Background: In an era of increased polarisation, identity politics and growing reliance on using evidence to make disability policy decisions - evidence-based policymaking - how much do we know about the process by which disability policy decisions are made and the use of evidence therein? Aims and objectives: The objective of this Practice Paper…

This article discusses a partnership with two different civic education organizations to study three different student-centered discussion designs. In one study, the authors worked with the Close Up Foundation. Close Up is a non-profit that annually brings 20,000 high school and middle school students from all 50 states and U.S. territories to…

Background: Seeing how governments formulate decisions on our behalf is a crucial component of their ability to claim democratic legitimacy. This includes being seen to draw on the knowledge and evidence produced by their civil service policy advisers. Yet much of the advice provided to governments is being increasingly withdrawn from public…

In the months since inauguration, the Trump Administration has leveled a staggering number of threats on social programs--from executive orders to funding freezes and staff layoffs--that are already harming child care and early learning programs. These assaults on social infrastructure and aggressive moves to reshape the government are accompanied…

Climate change is an incredibly important issue that has horrific long-term impacts if necessary lifestyle and policy changes are not made now. Despite the presence of significant scientific evidence of climate change for years, many politicians are still unable to admit that climate change is real, let alone create policies to better combat this…

At a time when Americans are divided, patriotism is declining, and liberal democratic norms are threatened, working Americans, more than college-educated Americans, take appropriate pride in the special contributions of their country. The extreme right and left have for too long engaged in a seesaw of bad policies that foster illiberalism.…

While much literature has been produced on globalization, privatization, and the State individually, it has not been common to treat them together, at least not in the field of comparative and international education. There is excellent work that has documented the ways in which globalization and privatization have influenced education reform, but…

In this paper, we propose the use of postcards as a learning activity in courses dealing with urban politics. The intended learning outcomes of the postcard assignment were: (1) to exhibit memory of previously learned material ("introduction to urban policy" readings) and apply acquired knowledge (selecting the postcards); (2) to make…

This article discusses the expression of neoliberalism in Kazakhstan's emerging higher education system. The central tenets of neoliberalism are briefly articulated. Noted is the phenomenon that the general political-economic paradigm of neoliberalism differs in its specific implementation depending on the particular countries and cultures in…

This article reveals that, contrary to common knowledge, schooling for Indigenous and non-Indigenous children in British Columbia -- Canada's westernmost province -- was not strictly segregated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Officially, government policy stipulated that Indigenous children should attend separate day and…

There is widespread concern about aspects of government policy relating to early years education. Current proposals for baseline assessment and changes to the early learning goals reveal a lack of insight into the nature of early learning, and little understanding and respect for effective early years pedagogy. Indeed, it is apparent that the…

The newly coined policy of social investment is an economic argument for targeting state investment to the most needy. I use Foucault's notion of biopolitics in a discursive analysis of recent New Zealand policy documents pertaining to a discrete group of 'vulnerable children'. I further argue that the Foucauldian metaphor of state institutions as…

Today, it is hard to imagine a time and place when public school teachers were considered among the elite strata of society. But in the lands controlled by the Ottomans, and then by the British in the early and mid-twentieth century, teachers were key players in government and leading formulators of ideologies. Drawing on archival research and…

It is essential to revise how political discourses and the administering of politics, not precisely within the school context but outside as well, interplay with the constitution of teacher subjectivities particularly in countries where education is highly influenced by sociopolitical factors without conscious acknowledgment from teachers.…

Forty years after its opening, Americans must reconsider the efficacy of a federal, Cabinet-level Department of Education. Rescinding agency status, eliminating duplicative, ineffective, and inappropriate programs, and re-organizing remaining programs under a restored Office of Education within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services…