The past decade has seen significant changes in our country's political landscape, some of which have spilled over into higher education. One change that has impacted millions of students is recent legislation in many states (such as Florida, Texas, Utah, Alabama, and North Dakota) and from the federal government intended to inhibit diversity,…

Scholars have analyzed debates about controversial faculty speech inside and outside of the classroom, but none have paid close attention to the facet of academic freedom related to professors' decisions about daily teaching methods. This omission, along with obstacles to enacting pedagogical norms, has caused the scholarly community to overlook…

Liberal arts courses sometimes face the question of whether core texts can actually 'educate character' or 'care for the soul' in the Socratic sense. The "Bhagavadgita" addresses these issues from a Hindu perspective. But at the same time, the educational function of a religious core text changes decisively when transposed into a liberal…

With increasing influence of illiberalism, freedom should not be considered or interpreted lightly. Post-truth contexts provide grounds for alt-right movements to capture and pervert notions of freedom of speech, making universities battlefields of politicised emotions and expressions (Peters et al., 2019). In societies facing these pressures…

The essay represents teaching as the coming to be of the human individual. In order to do so, it reflects on the character of human life by which it is knowledge of itself. Being knowledge of itself, human life is self-determining or free. Therefore generality and particularity come together in the human being in a distinctive way: a human being…

Improvisation is a fundamental aspect of musicianship and an important pursuit in music education. Children in music classes throughout the world are engaged with improvisation in a variety of modes and settings. Whether singing, physically moving, or playing an instrument, the act of improvising in front of others may raise one's…

The term "freethinking" originated in the 17th century to describe inquiry into beliefs which were accepted unquestioningly. Feminists such as Mary Wolstonecraft, abolitionists like Frederick Douglass, and novelists such as Mark Twain and Zora Neal Hurston are among the many who dared to simultaneously challenge religious dogma,…

The theatrical heritage of Jan Amos Comenius (1592-1670), the famous Czech teacher, religious thinker, and playwright, has been for a long time underestimated. There is little research on this topic. However, theatre played a very important role within the Pansophic school. The method of theatralisation was not new, but in the age of Comenius it…

This report concerns actions taken by the administration of Collin College to terminate the services of Professors Lora Burnett, Suzanne Jones, and Michael Phillips. The investigating committee found that the administration's actions involved "egregious violations" of all three faculty members' academic freedom to speak as citizens and…

While the teaching of controversial issues has generally been supported by schools and education scholars, new laws and public outcry have impacted whether and how controversial issues are taught. Calls to ban or limit teaching of controversial issues have largely been spurred by conservative parents, policymakers, and political groups. Some…

Freedom of expression is the core political ideal undergirding American democracy and recent attacks on freedom of speech are a direct threat to the liberties and rights guaranteed in the United States Constitution. Freedom of expression is essential for participatory democracy, scientific progress, individualism, and civic education in K-12…

From the beginning of its existence, the child is articulating an unconditional claim to life. Even in the post-mythic era, or rather in the myth-critical world of the modern age, education is confronted with the difficult task of responding to this claim -- but now without the possibility of being able to legitimise its interventions and actions…

The Vision and Change report called for biology educators to transform undergraduate biology education. The report recommended educators transparently state what students should know and be able to do and create assessments to measure student learning. Using backward design, learning objectives (LOs) can serve as the basis for course…

Mathematical argumentation is generally thought to be the paradigm of cogent reasoning. The concept of mathematical proof thus seems to be associated with necessity and enforcement, but not with freedom; however, in various ways a reference to freedom is also needed to understand the phenomenon of mathematical proof, for example, to distinguish it…

An expansive understanding of ancestors is integral to the opening of imaginative spaces for religious education--particularly in university and adult faith formation settings--to grapple deeply with contexts of precarity and the hopelessness such contexts breed. More specifically, this essay considers how hauntings by one's past selves…