In his 'Towards the Critique of Violence', Walter Benjamin introduces the concept of 'educative violence' as a contemporary manifestation of 'divine violence'. In this paper, we aim to interpret 'educative violence' by examining other instances where the young Benjamin addresses pedagogical issues. By connecting the concept of divine violence to…

The concept of collective identity emphasizes the importance of solidarity, collective strength, and coalition building among social groups in order to establish empowering educational systems, while still critically acknowledging the role that intersectionality, privilege, and power play in society and in students' lives. This brief summarizes…

How should Deweyan educators teach their students about engaging in efforts to bring about social change in a political context marked by polarization, power differentials, and oppression? In this article, Joshua Forstenzer argues that Deweyan educators must encourage their students to engage in pluralistic and creative experiments rather than…

Background or Context: A third space is characterized by the ongoing poststructural negotiation of being and the ongoing quest for liberation and revolutionary cultural change. Third spaces are possible when two people expressing difference from one another come together in a discursive, in-between space that rejects binarisms and essentialisms.…

This paper revisits and reassesses the intellectual and practical contribution of Caroline Benn (née DeCamp, 1926-2000) to politics, policymaking and practice at a crucial turning point in English education, which I call the 'long comprehensive moment' between 1950 and 1990. It articulates a strong sense that her involvement in significant public…

This ethnographic comparative case study documents the work of the refugee category in Quito, Ecuador. It examines "refugee" in relation to institutional power and details how different educational stakeholders, including young migrants, appropriate and relate to the refugee category. Situated in an urban context where those who have…

The methodological overrepresentation of moral dilemmas in recent Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) discourse has culminated in a critical stalemate--a methodological paralysis brought on by an overly cautious fixation on personal moral hazards. As critical YPAR scholars, we honor these necessary interventions but are also concerned that…

This essay explores the interplay between action learning and democracy in organizations, institutions and society. We start by reflecting on the history of democracy as an emancipatory discourse in management learning and education. We elaborate on critical reflection in action-based approaches to learning and identify key elements of critical…

Role-playing games (RPGs) are storytelling activities that mediate co-authorship through a variety of in-game, out-of-game, and intertextual relationships. Liminal interactions sometimes occur during RPG play that blur these categories. To understand the purposes and processes of "liminal play," this study analyzed data from a yearlong…

In this critical discourse analysis, I explored the language used in "campus update" emails sent to faculty, staff, and students to better understand how university presidents communicate via email to institutional stakeholders. Specifically, I explored the use of effective stance, epistemic stance, and intersubjectivity in this corpus…

This theoretical paper provides valuable insights into the ongoing debates on OfSTED's fitness for purpose and effectiveness. It critically examines the current education inspection system in England through the lens of complexity theory. The paper begins with a review of significant changes in the system from 2019 to the present, explaining that…

This paper studies when decentralization improves public service delivery. I analyze a Chicago reform that awarded select principals greater autonomy over budgets and operations while holding resources largely unchanged. A meta-analysis of similar reforms shows substantial heterogeneity, including both positive and negative effects. Building on…

Bringing Edward Said's intellectual work into education comes with a certain irony. As early as his magnum opus, "Orientalism," Said already questioned the social function of intellectuals as experts, arguing that the project of orientalism could not have transpired without the 'expert' eyes of intellectuals who distorted the Orient…

Learning from Freire can be a live-long endeavor, always adding humor, rigorous critical theory, and narrative. This article addresses the theoretical and cognitive ways in which Freire can be embraced. Moving far beyond banking education and fixed ideological notions of Freire's work, it is important to consider the tentative when reading and…

Power has always been an element of the program evaluation field, however, it has traditionally been attributed a negative connotation. With that in mind, power is seen as a force possessed to some extent by different stakeholders that can be imposed over others, and by which certain views, ideas, and decisions can be adopted. Given that program…