The concept of the 'norm' is considered in several strands of critical pedagogy but is rarely given a pivotal role in understanding and/or counteracting gender and sexual inequality. At least one tradition deviates from this tendency: norm-critical pedagogy. In this strand of critical pedagogy, initiated in Sweden in the late 2000s and further developed and disseminated during the 2010s and 2020s to the Nordic region, the concept of the norm is considered the most crucial conceptualisation of power relations in education. The main argument of this paper is that an overly narrow emphasis on this concept hampers the ability to understand and counteract gender and sexual inequalities in education. I develop this argument from a feminist critical realist perspective, analysing key Swedish texts on norm-critique. This argument is structured around the following three characteristics of the concept of the norm within norm-critical pedagogy: (1) it is a taken-for-granted concept, (2) it is a one-size-fits-all concept and (3) the paradox of norms as simultaneously too simple and too complex. Finally, I suggest that norm-critical pedagogy could be developed by drawing upon historical and contextual versions of the concept of the norm and conducting suitable empirical research on its use.
This article examines how diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) discourse in Canadian universities operates as a mode of symbolic governance rather than a straightforward pathway to structural transformation. Drawing on critical discourse analysis and van Leeuwen's framework for legitimation, the examination considers a variety of DEI-aligned institutional texts from Canada's nine top-ranked universities. The analysis identifies three recurrent tendencies in this discourse: aspirational language that affirms institutional commitment while remaining vague about material change - consistent with Ahmed's account of the non-performative speech act; discursive convergence shaped by sector-wide isomorphic pressures; and legitimation strategies that render DEI claims morally compelling while narrowing the discursive space for critique. Positioned within audit culture and contemporary governance logics, the analysis clarifies how DEI language manages reputational risk and stabilizes institutional legitimacy. The article contributes to critical scholarship on educational discourse by showing how institutional language organises the conditions under which equity can be named, enacted, and/or constrained.
The growth of the Education Technology (EdTech) sector in recent years has been accompanied by predictions that new digital platforms will disrupt HE. However, there remains a disjuncture between promises of digital disruption and the absence of empirical evidence of disruption. This article juxtaposes two theses on the value of education to offer a theoretical explanation for why this imagined digital disruption may be difficult to achieve. The first thesis is sociological and is primarily informed by the work of Pierre Bourdieu. This sociological account is compared with the example of the investment thesis of Emerge Education. When read together, these two theses provide intertwining, yet contradictory, accounts of the value of education and how that value is (re-)constructed. New digital platforms that aim to disrupt established institutional forms of Higher Education (HE) give emphasis to increasing employability and reducing the considerable investments of time in education required to accrue cultural and social value. We argue that an EdTech focus on reducing the time of education, by creating new educational assets that can be accessed more flexibly and efficiently, has not yet challenged a primary value of HE for students and institutions that benefit most from current arrangements.
Extensive research discusses how young people's educational 'choices' and trajectories are implicated in the reproduction of social inequalities. This paper addresses three key gaps, adding to: (i) the paucity of qualitative longitudinal studies of young people's trajectories; (ii) understanding of young people who 'go against the grain' of social reproduction in classed/gendered ways; and (iii) the role of subjectivity within young people's negotiations of their trajectories. It employs a Bourdieusian lens, analyzing 22 longitudinal interviews conducted with two white young men, Buddy (middle-class) and Hedgehog (working-class), and their parents, over an 11-year period, from age 10-22. It discusses how family socialisation practices worked on and through subjectivity to cultivate a disposition towards 'responsible' (white, classed) masculinity that supported social reproduction and constrained their pursuit of arts trajectories. Transgression was facilitated through experiences of habitus cliv & eacute; and the young men's agentic leveraging of societal discourses around neoliberalism and self-actualisation. It is suggested that subjectivity is a key site for young people's transition work that is implicated in both reproductive and transformative pathways. Implications for policy include challenging dominant human capital and rational action assumptions within education and careers policy and practice and providing greater understanding and support for transgressive trajectories.
This article examines the moralization of educational policy debates in the United States, focusing on recent campaigns to ban Critical Race Theory (CRT). Once an academic framework for analyzing race, law, and power, CRT has become a polarizing symbol in several state legislatures, school boards, and public discourse. Drawing on scholarship on moralization and affect, I argue that the traction of CRT bans lies not only in partisan mobilization but in processes of affective moralization, namely, the framing of educational policy issues as moral imperatives infused with emotional intensity. Emotions such as fear, outrage, and resentment amplify moral claims, transforming curricular disputes into existential battles over identity, belonging, and national values. By theorizing affective moralization, this article extends existing scholarship on moralization in educational policy, demonstrating how affect and moralization are mutually reinforcing. The analysis highlights both the scholarly importance and the democratic risks of moralized policy discourse in education.
This paper advances the notion of leadership in liquid times, in which school leaders' work is enacted in complex and uncertain policy and social landscapes. Marketised, competitive reforms, work intensification, and highly pressurised policy environments are resulting in concerns about principal health and wellbeing around the world. This paper analyses principals' work in Australia under reforms marked by compliance and accountabilities alongside increased levels of autonomy. Through analysis of interviews with 63 public school and system leaders, this paper argues that leaders are working within uncertain conditions characterised by a reduction in support, an increased sense of fear and risk aversion, and a lack of role clarity, all of which are leading to negative consequences for the affective dimensions of their working lives. These issues are manifesting in ways that exacerbate inequities, and result in individualised responsibilisation for leaders. The paper's contribution is theoretical in its advancement of Bauman's liquid times, developing leadership in liquid times as a concept which can help to analyse leaders' work in uncertain times. The paper provides a further empirical contribution through articulating the scope and scale of issues being faced by principals.
This article aims to reassess the democratic purpose of schools in times of polarisation. We conduct our analysis informed by radical democratic theory and with reference to Chile during recent political and health crises (2019-2023). Drawing upon focus groups with fourteen teachers, we discuss how during these events, schools in Chile became increasingly politicised, and students and teachers were able to make political decisions, beyond rationalised, consensual, and neoliberal politics. As the crises passed, schools turned to a new normality with increased violence and political fragmentation between and within schools. We conclude by recommending that in contexts of high polarisation, democratic policymakers and educators should prioritise 'coexistence' as a purpose and practice of schooling, and develop a shared, convincing vision for democratic schooling that stands a chance against more 'ugly' emergent anti-democratic options.
The economic downturn induced by the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted countries in the Global South, particularly those on the neoliberal periphery, plunging many into a deep crisis. A substantial dimension of this ongoing crisis is rooted in the neoliberal reforms adopted by these countries. Ironically, with support from the International Monetary Fund and other actors, the crisis has facilitated the reimplementation of such reforms under the guise that 'there is no alternative'. Using Sri Lanka's public university system as a case study, this conceptual paper examines how crisis-driven neoliberal reforms enable policymakers to further encroach upon 'public goods' amid rising neoliberal consciousness among the general public. Drawing on Homi Bhabha's postcolonial theory, the paper argues that the crisis has created a new Third Space of enunciation, enabling Global North education providers to penetrate the country's higher education landscape. It shows how the aspirations of postcolonial student-consumers for Anglo-American qualifications facilitate this infiltration, challenging the foundational mission of the public university system as a space for free education and civic engagement. The paper concludes by highlighting the urgency of reimagining a nationalist agenda for public education to resist the expanding influence of Anglo-American educational 'superiority' in crisis-ridden, neoliberal Sri Lanka.
The Australian educational landscape is currently responding to the latest national curriculum review. Government agencies are producing more material for implementation support. Teachers must again interpret and enact a new curriculum in their classrooms. Is the teacher's role in this process one of compliance or creation? Exploring definitions of curriculum in research, Clandinin and Connelly described a pervasive 'conduit' metaphor that positions the teacher as the mechanism of curriculum delivery. Years later, curriculum making is under scrutiny as a burden to be lifted to alleviate teachers' workload pressures. Teachers are being provided resources to reduce the 'busy work' of curriculum planning. But, has the view of teachers' role in curriculum making changed? Are these resources intended to revolutionise curriculum making, or are they a new way to ensure teachers serve as conduits? Using Bacchi's What is the problem represented to be? approach to policy analysis, three current approaches to curriculum support were scrutinised to consider the assumptions and (intended or unintended) effects of these proposed solutions. Culminating in proposed methodological options for future inquiry that extend beyond capturing narrative images of teachers' work and lives and interrogate the conduit, thereby rekindling the spirit of revolution.
Simplistic assumptions about learning as neutral and universal fail to reflect how policy constructs what counts as legitimate knowledge and whose learning matters. This study examines Australian education policy through a Foucauldian archaeological approach, tracing how multiple discourses construct learning and learner subjectivities in competing ways. Analysing policy and practice documents, we trace five discursive patterns: learning, economic investment, policy, civics and diversity, intersecting within the educational system, each embedding different epistemological assumptions. Drawing on Pinar's curriculum theory, our analysis suggests these competing constructions do not just obscure learning but show that learning in schools was always already entangled with questions of identity, power and whose ways of knowing are valued. Students are positioned through multiple subject positions: the legally participating, assessed, diverse, learning and industry-ready student, fragmenting their experiences in ways that fail to recognise them as whole, autobiographical beings. The crowding of policy discourses makes it difficult for teachers to approach students as learners given these competing constructions. While focused on Australia, this study highlights dynamics relevant to education systems worldwide navigating tensions between standardisation, equity and competing visions of educational purpose.
Educational transitions have way-markers and objective milestones as students enter, move through and exit institutional spaces within a normative timeframe. Increasingly, however, scholarship has illuminated the affective dimensions of transition that are less inclined towards measurement, but which nevertheless shape experiences and outcomes. Within these framings, transitions are tied to notions of both success and feelings of belonging, which have been shown to be separate but highly related in Higher Education (HE) policy. Indeed, student belonging now embodies a set of strategies and activities in HE, pervasively constructed as a 'fix' for disparities in student experiences and a suitable explainer for gaps in outcomes. In this article, we look closer at the ways belonging is operationalised by institutions and constructed within policy discourse. Through analysis of public-facing institutional texts - from marketing literature to strategy and student support - we draw on Bourdieu's concept of illusio to offer original insights into the process of transfiguration at play in contemporary institutional belonging work that brings about an unseen redefinition of belonging. We show how, through illusio, belonging is transfigured mostly unquestioningly, as a commodity and process of conformity which limits deeper engagement with the complex interrogations of belonging within educational research.
Situated within critical debates in education, this paper examines the challenges faced by teachers of post-graduate students through the emerging concept of neuroliberalism. The latter draws attention to how trends in brain science, affect studies and technology are reshaping the ways in which the roles and positionalities of HE practitioners are conceptualised. In a field inflected by long-standing debates about reflexion, neuroscience and educationalisation, neuroliberalism is used as an overarching governmental principle to bring together seemingly disparate strands of policy and practice. Drawing on analyses of qualitative data from interviews with teachers on post-graduate programs, we discuss how our interviewees' concerns about HE practices signal a neuroliberal agenda focused on meta-cognition, affect and techno-hybridity. Positioning this study within wider debates about neuroliberal governance, we suggest that while the latter presents itself as more humanistic and less technocratic, its effects are politically regressive. It intensifies existing power asymmetries and consolidates structures that normalise and extract from an increasingly volatile model of HE practice and provision.
How are Black and Indigenous education in the US related? How are antiBlackness and settler colonialism interconnected? This essay addresses these questions, reexamining the history of one of the only US schools to educate both groups: Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute. To explore the contemporary legacies of Hampton, we bring together a race-centered historical methodology and Black and Indigenous studies perspectives. We argue that three enduring legacies - subhumanity, genocide and self-determination - with roots in the school itself frame the present, collective struggle for Black and Indigenous justice in education. This focus provides both historical and current insights with global relevance on Black and Indigenous education in analyzing the post-US Civil War era to the early twentieth century. To conclude, we highlight implications for educational stakeholders related to building interracial coalitions for racial justice and recognizing how settler colonialism and antiBlackness have historically been and continue to be intertwined in contemporarily revealing ways.
Studies on the educational transitions of children of migrants are dominated by a quantitative perspective that highlights the unequal distribution of students across educational pathways but fails to account for the heterogeneity of experiences or the subjective dimension of these processes. This article examines the transitions to post-compulsory education among children of Moroccan and Pakistani migrants in Barcelona, focusing on the interplay between identities and aspirations within structural and institutional constraints. Drawing on qualitative longitudinal and visual research, the study follows 17 students over a year to explore how they navigate their transitions within a context of school and urban segregation. I propose two types of transition: transitions by ambition, where students choose studies based on a prestigious long-term professional goal; and transitions by alignment, where choices align with abilities, naturalised under the ideology of natural gifts, and available pathways. Transitions to post-compulsory education of participants are experienced through complex identity and aspirational articulations. These experiences underscore the futility of essentialist frameworks and the importance of incorporating young people's voices in transition research.
This manuscript explores the gendered nature of teaching using the 1975 film 'The Stepford Wives' as an allegory. We argue that teacher preparation, through intentional design, attracts and produces a specific type of teacher while discouraging diversity and critical thinking. Through feminist and critical human geography theories, we examine the structure of teacher preparation. We introduce a 'Stepford Teacher' remix, using horror storytelling to convey the terror of the docility, passivity, and subjectification of teachers that is embedded within the process of their preparation. The work questions whether teacher preparation truly prepares critical thinkers or if, in fact, it creates compliant individuals, perpetuating existing power structures.
This manuscript argues for the framing of teacher education research and programs through a visionary feminist lens. We believe that teacher education serves as an important space for the education of women, yet these spaces have a history of reproducing patriarchal, sexist, and misogynistic ways of thinking and being in the world that are not in the best interest of the very students in these programs, and indeed are harmful to them. Thus, we present the work of Jane Addams, analyzed through the work of bell Hooks to illustrate a visionary feminist theory and pedagogy that incorporates: the critique and decentering of patriarchy and patriarchal power through the centering of girls', women's, and other marginalized people's lives; non-hierarchical ways of being in solidarity; and approaching education as a political project grown out of lived experiences. Overall, we argue that the radical, visionary feminist projects of Addams and hooks is one possible combination that can inspire a conceptual lens for designing and studying teacher education that is up for the task of our personal, social, political, and economic lives in 2025 and beyond.
Across the globe, governments are responding to a 'teaching crisis' marked by high attrition rates and labour shortages. This crisis can be attributed to macro changes in the economy (intensified by the shift towards high inflation, low growth economies post-COVID) and micro changes to the organisation and funding of schools with teachers experiencing stagnating wages and unmanageable workloads in punishing accountability environments. In this paper we examine how government and other authorities in England seek to manage the teaching crisis through diagnostic tools and skills training designed to measure and improving teacher wellbeing. This includes inciting new teacher subjectivities, namely neuro-liberal workers who are resilient, agile or emotionally communicative. Through combining elements of policy archaeology and genealogy, this paper specifies: i. the conditions for the emergence of teaching wellbeing as a problem; ii. the knowledge claims and alliances framing the construction of said problem; and iii. the interventions made possible by these problem framings. Critically, this paper develops a new deconstructive language to address some of the limits or overreach of scientific psychology approaches to wellbeing that are central to government approaches to framing the problem of and solutions to teaching wellbeing.
This paper analyses 19 autistic individuals' stories of school experiences in Canada drawn from the Re center dot Storying Autism project, which aims to challenge dominant deficit logics of autism and re-story ways of becoming and belonging in schools. In our analysis, we were struck by ubiquitous stories of relentless, dehumanizing violence and by occasional moments of belonging and care. Through the feminist materialist ontology and metaphor of (mis)fitting and feminist affect theory, we engage discursive, material, and affective dimensions of autistic school experiences of violence and belonging to challenge harmful deficit logics circulating therein and open avenues for understanding affects/effects alongside pathways for transformation. We argue that misfitting and violence in schools materializes through assemblages produced, in part, via a constellation of affects - fear, hatred, discomfort - accompanying ableist developmentalist legacies still structuring formal education systems. Our approach intervenes into feminist neomaterialist and critical autism studies, which have yet to grapple with autism and school violence. Based on this analysis combined with stories of relational and creative responses to misfitting, we consider opportunities for transgression and advocacy that can expand possibilities for affirming (neuro)diverse becomings and for remaking school practices and spaces in more relational, contextual, and ethical ways.
The article adopts an exploratory lens to unravel the nature and construction of diagnostic labels associated with challenging behaviours while discussing their ideological underpinnings, politicized character, effects and policy implications. The non-normative nature of categories related to challenging behaviours calls for adopting a critical and cross-cultural perspective in exposing the intricately complex web of context-specific ideological and institutional dynamics that underpin the genesis, legitimation and subsequent management of these behaviours. The analytical edge also involves unravelling the political and socio-culturally mediated processes of constructing categories of ‘need’ based on deviant and disruptive behaviours while exploring how these normative discourses ‘travel’ globally, are indigenised and pathologize human behaviours by, inter alia, prescribing clinical-orientated identification and behaviour management strategies. A cross-cultural lens is not only instrumental in bringing to the fore points of cross-national convergence/divergence and identifying examples of good practice, but also in revealing the politically driven nature of categorical ascriptions and associated nomenclature of challenging behaviours, and understanding how they are constructed, disseminated and managed in contemporary schooling. As an action-oriented response to these critical considerations, the article makes a case for the imperative of adopting an interdisciplinary and intersectional approach to preventing and managing students’ behaviours in inclusive education.
