The dominant analytical and programmatic frameworks used when writing about conflict-affected contexts such as Libya in Global Northern academia belong to the interdisciplinary field of peace and conflict studies (PACS). Within this, education is increasingly gaining attention as a tool for building peace and developing social justice. This…

For those working in the relatively new field of psychosocial studies, the action of psychodynamic phenomena in day-to-day life is uncontroversial as these phenomena are at work both in clinical settings and in normal life outside the clinical frame. If this is indeed the case, then they must also be at play in everyday classrooms. But to what…

This article contributes to current debates on progressive, knowledge-based approaches to the curriculum by addressing the question of what it is that students are entitled to learn in school mathematics. From the outset it recognizes progressive arguments that teaching should be reconnected with the emancipatory ambitions of education. In doing…

This article revisits a major paper published a decade ago by the political scientist Christopher Pollitt about the highly activist approach to the reform of public services taken in England in recent years. In education, the pace has accelerated since that paper appeared. The weaknesses of the current structures and processes resulting from this…

Research on academic literacies has predominately focused on writing practices in higher education. To account for writing practices in the digital age, this paper emphasizes the importance of extending the focus of academic literacies beyond writing to include multimodal composition. Drawing on social semiotics, we put forward a framework for…

As a contribution to the history of higher education in English further education colleges, two policy episodes are sketched and compared. Both periods saw attempts to expand courses of higher education outside the universities. In the first, ahead of policies to concentrate non-university higher education in the strongest institutions, efforts…

This paper reviews developments in policy on early childhood education and care--early years--under the Coalition Government in England. Three factors came to define the Coalition's performance and record in this area: ambivalence about the rationales for the two areas of early education and childcare; a disconnect between early years and other…

This article questions the current situation for vocational acting training (VAT) in the UK. It aims to provide an update on the report into burgeoning provision of acting training (and the attempt to address subsequent high rates of actor unemployment) that was originally undertaken by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (CGF, 1975) in their…

This commentary explores the conundrum of why learners are not routinely involved in decisions about their own learning. It suggests that engaging learners in their own learning and in the development of education systems is central to the improvement of education. Given the evidence from this Special Issue that all learners have the potential to…

This paper explores the developing concept of expertise, taking the Dreyfus and Dreyfus staged model as its starting point. It analyses criticism of the Dreyfus model and considers more recent attempts to resolve the tensions implicit within it. The authors go on to suggest ways some of the later modifications can be improved. The traditional…

Contemporary universities in the developed world face a plethora of increased--and changing--responsibilities. We are the global university, responsible for the production of worker citizens who will be "prepared" for an extraordinarily diverse set of challenges across all facets of their lives. Much of our research concentration in the academy…

This paper explores the notion of a "threshold concept" and discusses its possible implications for higher education research and practice. Using the case of introductory accounting as an illustration, it is argued that the idea of a threshold concept provides an emerging theoretical framework for a "re-view" of educational…

This paper examines the legislative framework developed in New Zealand over the last 15 years to facilitate greater parental choice in education. The discussion is set within the context of changes to admission practices in a number of education systems to advance the privatisation agenda, and outlines the resurgence of interest in the development…

This paper uses three examples of educational innovation emerging in the contemporary context of market-liberal reform as a focus for exploring the patterns and possibilities of civic formation. The first part of the paper contextualises contemporary civic formation within the long historic struggle between capitalism and democracy, highlighting…