Teachers in many countries complain that their pedagogic work is impeded by unreasonable bureaucratic demands by government agencies. This paper suggests that historical, institutional and cultural perspectives are needed to understand the processes at work. It draws on Weber's classic study of bureaucracy, but also makes reference to claims that…

In the United States, 31 states have abolished corporal punishment in schools. However, the documented negative impact of corporal punishment notwithstanding, in-school corporal punishment is still practiced in 19 states. Thirteen of these states are in the South. Why is the use of corporal punishment to discipline children so concentrated in the…

Indonesian political thinking is divided in two: political Islam and secular politics. Soekarno and Mohammad Natsir were dominant political figures in Indonesia, with the former being a secular nationalist, and the latter being an Islamist. Both these leaders inherited ideological disparities, and these distinctions separate political Islam from…

Background: Anti-welfare narratives depict welfare systems as overly-permissive, open to fraud, and fundamentally unfair. Countering these supposed ills have been political appeals to evidence and reforms made to disability benefit assessments under the banner of objectivity. But objectivity is a complex construct, which entails philosophical and…

Student participation has become a relevant topic in the international debate on education. However, the conceptions of the meaning of participation and its practical implications are very heterogeneous. This article reviews how educational policies have conceived student participation in Western countries. Having conceptualised student…

Right-wing populists have recurrently created moral panics internationally about the supposed need to 'protect free speech' in higher education (HE), and 'protect children' from progressive speech in schools. This paper presents the first systematic analysis of how such dynamics function with respect to race and faith equality in a national school…

Remediating unaffordable and inequitable access to secondary education precipitated Ghana's introduction of the 'Free Senior High School (SHS)' policy. The existing scholarship has done a good job tracing the implementation gaps created by this reform. Considering the importance of local actors, whose contribution to the sustenance of the policy…

As neoliberal policies became widespread, the number of studies concerned with those policies also increased. This study aims to analyse articles which are concerned with neoliberal education policies in the literature through systematic review. The current study makes efforts, in its scope, to exhibit the descriptive properties (methodological…

Background: In theory and practice, it is understood that personal relationships play a role in the effectiveness of translational models that bridge research and policy. These models can be made more efficient by understanding factors impacting relationships between policy-making players and third-party knowledge brokers. Aims and objectives:…

Research in mathematics education has long identified the ideology of certainty as central to mathematical instruction and to the way in which mathematics is (mis)used in social and political discourses. As we will see, this ideology is not merely a matter of individual beliefs, but is deeply embedded in the material practices and power structures…

The purpose of this paper is to suggest that the concept of "fugitive pedagogies of dread" contributes to affective, ontological and political reorientations of dread in teaching and learning for/about the future. To do so, the paper puts in conversation the concepts of "fugitivity" (from Black liberatory practices),…

Many reasons exist for mergers in higher education. One of the most pervasive is the pursuit of resources, often expressed in terms of student numbers which give increased power within an education ecology. However, resource dependency is not the only rationale for merger; and history demonstrates that a multi-campus institution may disband as…

The focus on identity in the field of teaching and learning continues to grow, especially when it concerns equitable outcomes for students. While most attention is placed on students' identities and increasingly those of teachers, lesser addressed are the identities of the teacher educators and researchers broaching the issue of identity.…

Dewey's influence on Chinese education has been described as a prime example of the transfer of knowledge from the West to the East. This article investigates the precise process of this transfer by re-examining two themes stressed in current scholarship: Dewey's thoughts on education and democracy and his incremental approach to educational and…

School superintendents make many decisions throughout their careers in an attempt to educate students. Many people, both inside and outside of education try to influence the decisions made by superintendents. Many of these influences are political in nature. This study looks at the history and levels of political influence in education, identifies…