In 2015, the Trans, Gender Variant and Intersex Students in School Policy was introduced under a Labour government in Malta, contributing significantly to Malta being ranked first by ILGA Europe for LGBTIQ+ rights in 2016, a position it continues to hold. Drawing on a mixed-methods study comprising 25 semi-structured interviews with trans students, educators, parents of trans students, and school administrators, alongside a quantitative survey of educators, this paper examines how the policy is understood, engaged with, and enacted in schools, and analyses both the policy itself and educators' understanding of it. Findings indicate that most educators were either unaware or insufficiently aware of the policy, while none of the trans participants knew of its existence; parents were proportionally the most familiar. Despite this limited engagement (42% of educators had not read the policy), educators articulated strong critiques, arguing that the policy unnecessarily spotlights trans individuals, is overly theoretical and abstract, and should remain a matter of school-level discretion. Crucially, this paper explicitly argues that these findings are relevant both to educational policy in general and to the specific dynamics of trans-focused policy. The data point, on the one hand, to a broader pattern of educator disengagement from state educational policy, characterised by policy fatigue and scepticism towards government-mandated frameworks, and, on the other, to trans-specific misunderstandings and resistance shaped by a global context of heightened media scrutiny and political contestation around trans lives. Rather than treating these dynamics as mutually exclusive, the paper contends that they operate simultaneously. Through a critique of positivistic orientations and rigid separations of theory and practice, the paper advances a hopeful dialectical alternative grounded in a critical anticolonial framework that rethinks both policy engagement and educational responsibility.
Literature engaging with the issue of caste in Indian higher education can broadly be classified into three streams. While all streams ascribe caste as a systemic issue, the third and most recent stream lays much emphasis on an individuals' experience of caste discrimination. This has problematised the deep-rooted casteism within everyday functioning of Indian Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs). However, it implicitly assumes that caste as a systemic issue, translates directly into an individual's experience of caste, thereby overlooking the crucial mediating role of higher educational institutions at the meso-level. The scholarship on caste in Indian higher education cannot afford such omissions provided that caste affiliations lie at the very core of establishment and the functioning of HEIs. Drawing on the engagement of organisational studies with race, we contend that there exists a necessity for examining the caste affiliations of HEIs. Such studies would enable the disaggregation of the all-encompassing category of p'rivate' institutions by providing for an examination of the abilities of each caste to administer their own HEIs thereby adding yet another layer for the study of inequalities in Indian higher education with profound policy implications.
This article reinterprets Samuel Laycocks''Th'Shurat Weavers'Song' (1863) as a historically grounded instance of a rhetoric of exhaustion, in which bodily depletion is converted into aesthetic method and vernacular critique. Bringing together cultural materialism, Freirean critical literacy, labour poetics scholarship and language ideology theory, the analysis shows how dialectal density, rhythmic drag, patterned repetition and tonal hybridity formalise industrial fatigue under the conditions of the Lancashire Cotton Famine. A compact comparison with Ellen Johnston, Ernest Jones clarifies Laycocks' distinctive synthesis of testimonial immediacy, political address and dialectal realism. The article argues that dialect functions as epistemic voice, challenging standard language hierarchies and offering a historical model for linguistic justice in education. Policy implications follow for dialect affirming assessment, curriculum design informed by labour poetics and teacher education oriented to critical language awareness. Finally, the study gestures to Eco pedagogy, reading Laycocks'material focus on Surat cotton as an early trace of eco social entanglements between labour exhaustion and degraded ecologies. By recentring a working-class poet within nineteenth century literary culture, the article contributes a transferable analytic-exhaustion as method-that links Victorian labour poetics to current struggles over democratic pedagogy, collective agency and equitable curriculum formation.
This article introduces Biocentric Industrial Creative Writing (BICW), a worker-led critical pedagogy that integrates creative writing, ecological ethics, and working-class narratives to challenge extractivist, anthropocentric optimisation in industrial culture. Drawing on ecocriticism, posthumanist theory, and critical pedagogy, BICW reframes the workplace as a narrative ecosystem in which humans and more-than-human actors co-produce meaning, value, and agency. We report an exploratory mixed-methods study (N = 219) across Greek industrial contexts, combining Likert-scale items with open-ended prompts that encourage ecological identification and the biocentric reimagining of optimisation. Descriptive results show high support for embedding BICW within workplace sustainability agendas, perceived benefits for wellbeing and reflective work engagement, and willingness to accept minor productivity reductions for ecological gains. Qualitative responses frequently adopt non-human standpoints (e.g., rivers, algae, butterflies) and express scepticism toward corporate sustainability messaging, underscoring the value of worker-generated narratives. We argue that BICW can strengthen critical ecological literacy and democratic participation at work, linking labour empowerment with environmental justice and opening space for just, multispecies industrial futures.
This study examines how state education agencies (SEAs) make funding decisions to support schools identified for comprehensive support and improvement under section 1003a of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Despite the federal mandate that states reserve and strategically deploy Title I Part A funds for school improvement, little is known about the mechanisms through which SEAs translate that mandate into practice. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with ten SEA administrators across geographically and demographically diverse sates, supplemented by document analysis of publicly available policy materials from California and New York, this study investigates two research questions: how SEAs determine funding levels for school improvement, and what criteria they apply when reviewing district applications. Thematic analysis of the data revealed four interconnected findings: 1) SEAs rely predominantly on enrollment-based and flat base allocation formulas that are structurally indifferent to school level need; 2) several states lack coherent or documented funding processes altogether; 3) funding decisions in multiple states are anchored to historical practices-including prior-year carryover-rather than differentiated need assessments; and 4) application review processes, even when formally elaborate, function as compliance mechanisms rather than instruments for equity-intentional resource distribution. The findings carry implications for federal oversight of Section 1003a, state-level SEA capacity investment, and the redesign of application processes as instruments of needs-based, funding determination.
Framed by critical policy analysis, this study investigates the potential risks associated with recent changes in teacher education policy in T & uuml;rkiye. This study examines how placing teacher development under direct government control may reshape the ideological and professional foundations of teacher education. Drawing on official policy papers, legislative texts, governmental declarations, public statements, and ongoing public debates, the study deconstructs the policy path leading to the National Education Academy (NEA) model. The present study contributes to the insufficient studies on the NEA by situating T & uuml;rkiye within global trends, giving a critical look at its structural and ideological implications and suggesting guiding principles for countries undergoing the same or similar struggle between the strict centralized government control and academic freedom in teacher education.
Gender, as a socially and culturally constructed phenomenon rather than a purely biological distinction, shapes career choices and sustains occupational segregation that limits women's social mobility. In this context, gendered patterns in higher education preferences constitute a critical issue, as they reflect and reproduce unequal power relations and social norms that restrict individuals' access to educational opportunities based on gender, thereby undermining equality of opportunity in education. Accordingly, this study critically examines how gender influence female students' higher education preferences in faculties of education in Turkiye, situating these choices within the broader context of educational inequality and the reproduction of patriarchal norms. In the research, phenomenology, one of the qualitative research designs, was utilized, and the study group consisted of undergraduate students determined with purposeful sampling techniques in accordance with the qualitative research. The data were collected using semi-structured interview form prepared by the researchers after expert opinions and pilot interview, and then were analysed with content analysis. The findings demonstrated how deeply embedded gender expectations, reinforced by family, school, and societal discourses, channel women into caregiving professions such as teaching. This process illustrates how education systems function as microcosms of broader gender regimes, legitimizing existing social relations while constraining women's professional agency. The article argues for gender-transformative reforms that challenge the ideological and structural mechanisms of inequality, ensuring that women's academic success translates into genuine professional and socioeconomic empowerment.
The purpose of this study is to examine the experiences of tourism guidance department students in Turkey during the pandemic (COVID-19) process and the distance education process following the earthquake on February 6, 2023, in the context of critical pedagogy's characteristics of equal opportunity and dialogic learning. Using a descriptive phenomenological research design, data were collected from 15 academic staff working at universities in different regions of Turkey and 27 students studying at these universities through semi-structured interviews. The research findings show that students and academic staff experienced significant physical and infrastructural challenges during the distance education process, that inequality of opportunity was reproduced, and that dialogic learning disappeared. The research results were interpreted in the context of critical pedagogy's characteristics of equal opportunity and dialogic learning, and the validity of using the distance education model was discussed.
This research article examines how teachers' ideologies change as their teaching reproduces, shapes, and transforms the American social hierarchy. Educators go through observable stages of critical ideological becoming as they understand themselves and others as part of the structures that situate their teaching. The ideological transformation in this study primarily occurred through dialogical interactions, intercultural exchanges/experiences, developmentally appropriate frames, acting with others, personalizing experiences, connecting existing ideology and identity to just ideas, and developing intellectual solidarity with like-minded individuals. In this study, participants generally progressed through the developmental stages linearly, but ideological transformation was subjective and context dependent. Initial stages of critical ideological transformation commonly began with cognitive and identity shifts, and later stages included social analysis, community building, and transformative action. Findings demonstrate the impact of socialization, having diverse experiences, and existing ideologies on teacher praxis, revealing common ways in which ideological change occurs in a teacher's early career.
In Schooling in Capitalist America, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis theorize a correspondence between the social relations of production and those of education. They advance the argument that the education system inures students to the dispositions required of workers under capitalism by virtue of social and organizational parallels that exist between public schools and corporate workplaces. Their 'correspondence theory' of social reproduction has been criticized for being overly deterministic, not least because it downplays the realities of resistance in the classroom. In this paper, I reconcile my teaching experience with correspondence theory. Following a brief history of educational testing and drawing on experiential data, I argue that standardized testing cements the correspondence observed by Bowles and Gintis between schools and corporations in the U.S. by nullifying pedagogical autonomy to the end of ensuring alienation. In other words, it is precisely because teachers possess creative and inexpedient agency that testing is used as a means to forestall resistance and guarantee participation in the process of social reproduction.
Since its inception, the liberal tradition has placed special emphasis on the development of education. Various thinkers have reflected on its role in society. However, education has remained a divisive issue within liberalism, generating differing and sometimes contradictory viewpoints. This study examines two distinct strands of educational thought that emerged in response to the crisis of liberalism in the late nineteenth century: John Dewey's educational philosophy, which advocates for the deepening of democracy through education, and, in contrast, neoliberal approaches that seek to reinforce market dynamics. The objective of this work is to explore why, despite the significance of Dewey's contributions to educational thought, a neoliberal perspective ultimately prevailed within the liberal tradition, taking into account the social and intellectual context in which the debate between these two traditions unfolded.
The purpose of this research is to examine how Canadian K-12 public education racial equity policy may function to reproduce the oppressive social, historical, and political forces it claims to challenge. This research conducts a qualitative content analysis of Surrey School Districts' Racial Equity Strategic Plan 2023-2028, through an anti-colonial discursive framework, to research how capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, and white supremacy may be overlooked within attempts to achieve racial equity in education. Specifically, this investigation focuses on how hegemony may be reinforced through the implementation of educational racial equity policy due to persistent power inequities embedded in the text which function in opposition to policy goals. This research finds that in order for the Surrey School Districts' Racial Equity Strategic Plan 2023-2028 to improve the equity outcomes of its target populations, it must acknowledge and address the normative colonial structures and values that enforce educational domination over and oppression of marginalized communities beyond the dimension of race. Racial equity and anti-racism policies must incorporate initiatives of critical structural reform of education systems that seek to address the root cause of racism, such as capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, systemic whiteness, and white supremacy, in order to meaningfully and holistically address racism for Indigenous, Black, and other racialized communities within K-12 public schooling.
U.S. Communists charged that public-school culture was "a potent instrument in the hands of the bourgeoisie to enslave the toiling masses."In response, leftists created Workers Schools, counter-beacons to "clarify their minds, ...elevate them to the dignity of builders of a new society."Beginning in 1923, Communist Workers Schools offered courses "to equip the workers with the knowledge and understanding of Marxism-Leninism" so that worker-students could engage in "militant struggle."In the 1940s schools adjusted to the Popular Front, but New York's Jefferson School and Chicago's Lincoln School continued offering courses in Marxism even as they offered a progressive narrative of the United States, delivering some of the first courses in African American history and the history of anti-colonial struggles, championing a revolutionary form of adult education for "workers of hand and brain."Schools also provided access to literature, arts, and other humanities courses in a progressive milieu.
This study comparatively examines the perspectives of pre-service female teachers in T & uuml;rkiye and Greece on gender norms through Nazl & imath; Eray's short story Monte Kristo. Eray's text, which interrogates themes of womanhood, motherhood, and freedom, is analyzed through participants' responses to six open-ended questions. The findings indicate that the interpretations of pre-service teachers in both countries cluster around two main themes: tensions surrounding the maternal role and resolution/irresolution. When evaluating the actions of the story's main character, Nebile, participants strongly relied on cultural norms that associate motherhood with self-sacrifice, responsibility, and childcare, and they largely judged the desire for liberation depicted in the story within the framework of ideal motherhood and moral obligations. While Turkish participants tended to make more explicit moral and normative evaluations, Greek participants offered relatively more empathetic and contextualized interpretations. In both groups, the discourse of the "good mother" emerged as a powerful point of reference. Overall, the findings reveal that pre-service female teachers from two different countries both reproduce gender norms and, to a certain extent, are able to question them. The study suggests that gender awareness in teacher education should be strengthened not only at the level of representation, but also by focusing on less visible structures such as motherhood, care labor, and ideologies of womanhood.
Neoliberal reforms in higher education have entrenched exploitative and inequitable practices, shaping discourses on multiculturalism and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in ways that commodify and overburden faculty of color. This article interrogates these dynamics through plantation theory, critical race theory, and testimonio as a theory-method, revealing how faculty of color and administrators are systematically undervalued, marginalized, and silenced within predominantly white institutions- particularly in education departments. Through the authors' testimonios as borderland academics, the article advances a critical understanding of how faculty of color navigate these structural constraints, resist erasure, and sustain struggles for educational and social justice. By centering lived experience as a site of knowledge production, this work contributes to scholarship on racialized labor, institutional power, and the possibilities of resilience and resistance in neoliberal academia.
Neoliberal pressures have arguably increased education systems' vulnerability to the disruptive impact of generative artificial intelligence (genAI) technologies. GenAI's promise of f'ast' solutions and a surrogacy for the work of learners and teachers is both compatible with neoliberalism'sfocus on increased 'efficiency' and p'roductivity', and in its implications for the replacement of the human with the algorithm in educational interactions. As educational institutions at the K-12 and tertiary levels continue to struggle to articulate policies in response to the evolving situation around genAI use in education, this essay argues that such policies should take an essentially participatory and precautionary approach, both respecting educators' professional judgement, and resisting the pressure to adopt a neoliberal vision of. Instead, policy and pedagogical responses to genAI in education should articulate a 'slow' approach rooted in a 'counterpublic' that contests enthusiasm for genAI in education and its interaction with neoliberal governmentalities.
The paradox of education as both a space of cognitive freedom and a conditioning mechanism raises fundamental questions about intellectual autonomy. By examining the tension between neurological determinism and cognitive agency, this paper asks whether education encourages independent thought or directs individuals towards predefined ideological structures. Drawing on philosophical, psychological and neuroscientific perspectives, it explores how knowledge production, pedagogical frameworks and social conditioning shape cognition. While neuroplasticity suggests cognitive adaptability, institutionalized education often channels intellectual inquiry into rigid epistemological categories. Psychological theories emphasize how reinforcement mechanisms and implicit biases shape learning and reinforce norms rather than foster genuine intellectual emancipation. Consequently, this study argues that education needs to be restructured from being merely a means of ideological reproduction. A transformative model of education should center on critical inquiry, self-reflection and metacognitive adaptability. The hope is that education will cease to be a conditioning tool by encouraging independent thinking and become a space where individuals can critically explore and transform their cognitive worlds.
North Macedonia has been struggling to establish a participatory democracy since its transition as a Yugoslav successor state. During the 34 years since, widespread corruption and limited rights and freedoms have harmed citizenship and education. This study proposes the theoretical framework of critical transdisciplinarity, a politically engaged practice of dismantling disciplinary boundaries and hierarchical barriers to knowledge production, centering marginalized epistemologies to transform universities into spaces of resistance, resilience, and collective liberation. We apply this theory to analyze the context, global trends, and strategies for establishing democracy in North Macedonia that is grounded in civic participation through the transformation of higher education, while also recognizing its interdependence with primary and secondary education in cultivating learner agency and critical consciousness from an early age. Our work responds to the call by Templer (2014) for research on how neoliberal policies and corporate interventions have shaped post-socialist Southeastern European universities, and on how to decolonize European and U.S. educational systems increasingly governed by market-driven benchmarks. By situating these reforms within an anti-oligarchic vision of education, this study positions higher education as a site of resistance to neoliberal commodification and as a catalyst for democratic transformation in the Western Balkans. The study is vital because research on how higher education can drive the democratization of the Western Balkans, specifically North Macedonia, is scarce.
This sociological study examines the declining status of teachers through theoretical frameworks and empirical analysis of seventeen graduate-level educators. Employing a multidimensional approach, it assesses the comparative professional standing, career motivations, systemic challenges, and policy impacts. Findings identify interconnected devaluation mechanisms, inadequate compensation, compulsory education burdens, workplace violence, media stigmatization, and faculty oversaturation, that collectively erode professional autonomy. The analysis particularly highlights how neoliberal reforms have precipitated teaching's proletarianization, transforming educators into precarious workers under market-driven logics. Through integration of local case data with international comparisons, the study reveals how administrative neglect and policy constraints exacerbate status erosion. These findings contribute to broader discourses on professional precarity and educational inequality, demonstrating the need to reconceptualize teacher value beyond economic metrics. The research underscores the urgency of addressing both material conditions and symbolic capital in teaching to reverse its declining status within contemporary education systems.
This article examines how financialization and municipal debt operate as constitutive, racializing forces that shape childhoods under neoliberal racial capitalism. Building on Cindi Katzs'(2008) theorization of "childhood as spectacle" and Keavy McFaddens'(2023) framing of education as an "infrastructure of social reproduction,"I introduce the concept of the 'child as debt'to interrogate the entanglements between financialized governance, public schooling, and racialized childhood. I argue that financial violence not only undergirds the dismantling of public schooling as an infrastructure of social reproduction, but also is legitimized through figuring Black and Brown childhoods as sites of speculative risk, (dis)investment, and futurelessness. While certain children benefit materially from financial inclusion, my focus on the 'child as debt'attends to how disposable childhoods remain sites of extraction and responsibilization through the financial violence of municipal indebtedness in an urban school district. Using neoliberal education reform in Chicago as a case study, I examine how debt and austerity shape the geographies of social reproduction, considering also how the 'child as debt'not only mediates processes of disinvestment and state abandonment but also generates contradictions and sites for collective struggle over the terrain of social reproduction in the city.
