Although civic purposes are implicit in the mission statements of higher education institutions, American colleges and universities have not always embraced public engagement initiatives. This paper explores how the recent emergence of the engaged campus movement has helped move public engagement initiatives from the margins to the mainstream by…

Evidence has emerged that the civic engagement movement in US higher education may not be fulfilling its transformative potential, having lost sight of its core democratic purposes. Civic engagement conceptualised only in terms of activity and place--programmes in communities--may be easily accommodated to prevailing technocratic practices. For…

Public engagement is one of the three legs which support and underpin a restructured and transformed post-apartheid higher education system in South Africa (along with teaching and research). This third sector role of higher education is widely implemented in South Africa and is described differently by different institutions and entails a diverse…

Volunteering by higher education students in the UK has a long history which remains largely unexplored despite recent research and policy attention. This article offers a brief overview of the development of student volunteering before the 1960s and then discusses a shift from student social service to Student Community Action in the late 1960s…

This paper explores how civic engagement as an important dimension of public engagement in higher education has been slow to develop in the UK, despite an important history dating from the "civic universities" in the nineteenth century. I specifically consider the development of "service learning" as an important way in which the values and…

The profile of volunteering in English Higher Education (HE) has been enhanced in recent years through various initiatives that have not only funded activities, but have sought to expand the range of volunteering opportunities available to students and recognise the contribution that volunteering can make to students' employability. This expansion…

This paper draws on recent re-conceptualisations of the notions of "care" and "caring" (Noddings, 1992; Tronto, 1993) to explore data from semi-structured interviews with the parents and key workers for about twenty children under three who were attending two London children's centres. Located in an environment of frequent new policy initiatives,…

There has been a focus on policies relating to early years education and care across the developed world and particularly in Europe. In the UK, there has been a raft of policy changes alongside increased investment. However, this paper argues that these changes may not be sufficient to meet EU objectives in terms of quality or the government's…

Early childhood education and care settings in England and the people who work in them constitute an important sphere of influence, shaping young children's characters and values. But the values and dispositions expected of the early years workforce are missing from statutory policy documentation despite its clear requirement that practitioners…

In this paper I develop an alternative to prevailing moral development assumptions in early childhood education. Drawing on a Bakhtinian theoretical framework, theories of identity formation, and examples from my longitudinal research study of child-adult play, I reframe development as a lifelong process of coauthoring ethical identities that may…

The paper examines variations in the extent of special education needs (SEN) in different socio-economic contexts, drawing on data from 46 English primary schools. It examines the implications of variations in SEN for individual pupils and for school organisation and processes. It reviews funding allocations for SEN and what they mean for the…

It is argued here that understanding John Dewey's thought as that of a prodigal liberal or a fellow traveller does not capture the complexity of his work. It is also important to recognise the portion of his work that is "historie morale." In the very best sense it is epic, encapsulating the hopes and dreams of a history of the American people in…

Professor Roy Harris (2009) criticises me for ignoring freedom of speech in order to focus on "soft" issues, such as game theory, decision theory and chaos theory. In this response, I accept most of his arguments relating to freedom of speech, but argue that, in order to develop better systems of education, we need to pay more attention to the…

English education policy has increasingly focused on the need to intervene in an intergenerational cycle of poverty and low attainment. The accompanying policy discourse has tended to emphasise the impact of family background on educational outcomes. However, as the capacity of parents to secure positive educational outcomes for their children is…

Was there ever a golden age of academe: a time when academics were able to pursue their own interests, had relatively light and undemanding teaching responsibilities, and enjoyed widespread respect from both the general public and policy makers? This article explores that question, primarily in the context of the United Kingdom, but with some…