Academic freedom is seriously under threat. Here I will consider how the marketisation of Higher Education has exacerbated the decline of 'academic freedom'. While the effects of a 'cancel culture' on university provision are difficult to ignore, threats to academic freedom raise a number of questions, such as: 'who is allowed to speak on…

Literature suggests a positive impact on children's health and wellbeing from being in nature. This study explores primary teachers' perceptions of their pupils' (7-11 years) experiences of contemplative approaches in nature reserve settings. Nine teachers from a convenience sample of eight different primary schools took part. After observing…

Natural science in education can be summarized as a complex system. The professional and methodological task in the teaching of natural sciences is to convey this complexity. The terms and models of graph theory can be used to model the system approach, such as networks. Networks consist of elements and connections between them, which can be well…

Free speech is under attack at colleges and universities today, with critics on and off campus challenging the value of open inquiry and freewheeling intellectual debate. Too often speakers are shouted down, professors are threatened, and classes are disrupted. In "Speak Freely," Keith Whittington argues that universities must protect…

This qualitative study used an interpretative phenomenological analysis framework (Smith et al., 2012) to explore the ways in which U.S. public university chancellors and presidents experience campus free speech and safe space. Six public university leaders with campus free speech and safe space experience participated in semi-structured…

Milton Friedman is widely considered the intellectual father of the school choice movement. While Friedman deserves much credit, Father Virgil Blum stands out as an influential figure in the nascent school choice movement. Using archival research, this paper examines Blum's contributions to the movement. From his 1954 doctoral dissertation, which…

Purpose: This article demonstrates the reach of Tuhiwai Smith's ideas across Pacific research. It discusses the theoretical and practical influence of her seminal work "Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples" through "holographic epistemology", an indigenous way of viewing knowledge.…

The controversy about using inappropriate language in children's literature is constantly debated and repeatedly attracts the attention of the public. In Slovenia, this happened when the novel Na zeleno vejo by Andrej Predin was assigned as the text for the Cankar competition, a Slovenian language competition. Several reading mentors and other…

This study highlights the importance of giving Black female administrators a platform to share their stories and make meaning of their experiences as intersectionality. The idea for this study was born of countless conversations I had with Black female educators at all levels. As I reflect on them, the topic of trauma as a result of anti-Blackness…

The heightened use of "safe space" in educational settings has been the subject of polarizing contemporary controversy and protested by conservative and progressive camps alike, raising concerns about whether "safe space" remains an educationally viable concept. In response to claims that safety is conflated with…

Corporate norms and values, characterised by an enterprise ethos, became the new parameters that defined the academic environment. Academics are increasingly becoming concerned about the commodification of higher education and its impact on academic quality and the standards of quality graduates. The voices of South African academics and their…

Discussions of Black anarchism are rarely, if ever, found in the fields of educational theory and research. Characterizations of Black anarchism often paint it as a philosophy and praxis to be feared--as a movement that promotes violence and chaos. Yet, as the authors of this piece argue, Black anarchism is exactly the opposite: promoting a vision…

This paper examines how mounting pressures are reshaping academic freedom (AF) and the professoriate in contemporary higher education, with particular focus on the Canadian university context. Through qualitative interviews conducted between 2009-2011 with tenured faculty from two Southern Ontario universities, the study investigates how fiscal…

Academic freedom is undoubtedly a core value of higher education, but should it sometimes be compromised in order to accommodate efforts to tackle the many considerable challenges of the twenty-first century, from fighting climate change and global pandemics to reckoning with the stubborn legacies of institutional racism? More specifically, can…

Reflecting a larger context of profound political polarization, controversies and protests around campus speakers have exposed deep social fractures, highlighting an important normative question for campus leaders and educators: how should we make decisions about what views are reasonable and thus merit debate on campus? Although it may be…