In 'Literature and Life', Deleuze remarks that all literature manifests as delirium, and, as such, the destiny of literature is to play itself out between two poles that create and reflect life back to itself: what the human desires, and the constant changes life imposes onto us. Taking Deleuze's statement as a point of departure concerning the…

Decreasing government funding and increased corporate influence have combined to create transformation in higher education. Considering the shifting nature of higher education funding and the pressures that have come with this change, the purpose of this paper is threefold: First, an overview of the paradigm of higher education is provided,…

This paper addresses a dilemma of education's autonomy: if an educational goal is to be universal, how do people's current problems and concerns are supposed to be integrated or addressed in the educational work, and specifically in teaching the curriculum? The paper looks at this dilemma with a particular educational perspective and within a…

The reduction in funding that many American universities are experiencing has led to concerns that these institutions will rely more on corporations to provide funding for research. Unfortunately, industry-funded research can have a corrupting effect on science. Since universities are generally thought of as institutions that advance science, some…

There has been a heightened awareness and intensified discussion of the ethical issue in global higher education among scholars of international education. There are also strong calls for actions from the governmental, organizational, and institutional perspectives. However, there seems to be little discussion on what frontline international…

This article explores what we can learn about truth and meaning from fiction, through a reading of George Orwell's (Eric Blair's) dystopic novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four" (1949) in the light of philosopher Stanley Cavell's notion of "lived skepticism." The article suggests that we can conceive of the novel as portraying…

This paper explores the notion of truth in relation to literature. It opens with a critical exposition of some dominant tendencies in contemporary aesthetics, in which narrow views of truth and reference guide the aesthetic investigations in harmful ways. One of the problems with such as view is not merely that it becomes difficult to talk about…

Neoliberal policy reforms have had a marked influence on nearly every aspect of education, including the enrolment practices employed by institutions, teaching and assessment practices, and even the outcomes for students and society. There is a widespread expectation that teachers should contribute to quality outcomes for students along with their…

Consideration of risk and liability in outdoor educative practice has normally been limited to the narrow risks, usually to physical health, of incidents that can cause a particular injury. In this view of risk management, the more readily controlled the circumstance, the less likelihood of risk and consequent liability. Thus, to reduce risk,…

The world is changing, but political and educational institutions appears to be stuck in the 19th century. Modern policy and education are both premised on an Enlightenment assumption of the human, rational, individual subject. Increasingly, elements of these philosophical premises are being interrogated. The critique emerges from the…

Problematic policy constructions of the purpose of education implicate professional identities and working conditions of professionals working with the youngest children. This paper builds on our earlier writing, to contest teacher professional identities in Australia, Ireland, Denmark and the United States of America, to illustrate the crucial…

The segregation enforced during apartheid has not only ensured widely disparate South African university landscapes, but also framed constructions of activism in historical discourses of racial disenfranchisement and marginalisation. As a result, activism is implicitly and explicitly associated with disadvantaged universities; with black students;…

The article investigates the instrumentalizing and ontological effects of the concept of equality of educational opportunity (EEO). Starting with the Coleman report (Coleman et al., 1966), through the democratization of secondary and tertiary education, and reading it in light of the recent debate on educationalization of social problems (Smeyers…

There is a rational assumption built into some research projects that policy contexts are influenced by the quality of the evidence. This is, at best, only somewhat true some of the time. Through policy ethnographies, two education researchers working in the context of sustainability discuss their experiences with evidence-based policy. Central to…

This paper locates the main challenge for education in cosmopolitanism within the nature of education when interpreted as a "mind-making process." Based on this interpretation, education is currently a process that shapes non-cosmopolitan minds, for the practices generally associated with it habituate the human mind to see…