This article explores the role of teacher unions in shaping teacher professionalism discourses in New Zealand. Through an analysis of organisational documents and mainstream public media reports from recent decades, the article contends that tension and cooperation serve as defining characteristics in the relationship between teacher unions and…

The year 2018 marked the 10th anniversary of the global economic crisis of 2008. In Europe, austerity has been a constant ever since the crisis. This article critically engages with recent institutional and ideological developments in the small Baltic state of Estonia. The article investigates the structural reforms and prevailing ideology in…

One of the many facets of educational leadership is the emotional aspects of educational leadership itself. Leaders are regularly immersed in emotionally charged broad-based policy debates and political subjects like protests and voting policies. These are policy subjects that politically occur not only in schools where educational leaders…

This article reports on an investigation into the relationship between people's perspectives and ideologies and interest groups with their respective conceptions and perceptions of higher education. The aim is to show that the contemporary understanding of purposes and quality in higher education originate, fundamentally, in the most important…

The American university is in transition, witnessing major changes to its institutional structures and processes. While the 1960s and 1970s were decades of progressive democratization in American higher education, today's university is more aligned with the economic theory of neoliberalism. Existing at the intersection of two dominant but…

For the past six decades, conservative foundations in the United States have targeted their funding on a transformation of the public's understanding of markets, culture , and the undergraduate course of study. These foundations, and their sponsored researchers, have specifically challenged the place of diversity and intercultural competence…

Progressive media and the academic community outside of education has largely embraced liberal criticisms of corporate school reform or neoliberal educational restructuring, typified by the highly publicized writing and speaking of Diane Ravitch and Linda Darling-Hammond. Despite offering valuable policy information, the liberal view is grounded…

In June 2012, the Philippine government implemented what it called the K+12 Curriculum which reformed its basic education system by adding two more years of schooling to the then existing 10-year structure. Complicated by the long experience and participation of the Filipinos in the diaspora, the constantly lingering thought of leaving for greener…

Until the global financial crisis, neo-liberalism had appeared invincible. This article examines the global rise of neo-liberalism and its impact on education, particularly its treatment of the social democratic ideal of equality. Drawing on examples from education and other socio-political factors, it considers whether the financial crisis is…

This article examines the historic uses of the phenomenon recently defined as "Deep Politics" to shed light on the underlying realities of the contemporary War on Terror. Deep Politics describes the multiple uses of misinformation to marshal public sentiment in directions desired by dominant political and economic forces. Facing the reality of…

The revised New Zealand Curriculum became mandatory for use in New Zealand schools in February 2010. The ongoing reform agenda in education in New Zealand since 1989 and elsewhere internationally has had corrosive effects on teacher professionality. State-driven neo-liberal policy and education reforms are deeply damaging to the mental and moral…

This article utilizes Gloria Ladson-Billings' notion of educational debt in order to explore the historical, economic, and cultural politics of education reform under George W. Bush and Barack Obama. It tracks the No Child Left Behind Act across a number of fields in order to claim that Bush's expansion of the educational debt should be understood…

This article provides a case study of how a business culture imposes modes of educational leadership on a public school system in New York City that has little if any concerns for empowering children, teachers, and the communities. The article provides a counter-narrative that serves to dispel the notion that the culture of educational empowerment…

Anti-intellectualism and political illiteracy are sweeping across the American media and cultural landscape, giving rise to discourses that are unabashedly nativist, racist, and reactionary. Populist sentiments drive the rabid individualism and anti-government rhetoric of right-wing groups such as the Tea Party movement. Underlying these…

Since the 1990s, enormous changes have been made in the higher education sector in Bangladesh. The government promulgated the Private University Act in 1992, and formulated a 20-year Strategic Plan for Higher Education: 2006-2026 (SPHE). A critical review shows that the objective of the plan is to connect education with market-driven economic…