We, as community college English teachers, have the opportunity to empower students who have been subjected to years of top-down, teacher-directed education. We have the obligation to make them critical thinkers, improving their chances of being thoughtful and successful adults. It all begins with the way we teach writing and the respect we have…

In this narrative inquiry, the author dramatises the tensions and discoveries that emerged in a literature course for pre-service and in-service teachers in an English education graduate programme. The students' resistance to the instructor's choice of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" as a central text led to reflection on responsible and…

Being responsive to the experiences, ideas, and stories of others is an essential trait for democratic citizens. Responsiveness promotes the general welfare, shows respect for others, and allows for what Tony Laden (2012) has called the social practice of reasoning. Political theorists have shown how responsiveness is a middle ground between…

Research in education, but notably also in history (as James suggests here), is much better conceived and practiced as a kind of conversation than as a scheme for "outing the facts". Of course, some colleagues (particularly in education) think otherwise! But when it comes to something that "means" something--a connective…

Virtual schooling is expanding as an alternative to traditional public schooling in the early twenty-first century. This paper analyzes virtual schooling with regards to the democratic associational aims of public schooling as conceived by John Dewey. We examine the general landscape of virtual schooling by looking at recent history, governance,…

Purpose: To stress the existential crisis of European integration and the need to shape the European citizen, who forms the foundations of unification, which can no longer be based only on economic conditions. Methods: Analyse the contradictions in the integration method adopted so far by member states and the fallacious solutions proposed by…

In this article, the authors reflect on the results of their previous research at cooperation schools in the Netherlands, where students and teachers from nonaffiliated and Christian backgrounds come together. Dewey's perspective on educating democratic values is combined with empirical results of this research, answering the question what Dewey's…

Background: Promoting tolerance is an important goal of European education policies focused on education for democratic citizenship and human rights. In this article, we argue that cross-cultural comparability must be empirically assessed and ensured for the measurement of highly relevant indicators that serve to monitor inter-European and…

The aim of this article is to convey the history, practices and central discourses of film education in Sweden. The first part takes the pioneering efforts, dating back to 1908, as a starting point for describing the development of nationwide school cinema, financed by public funding and coordinated by the Swedish Film Institute. As I will argue,…

Discourse surrounding the role of science in modern society has been characterized by increasing scrutiny and skepticism. To address this, scientists have increasingly felt a need to share their results and engage with public audiences through public engagement. Historically, public engagement has been based on the deficit model, which attributes…

Background: Social responsibility and democratic citizenship are essential outcomes of a college education. Yet limited research has examined how college experiences may relate to students' moral and prosocial development, qualities that ground responsibility and citizenship. Purpose: This research sought to identify the college experiences,…

Learning to be tolerant is important in multiethnic societies. Based on the premises that tolerance is built through dialogue and that nowadays much informal learning takes place in social media, this paper explores the reactions of young people when they receive racist memes through social media, and how they dare to express their opinions(or…

Academisation of schooling in England is a significant development with consequences for the disavowal of the role of community and democracy in education at the local level and wider resonance for geo-policy jurisdictions where neoliberal education reforms play out. This study analyses the operation of power and control of Multi Academy Trust…

Educational commons is an emergent paradigm that introduces participatory and democratic learning practices and governance, contrasting neoliberal and self-reliant approaches. Learning is seen as a common good, and so are the educational processes. This article presents evidence from the EU Horizon 2020 funded project SMOOTH and examines two…

Education systems are often expected to play a key role in developing, maintaining and promoting democratic values and behaviours. This is particularly apparent in Portugal where, after nearly half a century of dictatorship ending in 1974, democracy emerged as a central national aspiration, especially within Early Childhood Education (ECE).…