A recent report from the Democracy Project found that "confidence in our governing institutions has been weakening over many years, and key pillars of our democracy, including the rule of law and freedom of the press, are under strain." In the recently published book "The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to…

This article analyses "performance government" as an emergent form of rule in advanced liberal democracies. It discloses how teachers and school leaders in Australia are being governed by the practices of performance government which centre on the recently established Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) and…

Governments in advanced liberal democracies have assigned Vocational Education and Training (VET) a critical role in preparing a productive workforce for the broader economy. This linkage opens the way to use economic theories to expand the understanding of VET. Noted economic theorists have described the use of one economic reductionist technique…

The attacks on university staff and students engaged in teaching, researching and speaking out against the state, military and religious powers, and for fairness, democracy, and equality, are increasing. As has been noted by many academics and commentators, liberal democratic principles of free speech and movement, alongside academic freedom, are…

This paper compares and contrasts pre-service teachers' (PSTs) beliefs about democracy in Argentina and Australia. While there are many important studies of how school students understand democracy and democratic participation, few have studied what teachers, and especially pre-service teachers, think about democracy. This paper uses a mixed…

This comparative analysis investigates the influence of neo-liberal and inclusive discourses in "special" education policy-making in New South Wales, Scotland, Finland and Malaysia. The centrality of competition, selectivity and accountability in the discourses used in New South Wales and Malaysia suggests a system preference for…

Education is central to creating well-informed citizens capable of participating in social and political life. However, civic education in some liberal democratic societies has often focused on teaching students the mechanics and structure of party politics, overlooking many of the public virtues that help to sustain democratic life. In this…

This paper examines the marginalisation of multicultural and multilingual discourses that occurred in Australia in the mid-1990s and that continues to the present day. The contemporary struggle between national and multicultural identities is considered against the background of the re-emergence of nationalist discourses across many Western…