This article takes a close look at the Czech children's magazine "Materídouška" from 1945 to 1989 and analyses it as a historical source for children's subjectivities in a socialist society. "Materídouška's" promotion of happy socialist childhoods employed aesthetic strategies and narratives that combined strict norms with…

In response to the contemporary problematic of populism and associated reactionary right-wing politics, this paper argues for a greater analytic focus on the role of schools and teacher expertise in understanding the social relations of populism. This conceptual paper builds a conjunctural conceptualisation of populism that understands it as an…

Over the decades, higher education has markedly expanded worldwide. Alongside its trajectory, scholars have investigated how such high participation systems (HPS) affect social stratification, with close attention to (in)equality in educational opportunities and heterogeneous/declining returns to tertiary degrees. While HPS have thus been the…

This article utilizes feminist and postcolonial scholarship to shed light on the affective governmentality that takes place in the context of both liberal democracy and right-wing populism. In particular, it articulates a political grammar of feelings that makes visible in democratic education how affective modes of governing operate and what…

In our theoretical and conceptual article, we propose that the application of Niklas Luhmann's sociological systems theory as a difference-theoretical approach to the opening of science unveils an openness paradox. We describe and discuss the general concept of open science as currently proposed by UNESCO and posit that only by accepting the…

School reform is almost always born out of big dreams and well-meaning desires to change the status quo. But between lofty reform legislation and the students whose education is at stake, there are numerous additional policies and policymakers who determine how reforms operate. Even in the best cases, school reform initiatives can perpetuate…

This paper examines fundamental assumptions about the notion of transforming subject matter, which is widely regarded as a core practice of teacher work, a crucial feature of teacher knowledge and a measure of teacher expertise. First, the notion of transforming subject matter and the ways it has been taken up in Anglo-American discourses of…

The last few years have witnessed a resurgence of interest among both scholars and public intellectuals over issues associated with distributive justice and its gravitational orbit of concepts, including the idea of merit and the adjacent vision of a meritocratic society. Nevertheless, despite its centrality for conceptions of equality of…

With "Empire," Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri reinvigorated debates in political theory and radical philosophy about the cultivation of revolutionary subjectivity. Their theorization of Empire and multitude has also significantly affected the tenor of critical approaches to educational theory during the past two decades. In this…

The Deleuze/Guattari text "Anti-Oedipus" burst onto the intellectual scene in 1972 as a radical new means to reconceptualise capitalism and its effects. At the heart of "Anti-Oedipus" and its analysis of capitalism is the concept of deterritorialization, and how it evacuates identities, culture, values, and, indeed, coherent…

Building on critical, performative, and emancipatory visions for digital citizenship education, this paper analyzes social media within systems of global capitalism in a time of climate crisis, which not only introduce opaquely complex agencies but shape relations on a planetary scale. To reconceptualize digital citizenship education in a…

This article advances a deeply political and material understanding of feeling in the context of racial capitalism. Informed by Ahmed's work on the "politics of good feeling" (2008, 1) and Gilmore's concept of "infrastructure of feeling" (2022, 490), we interrogate how feeling is regulated in everyday literacy contexts through…

The privilege walk is a pedagogical tool used to teach students about often-ignored aspects of privilege. Despite their popularity, privilege walks are under-examined in the scholarship of teaching and learning. This leaves open questions about the efficacy of the walk, and whether, and to what extent, the walk yields different results among…

'Continuous meritocracy' was introduced in Singapore to redefine the concepts of talent and ability in Singapore society. This expanded meaning of meritocracy serves as another way to further support the SkillsFuture Singapore movement (Skillsfuture Singapore, 2023b), which was launched in 2016. 'Continuous meritocracy' complements Work-Integrated…

In this article, we posit a Marxist critique of the way that neoliberal capitalism has thwarted the possibility of comprehensive education. We begin with an explanation of the unique productive capacity of human labour, and the centrality of labour power for capitalism. We go on to show the importance of the education system for continually…