The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) was originally promoted in 2010 by a centrist bi-partisan coalition that included Democrats interested in leveraging more rigorous academic standards to improve educational opportunity and moderate probusiness Republicans concerned about workforce development. As states moved to implement the new Standards…

Scholars of American politics and public policy recognize the interdependence of governments and corporations in the United States. This article presents research findings that high school civics textbooks, where most Americans first encounter the research and theories of political science, have little to say about this interdependence. This…

Vocational education is supposed to improve work and employment skills, but many of the vocational courses developed in schools and colleges after the collapse of industrial apprenticeships in the 1970s have not offered real opportunities for young people in the labour market. Instead, a succession of new qualifications was introduced, which…

The Symposium on Sustainable Schools (SOSS), an independent publishing operation, has contributed several pamphlets critical of Coalition policy in specific issues. The alarming lack of serious debate about education in the May election, and the radical Conservative programme operated as soon as the election was over, demand a wider perspective.…

The modernisation of education and other public services remains a major political objective of the current Coalition government in the UK. This paper focuses on "Tory Modernisation 2.0," a blueprint for the second stage of the public sector reform produced by the Conservative pressure group, Bright Blue. From the critical theory…

This article draws on findings from my doctoral research to exemplify some of the difficulties I encountered when interviewing 20 female professors and subsequently writing about their life histories. In this article, I discuss how I addressed the issues of representing and positioning my participants, and I reflect on the power dynamics present…

This inquiry aims to enrich conversation regarding school reform. The author asks about what other discourses are possible when the action-oriented question of how to "act" is a major approach to "fix" current educational problems. Drawing from Taoist philosophy of "wuwei" (non-action), the author provides a frame to…

In an era of increasing teacher accountability, charter schools are finding ways to circumnavigate the restrictions placed on public schools in regard to teacher certification. These efforts purportedly are being made to fill teacher shortages in high need areas, but realistically allow charter school teachers to avoid expensive and time-consuming…

This article explores innovation as an aspect of in-service continuous professional development (CPD) in ECEC. Based on a literature review and a cross-country analysis conducted in ten European countries, we found that innovation in CPD was understood as a way to improving quality in ECEC. CPD no longer solely deals with practitioners' knowledge…

The purpose of this study was to reveal the perceptions of preservice teachers with war experience regarding war, peace and peace education. In the study, the phenomenological design was applied. The participants of the study were individuals who experienced wars or conflicts for several reasons in their countries and who received teacher training…

This study explores the impact of litigation on the mobilization of ethnic equality in the admission to Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) schools in Israel, and examines the socio-political mechanisms that have shaped this impact. It uses a case-study approach and draws on an analysis of documents and interviews. The findings confirm the conclusions of…

Over recent decades neoliberal ideology, in the guise of market imperatives, has gained resonance within institutions of higher education around the world. Neoliberal proposals are too often characterised as 'realistic' responses to competitive market needs for efficient outcomes, although the proposals themselves are ideological and many of them…

This paper, based on interviews conducted for the "Early Childhood Oral History Project," draws on oral life-history interviews with 14 prominent early childhood researchers who have been active since the 1970s within diverse European countries. A common theme across the interviews is the key role that collaborative research between…

This paper examines the shifting relations between the family and the state in Indian education policy. It charts how family resources, responsibility, and participation have been variously called upon by the state across three historical conjunctures of education reform: the decades of post-independence planning for school expansion and…

Donald J. Trump was elected the 45th President of the United States in November 2016, after more than a year of campaigning on many major issues. Among the key issues presented during then-candidate Trump's campaign was immigration reform. While Latinos make up the largest ethnic group of non-citizens in the U.S., most of these individuals have…