With the relaxation of the system of command in China's public schooling sector and the decline of ideological coercion in the post-Mao era, the Chinese state has reshaped its control over individual teachers. Much effort has been made to analyse the state's influence on teachers' academic activities at school, but little attention…

Gifted education is leading an interdisciplinary paradigm shift moving education out of its historic role of entrenching systemic inequities. It is a crucible for pioneering investigations of optimal human development and provides a vehicle for increasing social equity. We review changing conceptions of intelligence, motivation and creativity, and…

This article explores John Dewey's Depression-era analysis of "liberalism" in an effort to clarify our own neoliberal moment. As Dewey argues, liberalism is a term used in the 1930s to signify diverse and often contradictory meanings. It variously refers to a minimalist state aimed at unbinding markets (laissez-faire liberalism) or…

Neoliberalism is the dominant economic paradigm in the globe today. It has led to stagnant wages, high unemployment, increased income inequality and a decline in quality of life for the average citizen in the industrialised world over the past 30?years. It has also fomented a dramatic increase in economic instability, culminating in the 2007…

This paper examines three recent accounts of what has allegedly gone wrong with the school curriculum in England in recent years and their prescriptions for remedying these ills--all three accounts sharing strong proposals to reinstate "knowledge" at the heart of the curriculum. These analyses, despite some significant similarities, come from very…

This paper presents some of the findings that emerged out of a national survey carried out in the school year 2005-2006 in various parts of Greece. The main aim of the study was to explore the effects of various "family" factors on the "student performance" in the (national) higher education entrance examinations. From the analysis of data it…

This article analyses the "soft power" that the Federal Government of Brazil has gained by designing and implementing a very ambitious Plan for the Development of Education. It draws on fieldwork carried out in the country in 2009 and 2010 in order to conduct a discourse analysis of the strategy deployed by the key political agents. The results…

This article points to international education in elementary and post-elementary schools as an emerging and promising field of enquiry. It describes the state of art of this new field and sets out the nature of the research. The rapid development of international networks in recent decades; the contribution of international education policies to…

Neoliberalism has utterly failed as a viable model of economic development, yet the politics of culture associated with neoliberalism is still in force, becoming the new common sense shaping the role of government and education. This "common sense" has become an ideology playing a major role in constructing hegemony as moral and intellectual…

Given the increasing power of neoliberal and neoconservative agendas in education internationally, critically democratic policies and practices are now even more important. Yet, one of the major problems with critical work in education has been the fact that some of the academic leaders of the "critical pedagogy" movement and of critical and…

The INCLUD-ED project's case studies of successful schools in Europe reveal that there are advantages involved in opening schools to all kinds of women as far as educational and social inclusion is concerned. "Other Women"--those whose voices have traditionally been silenced in academic settings--help in crucial ways to improve education when they…

New additional support-needs legislation in Scotland sought to recognise the way in which poverty, as well as individual impairment, contribute to the creation of children's difficulties in learning. As well as identifying a wider range of needs, the legislation sought to provide parents, irrespective of social background, with more powerful means…

This paper suggests that, in contrast to the great reports such as Crowther, Newsom Robbins and Plowden, recent government papers relating to education in England pay little attention to values that should shape the standards to be achieved, the knowledge to be transmitted and the virtues to be nourished. Whilst legislation over the past 60 years…

Higher education within the USA is increasingly perceived to be in a state of crisis. This crisis exposes the USA and its citizens to risks that spell out disaster whether it is from a loss of national global competitiveness, a reduction in the standard of living and/or deep challenges to social cohesion. The suggested remedy to this condition is…

This paper focuses on the curricular change in French universities that has taken place over the last two decades and especially since the implementation of the "LMD Reform" in 2002. Curricula tend to become "regionalised-knowledge" courses, by regrouping disciplinary knowledge and looking forward to economic and social needs. The article aims at…