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Some state legislatures have introduced a rash of bills designed to control how K-12 teachers discuss so-called 'divisive issues,' such as racism, sexism, and privilege. This legislation has prompted substantial news coverage on the impact of these laws. Sidelined in this discourse are the perspectives of teachers. This mixed methods study seeks to understand the impact this legislation may have on teachers. We identified three themes salient to how teachers as 'gatekeepers' (Thornton, 1991) anticipate these legislative efforts influencing their practice: curricular autonomy, context, and institutional guidance. The paper concludes with the significance of these findings, including potential policy implications at the national, state, and local levels.

LGBTQIA students are an important stakeholder group on college and university campuses, especially as both their visibility and expectations for support and empowerment on campus increase. But how ready is the field of higher education for litigation related to LGBTQIA issues, and how should student affairs practitioners prepare to address LGBTQIA students' possible negative campus experiences proactively? By reviewing details of cases that have set an important precedent and signal what might be coming with respect to LGBTQIA students' rights and experiences in higher education, this article seeks to provide detail and analysis of important legal areas that student affairs practitioners should be attuned to as they continue to educate thousands of LGBTQIA students each year. I explore how Title IX may be increasingly a route of redress for LGBTQIA students who have experienced discrimination; how rulings on religious freedom of expression may erode some of LGBTQIA students' rights on college and universities campuses; and the special relationship doctrine and how it may be applied to LGBTQIA students in mental health crisis.

The study was conducted to examine the consciousness levels of gifted children about children's rights and to compare them with their non-gifted peers. The general survey model was used in this study, in which the consciousness levels of gifted and non-gifted children on children's rights were compared. The study group of the research consists of 63 gifted and 65 non-gifted primary school students studying in a science and art center in Afyonkarahisar. In the research, the "Children's Rights Consciousness Level Determination Scale" developed by Akgül and Çaglayan (2019) was used to determine the consciousness levels of students about children's rights. In the analysis of the collected data, the difference between the groups was examined with the Mann Whitney U test using the data analysis program. As a result of the research, the consciousness level of gifted students about children's rights was found to be significantly higher than their non-gifted peers. In addition, this difference emerged in the "right to information and opinion" dimension of the scale. The unique developmental characteristics of gifted children may have an impact on their knowledge, consciousness and behavior towards children's rights. However, there is a need for comparative and longitudinal large-scale studies based on epidemiological data on the sensitivity of gifted children to children's rights. In addition, educational and behavioral interventions should be made in order to increase the consciousness of gifted children about children's rights, regardless of their educational environment.

Using a mixed-methods approach, this study uses an Internet survey to investigate the curricular freedom reported by Prekindergarten through Grade 8 teachers in the United States concerning the inclusion of children's literature into their classrooms and curriculum, particularly in the current sociopolitical climate. Drawing upon Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory, survey responses were analyzed based on the four levels of the ecological model (micro, meso, exo, and macro systems). To account for regional variations existing at the sociopolitical macro level, the study's findings were organized according to the five geographical regions of the United States: Midwest, Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, and West. Analysis indicated distinct variation in the patterns of the responses across the geographical regions, aligned with the dominant political ideology of their state. Responses of teachers from the Northeast and West were heavily influenced by events and experiences at the national level, whereas teachers from the Southeast and Southwest focused on matters concerning individual, local, and state issues. Teachers from the Midwest, a politically mixed region, least frequently commented on issues related to censorship, a trend noted in the other four regions.

In 2019 the American Association of School Librarians adopted a strategic plan with three goals, including "AASL advances research that informs school librarian practice." Members of the 2020 Community of Scholars Committee undertook this study to pilot an annual aggregation and systematic review of research related to school librarian practice. The AASL Strategic Plan (2019) also included five core values: learning; innovation; equity, diversity, and inclusion; intellectual freedom; and collaboration. This review also explores how published research in 2019 reflects the core values. A scoping literature review and the search string "school libr*" were employed to provide a broad sweep of potential studies. Fifty-nine studies were identified as "in scope" and were categorized using the AASL core values. Of the 59 articles published, 24 applied to the core value of learning; 14 to innovation; nine to collaboration; three to intellectual freedom; two to equity, diversity, and inclusion; and seven to a category of "other." Subsequent systematic annual reviews of published research in the field should serve to not only document patterns and trends but also to provide guidance or inspiration to practitioners and to the faculty who prepare practitioners.

The paper explores the historical significance of Hindu College Calcutta, a key institution in colonial India's intellectual discourse. Established in the early 19th century, the college faced numerous challenges, including opposition from conservative factions and financial constraints, as it evolved into a hub for education and independent thought. The study highlights the socio-political context and the necessity of an institution providing contemporary education while preserving traditional Indian values. It focuses on the contributions of intellectuals associated with the college, particularly Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, examining his dynamic influence and his pivotal role in founding the Academic Association. Derozio's teachings and leadership inspired a cohort of students, fostering a culture of free thought and intellectual exploration.

Authentic assessments are designed to evaluate knowledge and skills that are relevant for students' life beyond university, emphasising practical, applied skills. They offer an alternative to assessments that don't explicitly foster transferability of skills. The present study examined undergraduate student perceptions of authentic and traditional assessments (N = 150). We used a qualitative story completion methodology to examine three domains: student's emotional responses to authentic and traditional assessment forms, student's perceptions of how different assessment types may benefit their employability, and student's preferences for pedagogical support with authentic assessments. A qualitative content analysis revealed students generally perceive authentic, novel assessments to be exciting, motivating and inspirational; however, this was accompanied by feelings of uncertainty and unfamiliarity. More traditional assessments (e.g. essays and multiple-choice-question examinations) elicited feelings of comfort and preparedness, but students also felt worried, bored and unexcited by these assessments. Students appreciated creative freedom when lecturers set traditional assessments but would like more consideration of their feelings and need for support in authentic assessments. Hence, we argue, when advocating for authentic assessment, there is a balance to be struck between innovation and challenge, ensuring sufficient support for student's psychological safety and feelings of comfort. Implications for practice are discussed.

Classroom discussions have become a centerpiece of reform efforts in science education because talk mediates the joint co-constructing of knowledge in science classrooms. Although decades of research underscore the importance of talk in supporting science learning, the science education community continues to grapple with how to support teachers and students in navigating the uncertainty that is associated with doing knowledge building work. To address these challenges, we must examine not just "what" gets constructed (the scientific ideas), but "how" knowledge is co-constructed by teachers and students (the process of building those ideas) amidst uncertainty. In this study, we propose a conceptual tool for identifying organizational, epistemic, and interpretive metadiscourse markers (MDMs) in science talk. We highlight how teachers and students use these three types of MDMs as they navigate uncertainty while connecting ideas within and across multiple turns of talk, leveraging resources for knowledge building, and making interpretations about one another's ideas. We conclude with a set of suggestions for how researchers and teachers can utilize this framework to attend to the ways that MDMs index the organizational, epistemic, and interpretive dimensions of uncertainty in the knowledge building process.

Since late November 2022, generative AI ChatGPT has drawn waves of attention in society, and its impacts certainly extend to the higher education setting. Although ChatGPT has not been officially released for registration in Hong Kong, the higher education setting has been responding differently. The article conducted a systematic review of local newspapers published between 1 December 2022 and 31 July 2023 to analyse how the eight public universities in Hong Kong responded. This article divided the timeline into three phases: procrastination, remediation, and adaptation. Recommendations are given to universities for making policies and management based on the findings, including making timely but temporary announcements at the university level and updating course outlines that explicitly stated to what extent GenAI can be used in each course. This study used Hong Kong to serves as a reference for universities that are still struggling with the usage of ChatGPT and GenAI technologies in the restricted access areas.

The requirement for Australian initial teacher education (ITE) providers to administer a Teaching Performance Assessment (TPA) highlights a tension between policymaking directives and academic independence. It has raised fears of entrenching simplistic notions of measurement and evidence into a professional field distinguished by its complex relationship with intellectual and academic labour. Drawing on focus group data and reflections of academics co-designing an Australian TPA, this study considers how intellectual labour intertwines with its operational field, wherein co-construction of knowledge, critical thinking, and reflection define both academic and teachers' work. Our analysis explains how education academics, as principle-designers of an assessment instrument, might also negotiate the intellectual premise of a TPA within their own ITE programs. We find that Australia's initial TPA policy framework has been mediated with ITE academics. This offers opportunities for building knowledge to understand more precisely the TPA in its contexts, including admissible evidence to measure classroom-readiness.

Reading is an integral part of scholarly practice, though we do not often discuss how our approaches to reading differ, and how these approaches may ultimately make interpretive impact on our research. This essay considers approaches to reading in light of the concepts of proximity and orientation. Though formal "close reading" is a common approach to teaching reading and analyzing texts, it is possible that there are other, closer approaches to situating reader and text. Perhaps reading has been seen as dangerous and liberating because it is true that texts can draw us into their landscapes and fundamentally alter our orientations to the world, an important consideration for scholars.

Purpose: The new Finnish National Core Curriculum for Early Childhood Education and Care (2018) strongly highlights pedagogical knowledge and practice, demanding teachers to develop their pedagogical thinking, evaluation, judgment, and operating culture. Since ethics is viewed as vital characteristics of the teaching profession, our objective is to make these complex ethical issues more visible to be subject to democratic discussion and change. Design/Approach/Methods: The framework comprises a broad theory base of codes of ethics and professional codes of ethics of teaching. The research materials were national curricula of early childhood education and care (ECEC)- and pre-primary education. The eight-step qualitative analysis process was applied to identify and shed light on the codes of ethics laying the foundations for purposeful and ethical early childhood education (ECE) teacher. Findings: The results indicate that through both theoretical lenses, the Finnish ECEC curricula comprise several ethical codes. For the future purposeful ECE teachers as ethical professionals, the results raise questions for further discussion. Particularly, issues related to the ethics of care, intellectual freedom, inquiry stance, and professional competence, and diversity may further enhance our ECEC curricula. Originality/Value: During recent decades, the ethics concerning ECEC have gained increasing global attention. Particularly, there is a large international consensus considering ECEC as a prominent policy equalizing opportunities.

In this study, one current and three former British Columbia (BC) offshore school principals were interviewed to seek their insights on how they contended with being compelled to censor material and disallow topics of conversation while administering a Canadian curriculum in an international context. Using a research design consistent with an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) methodological framework, the data were interpreted using three reduction cycles to generate five categories: disillusionment, anger, struggle, expedience, and subversion. The participants' responses were synthesized through the five categories in light of the phenomenon of moral distress, which occurs when a person is hindered from following a course of action consonant with their own moral judgement. Participants' reflections on leading Canadian high schools outside of Canada offered meaningful insights into their lived experiences abroad and provided a basis for a more robust consideration of how principals make sense of morally distressing situations in their schools.

In European universities, teaching ethics has acquired special relevance with the Bologna Process and changes in curriculum. In Spain, the White Book of the Degree in Information and Documentation incorporates ethics as a specific competence, through the combination of ethical, social, and legal content, as a transversal competence. In this context, this study aimed to detect whether changes in attitude toward ethical values occur in a group of LIS students as a consequence of the training received and to test a qualitative approach to identify these changes. A questionnaire based on the vignette technique was used, presenting students with cases of conflict or ethical dilemmas, in most cases in the context of an information unit. For each vignette, they were asked to assess the performance of the information professional and to explain what they would have done if they were in their place, before and after they received the training. The results obtained showed that the attitude of the students who received training changed from individual ethics to professional ethics. We can consider that the content used for the training was correct, although the knowledge about the different ethical theories and ethical reasoning models for decision making should have been deepened. To the theoretical content, we must add a teaching methodology based on the effective study of cases and scenarios in our work. On the other hand, the application of the vignette technique and content analysis as a methodological approach to the students' discourse is very useful, since it was decisive in identifying the reasons that helped the students make a certain decision, before and after the training session, for checking to see whether this decision was made following their individual ethics or guided by normative ethics, and for knowing the degree of acceptance and depth of the training session.

Background: Challenges to books are surging across the United States, and books that portray diverse human experiences are particularly targeted. Censorship has deleterious consequences, such as undermining children's intellectual freedom and influencing educators' book selections. In a climate of censorship, when educators face the realistic possibility of a challenge, diverse voices may be silenced, and real-world issues avoided. Despite the impact that book challenges have, the experiences of educators who have faced them are understudied. Purpose: This study investigates the self-reported experiences of seven educators who have been involved in book challenges within K-12 public schools within the United States. Its goal is to yield new insights about how educators perceive the experience of censorship and what resources they leverage as they defend children's right to read. It is significant because the lessons learned from these educators may be instructive for novice and veteran teachers and school librarians who are facing censorship--an increasingly likely possibility in contemporary times. It also highlights the range of forms that censorship takes within today's schools. Research Design: This research employs a collective case study design. Seven teachers and school librarians from K-12 public schools across the United States were interviewed about their experiences with book challenges and other forms of censorship. Interview transcripts were qualitatively analyzed using Pierre Bourdieu's types of cultural capital as a framework. Within-case and cross-case analyses are presented. Conclusions: Participants drew from various forms of cultural capital in their efforts to defend children's intellectual freedom, including their professional ethics, school policies, and institutional knowledge. The study emphasizes the importance of building cultural capital among pre- and in-service educators within university preparation and professional development programs. It also calls on professional groups within education and librarianship to take an organized stand against censorship.

The tension emanated from deeply polarized socio-cultural values has found its way into the Canadian university campuses. In their endeavour to strike a balance between promoting diversity, inclusion and respecting free speech, the Canadian higher educational institutions have encountered formidable challenges. Central to the contention revolving around the free speech debate is an assertion that institutional pressures for consolidating a culture of political correctness is believed to have the potential to curtail and stifle freedom of expression which has in turn triggered governmental intervention in certain Canadian provinces. The lack of a proper balance between the quest for promoting inclusion, diversity and free speech can in the long run undermine the socially vital mission of universities, and hence corroding the public trust in the higher educational institutions. Obviously, there is no single solution that can function as panacea to surmount these pressing demands faced by the Canadian universities. However, it will be argued that the extension of constitutionally protected freedom of expression to the Canadian universities is not only geared to address the shortcomings of academic freedom, but it is also conducive to harmonizing the pursuit of promoting diversity and inclusion with upholding free speech principles.

Academic racism is an intellectualized and race-based ideology of hatred fostered and propagated in classrooms and newsrooms. In this article, William Howard asserts that rather than transparent, unadorned, visceral hatred, academic racism consists of a maze of theory that conceals visceral hatred under a veneer of intellectualism and enlightenment. Its object is to attain political power. Now that the woke have attained that power, they intend, with the leadership of the President of the United States, to institutionalize their own racism. He goes on to say that those who authorize themselves to accuse others of racism are the racists themselves. Further, he argues that the ideology of academic racism has been concocted in the laboratory of leftist ideologies: American universities. Academic racism is not about remediation of a social problem; it is about discrediting and demoralizing the citizens of a country as a pretext for taking it over. Howard resolves that academic racism is intellectual futility transformed into hatred and power-seeking. But if educators teach students the thought of Yeats, Ellul, Orwell, Arendt, and other champions of freedom, they can equip them to detect and reject malicious racial propaganda and discover truthful principles. And one day they can look back and say that academic racism was just academic after all.

Selection policies are practical tools used by school librarians to guide them in their collection development plans. This investigation into district-level selection policies examined policies from 80 school districts across the United States. The policies were examined to determine the status of selection policies in school libraries and if the policies reflect the recommendations of professional literature. Through content analysis, we determined that most of the school library selection policies included at least half of the expected key components. However, there is a need for school librarians to advocate for revision of policies to keep them current and provide effective guidance for school librarians as they make selections for their collections.

Intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity are hotly debated topics in academia, marked by an increase in legislation focusing on intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity within academic settings. This study explores the impact of Florida House Bill 233 on public universities, including academics' morale. House Bill 233 purports to support intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity through four components: prohibiting shielding of students, staff, and academics from certain speech; requiring an annual assessment on intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity; creating a cause of action for certain video- or audio-recordings; and revising provisions related to protected expressive activity, university student governments, and codes of conduct. This study sampled 187 academics from four state universities. Findings indicate that while academics support intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity conceptually, most academics suggested the bill has negative impacts on intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity and faculty morale. Implications for future research and policy development are discussed.

Democratisation in Turkey collapsed in the wake of the 2016 failed military coup and the crackdown that followed, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan launching a widespread rollback of academic and other liberties, systematically purging civic institutions of political opponents and critics that significantly harmed intellectuals, students, and educational rights. This paper analyses the narratives of Turkish citizens who were prosecuted, dismissed, abused, tortured, victimised, and imprisoned during the State of Emergency (OHAL) initiated after the failed coup attempt in July 2016. This narrative approach examines the transcripts of in-depth interviews about the experiences and critical life stories of 20 individuals now living in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Also included are field notes and documents that reveal the authorities' violations of their educational human rights. These included the denial of education, unwarranted dismissal, elimination of academic freedom of thought, and harassment of academics and their children. Such violations have created a brain drain of educators fleeing the country. These deleterious changes in the Turkish education system have had severe social and political effects and have produced an education system that fails to meet the country's needs, which, if not remediated, will ripple through the generations, dimming the nation's future.

Applying a content warning to metadata and archival descriptions is a practice that libraries increasingly embrace, even though the American Library Association considers content labeling to be censorship under the Library Bill of Rights. The language used in a content warning, such as "offensive" or "harmful," carries important implications for the responsibility the library assumes and the actions it might take. Before deciding to apply a content warning, libraries should consider a range of questions posed by such warnings and be prepared to respond to the inherent conflict they create with librarianship's commitment to intellectual freedom and anti-censorship.

In this article I contribute to the scholarly discussion on how minority religions and world-views could be represented in the RE subject of Norwegian primary and lower secondary school. I will focus on Islam since Islam is the largest and -- at the same time -- most debated minority religion in Norway. The starting-point of my analysis will be the chapter on human rights in "Signposts" where the author, Professor Robert Jackson, refers to the Council of Europe's 2008 recommendation -- on which "Signposts" is based -- where it is stated that the dimension of religions within intercultural education should be seen as a contribution to strengthen human rights. This formulation is mirrored in the new National Curriculum of the Norwegian RE subject which states that pupils should acquire knowledge of common values (such as intellectual freedom and equality) and how these values are anchored in different religions and worldviews. With the theoretical support of Robert Jackson's three level model I try to demonstrate how RE teachers can realise this didactical vision when teaching about Islam.

This article considers Australian receptions of C. P. Snow's "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution" (1959), and of the controversy over the literary critic F. R. Leavis's combative 1962 response to it. Taking a lead from conceptual insights in global histories of science and the history of knowledge, the paper considers the ways knowledge claims iterate differently in different geographic and cultural contexts. Elements of the Snow-Leavis dispute resonated among Australian scientists, cultural critics, journalists and poets, while others did not. Snow's diagnosis of a disciplinary antagonism between the humanities and the sciences was central to Australian receptions of the controversy, but wider political issues, emphasised in much of the more sophisticated historiography of the 'two cultures' as a British-American controversy, were largely ignored. This reception reflected the post-war expansion of Australian higher education, and the shifting relations within it between the humanities and the sciences.

This invited paper highlights the reflections of expert panelists who were spontaneously called upon, graciously accepted, and quickly organized to respond thoughtfully and compellingly to Dr. Arlette Willis' powerful and timely Oscar Causey address at the 2022 Literacy Research Association (LRA) annual conference. In her address, Dr. Willis issued a clarion call for a Transcendent Approach to Literacy (TAL) to a space where "We re-create literacy as an equitable and moral construct" (Willis, 2023, p. 133). This paper comprises Dr. Alfred Tatum's comprehensive introduction, the cogent reflections on TAL by panelists Dr. Josh Coleman, Dr. Marcus Croom, Dr. Matthew Deroo, Dr. Michiko Hikida, Dr. Emily Machado, Dr. Patriann Smith, Dr. Chad Waldron, and Dr. Rahat Zaidi, and Dr. Willis' eloquent epilogue. In her epilogue, she provides not an ending but the genesis of a movement forward for the LRA community to "be brave" and actively and genuinely engage in a TAL that "democratizes literacy, declaring literacy belongs to all."

Rabindranath Tagore (1861--1941) is primarily known worldwide as the first Asian poet to receive the Nobel Prize in literature, in 1913. He lived and died in colonial India as a British subject. However, any engagement with studies of Tagore would reveal that, despite his outstanding achievements in creative writing and music, he deserves to be remembered as the only poet of international standing who not only founded a self-funded university, but also designed a curriculum which radicalized traditional institutionalized education in colonial India. This essay endeavours to explore Tagore's re-imagining of the process of institutionalized instruction and the objectives of education. Undoubtedly, the concepts and models of the teaching-learning process outlined by Tagore bear the stamp of a poet-philosopher who tried to distance himself from the public educational sector, epitomized in colonial times as the formidable University of Calcutta, under British administration. Historically, Tagore's Visva-Bharati University at Santiniketan, obviously a private sector enterprise, is regarded as a unique experiment in inclusive education that debunks rote learning and fragmented knowledge, though its viability in the 21st century is open to debate.

The restrictions imposed by a state on the way of life of a certain ethnic group, and the education policy implemented on that group, may prevent the use of the right to education, which is one of the fundamental human rights. This study focuses on the educational consequences of the exiling from their homeland of the Ahiska Turks (or Meskhetian Turks) who lived in the Ahiska (Samtskhe) region of Georgia at the time of the Soviet Union, in the year 1944. This descriptive study adopted the case study design based on qualitative research techniques. The data were gathered through a semi-structured interview form given to four participants selected via criterion sampling method from different generations who were either sent into exile, were born and grew up in the place of exile, or were born after the break-up of the USSR and were attempting to settle in another country. The data were analysed using the descriptive data analysis techniques, and the results revealed that the exiled Ahiska Turks suffered losses in terms of education due to their exile and its consequences. These losses were categorized in four groups, namely, losses stemming from leaving the community devoid of intellectuals, losses due to literacy becoming more difficult, losses originating from being forced into agricultural labour, and losses due to exposure to ethnic discrimination.

In 2020 the tenth edition of the "Intellectual Freedom Manual" will be published by American Library Association (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF). As with each new edition, this one includes guidance on the latest issues, the newest policy statements related to intellectual freedom (IF), and the core documents that outline the library profession's commitment to free expression, free access to information, privacy, and other intellectual freedom principles. In this article Martin Garnar, editor of the tenth edition, talks with Kate Lechtenberg, a school library educator and former school librarian, and Carolyn Vibbert, an elementary school librarian, about what's new in the "Intellectual Freedom Manual" and how intellectual freedom connects with AASL's "National School Library Standards for Learners, School Librarians, and School Libraries." Changes to the manual include new interpretations of the "Library Bill of Rights" approved by the ALA Council since the last edition, information about when to call the police, an essay about censorship beyond books (e.g., programs, displays, databases, etc.), expanded content about developing library policies that support intellectual freedom, and an expanded "Glossary of Terms."

No matter how school library standards evolve to address changes in society and educational research, certain intellectual freedom principles remain constant, including the principle to protect all learners' rights to freely access and explore information and ideas. The American Association of School Librarians' (AASL's) "National School Library Standards" give school librarians an opportunity to re-envision how to embed the principles of intellectual freedom by identifying and posing "authentic, real-world problems to spark learners' new knowledge pursuits through critical thinking and problem solving" (2018, 107). AASL identifies six Common Beliefs as core to the school library profession. All six relate in some way to intellectual freedom, most overtly number five: "Intellectual freedom is every learner's right" (AASL 2018, 13). That core value has not changed because all learning has intellectual freedom as its root. In fact, a number of appendices in the National School Library Standards are dedicated to explicitly setting forth guidance to ensure learners' intellectual freedom in the school library. The purpose of the article is to provide examples for everyday application of those guidelines through the AASL Standards, focusing on the Inquire, Include, and Curate Shared Foundations.

In 2017 the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) released the "National School Library Standards." The revised standards were streamlined to reflect the attributes that dynamic school librarians, learners, and school libraries should possess. The standards provide school librarians with a framework for creating school libraries that support student growth (Hancock et al. 2019). They also articulate Common Beliefs that represent the core values of librarianship. Among them, still, is the belief that intellectual freedom is the right of every learner. This article begins by defining intellectual freedom as it applies to students. It goes on to discuss challenges, such as internal and external censorship, associated with supporting intellectual freedom; the importance of school librarians educating their respective communities on the role of libraries in supporting information freedom; and how school librarians can work to change the narrative of marginalized groups by advocating for intellectual freedom.

Libraries still stand as a source of knowledge that can guide us to make informed decisions through the use of credible sources. A balanced collection that provides access to all points of view empowers a community to use information responsibly and make decisions independently. Intellectual freedom and equity of access are still important issues today, especially when confronting uncertain times with the COVID-19 virus and distance education. Through education and the information found in libraries, democracy allows citizens to experience free speech through dialogue not diatribe and to support our opinions with a respect for the diversity of our fellow citizens and a desire to realize equity and justice. From physical access to material selection to policies dealing with challenges to privacy of patron information, the article argues that school librarians must demonstrate intellectual freedom to maintain a free and open forum for ideas. They should be protectors of intellectual freedom for minors just as public libraries protect the rights of all citizens regardless of age.

School libraries are no longer solely repositories for the information that has traditionally been published in books. School library professionals are providing education and access to information in many different formats and technologies. The role of the school librarian is much more than just literacy; it is about visibility, culture, and access to the world. When providing services and resources to all, school librarians and educators often encounter obstacles that target learners who need them the most. These obstacles can include censorship and inequitable access. This article discusses challenges to managing censorship. In providing services and resources to all, library workers and educators have often encountered obstacles that target the students that need them the most. Censorship and inequitable access to programs, online resources, and displays not only harm students but also society.

New Zealand's Education and Training Act (Education and Training Act 2020 establishment of institutions, https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2020/0038/latest/LMS202213.html, 2020) confirms that the principal aim of universities is to develop intellectual independence. The act does not stipulate what intellectual independence is or how universities are to develop it. This article explores what intellectual independence might mean in the context of student learning in New Zealand, and what is known about how it could be developed and about how university teachers might confirm that they are developing it. The article provides a conceptual commentary and a model of intellectual independence, designed to encourage debate on this important and pressing higher-education policy issue. The model proposes that intellectual independence is the consequence of students learning the skills and dispositions to think critically, as an independent guide to their own beliefs and actions, and that the Education Act provides a challenge to higher education to contribute positively to the further development of an intellectually-independent critical citizenry.

The purpose of this study is to determine the contribution of the "social responsibility and healthy living" course, which was put into effect at a state university for the first time in Turkey, within the scope of elective courses on students' acquisition of values. The data in this study, in which action research, one of the qualitative research designs, was conducted, were obtained using the semi-structured interview form prepared by the researcher. The data obtained were analyzed using the descriptive analysis and content analysis techniques, which are qualitative data analysis methods. 39 students participated in the study on a voluntary basis. As a result of the analysis of the data, it was concluded that the action plan developed within the scope of the social responsibility and healthy living course was effective in the acquisition of values of taking responsibility, charitableness, being useful, ethics, empathy, importance of the institution of family, cooperation-solidarity, patience, gratitude (thankfulness), freedom of thought and respect for differences. Likewise, some of the students stated that this course contributed to their views and behaviors concerning healthy living. However, a considerable number of students were of the opinion that either the course did not make a contribution or made a partial contribution. In addition, the students pointed out that the way the course was taught was fruitful and practice-based, that it was fun and informative and that the projects and readings contributed to learning. Yet, there were also negative student views about the course content and the method of teaching employed. Moreover, it was important that a theme emerged indicating that class hours were not sufficient.

This study was conducted to examine the preparation of school librarians around intellectual freedom issues. The pilot study was conducted with school librarian students at three universities. A gap analysis was used by the researchers to measure the gap between prior knowledge about intellectual freedom that students believed they possessed upon entering a school library preparation program and the knowledge they believed they possessed when leaving the school library preparation program. A survey was administered that was divided into the three aspects of self-awareness, education, and willingness to take action. The educational gaps are focused on in this article with recommendations to continue to analyze the data in further publications. Additionally, the researchers provide suggestions for improving school librarians' preparation in the area of intellectual freedom.

The author takes the experience of book challenges as an opportunity for positive curricular changes by walking readers through the development of a formalized procedure for selecting new, diverse texts to add to the English Language Arts (ELA) program curriculum. The text-selection committee arrived at a six-step method: (1) Identify Desired Goals; (2) Identify potential titles; (3) Read the books; (4) Evaluate potential titles; (5) Think about instructional considerations; and (6) Finalize title selection. While the new process hasn't silenced criticism, it has made it easier to defend the titles.

YA author Pérez offers encouragement and insight into book challenges today, which are about much more than just a book. Offering tips for how to prepare for challenges and amplify student voices, the reader will also find ideas to help marginalized learners still find their way to targeted books.

Using the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) "National School Library Standards," and the essential questions developed out of the author's work on the Emerging Leaders project "Defending Intellectual Freedom LGBTQ+ Materials in School Libraries" resource guide, readers are taken through applying essential questions to think about intellectual freedom in the face of book challenges. The six Shared Foundations of Inquire, Include, Collaborate, Curate, Explore, and Engage raise essential questions that could help both individuals and the profession become stronger defenders of intellectual freedom and LGBTQ+ materials.

Parents and politicians feel it is their duty to assert control over the information within school libraries. According to Joshua Spilka, a high school junior, book banning has affected no one more than students and school librarians. Students find that the people who are supposed to advocate for them, parents and guardians, are often working against them. In this article, he examines two issues that stand out: (1) student voice and representation--or, rather, the lack thereof; and (2) how book banning can affect students' lives, not only on an educational and informational level but on a deeper, more-personal level.

Like other transitional countries, the Western Balkans face educational challenges due to the long transition period, respectively centralised educational activities associated with a dearth of scientific activities, and limited academic freedom. The previous centralised political and economic system in the Western Balkans created the academic community's dependence on the political system in some of these new countries. Kosovo is a point in the case. The purpose of this study is to address some aspects which have an impact on academic freedom within higher education institutions (HEIs) in Kosovo: (1) freedom to research and teach; (2) freedom of academic exchange and dissemination; (3) institutional autonomy; (4) campus integrity; and (5) freedom of academic and cultural expression. To analyse universities' challenges concerning academic freedom, we conducted a survey with academic staff at the largest public university in Kosovo, the University of Prishtina. This study is the first attempt to construct and analyse the academic freedom, providing a framework for analysis and debate of academic freedom in Kosovo. The results show that compared to previous decades (1981-1999), there is improved academic freedom in Kosovo. However, considering the latest developments and opportunities coming from the European Union (EU) programs and cooperation with EU universities, there is still a possibility of further advancing academic freedom within HEI, focusing on supporting academic integrity, institutional sustainability, and cooperation.

Banned Books Week is a hallmark tradition among US-based librarians and the American Library Association. Yet, the ALA and librarians across the profession are excluding the most significant and egregious violations of intellectual freedom and access to literature and information in our so-called free society -- the US prison system. In this essay, the author discusses the significance of carceral book banning and why libraries' interest divergence from social and prison justice movements are counterproductive and uphold systems of racial injustice.

This paper was invited as a commentary on the keynote paper for this special issue by Simon Marginson and Lili Yang. The paper begins by noting the importance of a fully balanced approach to comparison in higher education, that gives equal value and weight to Sinic and Anglo-American views by adopting a transpositional approach and also recognising the linguistic challenges involved. It then considers strengths of the Sinic approach and of the contrasting Anglo-American approach and their outcomes over history, using a frame drawn from recent work by Francis Fukuyama. Finally it turns to weaknesses on both sides, and ways in which learning from the other could make a difference. [For Marginson and Yang's, "Individual and Collective Outcomes of Higher Education: A Comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese Approaches," see EJ1323341.]

The child's right to freedom of religion and belief and fundamental principles such as equality and non-discrimination constitute an international frame for religious education (RE). However, these rights might be challenged when RE is allocated a major role in transmitting the majority religion as national cultural heritage and national identity. This article will explore and discuss this issue. It is based on an analysis of the transmission of Christianity as cultural heritage in the national RE curriculum for primary and lower secondary schools in Denmark. The article argues that principles from human rights education could provide a basis for a more pluralistic, objective, and critical approach to RE, thus enabling the classroom to function as a community of disagreement.

In this article we examine the profiling of human rights and children's rights in religious education (RE) and its secular alternative in Finland. We use the term 'worldview education' to describe the combination of these subjects. We analyse what kinds of human rights and ethical issues are raised in Finnish worldview education. One specific focus is the explicit mention of human rights and children's rights in the worldview education section of the Finnish national core curriculum (2014). We conclude that the curriculum gives plenty of space to human rights and children's rights, and that this enables one to conceive of human rights as being an overarching ethical perspective in worldview education. Nevertheless, we indicate that the organisation of worldview education in Finland has some problems when it comes to the realisation of children's freedom of thought, conscience, and religion.

In 1864, the Russian empire placed a ban on all forms of the written Lithuanian language in order to subdue the people of Lithuania and to shape the country's culture into the Russian norm. The ban made a variety of Lithuanian books, as well as many other forms of Lithuanian communication, illegal. Over the next 40 years, Lithuanians resisted this Russian oppression in many ways, including finding loopholes in the law, starting secret schools, and smuggling books across the country's border. In time, the resistance would not only save the Lithuanian culture, but would set the foundation for independence by saving the Lithuanian language, separating Lithuania from foreign powers, and, most importantly, reforming the country's identity.

In "Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care?," Neil Gross introduces research that suggests fifty to sixty percent of college professors are leftist or liberal, a much higher proportion than the seventeen percent of Americans in general. He posits the conservative fear that "bias" in higher education is a "very serious" problem. If the majority of faculty placing emphasis on social justice education (SJE) are liberal, how do we nullify the apparent conflict with the essential honors mission, as defined by the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC), to develop critical-thinking skills? The answer lies in the fallacy that correlation equals causation. The fact that faculty are liberal does not mean that SJE must be taught with an ideological agenda. The author contends that we can and must teach social justice from a non-partisan perspective and offers recommendations for best practices for SJE in the context of an honors program.

Students are embedded in a stochastic world. Postmodern practitioners of fragmentation accept this, however they dispute Jungian and Eriksonian wholeness. The existential representation ego as a two-dimensional thing, the Kantian-, Jungian- I-formation is questioned. Similarly, Gardnerian frames of mind and MI are questioned as functional pedagogical models within the context of a stochastic reality. Thus, the term literacy must be expanded to address this enduring reality of both the classroom, and the shape-shifting, kaleidoscopic, urban landscapes through which students move daily. Egosystem (Author, 2005) is a perfect model for this environmental kaleidoscope. This requires a new literacy, a true 'reading the world' (Freire, 1995). We understand that the classical ego is an extension of a system of influential forces of the embedding world that inform, shape and re-shape it. Egosystem is the new complex ego struggling for survival. Uncertainty is the undercurrent beneath volatile educational environments wherein visual arts achieves some measure of control by offering challenging design problems. Archaic and modern confrontation with challenges presented by this stochastic world is an impetus for intellectual development through increasing visualization, heightened awareness, self-healing and self-renewal. The search for wholeness extends the Jungian archetype of teleiosis to an enlightened version of the whole Self within an entropic field that tends towards fragmentation. It is the same ego-consciousness and environmental awareness the genus Homo used to negotiate survival within the original stochastic classroom of the African Rift Valley. We witness the same successive growth of modern students learning to solve challenging design problems, to adapt and to change within an uncertain world. As ego evolves into egosystem--with its palpable links to a stochastic environmental milieu--so students evolve through a consequential series of 'successive emancipations of the human will and intellect' (Malraux, 1956).

This study aimed at identifying the role of Jordanian youth associations in spreading the national education and its relation to the tendency towards extremist intellectual behavior among a sample of Jordanian university students. The study population consists of (504) undergraduate students in the Jordanian universities, namely: Jordan University, Yarmouk University, Philadelphia University, and Al-Ahliyya Amman University. They were chosen in a deliberate manner. And have participations in activities organized by students' affairs deans in their universities. The reliability and validity of the study tool were verified. The results of the study showed that the role of the Jordanian youth associations in spreading the national education came within the intermediate level. The results also showed no statistically significant differences in the role of the Jordanian youth associations in spreading the national education according to the gender variable and the place of residence. There was also a strong correlation between the level of national education and the tendency towards intellectual extremism among Jordanian university students.

Given the increasing power and prominence of political figures in the United States who openly espouse xenophobic, misogynistic, white nationalist positions, it is only natural to anticipate encountering students who express these views in our libraries and classrooms. This essay uses a classroom encounter with a student expressing xenophobic sentiments as a way to explore the following questions: As someone heavily influenced by a great deal of Critical Information Literacy (CIL) literature, why was I so flummoxed upon encountering this student's perspective? Why did I find the intellectual resources that I had drawn from to shape my classroom pedagogy inadequate? Using the methods of normative political theory, the essay draws from CIL literature emphasizing intuitional questioning and resistance, and civic education literature emphasizing institutional participation. The essay concludes by arguing that the political theorist Chantal Mouffe's radical democratic pluralism provides librarians with a theoretical framework that can accommodate both insurgency and institutional participation when encountering intolerance.

Purpose: The purpose is to demonstrate that conceptual change theory and strategies can be applied to areas of the social science, such as human rights education on FORB. Design/methodology/approach: The theoretical scope of this paper is conceptual change theory and is intended to introduce the theory and practice of conceptual change in teaching about FORB in social sciences and how it was used in training teachers. Findings: Conceptual change theory and strategies were found to be effective in teaching about FORB. Practical implications: This study introduces the use of conceptual change theory and strategies in teaching about human rights.

This paper explores doctoral candidates' experiences of making progress through the doctoral space. We engage concepts associated with the 'new mobilities' paradigm (Urry, J. 2007. Mobilities. Cambridge: Polity Press) to provide insight into the candidate experience of the doctoral journey; exploring specifically the interplay between the fixed structure provided by institutional-level progression frameworks that are commonly implemented by UK universities to measure 'timely progress' across disciplines and the borderlands space that enables and facilitates intellectual freedom, creativity, becoming and adventure. Drawing on notions of 'moorings', 'home on the move', 'connectivity and transit spaces' and 'rhizomic thinking' we analyse narrative data generated through the reflective diaries of doctoral candidates at a modern university in the English Midlands to offer new insight into how universities can provide better doctoral education, that supports: candidates to make a contribution to knowledge; protects well-being; and facilitates timely completion.