Foucauldian research, as it is currently practised, is generally unwilling to offer a vision of alternative futures. This article examines the recent work (2007 and 2009) of Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons which appears to be an exception. They offer a critique of contemporary trends in higher education and propose an alternative model: the…

This paper examines the impact of the International Standard School (ISS) on the identity of Indonesia as a postcolonial nation. According to the Indonesian Ministry of National Education, an ISS is "a school which complies with the National Standard of Education and enriches its standards from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and…

In this paper, the author shows that the issue of whether toleration promotes coexistence is controversial and therefore needs careful consideration in light of the complexities that are involved in understanding and teaching toleration in the schools of conflict and post-conflict societies. In particular, this paper offers a critique to the…

In this article I discuss a number of excerpts from interviews with class grandparents; that is to say, older people helping out in schools for children in Sweden. The interviews focused on experiences of taking part in class grandparent projects. Indirectly, however, they dealt with identity. By treating the interviews as stories, as ways of…

Parenting is a recurring topic in books, newspapers, magazines and TV shows in Western societies. Often it involves experts giving advice to adults. Hence, parenting is made visible, categorised, evaluated and corrected in public. Judgements on what is desirable are demonstrated, and objectives to be achieved are pointed out. In the present study,…

Every now and then the feminisation of the teaching force is put forth as a barrier to reduce educational equality between the sexes. The feminisation of education is supposed to have a negative impact on boys' achievement, causing educational as well as behavioural problems. It is not just boys who allegedly suffer; over the years, the…

The strengths and limitations of approaches to participatory and democratic practice rooted in voice have been discussed in relation to education and also "youth voice". The paper seeks to make critical connection between the two debates, especially in relation to the persistence of practices of exclusion and marginalisation. Drawing on a two-year…

In this paper images are used to support the conceptualisation and recognition of embodied pedagogy. Analysis of data gathered during an arts-based teaching project in pre-service teacher education revealed the presence of an embodied pedagogy and supports the further deployment of embodied teaching and learning in teacher education. Embodied…

Narratives of power that purport to represent the "truth" of others need to be challenged by the individual stories of those who are silenced by "authority" and "expert" opinion. This paper utilises research data from an open-ended ethnographic study of 32 Australian high school students at the turn of the twenty-first century. In its entirety,…

This paper draws on findings from an empirical study on the epistemic nature of teachers' practice. It particularly addresses teachers' reasoning that lies behind their practice in order to gain insight into the epistemic weights embedded in the teachers' practice. Drawing on qualitative data gathered from six class teachers in Helsinki in two…

This paper aims at decoding problems and meanings of situations that frequently occur in socio-educational contexts, while concurrently showing real difficulties to establish intercultural dialogue. It is a critical reflection on fieldwork developed in Mozambique in 2006 by Cardoso Cuale. Cuale was a Primary School teacher who attended a research…

In the field of modern language education, the discourse of intercultural communication has experienced three "moments": "cultural awareness, cross-cultural mediation," and "critical intercultural language pedagogy". The first refers to the equation between culture and country. The second concerns the development of intercultural competence…

This article proceeds from the argument that while the discourse of social responsibility (SR) is increasingly evident in pedagogies circulating through the workplace, its actual practices tend to be obscured beneath complex tensions and moral precepts presented as self-evident. Through an examination of individuals' learning of SR in the…

It is considered good pedagogical practice for undergraduate social science students to reflexively use their real-life experiences to illustrate concepts and theories, especially in relation to themes of social inequality and power. When teaching gender and sexuality, this can become problematic because of the emotional topics involved such as…

The issue of whether to "come out" in class has a poignant history in the literature by gay, lesbian and bisexual educators on this topic. By comparison few heterosexuals have publicly written about whether they explicitly reveal their heterosexuality to students. This paper contributes to the enduring debate about whether to "come out" in class…