This study explores how institutional closure shapes the subjectivities and identity formation of current and former students at a small-scale Japanese women’s university. Drawing on an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of six participant interviews, we employ Foucauldian readings of governmentality, subjectification, and discourse to understand how closure operates as a form of institutional power. Findings reveal that closure policies produce ‘rational’ subjectivities, characterised by pragmatic individualism, affective disengagement, and entrepreneurial self-governance. More damagingly, however, the accounts of participants in this study suggest that neoliberal governance within this institutional context positioned students as ‘docile’ subjects who navigated institutional precarity primarily through processes of self-responsibilisation. Within this case, institutional closure emerges as a site where market rationalities were enacted, normalised, and internalised through self-management and adaptation. In doing so, our research contributes to understandings of educational policy as a technology of power that shapes not only institutional futures but also the identities and subjectivities of those within closing institutions.
This paper employs Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis to examine how neoliberal rationalities are discursively legitimised within Indian higher education policy. Drawing on Giroux’s critical pedagogy and Foucault’s governmentality framework – used here as an integrated rather than parallel analytic – the study analyses the National Education Policy 2020 and related instruments. The paper argues that Indian higher education marketisation operates through a distinctive mechanism wherein the state simultaneously invokes constitutional social justice commitments toward Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes, and Economically Weaker Sections while embedding market structures that undermine those commitments. Textual analysis reveals specific discursive strategies: the substitution of ‘scholarships’ and ‘targeted opportunities’ for the constitutional language of ‘reservation’; the repackaging of market deregulation as ‘autonomy’; and the deployment of equity vocabulary as rhetorical legitimation alongside provisions advancing privatisation. The study extends Giroux’s critical pedagogy by demonstrating that his class-based framework requires supplementation with caste-conscious analysis, and shows how caste-market intersections produce forms of exclusion structurally distinct from Western patterns.
This study investigates the effectiveness of educational support for students with learning disabilities in elementary schools in the Arab community in Israel. Through interviews with ten parents, the research examines three key areas: Individualized Educational Programs (IEPs), family-school communication, and inclusive practices. Findings reveal that schools implement personalized approaches, including in-class assistance, additional teaching hours, and therapeutic interventions. While many parents express satisfaction, some call for more tailored IEPs. Communication between schools and families varies in quality and frequency, with some parents desiring more detailed feedback on their child’s challenges and learning. Inclusive practices and extracurricular involvement are generally positive, though inconsistent across schools. The study concludes that schools are making significant efforts to support students with learning abilities, but there is room for improvement in personalizing IEPs, enhancing communication, and ensuring consistent inclusion. Based on the results, the researcher recommends that schools refine IEPs, improve coordination among service providers, increase specialized support hours, and develop more comprehensive communication strategies. These enhancements aim to create a more effective and supportive learning environment for students with learning disabilities.
Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) professionals in England operate within a system that persistently undermines their status, voice, and agency. This conceptual paper, informed by prior empirical research, introduces a new conceptual framework positioning professional confidence as a driver of change from within the sector. Building on Miller’s analysis of system conditions that constrain professional identity and autonomy (2019; 2021), it reframes confidence not as an individual trait but as a relational, collective force. The conceptual framework identifies five interconnected components – awareness, positive action, skilful advocacy, collective action, and purposeful passion – through which practitioners can exercise meritocratic agency and challenge externally imposed definitions of professionalism. By situating confidence within the broader system architecture, the paper highlights how professional self-definition and sector-led leadership can begin to reshape institutional cultures. It concludes with a call to action for leaders, policymakers, and practitioners to co-create an empowered and self-determining profession.
This paper has three aims. First, to provide a critical history (to look back critically at the community you belong to) of the ECT (Educationalists that adopt a critical theory perspective) to see how the major contributors to this community developed their approach to critical theory with an educational emphasis and more specifically how they looked at the relation between economics (a Marxist approach) and culture. Second, with the major finding of this critical history being that Marxism and economics was deemphasized within this community (of which I am a member) and the cultural became the dominant orientation, the paper considers what limits this focus had and has on critiquing society to change it. The third aim is to consider an alternative to this cultural emphasis that is titled Oneness theory—the weaving together of culture and economics. The thesis of Oneness theory is that by weaving culture and economics together not only will injustices and possibilities be more fully understood but differing critical theory groups can work together in solidarity to become a force for change to a more just society.
The role of the kindergarten teacher is especially important in early childhood, particularly in conflict-affected regions where social and educational structures face unique challenges. This study examines the impact of war on communication between kindergarten teachers and parents in the Bedouin Arab sector in Israel, a minority community with distinct socio-economic and cultural characteristics. The research focuses on the wartime period, during which remote teaching became necessary, and explores the use of WhatsApp as the primary communication tool in compulsory and pre-compulsory kindergartens. A qualitative methodology was employed, involving 20 semi-structured interviews with Arab kindergarten teachers. The findings reveal that during the war, WhatsApp was preferred over other digital platforms due to infrastructural limitations in unrecognized Bedouin villages and the specific socio-economic challenges faced by the community, including a lack of access to stable internet and advanced digital devices among parents. WhatsApp was widely used for educational purposes, messaging, instructions, storytelling, and activities, proving to be more effective than Zoom, which teachers found unsuitable for small children due to usability and technical difficulties. Kindergarten teachers identified several advantages of using WhatsApp, including accessibility and ease of use. However, they also reported significant challenges, such as the high time investment and the need for continuous commitment. While WhatsApp emerged as the most effective tool under these circumstances, teachers emphasized the necessity of flexible and frequent communication with parents. The general directive of the Ministry of Education to prioritize Zoom proved unsuitable for this sector due to these technological and cultural barriers, underscoring the need to reconsider the alignment between communication technologies and local needs in conflict-affected minority communities.
This paper examines part-time English teachers’ experiences in higher education in Macau, focusing on their motivations, challenges, and career pathways in an environment marked by flexibility and precarity. Through qualitative interviews with seven part-time instructors, the research investigates themes such as online teaching practice, the balance between the conflicting demands of teaching and research, and collegiality. The findings elucidate the dualities of part-time employment, where autonomy and flexible scheduling are paired with job insecurity, limited career advancement, and emotional strain. The study calls for institutional support, revised evaluation frameworks, and collaborative cultures to enhance the well-being and professional development of part-time instructors. Addressing these dynamics would enable higher education to productively utilize the knowledge of part-time educators towards enhancing educational quality and the regional development agenda.
This study develops and applies educational indicators for Just Transition pedagogy, addressing the lack of tools that connect education to struggles for both social justice and critical environmental concerns. Drawing on literature in Just Transition, critical pedagogy, and sustainability education, thirteen indicators were created across three constructs: critical thinking, coexistence, and student agency. These were applied to analyze two graduate-student lesson plans on Indigenous peoples and sustainable tourism in Taiwan. Strong intercoder reliability between human and AI-assisted coders confirmed the robustness of the indicators as tools for curriculum analysis. The analysis showed that the lesson plans encourage learners to think critically, foster coexistence, and strengthen agency in resisting injustice within the context of Just Transition. Yet, a central challenge persisted: local issues were insufficiently connected to global concerns. This underscores the need for education to link local and global struggles, making visible the importance of transnational solidarity as a cornerstone of Just Transition, while the theoretical framework developed here highlights the potential of Just Transition pedagogy to serve as a site intersecting environmental issues and social justice.
Recent reports from a number of Swedish municipalities show increased levels of antisemitism since the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023. This underlines the challenges faced by schools in addressing antisemitism. Despite increasing reports of antisemitism in Swedish schools, little is known about how educators and students navigate these issues within multireligious school environments. This case study focuses on an urban secondary school in Sweden, which has Jewish students and topics on Jewish life and Judaism, and examines how issues related to antisemitism and the Israeli-Palestinian (I-P) conflict are addressed within a multireligious school environment. This qualitative study draws on interviews with six school leaders, two special pedagogues, five social studies teachers, and four student focus groups, with five students in each (n = 33). The findings reveal that although some antisemitic incidents have occurred at the school, interviewees report that such events are relatively infrequent. Students perceive the school as safe, but conflicts and polarised positionings regarding the I-P conflict create an uneasy environment, especially for Jewish students, who are often held responsible for the situation in Israel and Gaza. The study contributes to understanding how ambivalence and avoidance shape school actors' positioning on sensitive political topics. The findings highlight the need for clearer guidelines and support for teachers addressing contentious issues like antisemitism and the Israel-Palestine conflict.
As higher education institutions (HEIs) navigate complex digital transformation demands, leadership agility has emerged as a critical determinant of institutional resilience. This study examined the mechanisms through which leadership agility is associated with institutional resilience, focusing on the mediating roles of digital readiness and strategic adaptation, and the moderating role of organizational innovation climate. Data were collected from 445 senior administrators across Chinese HEIs, including vice chancellors, deans, directors, and heads of departments. Participants completed validated scales measuring leadership agility, digital readiness, strategic adaptation, innovation climate, and institutional resilience. Structural equation modeling was employed to test direct, mediated, and moderated pathways. Results revealed significant associations between leadership agility and institutional resilience (beta = 0.28), digital readiness (beta = 0.52), and strategic adaptation (beta = 0.30). Mediation analyses indicated indirect statistical pathways linking leadership agility with institutional resilience (beta = 0.09). Furthermore, organizational innovation climate significantly moderated the effects of digital readiness (beta = 0.14) and strategic adaptation (beta = 0.16). The findings highlight the need for agile leadership that cultivates digital preparedness and adaptive strategies, particularly in innovation-supportive environments. Implications are discussed for leadership development and organizational design within the Chinese HEIs.
This study draws on critical perspectives on power and politics to demonstrate how exclusion is structurally embedded within educational systems. Although, the claim that education produces marginalisation may initially appear rhetorical. While education is often presented as a tool for empowerment, knowledge production and social mobility, it can also marginalise communities by pushing them out through official knowledge structures and tokenistic inclusion. Using the critical theory of education, the study questions the dominant forms of knowledge that are designed in a way to serve the interests of elites and corporate actors. Often, the frameworks exclude tribal communities from policymaking, neglect their knowledge systems, and detach them from their sustainable ways of living. Drawing on ethnographic methods, this study engages closely with tribal community members in Ladakh (India) through long-term interaction and participation for 14 months. It reveals how education contributes to social exclusion and how market forces aligned with neoliberal agendas that shape the educational experiences of tribal communities.
Race theory in education is locked into a mode of critique that accepts conventional categories of political economy and essentialises race and education as timeless. Attempts to build economic factors into CRT (Critical Race Theory) and recent attempts to combine CRT with theories of racialised social systems to create Racialised Social Systems (RSS) Theory do not enable a negative critique of capitalism. Social Reproduction Theory (SRT) and Marxist theories of racialisation do engage with a negative critique of capitalism but could further consider the contradictions of capitalist society. This requires an understanding of capitalism, class struggle and race that transcends na & iuml;ve materialism and enables an understanding of education, race and capitalism as locked into permanent crisis. Using metatheoretical critique, a new metatheory, Racial Value Theory (RVT) is presented. This shows how methods of 'racial organisation', racial categorisations and racial theories in education become archaic. For educators, RVT shows the redundancy of forms of practice and praxis but also the possibilities for revolutionary education.
Jakarta's Virtual Linguistic Landscape (VLL) offers a unique lens for examining the intersection of politics, economics, and identity in a multilingual, globalized urban setting. While most linguistic landscape studies focus on physical spaces, this research maps Jakarta's VLL by analyzing language use in street, store, and restaurant names across five culturally and economically distinct districts: Glodok, Tanah Abang, Menteng, Thamrin-Sudirman, and Condet & Cipayung. Using virtual ethnography, data were collected from Google Maps, business directories, and online images, then analyzed through Thematic Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis. Findings show that Bahasa Indonesia dominates official toponymy due to state policy, while commercial actors strategically deploy English for global prestige, Mandarin and Arabic for ethnocultural identity, and Betawi dialect for local preservation. District-level variations reveal how language functions as both a political instrument and an economic commodity. The study concludes that Jakarta's VLL reflects broader socio-political power structures, market-driven language commodification, and community identity negotiation, underscoring the need for inclusive language policies and further exploration of digital linguistic landscapes in Southeast Asia.
Cultural competency is widely recognised as essential in modern higher education, given the increasing prevalence of culturally diverse student bodies. However, turning that recognition into educational practices that align with the social and cultural realities of each country is challenging. This article argues that prevailing approaches to cultural competency often ignore the ideological frameworks in which they are embedded. Drawing on the contrasting cases of Britain and France, where celebratory multiculturalism and assimilationist republicanism, respectively, shape educational norms, we reveal how cultural engagement is too often constrained by national traditions. We advocate for a reconceptualisation of cultural competency as a dynamic, context-sensitive pedagogical practice rather than a universalised skillset. Grounded in the scholarship of critical pedagogy and intercultural learning, and speaking to an international audience of educators, this work calls for tailored, reflexive approaches that interrogate underlying assumptions and work towards genuinely inclusive and transformative educational experiences across diverse global settings.
Notwithstanding the frantic efforts by Southern African universities to decolonise education, evidence persists to show that their education systems are predominantly shaped by Western epistemologies, obscuring our understanding on whether these institutions are cursed by coloniality to perpetuate colonial legacies. Through a comprehensive literature review and theoretical analysis, the paper, anchored on the decolonial theory, explores whether the universities in Southern Africa are bewitched or otherwise, and then proposes pathways toward decolonisation and epistemic justice. The analysis reveals that the metaphor of 'bewitchment' aptly describes the entrapment of universities within the colonial structures, where alternative knowledge systems are marginalised and excluded. From the findings, the study recommends that universities commit to structural changes that include the indigenisation of universities in Africa, the integration of indigenous knowledge systems, the use of local languages and the development of curricula that reflect the socio-cultural realities of the region. Only through such comprehensive efforts can these institutions overcome the bewitchment of coloniality and contribute to the epistemic justice of their societies. The study extends the broader scholarship on the decolonisation of education located in the metaphor of bewitchment.
Jamaica's education system continues to reflect the imprint of colonial rule, as Eurocentric curricula, rigid language hierarchies, and high-stakes testing reproduce inequities despite repeated reforms. Political independence did not dismantle these structures and attempts to democratize access have often been undermined by persistent stratification. At the same time, teachers and policymakers have experimented with reforms aimed at equity, inclusion, and cultural responsiveness. This scoping review synthesizes 45 studies published between 1947 and 2025 to examine how colonial and postcolonial dynamics have shaped Jamaican education across history, policy, and pedagogy. The analysis maps developments in curriculum, language policy, assessment, teacher education, and culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP). Findings demonstrate the endurance of colonial structures in school categorization, curricular content, and testing practices, while initiatives such as the National Standards Curriculum sought, with mixed results, to redress inequities. Teachers often resist systemic constraints through CRP, such as affirming Jamaican Creole and integrating local knowledge, though institutional supports remain limited. Evidence on CRP in Jamaica is still emerging, highlighting both its promise and challenges of contextual adaptation. This review contributes an integrated map of almost eight decades of scholarship, situating Jamaican education within postcolonial critique and identifying priorities for policy, practice, and research.
This paper provides an analysis of the relationship between neoliberal reform in secondary education in England and Germany and the reproduction of racial inequality. We fill a gap in the understanding of how neoliberal mechanisms interact with racial structures in secondary education to fuel race inequality. The paper reviews existing literature on neoliberal policies in secondary education. We employ insights from theories of racial capitalism (Gerrard et al., 2022) and innovatively combine these with an understanding of whiteness as symbolic racial capital (Reiter, 2020). The paper identifies common neoliberal mechanisms in secondary education in both countries: school choice, institutional autonomy, and responsibilisation of the individual. We demonstrate that neoliberal mechanisms function to create racialised divisions in both education systems by fuelling: center dot ethnic segregation, center dot the exclusion of minority groups from mainstream educational spaces, center dot and cultural 'othering'. Our analysis shows that these divisions are achieved by the education systems enabling the extraction and realisation of value via the fuelling of the prestige and desirability of whiteness, and practices of racialised enclosure and dispossession. We argue that in the secondary education market, whiteness functions as capital and marketisation further enhances its status and value, thus fuelling racial inequality.
Teacher evaluation and accountability have become central to educational reform in Greece since 2012, a system marked by strong centralization and political volatility. This study explores how Greek teachers interpret and respond to policy reforms that are often introduced without sufficient consultation or support, creating conditions of mistrust and fear of change. Drawing on thirteen semi-structured interviews with teachers, headteachers, and regional officials, the study adopts an interpretivist, policy enactment framework to examine how educators construct meaning around evaluation, trust, and professional autonomy. The thematic analysis identified four interrelated themes: top-down control and systemic dependence, mistrust and political influence, fear of the unknown, and professional autonomy as stability. Findings reveal that teachers' resistance is not rooted in opposition to change but in defensive responses to instability and opaque policy communication. Trust emerged as a critical condition for reform engagement, underscoring the need for dialogue and sustained collaboration between policymakers and practitioners. The study contributes to international debates on educational reform by illustrating how emotional and relational factors mediate the success of accountability-driven policies in contexts of high centralization and low institutional trust.
Since the 2019 Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement, both the Chinese government and the Hong Kong government, along with pro-establishment figures, have attributed the political unrest to perceived problems within Hong Kong's education system. In response, the Hong Kong government has increasingly aligned itself with Chinese-style political correctness. This study adopts "Chinese-style political correctness" as an analytical lens to investigate recent changes in Hong Kong's educational policies and conditions. It first reviews developments in education policy from the 1997 handover to the 2019 movement, and then applies discourse analysis to official documents to examine how these texts reflect shifts in education policy after 2019. Supplementary sources are used to contextualize these changes within broader societal developments. The findings suggest that, under the prevailing discourse of political correctness, education policies have tilted toward values endorsed by the Chinese government, such as patriotism, national education, and nationalism. These trends have contributed to structural and cultural transformations in the educational landscape, including the dissolution of the Hong Kong Professional Teachers' Union, increased student withdrawals due to emigration, and a shortage of experienced teachers. The study underscores the far-reaching consequences of excessive state power on education.
This study provides a Foucauldian genealogical analysis of the power and knowledge dynamics that shaped Ethiopia's education system from 1991 to 2018. The analysis explores how a new governmental rationality, a hybrid of the ruling party's "revolutionary democracy" and a global neoliberal discourse, was produced and institutionalized. Using policy documents and secondary sources, the study reveals four key findings: first, the state used disciplinary technologies to co-opt educational institutions and produce politically compliant subjects. Second, donor-driven reforms acted as a powerful form of governmentality, establishing a neoliberal regime of truth that prioritized market efficiency over academic expertise. Third, the resulting tension between quantity and quality was a predictable outcome of a biopolitical project that normalized mediocrity in favor of mass enrollment. Finally, these dynamics led to the systemic epistemic suppression and knowledge dispossession of Ethiopian academics. The study concludes that during this period, education was not a neutral social good but a central site for the exercise of power, where global and local forces converged to shape knowledge, produce subjects, and constrain professional agency.
