this proposal. (shrink)

International education is impacted by multiple discourses, in particular the discourse of university as an educational institution responsible for producing and curating knowledge for the public good, pursuing truth and transforming student life, and the neoliberal marketing discourse which portrays the university as a business organization providing a service for international students as customers/consumers. Following a multimodal discourse analytic perspective, this study examines ‘Why Choose’ webpages of one British and two Australian universities to identify how the apparently conflicting (...) higher education and neoliberal marketing discourses are managed in the interdiscursive space using language, images and videos. The results reveal that ‘Why Choose’ webpages are hybrid texts where the discourse of higher education is upheld in relation to the neoliberal marketing discourse through multimodal strategies of accentuation, infusion and progression. The study argues for the necessity of undertaking a multimodal discourse approach to understand how various positions are negotiated interdiscursively in online media. (shrink)

When schools react to contemporary events and focus on complex moral problems they commonly fail to make basic distinctions between the morally serious and trivial, the moral and the non-moral, and problems and dilemmas. We need to teach the distinction between moral and other values, and between what is intrinsically good, what is right in practice and what is justifiable. Moral theory seeks to delineate an ideal situation. Different circumstances give rise to different particular practices; but the principles of freedom, (...) fairness, respect for persons, truth and felicity constitute a widely recognized view of the essence of morality. These principles, and the nature of education itself, are often ignored in programs of moral education, which should proceed by providing an understanding of the nature and limits of the moral sphere. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Norway has a complex, even paradoxical, relationship to the United Nations Agenda 2030 and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals. It makes considerable financial contributions to the United Nations and has strongly supported the establishment of the sustainability agenda aimed at promoting global equity and mitigating the ecological and climate crises. Norway is also a prominent petroleum-producing nation. The Norwegian position is explored using an approach that emphasizes justice and education in the sustainability agenda. Three key texts (...) are studied. The first is the objectives clause in the Education Act, the second is an address by then prime minister Erna Solberg at the annual conference of the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise, and the third are educational assignments published by the Norwegian Petroleum Museum addressing sustainability and climate change. What is decisive is how specific facets of justice are emphasized in ways that detach Norway from tensions, contradictions, and dilemmas involved. (shrink)

How might we usefully apply concepts and procedures derived from the study of other complex dynamical systems to analyzing systemic change in education? In this article we begin to define possible agendas for research toward developing systematic frameworks and shared terminology for such a project. We illustrate the plausibility of defining such frameworks and raise the question of the relation between such frameworks and the crucial task of aggregating data across ‘systemic experiments’, such as those conducted under the Urban Systemic (...) Initiative sponsored by the US National Science Foundation. Our discussion includes a review of key issues identified by groups of researchers regarding Defining the System, Structural Analysis, Relationships Among Subsystems and Levels, Drivers for Change, and Modeling Methods. (shrink)

Abstract:From a systems-theoretical perspective, community music can be conceived of as a self-referential communication system with the capacity for self-observation and self-description. How do these self-descriptions relate to the economic and social-political agendas of recent decades? This paper argues that community music tends to adapt itself to neoliberal and advanced-liberal agendas by integrating their key semantics into its own self-description. Although this could be seen as a merely strategic necessity, it can be shown that the incorporated semantics not only (...) modify the way community music sees itself, but also “subjectivate” the people community music addresses. The apparent overcoming of neoliberal “individuality” by the advanced-liberal notion of “community” can be shown to be especially dangerous in this regard. (shrink)