This article focuses on political education, a vital but neglected component in histories of education within South Africa's liberation movement in exile during the 1970s and 1980s. The article shows how in conditions of exile the idea of political education as a forward-looking, home-bound form of education was counterposed to a notion of…

At a time when educators are increasingly rising up within and beyond their unions to protect public education, it is vital to understand how activist educators become politicized and how their activist organizations contribute to such political education efforts. In this article, Maton and Stark examine the grassroots organizing work of three…

Numerous states have attempted to enact sweeping curricular bans targeting Critical Race Theory (CRT) to prevent educators from teaching content that challenges the white-Eurocentric curriculum of American schooling. In this paper, we build on arguments that curricular bans are not new to education, nor is the resistance enacted by educators to…

The linking of school choice and charter schools to the legacy of Black alternative education and civil rights initiatives is a central discursive galvanizing and organizing tool for charter proponents, as it aims to provide legitimacy to the charter movement, while simultaneously coopting Black critiques of the institution of education to advance…

Student movements have played a significant political role in the history of Latin America. Since the beginning of the 20th century until now, students have transformed their universities, resisted totalitarian and authoritarian regimes and struggled against US military occupations. In the early 1900s these movements promoted university reforms,…

Schools are sites of unfreedom. As such we engage in freedom dreaming and co-constituting of non-negotiables of an "abolitionist teacher residency (ATR)." This conceptual article asks: what non-negotiables are necessary when centering abolition in residency work? Our dream guides illustrate the need to draw on radical imaginations,…

Activists use populist language when proposing school reforms. Are they appealing to a public ideology as coherent as conservatism or liberalism? A national probability sample of U. S. adults is asked to self-identify as liberals or conservatives, respond to statements about government trustworthiness and responsiveness to the people, and give…

This article discusses the growth of neoliberal student activism in Brazilian higher education, considering the role of organisations called neoliberal think tanks. The following questions are addressed: why and how do these think tanks operate in the field of higher education? How do they articulate and promote student activism? The study…

Many institutions have found the strength to name racism and seek space for curriculum and other systemic changes. We argue this is happening against a backdrop of curriculum, regulatory and policy changes in education, and particularly initial teacher education and training (ITE/T), which are de-racialised. We propose that a 'pocket of…

As winter swept across the United States at the outset of 2018, ushering in the bitterest and bleakest days of the year, American teachers and their unions had little to celebrate. The first eight years of the decade had exacted a heavy toll, and still more trouble was lurking on the horizon. In the wake of the Great Recession, funding for public…

"¡Juntos Podemos!"/Together We Can! is a multigenerational, districtwide collective of educators, community organizers, and activists. Located in eastern Los Angeles County, the group developed intentionally and horizontally to address the disenfranchisement of the working-class communities of La Puente and Valinda using the California…

This paper examines the formation of the teachers' movement in South Korea, focusing on the publication of the short-lived magazine "Minjung Gyoyuk" (People's Education) in 1985. Progressive teachers published this magazine to systematically critique the education practises of the time and seek a new direction for education under…

In 1994, South Africa's political governance changed from being a White minority-controlled apartheid state to a democracy--a relatively peaceful transition underpinned by a social cohesion and reconciliation ideology, namely, that all (both perpetrators and the oppressed) were victims requiring healing in the new proverbial "rainbow…

This study explores the queer history of the University of North Dakota from 1980 to present day and demonstrates how LGBTQ+ student activism lead to the development of LGBTQ+ programs and services at the University. Situated in a socially and politically conservative state, the University of North Dakota provides an understanding of how LGBTQ+…

This article examines the ways in which teachers and community-based activists collaborated to advance an anti-privatisation agenda within an urban school district. The article emerges from our respective studies of privatisation in Oakland, one a historical study of the advance of neoliberalism and the other a case study (Merriam 2007,…