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With the development of technology, the circulation of information around the world has accelerated. Journalism has now entered social media and mobile phones and has started to accompany people everywhere. The role of the media in education helps to learn, develop and keep alive a culture, and then transfer it to new generations. Media messages prepared for educational purposes aim to educate the individual and society on certain issues. The media is integrative with publications that raise awareness of the country, state and nation, make people popular, protect and protect national values. Thanks to the developing technology, politicians benefit from the educational role of the media by using new media tools as well as traditional media. In this study, the concepts of communication and media are explained in detail. In the continuation of the study, it was tried to reveal what needs to be done about the realization of a successful corporate perception management by mentioning the importance of corporate perception management in public administration by making use of the developing technology. Using content analysis, the interviews of the President of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, Ersin Tatar, in the TRNC and universities in Turkey in October 2023 were examined.

This paper investigates the case of Singapore where there are teachers' unions but industrial actions are rare. It questions why and how has educator organising, steered by Singapore Teachers' Union, transformed? Our findings show that historical, political, and socio-economic dynamics have influenced the transformation of STU. For more than seventy years, STU has been a champion, supporter, and advocate of teachers in Singapore through industrial, professional, and social unionism. We argue that the legacy of STU's struggles, throughout its contentious relationship with the colonial government and collaborative rapport with the local government, has laid the foundation that enables the development of teachers and the high quality of education that the country is currently known for globally. However, persisting residual issues surrounding teachers' wellbeing due to the high expectations of teachers and teaching call for a review of this state-labour relationship.

The 'demand for justice' is a long-standing principle of Oaxaca's Sección 22 union chapter, which has led a teachers' movement since the 1970s that has evolved to meet changing social, political, and economic circumstances. Various researchers around the globe have increasingly linked notions of justice with education, exploring terms like social justice education, justice-oriented teaching, justice-oriented education, and teaching for social justice in a range of contexts, mapping the ways educators integrate these concepts into classrooms and schools. Missing from this research, however, is an examination of the ways teachers might practice 'justice-oriented teaching' outside the classroom as well, as they participate in movements and struggles. Drawing on ethnographic data collected over a five-year period, and on interviews with 40 teachers, teacher educators, union officials, and student teachers, I will map out four 'justice orientations' via which Oaxacan teachers demand justice. Sección 22 educators perform justice-oriented teaching along economic, political, cultural, and humanistic orientations, manifesting a widely held belief in Oaxaca that 'the teacher fighting, is also teaching'. This study can inform research about teachers globally enacting justice-oriented pedagogies and practices, not only in the classroom, but also in the public domain as activists, movement actors, and union members.

Between 2011 and 2015, at the dawn of the global financial crisis, Spain went through severe austerity measures that led to social unrest and to the emergence of new expressions of collective action. In the educational field, teachers' unions and grassroots movements organised against the neoliberal and neoconservative policies promoted by the central government and several regional governments. The case of the Teachers' Assembly in the Balearic Islands is particularly relevant because it was a highly successful protest experience that triggered unprecedented social mobilisation and broad social support. Drawing on social movement theories and combining semi-structured interviews with document and media analysis, this study finds that the combination of alliance-building, disruptive collective actions, and framing processes was key to explaining the success of the social mobilisation.

Unions have played a decisive role in promoting democracy and social justice in Tunisia. In 2023, two teacher unions led a yearlong 'silent strike' of withholding student marks from administration. Based on interviews with 60 teachers, this article analyses teacher views on the unions and on ongoing protests. While unions are still considered the main defenders of public education and grievances about salaries were shared among teachers, their views on strike participation diverged based on perceived political opportunity and differences in moral and political preferences, amidst a local political and financial crisis and global pressures towards austerity and privatisation.

This article examines the ways in which teachers and community-based activists collaborated to advance an anti-privatisation agenda within an urban school district. The article emerges from our respective studies of privatisation in Oakland, one a historical study of the advance of neoliberalism and the other a case study (Merriam 2007, "Qualitative Research and Case Study Applications in Education: Revised and Expanded from Case Study Research in Education," 2nd ed. Jossey-Bass) of teacher and community organising against privatisation and school closures. Utilising interviews with key activists and organisers as well as observation and participation in the education justice movement, we describe a set of collaborative political education projects through which activists reclaimed racial justice as the framework to strengthen the movement against privatisation. In these projects, activists called attention to the centrality of antiblackness in advancing privatisation and to the shared disposability and precarity of students of color and the teachers and schools that served them. By shifting from a 'defend' public schools to a 'transform public schools' framework, they also increased solidarity between teachers, the teachers' union, and the local community. In the context of the school reform's industry's appropriation of racial-justice language, these political education projects were both a counter-hegemonic and power-building strategy.

Trade union collaboration on issues of social justice connects workers to each other and to their wider communities and is therefore considered a strategy of union renewal. Prior to their amalgamation on 1 January 2023, Lärarförbundet (Swedish Teachers' Union) and Lärarnas Riksförbund (National Union of Teachers in Sweden) collaborated intermittently to challenge educational injustices in the highly segregated Swedish school market. Through documentary research, with dialogue as method, this case study explores the policies and politics of this inter-union collaboration. Using 'framing' and 'intermediation' as conceptual lenses, we argue that the two unions collaborated predominantly, but to varying degrees, on bargaining, political, and professional issues. However, these joint actions were conducted in the context of declining union membership, competitive national recruitment agendas, and the rise of grassroots teacher-led 'rebellion' groups campaigning for public education. External solidarity in organising was therefore limited by inter-organisational and intra-professional differentiation and both unions' orientation towards a service model of unionism. Future research might explore the complexity of intra-union collaboration in the newly amalgamated Sveriges Lärare and the extent to which regional branch activism and broader alliances with social movements could promote a more democratic organising agenda.

This narrative study examines a failed attempt to unionise an urban charter school. To investigate why this effort failed, I construct two competing 'stories of the school' -- the discursive narratives each side told about how the school operates, who it serves, and how it fits into a larger battle for educational, racial, and economic justice. I then read these narratives through the critical lens of 'neoliberal urbanism' (Lipman, P. 2011. "The New Political Economy of Urban Education: Neoliberalism, Race, and the Right to the City." Routledge) to highlight how the school's official narrative pulled on neoliberal structures and hegemonic discourses to ultimately help administrators quell the unionising effort despite initial widespread staff enthusiasm.

One major aspect of interest in Filipino philosophy is education. Reflecting on the nature, aims, and problems of education, Filipino philosophy of education investigates philosophical issues and emerging trends of philosophical thinking in education which are distinctive to the Filipino context. Filipino philosophy of education has a rich potential that encompasses revisiting cultural and historical narratives, considering inclusivity, reevaluating the educational system, challenging existing pedagogies, and re-discovering indigeneity. In this context it is worth exploring it further. Taking off from a collective work on Filipino philosophy of education by a group of Filipino scholars, this special issue provides a more elaborate discussion of major aspects of Filipino philosophy providing traction on the conversation that which furthers the truth of the existence of Filipino Philosophy, its nuances, and its relevance to education. More specifically, this special issue provides philosophical and theoretical reflections that bring to the fore the state of Filipino philosophy of education and discussions about the nature of Filipino cultural, political, and intellectual heritage. As such, it will be of interest to students and scholars in philosophy of education in the Philippines and globally.

Right-wing populists have recurrently created moral panics internationally about the supposed need to 'protect free speech' in higher education (HE), and 'protect children' from progressive speech in schools. This paper presents the first systematic analysis of how such dynamics function with respect to race and faith equality in a national school policy context. Drawing on a critical post-structural framework, we conceptualise the policy problematisation of "speech" as situated in a wider set of coercion-consent governing strategies used to manage contemporary authoritarian neoliberal contradictions, and to narrow the "speakability" of anti-racist and faith equality concerns. We present a two-stage thematic and discursive analysis of a corpus of primarily school-focused English policy texts from successive Conservative-led governments (2010-2022). The analysis outlines three main policy strategies which narrow speakability: the defining of 'good' schools and citizens with limited/oppositional reference to race equality, the problematising of 'dangerous' speech, and the indexing of school/HE subjects who are "truly" vulnerable to political speech. The paper offers an urgent case study of how possibilities for progressive race and faith-based expression are shaped beyond explicitly speech-focused policies, and argues that engagement of the complex governance of speakability offers nuanced possibilities for analysing bans on progressive education internationally.

Learning Poverty (LP), the inability to read at age of 10 years has been the cynosure of concern and trigger for policy reform. Specifically, in India, the National Education Policy (NEP-2020) advocates several recommendations for epistemic justice and to thwart "learning poorness." This paper exposes that the proposals advocated by the NEP-2020 are neither unknown nor unattempted nor have they gone unlitigated in the High Courts/the Supreme Court. Based on an analysis of how the NEP-2020 aspires to deal with LP and an evaluation of how the same were addressed by the Indian Judiciary, we find that the state's executive construes discourses that at least profess to advantage the Indigenous/Tribal/Minority/Minoritized (ITM) child in particular. However, counter-discourses by the Judiciary overturn the projected advantage albeit its engagement with 'allied legal concerns' every time the state's executive proposes changes. In doing so, the courts espouse an inconsistent jurisprudence and perpetuate a status-quo that can potentially accrue LP and thus are counterproductive for the ITM child's rights.

Successive British Governments have promulgated policies and initiatives that have not only resulted in the marketisation of education but have, arguably, constructed a democratic deficit in relation to who represents the local in a neoliberal educational context. The article utilises a conceptual framework which encompasses notions of civility and somatic norms as well as evaluative models of deliberative democratic systems. The article illuminates the democratic deficit impact of these policy changes on social groups, such as parents or community members of low socioeconomic status, women and non-white Others. In doing so this research illustrates empirically a democratic deficit which is manifested in the school governance of the Co-operative Aligned Academies Trust (CAAT). It would appear local participatory school governance practices have been systematically disabled due instrumentalist and economistic New Public Management practices and neoliberal reforms. Democracy can be conceived as illusionary in the empowered space and as silencing, civilising and exclusionary (anti) democracy in the public space.

Institution-wide curriculum change is a costly, time-intensive and politically fraught undertaking. It is a challenge identifying who has responsibility for the curriculum and who is empowered to change it. The unbundling of the traditional tri-partite academic role of teaching, research and service leaves a gap of who in those communities decides what features in the curriculum. Using discourse analysis of curriculum change documentation, this paper analyses the experience of departments in a research-intensive institution undergoing a holistic, large-scale curriculum review. Departments engaged to varying degrees, with associated integration of educational and disciplinary perspectives. Landscapes of practice are used to explore different communities within departments coming together, or not, in the process. The acknowledgement and appreciation of educational expertise alongside disciplinary research-based knowledge is highlighted as a marker for successful adoption of the curriculum review intentions. This paper contributes to the underdeveloped field of curriculum change in higher education.

We study the role of the State in education through the most significant government periods in Argentina in the last 50 years. We use a sociocultural approach, contemplating the historical development of educational policies in the country, exploring conceptual frameworks applicable in the investigation of the State, privatization and decentralization in education. We analyze how certain models of government establish the cultural reproduction of inequality in education, contextualizing the role of the State as a possible promoter of hegemonic educational projects of hybrid models of globalization. We discuss the multifaceted role of the State in education and society, as well as in the educational institutions themselves and their actors, considering education as a fundamental right, which must be guaranteed by the State. Through the analysis of political, economic and social contexts we expose negative impacts on education during the exercise of neoliberal practices, which resort to privatization and state decentralization. In contrast, the use of socio-educational policies has contributed greatly to the improvement of the country's public education system. The results of this case study are then presented as a general notion regarding the global issue of inequality in education, in order to help rethink the future of education.

In the U.S. education system, students of color experience multiple forms of marginalization at the intersection of markers of difference. These injustices manifest in multiple forms, such as higher rates of inappropriate referrals to special education, misidentification, conferring stigmatizing labels, and subsequently placing students of color in more segregated spaces. To combat this persistent racial injustice within special education practices and programs, policymakers have formulated regulations under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) aimed at ensuring equal educational opportunities and outcomes for students of color. In particular, the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Special Education Programs introduced 20 State Performance Plan and Annual Performance Report (SPP/APR) indicators in 2004 to monitor states' implementation of IDEA. Building upon an interdisciplinary and intersectional lens informed by the cultural historical approach to disability, critical policy analysis in education, and disability critical race theory, this systematic literature review synthesizes 19 studies investigating local policy actors' enactment of IDEA policies related to SPP/APR indicators, which were designed to address racial inequities in special education. The findings reveal that local policy actors' interpretations, negotiations, and implementations of equity-intended special education policies are intricately tied to the situated cultural and political dynamics, making the process multifaceted and deeply contextual.

Student participation has become a relevant topic in the international debate on education. However, the conceptions of the meaning of participation and its practical implications are very heterogeneous. This article reviews how educational policies have conceived student participation in Western countries. Having conceptualised student participation, the role of the liberal model in shaping school democracy and student participation is explored. It is suggested that this model is in crisis due to two main factors. On the one hand, the organisation of democratic processes in schools has well recognised limitations. On the other hand, the pressure of the neoliberal agenda on standardisation and the emphasis on individual success omit any interest in democratic aims. The evolution of education policies concerning student participation is illustrated with reference to a case analysis of Spanish state educational legislation. The future of student participation is reflected on.

District leaders in school choice contexts tend to overlook the many hidden costs of selecting schools in terms of mobility, time, liquidity, and labor. Meanwhile, a body of literature on school choice policies and cultural, social, and political capital shows that middle-class parents use the resources they possess to get the school access they want. In this study, I critically examine the complex interplay between school choice policies and forms of capital. This analysis extends our empirical understanding of the political dimensions of families' school choices--the way parent resources, relationships, and strategies determine "who gets what, when, and how" (Laswell, 1936) in terms of schooling opportunities, and way these policies help structure disproportionate school access. By attending to families' affordances of cultural, social, and political capital in studies of school choice, authorities may be more likely to design choice supports that address some demand-side inequities.

Neoliberalism has pervaded almost everywhere in the world, bringing about major changes in institutional frameworks and social relations. Science and university research have not escaped the effects of the neoliberal conception of university knowledge as a commodity and of Higher Education as a factor of economic growth. This research offers a provisional assessment of the effects of the profound institutional change produced in the Spanish university sphere instigated European and national directives. As will be seen, the implementation of the operational criteria of evaluation is shaping a new culture of university teaching staff. This paper ties together a Institutionnal Political Economy explanation of the transformation of Spanish academia with research evidence of the outcomes of a neoliberal regime, honing in or activities resembling or constituting malpractice, and complicity of staff in their governance, alongside the more commonly discussed issues of workplace stress, overwork, and mental health issues. This research analyses the discursive devices and strategies used for the construction of the new neoliberal subjectivity, by means of an exhaustive review of the literature and empirical studies carried out in Spain. Next, the institutional effects of the disproportionate use of metrics are presented. Thirdly, the socialisation processes of Spanish academics and their adaptation to evaluation methods are described. The text ends with a brief conclusion and a series of proposals aimed at configuring another way of generating knowledge in a model designed more for development than for economic growth.

Based on empirical observations of educational guidance and interviews with students and teachers at two Danish schools, as well as critical policy analysis, this article illustrates how worry about future education for racially minoritised students in problematized housing areas is shaped in intersections of place, class, and race. Through an analytical framework combining affect theory and intersectionality, the article identifies two figures of worry: The overambitious bilingual student and the bilingual student in trouble. These figures draw on racialized histories of immigrant parents as unable to support their children, and position the students as in need of intervention from the state. Educational guidance comes to work as a further racializing force that gains momentum through affective circulations of worry and care across school practice, policy and political rhetoric. This results in a limitation of the educational opportunities considered 'realistic' to the students, placing them in a disadvantaged position when making important decisions for their future.

In spring 2020, nearly every U.S. public school closed at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Existing evidence suggests that local political partisanship was a better predictor of in-person instruction than COVID case and death rates in fall 2020. We replicate and extend these analyses using data collected over the entirety of the 2020-21 academic year. We affirm that local political partisanship was an important initial predictor of county-level in-person instruction rates. We also demonstrate that, under certain conditions, COVID case and death rates were meaningfully associated with initial rates of in-person instruction. We reveal that partisanship became less predictive--and prior average student achievement became more predictive--of in-person instruction as the school year continued. We then leverage data from two nationally representative surveys of Americans' attitudes toward education and identify an as-yet-undiscussed factor that predicts in-person instruction: public support for increasing teachers' salaries.

In an era where many states' postsecondary education governance dynamics are evolving, we set out to understand whether state-level governing boards with centralized governance functions affected institutions' decisions to engage in in-person instruction during the fall of 2020, the first fall of the COVID-19 pandemic. We examined sociopolitical features related to the strength of governance functions of centralized state boards. The data alluded to linkages between Republican control and lower bachelor's degree attainment linking ([beta] = -0.45) with weaker centralized governance. We also found a negative effect from increased centralized governance functions ([beta] = -0.12) to in-person instruction at public 4-year institutions for fall 2020. This paper gives a real-time opportunity to see if the characteristics of governing boards influence return to campus.

For decades, policymakers in the U.S. have leveraged accountability policy as a governing tool to lift school performance and close the achievement gap. Accountability become so widespread that it arguably became a "policy paradigm" with the passage of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act in 2002. Yet after just 13 years of implementation, policymakers replaced NCLB with the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which gave states more control over the policy tools and mechanisms to regulate school improvement. This qualitative project captured the evolution of the accountability paradigm by studying the policy ideas and moral narratives of policy elites in California and Tennessee during the transition period between NCLB and ESSA. The study finds that interview participants legitimized the core design features of ESSA, but attached their underlying worldviews and beliefs to the flexible design features, which created unique accountability models with different institutional arrangements.

This study aimed to explore the top-down or compact accountability relationship for curriculum implementation in rural public primary schools in the East Wollega zone administration, Ethiopia. An exploratory case study type and a multiple case study research design were employed. A purposeful sampling technique was used. The data were collected using semi-structured interviews and document reviews. The data were analyzed qualitatively by coding and describing patterns and themes in the raw data. The study utilized triangulation, expert reviews, and member checking to ensure internal validity and reliability. The findings of the study reveal that the compact accountability relationship between the policymakers and the curriculum implementers was loosely exercised and compromised by main determinants such as weak capacity, poor monitoring progress, and politicization of the policymakers' roles and responsibilities. This study also affirms that a compact accountability relationship was seriously operational to collect easily achievable reports, which led policymakers to be unsuccessful in communicating their clear duties and responsibilities for the curriculum implementation to hold implementers accountable as stated in the government proclamation. Hence, it can be concluded that accountability stands for responsibilities outside the classroom by missing the actual curriculum implementation. The study recommends that the regional education bureau, in collaboration with the Ethiopian Ministry of Education, establish an autonomous and independent policymakers' office that acts as an overseer and holds curriculum implementers accountable by visiting schools, pointing out mistakes, writing reports, and exercising accountability mechanisms. The study suggests that teachers and school principals ought to be held accountable for their particular duties and responsibilities instead of producing reports for higher-level commands that take them away from effectively implementing the curriculum.

This paper explores how advocates in Ontario have resisted neoliberal restructuring in education since the 2018 general election, which marked an intensification of market-oriented reforms. Shaped by the insights of 23 participants, this paper shows how resistance has been accessed through multiple entry points and has been spatially heterogeneous, replete with internal contradiction. It also highlights the cost of resistance for participants whose relationship to systems engender oppression and harm. Broadly, this paper calls for vulnerable reflection on fantasies of a "good life" shaped by a normative neoliberal order that interferes with collective flourishing. Through emergent strategy, which aligns action with a vision for social justice, this paper values the non-linear and manifold ways individuals are embedded in systems; the fractal nature of change, which takes place at all scales; and a love ethic, which sustains relational the spiritual growth necessary for solidarity.

This article examines a popularized term, the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), and its underlying paradigm of neoliberalism. It elucidates neoliberalism's maddening effects on the education sector, especially public education. To analyze these effects, I draw from and adapt Michel Foucault's analytical approach to madness. My analysis focuses on the following maddening effects of neoliberalism on education: (1) it obstructs us from seeing inequalities; (2) it creates a desperate passion amid the rise of school choice; and (3) it eliminates reason and creates unreason in the school selection and admissions processes. My analysis is based on reflections on my decade-long research on school marketization and school choice in Canada. I conclude by suggesting that collective visions and concrete steps are needed to move toward equitable educational structures, discourses, and practices that resist or challenge the neoliberal education reform madness (NERM).

In October 2022, New Brunswick Minister of Education and Early Childhood Development Dominic Cardy publicly resigned and widely disclosed his disappointment with Premier Blaine Higgs' leadership. Using Cardy's unprecedented public resignation letter as a primary source, this paper explores the inner workings of neoliberal governance and privatization in public education and critically analyzes data manipulation, governance shifts, and problematic conservative "hands-offism." Applying a rhizomatic methodological framing and theoretically drawing from Bourdieu and Passeron's (1977) conceptualization of symbolic violence and Gilmore's (2008) notion of "organized abandonment," we argue that neoliberal governance and privatization disproportionately affect vulnerable communities and weaken democratic processes. To understand these complexities, we utilize a rhizomatic analysis, simultaneously considering historical and geographical contexts, governance structures, and political narratives. We conclude that neoliberal governance and privatization are inherently symbolically violent, as they are used in tandem to perpetually defund and dismantle public institutions.

We compare the institutional standards and expectations for English language arts (ELA) educators from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), the leading professional organization in this field, and the state of Georgia. By conducting a critical policy analysis of documents from NCTE and the Georgia Department of Education (GADoE) we sought to understand the tension between standards set for training English education students in institutions of higher education and the standards those teachers would be required to use in Georgia K-12 schools. We analyze these documents through Cooper et al.'s (2004) policy analysis framework, which questions the normative, structural, constituent, and technical dimensions of policy development. We found that the ideological beliefs and values embedded in the policies and documents from NCTE and GADoE have developed divergent sets of expectations for ELA teachers in Georgia, particularly around how teachers respond to oppression in our society; how we understand the overall purpose of ELA instruction; and the scope of responsibilities for educators. We end by presenting implications for educators working among these two sets of policies, in recognizing where these expectations may overlap as well as diverge.

Higher education institutions have come under fire for their perceived restrictive tactics and lack of diversity among students and faculty. This article dives into the possible synergy between anthropology and critical consciousness, drawing inspiration from Paulo Freire's seminal contributions. The major goal is to create a revolutionary transition in higher education toward a more inclusive educational paradigm. Furthermore, this study investigates the influence of political landscapes on educational curriculum, emphasizing the need for a revolutionary pedagogical framework that fosters critical consciousness in both students and instructors. The prospect of developing a more equitable and inclusive learning environment within higher education becomes reachable via the harmonic integration of different pedagogical techniques, one that is sensitive to the diverse requirements of all learners. This attempt, however, is not without difficulties, such as opposition to change and the political terrain's intricacies. Professional development opportunities and coordinated efforts between educators, administrators, and policymakers are required for successful implementation. To summarize, the priority of social responsibility in higher education is evident, and adopting transformational pedagogy is critical for tackling the multiple issues inherent in the twenty-first century.

The Education and Training Act 2020 requires schools to give effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi. However, the newly elected National coalition-led government has sent contradictory messages about Te Tiriti o Waitangi, which may be confusing educators. For example, recent actions by the government, such as repealing laws, are harming their relationship with iwi Maori and have undone decades of Maori progress. While the government may be sending educators contradictory messages, educators play a crucial role in teaching students about Te Tiriti o Waitangi which can promote a unified understanding. Suppose all educators and students have a sound knowledge of Te Tiriti, they can better comprehend the historical injustices that Maori have endured and the intergenerational effects that continue to impact Maori today. With contradictory messages from the government and different interpretations about Te Tiriti o Waitangi, what should educators be teaching students about Te Tiriti o Waitangi? This article aims to contribute to a collective understanding of Te Tiriti o Waitangi in education by discussing the articles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the Treaty of Waitangi. I also offer suggestions for how schools could give effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi despite the confusing messages being received by the government.

In the dynamic landscape of the neoliberal university, conversations between emerging scholars serve as vital spaces for critical reflection and transformative action. This collaborative autoethnographic study engaged with the complexities of navigating academia as two black clinical psychologists within a South African university. Drawing on decoloniality, we interrogated the pervasive 'carrying on' culture and its impact on early-career academics. Our lived experiences underscored the intersections of identity, power and resistance, as we grappled with the commodification of higher education and the pressures to ascend the ranks hastily. Through a reflexive thematic analysis of our recorded discussions, we uncovered mechanisms for disrupting normative structures and redefining the purpose of scholarly pursuits. Central to our inquiry was the notion of refusal as a generative force, challenging the status quo and advocating for a more conducive, supportive environment where teaching and learning activities are genuine expressions of growth. We envisioned a university that fosters meaningful intellectual engagement and societal transformation, calling for collective dialogue and action to reimagine the neoliberal higher education landscape.

In the 21st century, knowledge has become the driving force behind societal progress, emphasising the need for higher education to produce contextually relevant knowledge that addresses the multifaceted challenges faced by local communities. It is in this respect that knowledge needs to be generated through one's position of epistemic location in higher education. However, academics positioned at the pinnacle of knowledge production in higher education find themselves entangled in a global crossroads. On the one hand, they are expected to exercise epistemic freedom by producing knowledge from their centralities and unique positionalities. On the other hand, they are constrained by the pervasive influence of neoliberalism, a paradigm that dictates that knowledge production should be subservient to market dynamics. To interrogate the intricacies of the impediments placed on academics seeking to exercise their epistemic freedom, this article utilises a desktop literature review, underscored by the theoretical framework of Decolonial Theory. The examination elucidates how these constraints hinder the production of knowledge from the centrality of the Global South. The article draws examples from South African higher education as a point of reference, providing examples that underscore the global challenges of neoliberal policies in higher education. Central to the thesis advanced in this article is the contention that, within the existing neoliberal framework of higher education driven by market forces and productivity imperatives, the production of knowledge from the position of one's centrality is limited and the ability to produce locally relevant knowledge is fundamentally restricted. Consequently, the epistemic freedom of academics within higher education across the Global South is imperilled. Contribution: In response to these challenges, this article engages in an academic discourse on potential strategies for reclaiming epistemic freedom within the prevailing neoliberal milieu of higher education.

The turn to democracy in South Africa brought hope for a higher education sector that would play a key role in tackling racial inequalities and injustices. However, transformation promises ended up being largely smokescreens for maintaining entrenched racist and capitalist logics rooted in colonialism and apartheid. Instead of focusing on epistemic decolonisation, universities became commodified and commercialised neoliberal enterprises focused on the maintenance of Eurocentric epistemic hegemony. In this conceptual article framed within the decolonial theoretical framework, we critically interrogate how two dominant ideologies -- the Rainbow Nation and neoliberalism -- have sidelined fundamental transformation and epistemic decolonisation in South Africa. Focusing on the Department of Higher Education and Training's "Strategic Plan 2020-2025," we illustrate that decolonisation is not government's priority and that neoliberal visions continue to dominate strategic planning for higher education. We argue that the lack of political will and policy alignment from the government will contribute to the further entrenchment of coloniality, Eurocentricity and neoliberal logics at universities. We conclude with the call for critical engagement with the history of universities and their role in propagating and supporting colonialism and apartheid and argue that progressive scholars and students must continue to organise within South Africa and beyond and work on the radical dismantling of the Eurocentric and neoliberal universities. Contribution: While other scholars have engaged separately with neoliberalism and the Rainbow Nation and their impact on higher education in South Africa, in this article, we bring these two ideologies together to show how they have combined to prevent decolonisation of higher education.

As American teacher educators and teachers are being roiled by restrictive legislation around critical race theory and divisive concepts in some states, our investigation explored the impact of critical communities of practice (CoP) on redesigning and teaching introduction to education courses with a transformative lens. This manuscript details the collaboration of four equity-minded teacher educators, each representing unique institutional and political contexts. While two authors taught in states which promote culturally sustaining pedagogies, the other two authors taught in states that had passed laws restricting the professional autonomy of educators and honest discussions of race and racism. Participation in this critical CoP as a support group enabled us to better understand and navigate our dichotomous policy contexts and renewed our commitment to teaching prospective teachers to be politically conscious and empowered to teach in anti-racist ways. Our CoP was instrumental in helping us recognize that transformative pedagogies and collaboration are effective tools that can provide much needed support to teacher educators across policy contexts, while we simultaneously strive to prepare teacher candidates who will teach in culturally sustaining ways.

This article theorizes the global anti-gender movement in education. This conservative movement opposes "gender ideology," which is perceived as a threat to traditional social values. Building on a systematic literature review of how the anti-gender movement shapes educational policies, politics, and practices, with a specific focus on Brazil and the US, this article presents a theoretical framework for conceptualizing: 1) the contested meanings of "gender ideology"; 2) its discursive components; 3) the characteristics and composition of anti-gender alliances; 4) the anti-gender agenda's manifestations in curriculum, pedagogy, the social relations of schooling, and education policy. We attempt to highlight the ways in which anti-gender politics often operate together with racial politics to reveal the ways in which conservative, right-wing alliances, frequently predicated on and united through anti-Blackness, white supremacy, homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny, exert influence on educational policies, politics, and practices to simultaneously maintain a white supremacist, cis-heteronormative, and patriarchal state. We conclude with a discussion of the contradictions of this agenda and resistances to these conservative attacks on equity, inclusion, diversity, and human rights.

While many scholars recognize and criticize the politicization of education policies, scholarly attention to the strategies politicians utilize to politicize educational policy discourses remains limited. Focusing on the officials of Ghana's two major political parties, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC), as policy actors, this paper investigates how officials of these two parties operationalized discussions regarding Ghana's Free Senior High School Policy (FSHSP) to garner support for their parties while stoking resentment for their political opponents. The study employs a critical discourse analysis (CDA) framework and a dataset of 175 documents, including news stories, press releases, party manifestos, and government publications. The analysis reveals that both parties resorted to strategies of positive self-presentation and negative other presentation. The NPP contrasted its regime with the NDC's tenure and framed the NDC as a threat to FSHSP and the education of the poor and vulnerable. The NDC problematized and highlighted implementation bottlenecks while framing the NPP and FSHSP as threats to quality education. I argue that through these strategies, NPP officials aimed to maintain incumbency while NDC officials advocated a regime change. The paper concludes by emphasizing the potential risks associated with politicizing education policies.

A crucial aspect of the learning cycle, unlearning has recently received more attention in academic discussions about the future of higher education. In an attempt to improve equality and equity of access to quality educational experiences in the wake of postmassification, the recent literature has highlighted the need to incorporate unlearning practices to transform university learning experiences. This literature review examines the role of the unlearning process in engaging diverse student populations in tertiary learning environments. First, traditional and contemporary conceptualizations of unlearning are explored. Next, specific issues related to unlearning in higher education are discussed before synthesizing current studies describing extant strategies employed to foster conditions necessary for unlearning. Findings suggest that creating unlearning contexts, promoting contemplative practices, and using strategic foresight methods have the potential to enable the unlearning process. However, further research is needed to triangulate findings from emergent studies on unlearning practices in higher education.

This exploratory essay considers how and why humanities research is excluded, co-opted, or othered in methods courses and methods course offerings for education research at an R1 institution. While not generalizable (ironically?), concerns have also been raised by philosophers of education that philosophy is not taught or is rarely taught as a research method in colleges of education (Norris, 2021). As though there are only two kinds of research--quantitative and qualitative--this paper asks why humanities methods are rare in an R1 education research core. The short answer might point to numbers: there simply are not that many graduate students in history and philosophy of education. The longer answer, however, arguably involves scholarly turf wars waged within the politics of inquiry. This paper provides a brief overview of the history and politics of the methods wars, an explanation of a research core and the courses constituting it at Georgia State University, and a view from the outside looking in: peering over the qual and quant gate to see that philosophy is already there, but denied credibility, acknowledgement, and understanding.

This study explores the development and implementation of the Indigenous Peoples' Education (IPEd) policy in the Philippines, which institutionalizes the practice of cultural interface by combining Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledge systems in the Philippine curriculum. Using actor-centered institutionalism as an analytical framework, this study investigates the motivations and processes behind the Philippine Government's strategy of employing an interfacing model in policy and curriculum development. Through in-depth expert interviews and policy documents analysis, this study provides a comprehensive understanding of IPEd's development and stakeholder involvement. The findings reveal that IPEd shifted from assimilationist approaches to an interface model of education, recognizing Indigenous peoples' representation and rights to education, and participation in national policy development. The implementation of the IPEd policy necessitates continuous dialogue and collaboration between the Indigenous communities and the state, emphasizing rights-based approach to ensure meaningful inclusion of Indigenous knowledge systems. This study contributes to the ongoing agenda of inclusive education for Indigenous peoples at the national policy level.

The paper highlights the process of development, validation, and adoption of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) Regional Qualifications Framework (GADQF). Using descriptive, textual, and contextual methods derived from participant observation, the paper provides an insider view of the policy-making and regional consensus-building process. It emphasizes the importance of political will, partnership, and ownership as key components of successful policymaking. In the lessons learned part, the paper outlines the significance of a regional qualifications framework in terms of skills mobility, curriculum harmonization, and ensuring the quality of learning outcomes, among other factors. Although the paper is not purely academic research, the information contained within it is expected to benefit academics, policymakers, and development partners/practitioners.

Prohibited concept laws have a chilling effect on teaching, resulting in the erasure of social justice topics; however, the extent to which district-level actors support such laws or the role they play in perpetuating the effect is unclear. I offer a framework for understanding how district-level policy messaging contributes to the chilling effect in the context of increased partisanship and nationalized politics at the local level. I use survey data to describe school board members' and superintendents' perceptions of Tennessee's PK-12 Prohibited Concepts Law. Overall, there is support for the law, but there are significant differences between the perspectives of school board members and superintendents, with the latter more likely to express neutrality. There are no differences by location, but there are significant differences based on political affiliation and perspectives about state control of curriculum, supporting the larger trend of increased nationalized partisanship of local politics.

Media reports suggest that parent frustration with COVID school policies and the growing politicization of education have increased community engagement with local public schools. However, there is no evidence to date on whether these factors have translated into greater engagement at the ballot box. This paper uses a novel data set to explore how school board elections changed following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. I find that school board elections following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic were more likely to be contested and that voter turnout in contested elections increased. These changes were large in magnitude and varied with several district characteristics.

Troubled by the inequities in competitive grantmaking, we use critical quantitative methods to analyze the FY2023 federal academic earmarks as a potential mechanism for racialized change work. Specifically, we ask: To what extent does Congress distribute academic earmarks in ways that reinforce or weaken the racialized stratification of resources across organizations in the field? Accordingly, we identify distribution patterns of academic earmarks, considering the allocation of dollars and types of earmarks (i.e., general capacity-building versus specialized grants) across colleges and universities, between White-serving institutions and minority-serving institutions (MSIs), and among MSIs. Based on our analysis, Congress favored a racially reproductive funding portfolio, driven by smaller and more restrictive allocations, not fewer earmarks. However, the distribution of earmarks among MSIs defied normed expectations, as Congress did not privilege whiter, more prestigious MSIs, signaling the potential of pork-barrel politics for racially reparative work.