Virtual reality (VR) is not only attracting the attention of the information and computer technology (ICT) industry (Shirer & Torchia, 2017), especially in the production of consumer VR hardware, but also that of educators. One of the important features of VR is immersion, which enhances the situated experience of users. The sensation of being…

Free universities are diverse but loosely networked projects that resist repressive capitalist and state configurations of power by re-imagining teaching, learning and research on their own terms, often through radical and ongoing experimentation. Drawing from my own experiences as a co-founder and organiser of the Brisbane Free University, along…

This paper explores Bakhtin's reception of Goethe's "Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre" with a view to assess how Bakhtin's interest in this early chronotopical masterpiece can be understood in the wider context of his utopian thinking and his political eschatologies. Bakhtin reads Goethe's novel as a critique of totalitarian forms of Socialist…

According to Karl Popper's critical rationalism, criticism is the only way we have of systematically detecting and learning from our mistakes so as to get nearer to the truth. Meanwhile, it is arguable that the emphasis of Confucianism on creating a hierarchical and harmonious society can easily lead to submission rather than opposition, producing…

Chinese culture is widely regarded as being dominated by Confucian thought, which is characterized as focusing on morality, relationalism and collectivism. Also, Chinese culture has been deemed to be very hierarchical and lacking in a sense of autonomy. However, there has been little attention paid to other diverse elements in Chinese culture and…

Explanatory typologies have recently experienced a renaissance as a research strategy for constructing and assessing causal explanations. However, both the new methodological works on explanatory typologies and the way such typologies have been used in practice have been affected by two shortcomings. First, no elaborate procedures for assessing…

This article pursues the question of what the significance was of the discursive construction of heroism for the National Socialist indoctrination of children in the context of communication processes at school. In particular, it is about ideological-educational intentions pursued in the context of teaching early readers as well as about topical…

In 2012 the author wrote about what a socially just system would look like, and used the example of Finland Since then the already emergent aspects of neo-liberalism within Finnish education have grown, as privileged white parents increasingly demand privileged spaces within comprehensive schools for their children. There are radical spaces within…

This article seeks to clarify the potential that Herbert Marcuse's and Theodor W. Adorno's psychoanalytic accounts may have with respect to the philosophy of education today. Marcuse and Adorno both share the view that psychoanalytic theory enables a deeper understanding of the social and biological dynamics of consciousness. For both thinkers,…

The present study introduces a systemic model that demonstrates a description of the relationship between the labour-market and vocational education from the perspective of systemic theory. Based on the application of the relevant methodology, the two open social systems are identified and analyzed. Their key-features are presented and the points…

The present study introduces a systemic model that demonstrates a description of the relationship between the labour-market and vocational education from the perspective of systemic theory. Based on the application of the relevant methodology, the two open social systems are identified and analyzed. Their key-features are presented and the points…

Much academic development work, whether it be student, academic staff, institutional or curriculum development, is undertaken from an affirmative rather than a transformative approach (Luckett, L., and S. Shay. 2020. "Reframing the Curriculum: A Transformative Approach." "Critical Studies in Education" 61 (1): 50-65). To be…

In this review essay Kevin Murray and Dan Liston examine three texts in what this symposium has deemed the recent resurgence in neo-Marxist accounts of schooling: David Blacker's "The Falling Rate of Learning and the Neoliberal Endgame," Mike Cole's "Marxism and Educational Theory," and John Marsh's "Class Dismissed."…

In this paper, we analyse the status and significance of adopting a Marxist ontological perspective in the field of Brazilian environmental education. We draw on the concept of labour developed by Marx, where labour is used as a category to articulate the relationships humans establish with nature and which, historically, have an impact on their…

From the perspective of a recent graduate, this article offers a critique of non-STEM higher education in England as unfit for purpose. Whilst universities blindly focus on employability, transferable skills and narrow bands of subject knowledge, the economic world around them has collapsed into absurdity. The graduate today is now faced with…