Drawing from a larger ethnographic study, this article engages post-structural theories of language and critical feminist theories of social class to examine two fourth-grade, White, working-poor girls' narratives about their urban neighbourhood in the United States. The author argues that young girls should be perceived as social theorists…

Social reproduction theory names at least two distinct traditions, one of which has a long history in educational research. Social reproduction theory in "education" emerged out of a concern with education's relationship to capitalist inequalities. By contrast, social reproduction "feminism" developed out of feminist…

This article explores affective alignment and epistemic polarization in the field of feminist research, resulting from the neoliberalization of the universities and a performance-oriented research economy. Previous research has described and analysed the 'epistemic splitting' that feminist scholars engage in to live up to standardized performance…

In this article, I explore the pedagogical function of #MeToo, highlighting what it might teach about gender-based mistreatment and mainstreamed feminism. I begin by reviewing linkages between adult education and social movements, then trace the development of #MeToo, drawing on both media and scholarly texts. Next, I apply the concepts of…

This paper traces the evolution of discourses around the role of critical social theory in the field of lifelong education that have played out in the pages of the "International Journal of Lifelong Education" and elsewhere in the field, beginning with early critical theoretical discourses, a consideration of the impact of some key…

This article explores the importance of sustaining a rich and vibrant discourse of theory to inform the practice of adult education. Beginning with a brief overview of factors that have shaped the development of theory in adult education, the article then explores reasons why educators may not spend as much time teaching and learning about theory…

Late modern social theories and critiques of neoliberalism have emphasised the regulatory and negative aspects of responsibility, readily associating it with self-responsibility or analytically converting it to the notion of responsibilisation. This article argues for stepping back from these critiques in order to reframe responsibility as a…

Michel Foucault showed by his genealogical method that history is random. It comprises sites of disarray and dispersal. In those sites, Simone de Beauvoir wrote philosophy through lived experience of woman as Other in relation to man as the Absolute. Here lies a fecund site for revisionist analysis of female cultural production and its relevance…

When Alexandra Gold described her composition course: one that situates feminist and queer theory as a lens through which to view, analyze, and discuss contemporary television, a male acquaintance responded by saying he would not pay for that class. Another female acquaintance assured Gold that although she had loved a similar class at her Ivy…

This paper looks back on the methodology and experience of feminist consciousness-raising (CR) in the 1970s, in relation to the current re-emergence of feminism. It constructs an argument that a new wave of CR is desirable so as to construct new forms of feminist pedagogy and activism. The paper will argue that contemporary feminism in the UK and…

This article explores how our understandings of gender and Physical Education (PE) have developed since the publication of "Shaping Up to Womanhood" in 1992. I reflect back on my research which, using qualitative methodology and a socialist feminist lens, explored dominant gender relations in the teaching of girls' PE in English…

This article outlines core tenets of feminist economics and contrasts these tenets with traditional neoclassical economic assumptions about human nature, value, markets, inequality, and power. Further, it challenges the "Voluntary National Content Standards in Economics" and the "C3 Framework" for their exclusion of any…

We examine the emergence of the 'postfeminist' sensibility from feminist theory and praxis, and its relation and relevance to education. Analytical frameworks such as postfeminism and intersectionality have given equal weight to recognition-based struggles, such as those based on sexual, racial, class-based, gender-related identities. We follow…

In this paper, we offer a critique of neoliberal power from the perspective of the gendered, sexualised, raced and classed politics of motherhood in English universities. By using dialogical auto-ethnographic methods to examine our own past experiences as full-time employed mother-academics, we demonstrate how feminist academic praxis can not only…

Within the broad Freirean paradigm that dominates critical pedagogy, there is a tendency to assume that affects such as love, hope, and empathy as well as revolutionary agency are naturally occurring in all human beings and that conscientization will eventually lead to empowerment for change (Amsler 2011). However, it is not clear how the workings…