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Privatization of public education in North America has long been influenced by two schools of conservative thought: neoliberalism, which seeks to create a marketplace for public services in which individuals choose the option they judge to be in their best interests and government's role is limited as much as possible to simply funding these choices; and neoconservatism, which believes that education should seek to uphold traditional religious and social values. These two strains are divided in terms of their view of how much control government should seek over education, but united in their agreement that funding should "follow the student" to the option of the parents' choice. Recently, far-right conservative groups in the U.S. and Canada have been inciting a moral panic over "gender ideology" in schools, and in particular transgender students. Under cover of this moral panic and the accompanying call to recognize "parent rights," the right is organizing to gain greater influence over public education through legislation and through the election of conservative candidates to school boards, even as it seeks greater privatization options for families who wish to opt out of public education. While this trend has been noticeable in Alberta for some time, it appears to be spreading to the rest of Canada as well.

For decades, there has been a well-coordinated effort to unmake public education in Canada and around the globe. Neoliberal reformers have undermined public education through increased privatization, marketization, and managerialism. Government austerity measures have shaped policy that falsely necessitates, validates, and legitimizes the privatization of public education. All of these forces that fuel the neoliberal reform movement diminish the collective aims, benefits, and responsibility of/for public education. Instead, the movement encourages systems that ration education. The moves to emulate business models in education systems exacerbate inequities and run counter to the purpose of public education. Indeed, attempts to marketize, commodify, privatize, and dismantle public education are well-organized and coordinated. Yet, in Canada, provincial and territorial fragmentation has veiled the well-organized rhetoric and tactics of neoliberal education reforms. As a result, community and political responses have often been confined within borders. The reformers have been centrally organized, but the resistance has not. Recognizing that provincial and territorial borders can act as barriers to collective advocacy, this special issue is intended to share activities, research, and writing from across Canada about the tactics and impacts of privatization, to recognize the efforts being made to organize a collective response to privatization efforts, and to encourage national conversations beyond borders.

This study explores how pre-service mathematics teachers build alternative model simulations of real-world scenarios. Inclusion in the formal structures for wealth generation and accumulation is a fervently debated issue in South Africa. Share owning in companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) in South Africa is one of many wealth-building tools. Related discussions evolved on the spread of share ownership among black and white citizens. Two mathematically motivated positions were reported in a newspaper. In one of their mathematics courses, prospective mathematics teachers were presented with the article and asked to reflect on it with the prompt 'Which of these two methods for determining the "number of Black South Africans holding shares on the JSE" would your group support?' Audio- and video-recorded data were collected and subjected to thematic analysis. The themes that emerged from the analysis were economic empowerment, authority of research and trustworthiness of information. The discussions reflected on the complexities and rationalities involved in decision-making of mathematically driven opposing positions on issues of social importance. The mathematically derived results of such issues will eventually be resolved in the political field. The findings revealed that building of alternative mathematical models by pre-service mathematics teachers begins with an explicit problem setting, followed by the development of mathematical models that included real-world problems.

In this paper, the author examines the reflection of social violence within the structure of the Arabic language through an analysis of classical Arabic grammar texts. The study's comprehensive examination of grammatical examples, rules, and terminologies reveals how the societal relationships and power dynamics of the era were embedded within the linguistic framework. The research identifies three primary areas where social violence is manifested: fabricated grammatical examples, grammatical rules, and terminologies. These elements frequently entrenched themselves within socio-political structures that were already oppressive towards women and detrimental to the lower classes and people of colour in Arab societies of that period. Consequently, the works of American Arabic scholars underscore the dual role of grammar books as both language guides and repositories of historical insights into Arab society. The findings of this study thereby contribute to a deeper understanding of the interplay between language, society, and power, particularly within the Arabic-speaking context, and hold significant implications for modern Arabic language pedagogy and further sociolinguistic research.

Polarization is increasingly impacting Extension's work in communities. Extension has untapped potential to address division and lack of civility by building civic infrastructure and skills for constructive dialogue. We describe a pilot program that began as a one-off event and grew into a series organized by University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension in partnership with Braver Angels, a national organization applying research-based skills to building bridges. We report on the series structure and content, its goals, and the impacts on participants. We suggest that Extension has the mission, capacity, opportunity, and responsibility to engage in skill-building for Public Issues Education.

This study attempts to explore the teachers' beliefs on the causes of learners' misbehavior in language classrooms. To do so, 23 language teachers completed a narrative frame in which they discussed a misbehavior experience they had in the class and why they thought it happened; they, then, attended semi-structured interviews where they discussed their experiences regarding learners' misbehavior. A thematic analysis was employed and the data was analyzed with an eye on the study's theoretical underpinning, i.e., Activity Theory (AT). The results indicated that there are different sources of misbehavior on different interconnected components of AT. In the "tool" component, the emergent themes were materials constraints, technological challenges, and hobbies interventions. In the "rules", some themes such as teaching methodology, socio-cultural norms, and political, and ideological intolerance or disobedience emerged. It was in the "community" component of AT that the data revealed social phenomena, colleagues and authorities, and learners heterogeneity. Finally, in the "division of labor" the emerged themes were overwhelming responsibilities, family issues, and executives' dereliction. The findings suggest a new look at language learners' misbehavior and inform teacher education programs in which teachers are trained on this issue to manage learning in their classrooms effectively.

The main objective of this study is to examine the correlation between digital skills and their correlation with digital citizenship among students enrolled at a university in Peru. The research was carried out using a sample of 906 participants, encompassing individuals of various genders, with ages spanning from 17 to 54 years. The methodology of choice aligns with a non-experimental, cross-sectional, descriptive-explanatory design. The findings of this study indicate that the development of participation skills, whether in traditional face-to-face settings or in online digital platforms, significantly influences the formation of digital citizenship. The aforementioned observation holds considerable ramifications for the field of digital skills education, underscoring the imperative to prioritize and actively advocate for the development of participation skills in the context of the digital age. The importance of digital skills in our contemporary society is widely acknowledged. However, the connection between digital skills and digital citizenship is intricate and complex.

Post-truth strategies are characterized by the manipulation of facts and personal assertions of the truth for political gain. By seeding polarization, skepticism, and mistrust, post-truth presents challenges to teaching and learning within academic settings. In this paper, we explore how post-truth is articulated in higher education literature using a critical pedagogical lens. We suggest that pedagogical scholarship needs to expand its scope beyond a focus on the media antics of individual politicians in order to interrogate the reliance on dominant framings that simply define "post-truth" as circumstances where personal beliefs take precedence over established facts. We argue that the current framing of post-truth shapes the educational response to this issue, which focuses on helping students discern correct from incorrect information, as opposed to teaching students how power and knowledge are intertwined in post-truth and ways to understand and address the subsequent and potentially harmful power relations. Since post-truth strategies are enacted to restrict thoughtful reflection on dominant relations of power, we propose a critical pedagogical framework to problematize the notion of objective truth, account for the politics of exclusion, examine power relations, and contest post-truth strategies.

Student translators at the College of Language Sciences take a Media and Political Translation course in which they translate the latest news stories, media and political texts and terminology. This study proposes a model for integrating Gaza-Israeli war terminology and texts in translation instruction to familiarize the students with terminology such as names of weapons (grenades, mortar, drones, missiles, Merkava, Cornet anti-armor, mortar shells), toponyms(Khan Younis, Maghazi, Sderot, Ashkelon), crossings (Rafah, Erez), Jihadist groups and brigades (Islamic Jihad, Golani), military actions (incursion, bombing, shelling, genocide, displacement) war metaphors (target bank, carpet bombing, scorched earth, fire belt, Philadelphia Axis, Hannibal's plan), (UNRWA, Gaza hospitals, starvation, humanitarian aid) and others. English and Arabic texts can be collected from mainstream media as RT, BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera and Al-Ghad. A class blog can be created for posting translations, corrections, discussions, and feedback. The students can practice full, summary, and conceptual translation and avoid word-for-word translation. They can watch news stories about the Gaza-Israel war, write a summary translation of it and receive comments and feedback. Beginners can translate short news excerpts (few lines). Students make sure their translations are cohesive, make sense and are easy to read. Students should use Google Translate and artificial intelligence (AI) with caution and should read the same news story in both English and Arabic to get used to the terminology and their equivalents. The instructor serves as a facilitator. Further instructional guidelines and recommendations are given.

As an epistemological, axiological, and methodological paradigm, Critical Race Theory (CRT; Crenshaw et al., 2000; Harris, 1993) is a scholarly tool to identify and disrupt inequities, possible via CRT's core tenets towards troubling systemic racism. We argue that political movements in North Carolina (NC) exhibit attempts to delegitimize critical race scholarship and curricula that accurately portray history and contemporary student populations' racialized experiences, a manifestation of the conservative agenda to whitewash the state's history that is predicated on racism and white supremacy. In alignment with radical theorizations and research that examine ideologies at the root of ill-informed hysteria, we present a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of the effects of political power in foreclosing educational possibilities toward building equitable societies through our analysis of data from NC's Fairness and Accountability in the Classroom for Teachers and Students for North Carolinian "FACTS" submissions (Robinson, 2021). FACTS is a reporting tool targeting NC educators who employ critical lenses in their instruction that promotes unfounded antagonism toward CRT. The significance of this research is a localized example of CRT being targeted by conservative politicians toward the intent of delegitimizing critical scholarship and education and thus perpetuating ahistorical ideals rooted in racism and white supremacy.

Being ubiquitous, language is essential to our everyday existence. Human language is seen to be a traditional field that depends on using words in accordance with intricate standards. In this study, the idea of aggressiveness is investigated from a pragmatic viewpoint. The goals of this research are to identify the aggressive techniques that Clinton uses in her speeches, to show the impoliteness tactics that she mostly uses to accomplish her goals, and to expose the pragma-rhetorical tropes that are mostly mentioned in her speeches. The research proposes that in her presentations, Clinton utilizes indirect verbal passive aggression, mostly negative impoliteness techniques, and often metaphor as the main rhetorical device. The study's results validate that Clinton utilizes indirect verbal passive aggression, mostly employs negative impoliteness techniques, and emphasizes overstatement as the main rhetorical device in her hostile speeches. Clinton's speeches are analyzed pragmatically to find rhetorical devices, aggressive messages, and rudeness tactics. The research admits several limitations, namely the subjectivity that might lead to interpretive biases in pragma-stylistic analysis. Notwithstanding these drawbacks, this research provides important new information on the aggressive language used by public authorities to shape public opinion.

A political discourse would comprise terminology related to economic development, social welfare, national identity, international relations, and security. The purpose of this study was to determine the function of political discourse and study its role as a mass media that shapes public opinion, and to prove through discourse that political terminology plays a key role in shaping the country's image. Through a qualitative analysis of speeches, official documents, media coverage, and public statements, a dialectical approach was adopted to enhance understanding of the role of language in shaping perceptions of nations in the contemporary global context. The data mainly comprised secondary data, speeches of political leaders, official documents and media reports. Political archives, media reports and newspaper editorials also supplemented the data about Kazakhstan and its historical evolution. The research findings identified patterns, trends, and differences in the portrayal of a country's image and the strategies used to promote or defend it. It also found the nuanced interplay between political terminology, discourse, and the construction of a country's image. The findings would contribute to a deeper understanding of the role of language in shaping perceptions of nations in the contemporary global context.

In this article, I discuss how walking as mapping serves as a method for observing and disrupting spatial geopolitics, opening possibilities for alternative systems of living. I explore three theoretical perspectives--posthumanism, Indigenous and decolonializing theories of land, and Black geography--that, while distinct, nonetheless share some overlapping characteristics: the recognition and contestation of knowledge systems, the turn toward a relational ethics of living, and a call for critical and creative methods of mapping. intervention into existing systems. In the final half of the paper, I consider these orientations and their call for creative and critical methods of intervention as I review my scholarship on walking and how it has served as a form of counterstory mapping.

The field of communication has been working to reconcile its historic omission of race from research (Chakravartty et al., 2018) and pedagogy (Chakravartty & Jackson, 2020). The subfield of political communication has begun this process in its research (Freelon et al., 2023) but has yet to consider the implications of race missing from pedagogy. This essay offers an argument for including race in the political communication course, in the form of more focus on race in course content and more work by scholars of color. We offer reasons for these inclusions, ways for instructors to begin this incorporation, and what considerations instructors must be mindful of throughout the process.

Purpose: This study investigates the relationship between political discussions and ideological composition in the classroom. Design: The effects of class patriotism and within-class differences in it are analysed using the Russian data from the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study. Findings: Students in more patriotic and like-minded classes perceive the classroom climate as more open, but it does not change its effect on knowledge. There is a negative relationship between ideological diversity and civic knowledge. These effects in Russia are neither unique nor the strongest among the ICCS participants. The reality of an open classroom might be far from the idealised notion of balanced deliberation, and its diversity remains a challenge rather than an opportunity. Research limitations and implications: The study makes no claims about the directionality of the relationships due to their correlational nature. More research is needed on the quality of reasoning in social studies classrooms in times of polarisation and political turmoil.

Purpose: This study explores debate seeking and conflict avoidance as dimensions of disagreement orientation, and how factors such as citizenship education and individual background may impact how young people engage in situations with conflicting political perspectives. The aim is to study whether how we facilitate citizenship education may affect young people to be more comfortable with political disagreement. Design/methodology/approach: Multilevel modelling and factor analysis is performed using a survey among a selection of Norwegian fifteen-year-olds. Findings: Citizenship education characteristics impact conflict avoidance but not debate seeking. Debate seeking is rather related to individual background factors such as political interest and attention paid to the news. Finally, the dimensions form basis of a potential typology of young people's disagreement orientation. Research limitations/implications: Further research is needed to establish causality, however the results have implications for the role of disagreement in teacher education and classrooms.

Purpose: The research aimed to critically analyse the changes that have occurred in the core curricula of general education in Poland following the Russo--Ukrainian war from the perspective of the securitisation process. Methodology: The research involved analysing 366 texts spanning various genres. These texts were produced by both securitising actors and recipients of the change. The research employed content analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis, following the approaches of Ruth Wodak and Martin Reisigl. Findings: The research revealed that the securitising actors advocating for changes in the core curricula have been identified as a threat directly linked to the war in Ukraine. However, the discourse surrounding these changes also exhibited several features that indicate a hidden political dimension. Further, the analysis emphasised the use of 'ministryplaining' towards the audience involved in education, who formulate critical remarks.

Purpose: This study investigates teachers' professional judgement about Russia's war on Ukraine as an unplanned, controversial classroom issue. Design: It employs 26 interviews with Russian teachers collected during the invasion's first month. Findings: The analysis identifies six situations and five teaching approaches that emerged in response to these, with varying degrees of student voice and political commitment. The inclusion of student voice is limited by perceived student passivity, lack of skill, and political disagreement with students. Satisfaction with the status quo, lack of social status, and fear of harming students were obstacles to pursuing political commitment. Research implications: By exploring the dynamics of depoliticisation in the classroom, this article adds to the literature on the co-construction of authoritarianism in Russia. It also highlights practices of resistance and 'everyday politics' stemming from teacher professionalism as a function of individual and structural factors.

This research explores the implementation of Arabic language learning at the Maitreechit Withayattan School in Bangkok, Thailand. With a population dominated by a Muslim minority, this research aims to understand the challenges and potential for developing Arabic language education in this context. The research background reflects Thailand's uniqueness as an ASEAN country with a Muslim minority that is recognized and regulated by national law. The focus of the research is on issues of student interest, teaching methods, hidden learning goals, and the role of teachers in the learning process. The research method uses modern ethnographic studies at Maitrechit Wittaayathan School Bangkok. Research findings show that students' low interest is influenced by less innovative teaching methods and a need for more variety in learning. Hidden learning goals, which include students' political aspirations to support the position of Muslims in government, become a complex dynamic in Arabic language learning. The importance of Arabic in the government context was a significant finding, with students being taught that Arabic language skills can provide a competitive advantage in careers in the government sector. Despite challenges regarding student interest, school administrators' high enthusiasm for Arabic creates the potential for solid collaboration between education and religious identity development. Implications for Arabic language education management include the need for more exciting learning strategies, teacher training, and collaboration with external parties to increase the relevance of learning to careers. This research provides in-depth insight into the complex dynamics of Arabic language education in Muslim minority school environments in Thailand. However, it should be acknowledged that the research findings are limited to one school in Bangkok, and generalization of the findings must be done cautiously.

How are Americans' perceptions of their economic lives related to their perceptions of their agency (internal efficacy) and institutional responsiveness (external efficacy) in the political realm? We use the American Voices Project data to listen to such perceptions using in-depth, holistic analysis of a subsample of cases. We find that individuals' understandings of their place in the economy resemble the sense of efficacy they express with respect to politics, with those with extreme economic insecurity talking about politics as a world removed from their own. These views are a stark indicator of the compounding effects of economic and political disaffection.

In this study, since no candidate received more than fifty percent of the votes in the TRNC Presidential election held on October 11, 2020, the election campaign visions of the candidates who made it to the second round and their latest commercials were analyzed using discourse analysis. For this purpose, the political advertising campaign contents of Mustafa Akinci and Ersin Tatar, who made it to the second round of the Presidential election, were examined under the four headings of language clarity and understandability, transmission of political messages, informative content, political ethics and impartiality, which are four items within the scope of educational language in political advertising, and their contribution to the election result was evaluated.

This study explores the potential of a new perspective on research into the impact of higher education on students' civic engagement. We propose shifting from viewing engagement as the key dependent variable to two "fundamental constituents": political interest and agency. Both constituents have been presented as either static or determined entirely by factors external to education, such as maturation, but also as dynamic and affected by various aspects of the educational experience in higher education. Furthermore, as analyses of these effects based on sample means do not account sufficiently for the intersectionality of background variables that define the student experience, we propose that data are explored through cluster analysis. Employing this type of analysis, a case study conducted at a small international liberal arts college in the Netherlands showed four distinctly different patterns in the development of both constituents of civic engagement. Based on further data obtained from the same sample, we offer suggestions for specific foci in further research about the impact of higher education on the development of civic engagement.

This paper presents the findings of a qualitative study about the inclusion of arts-based assessment strategies in a 12th grade Israel education classroom. Students were tasked with producing a political cartoon that demonstrated their understandings of contemporary Israeli society. Data was collected from interviews and students' original artwork. The findings revealed that learning through the arts provided students with opportunities to think about and express their feelings about Israel in aesthetically complex and personal ways. The findings also demonstrated the importance of pre-assessment strategies like frequent exposure to the genre of political cartoons and conferencing before submission.

Recent efforts prohibiting race-related diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives have informed localized public pushback narrating anti-equity campaigns. Emerging research and media accounts have largely focused on adults engaged with or against these efforts, with less attention on youth and their perceptions of these campaigns. To center youth voice, we analyzed 224 student newspaper articles published in Carmel, Indiana and Loudoun County, Virginia--two sites replete with localized contestations of equity reform. Using narrative policy analysis and approaches to counter-narratives, findings demonstrate youths' roles as engaged policy actors as student journalists highlighted forms of political engagement and action in their local contexts. We include recommendations for school leaders and policymakers to promote youth voice and engagement in education governance.

In the United States and elsewhere, risk assessment algorithms are being used to help inform criminal justice decision-makers. A common intent is to forecast an offender's "future dangerousness." Such algorithms have been correctly criticized for potential unfairness, and there is an active cottage industry trying to make repairs. In this paper, we use counterfactual reasoning to consider the prospects for improved fairness when members of a disadvantaged class are treated by a risk algorithm as if they are members of an advantaged class. We combine a machine learning classifier trained in a novel manner with an optimal transport adjustment for the relevant joint probability distributions, which together provide a constructive response to claims of bias-in-bias-out. A key distinction is made between fairness claims that are empirically testable and fairness claims that are not. We then use confusion tables and conformal prediction sets to evaluate achieved fairness for estimated risk. Our data are a random sample of 300,000 offenders at their arraignments for a large metropolitan area in the United States during which decisions to release or detain are made. We show that substantial improvement in fairness can be achieved consistently with a Pareto improvement for legally protected classes.

Policy evaluation studies, which assess the effect of an intervention, face statistical challenges: in real-world settings treatments are not randomly assigned and the analysis might be complicated by the presence of interference among units. Researchers have started to develop methods that allow to manage spillovers in observational studies; recent works focus primarily on binary treatments. However, many studies deal with more complex interventions. For instance, in political science, evaluating the impact of policies implemented by administrative entities often implies a multi-valued approach, as a policy towards a specific issue operates at many levels and can be defined along multiple dimensions. In this work, we extend the statistical framework about causal inference under network interference in observational studies, allowing for a multi-valued individual treatment and an interference structure shaped by a weighted network. The estimation strategy relies on a joint multiple generalized propensity score and allows one to estimate direct effects, controlling for both individual and network covariates. We follow this methodology to analyze the impact of the national immigration policy on the crime rate, analyzing data of 22 OECD countries over a thirty-years time frame. We define a multi-valued characterization of political attitude towards migrants and we assume that the extent to which each country can be influenced by another country is modeled by an indicator, summarizing their cultural and geographical proximity. Results suggest that implementing a highly restrictive immigration policy leads to an increase of the crime rate and the estimated effect is larger if we account for interference.

The Humanities Institute of Universidad Panamericana, Guadalajara (Mexico), has carefully crafted its own reading canon by incorporating in to its course design a learning outcomes framework that mirrors its Christian institutional mission. The paper presents an overview of this framework and of its implementation within the University's Gen Ed reading canon selection. It uses an excerpt of Bartolomé de las Casas' "Apology" as a case example of the practice. This text is used within a course of introductory Ethics delivered to 30 different student groups per year. The criteria used in its selection and suggested practices are detailed. Overall, the text shows the value of a learning outcomes approach to text selection in a core-text-based course.

Recess, the bus ride home, the school corridor and other grey areas are ambiguous for both teachers and students and fall under less institutional regulation. The purpose of this study was to examine the ways teachers would react when they encounter students' informal political comments in the grey areas. We presented vignettes to 71 Palestinian teachers and 64 Jewish teachers in Israel and asked them what they would have done in a similar situation in their classroom. Teachers' reactions were on a continuum ranging from avoidance and passivity to engaging in multidimensional mediation. Differences between Jewish and Palestinian teachers were found, and they reflect power relations between the Jewish majority and the Palestinian minority, which involve Palestinian teachers being more reluctant to engage in controversial public issues due to their minority status.

Academic freedom constitutes an integral part of traditional university values that ensure the proper functioning of universities in pursuing truth and inculcating civic values. In a globalized world where Higher Education (HE) policy is the result of the interaction of local, national, and international levels, the positions of international organizations on questions of academic freedoms deem significant. Within global discourses on HE, literature contrasts the World Bank's human capitalist to UNESCO's humanistic approach. Through Foucauldian Discourse Analysis of both organizations' documents, the paper presented a genealogical analysis of academic freedom that challenged the existence of static, opposite, and binary positions. Transformations, ruptures, juxtapositions as well as gaps, limits, and exclusions were detected within and across International Organizations' discourses. Juxtaposition of economic and humanistic rationales as well as academic freedom protection and neoliberal policy interventions have muted discursive conflicts and inherent contradictions. The failure of UNESCO to address contemporary threats to academic freedom emerged from the appearance of neoliberal transnational governmentality as an inevitable social regularity that delimits what can be said and cannot be said about academic freedom. Through coercive funding schemes and technologies of differentiation, surveillance, and monitoring, the WB created the space for such transnational governmentality, and placed faculty members under its gaze resulting in undermining academic freedoms and de-professionalization of academics.

Early childhood education (ECE) teachers have expressed being silenced, indicating their responses to everyday issues of political concern may be hidden. This voicelessness underscores the importance of examining strategies and spaces that incite ECE teachers to vocalise their political dialogues. The pandemic, as a crisis event, within Victoria, Australia, during 2020 offers an unrivalled viewing of such entreaties. Posing unique and unusual dangers and opportunities, the early days of the pandemic serve as an entry point to viewing the strategies and spaces utilised by teachers during marked political crisis. Considering these pandemic dangers, this study undertakes a uniquely complex and opportunistic investigation into the political thoughts, ideas, and voices of ECE teachers within these coordinates, which may be of use for other community members beyond these dimensions. Comprising a larger doctoral study, teachers' posts within a closed ECE Facebook group were analysed against Bakhtinian crisis chronotopes and carnivalesque responses. Insights infer the pandemic crisis incited teachers' political dialogues to problematise their historical and ongoing issues. Doing so fostered a supportive peer network, opening up and renewing narratives from within the sector. Provocations to arise include the potential of crisis, the ability of laughter to empower teachers to speak up and have voice, as well as creating spaces for political dialogue and activism within the sector.

Democracy is increasingly being challenged, by disengagement and by anti-pluralist movements (Levitsky and Ziblatt in How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future, Viking, New York, 2018; Wikforss in "Därför demokrati. Om kunskapen och folkstyret" [Because of this, democracy. On knowledge and people's rule] Fri Tanke, 2021; Svolik et al. in J Democr 34(1):5-20, 2023). This article draws upon a theoretical discussion about democracy, pluralism, and threats to democracy. Departing from Dewey, Laclau, Mouffe, Young and Allen, we address democracy as an ideology that centers around pluralism, or an ever-increasing inclusion of voices from the margins as its goal. We argue that perceiving democracy pedagogically as a pluralistic ideology would support students' democratic citizenship and equip them for a world where threats to democracy are being reported. Employing a case study on Finnish social studies textbooks, we analyze how democracy as well as threats to democracy are discursively portrayed. Our study shows that the textbooks present democracy as predominantly institutional and static. We also find that while disengagement is portrayed as a problem for democracy, anti-pluralist movements are generally not referred to as a threat. Additionally, we examine a discourse in the textbooks that connects freedom of speech with democracy in a way that favors a multitude of opinions, even antidemocratic ones, over creating space for marginalized voices. Drawing on the theoretical discussion and the results of the analysis, we argue that a focus on pluralism as the core of democracy makes the opposition between restricting hate speech and advocating for democracy redundant.

Research consistently shows that parents' educational attainment is associated with their children's level of political interest. The life stage when this relationship is established and grows has been identified to be between the ages of 10 and 16. This paper identifies the social class-based practices that drive the influence of parental education on the development of political interest among early adolescents and explains why the social gap grows at this point. The paper draws on two panel surveys, the Citizenship Education Longitudinal Study and the Understanding Society Youth Survey, and applies latent growth curve modelling and path analysis. The findings show that university-educated parents influence the "change" in political interest of their children in early adolescence by raising their educational aspirations, enabling their access to political activities in school, choosing the school for their children, taking their children to museums and art galleries and influencing their children's friendship groups.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas attacked Israel, igniting the 2023 War in Israel and Palestine. As human rights atrocities unfold, the war has sparked contentious political debate and civil discourse. Given their positions of authority, university presidents and chancellors have weighed in on the conflict through their public statements, while seeking to support their campus community members in the process. This research employs thematic discourse analysis to evaluate presidential statements to (1) understand how leaders position their institutions amidst strife and (2) identify who university leaders support in the process. By reviewing the attributes and deficits embedded within presidential statements, this research attempts to provide strategies and recommendations for university leaders to exercise inclusive practices during crises.

Latinx youth are often engaged in critical action to transform social injustices, yet we know little about the wellbeing of Latinx youth activists. This study draws on critical ethnographic research to understand the multidimensions of wellbeing that Latinx youth experienced when they engaged in critical action toward anti-immigrant politics during the Trump Era. Data collected through open-ended interviews with Latinx youth who participated in social protests revealed that (a) concepts of wellbeing need to be extensively explored for a more nuanced understanding of its characteristics, and (b) when youth engage in critical action, they experience physical and socioemotional wellbeing in distinct ways. This research contributes to the critical consciousness and wellbeing scholarship by (1) adding to the dearth of research on Latinx youth physical wellbeing and critical action, (2) theorizing nuances of physical, mental, and socioemotional wellbeing as simultaneously present during critical action, and (3) centering the voices and experiences of Latinx youth, specifically Latina youth, who have historically been omitted from the literature.

When teachers and school staff work together, it inevitably involves issues of power, influence, diplomacy, and cooperation; this has been termed "micropolitics," and the ability to read situations with micropolitics in mind has been identified as "micropolitical literacy." The purpose of this year-long case study was to explore one beginning music teacher's micropolitical literacy development with explicit connections to the framework put forth by Kelchtermans and Ballet. The research questions were (1) How does the participant describe their micropolitical understanding? (2) How does the participant describe their micropolitical strategies? and (3) How does the participant feel about their micropolitical literacy? Qualitative analysis of interview transcripts suggested themes aligned with the theoretical framework's aspects of know (understanding), do (strategies), and feel (experiential). The participant's knowledge development focused on power dynamics, structures, and relationships. Strategies included gaining clout and reframing situations. Furthermore, the participant's experience of micropolitical literacy development was fraught with negative emotions and uncertainty. Overall, literacy development was stymied by systemic challenges in the district.

The main purpose of this research was to investigate the phenomenon of shadow education in Greece. In this research, the quantitative research method is combined with the qualitative method. The results showed that the liberalization of education during the recent decades was accurately implemented in the institution of shadow education. Knowledge is becoming a commercialized product and the choice for private education is made through private-financial criteria. Restrictive and maladjusted educational policies and decisions relating to individuals' needs support the development of this institution, highlight the exchange value of academic credentials of the individual, and exacerbate social inequalities.

In this study, I explore the discourse surrounding parental rights in U.S. public schools, with Virginia as a focal point. Analyzing two sets of model policies regarding the treatment of transgender students--one established under a Democratic governor and another implemented following the election of a Republican candidate championing parental rights--this research employs qualitative content analysis to gain insight into the contemporary parental rights movement in educational settings. Five key themes emerged: 1. Reliance on expert opinions; 2. Variation in depth and breadth of information within policies; 3. Transgender student inclusion in policies; 4. Student and parent focus imbalance; and 5. Adherence to legal intent. The findings indicate a shift in emphasis from addressing gender identity concerns to prioritizing parental rights, with ramifications for the broader political landscape. This research enriches the ongoing dialogue on the role of parents in education and the consequences of the conservative parental rights movement for educational policy.

Starting and finishing with the words of Sally Lubeck, one of the founders of RECE, this article locates early childhood education, all education, in conditions of polycrisis, conditions that are extremely dangerous but offer a glimmer of hope by making transformative change more possible. The article argues that such change calls for re-thinking, re-conceptualising and re-forming (early childhood) education; and, with a focus on the systemic crisis of neoliberalism, explores what this might mean, starting from a re-politicisation of early childhood education, all education, leading to political questions and political choices.

Politics and science are inextricably connected, particularly in relation to the climate emergency and other environmental crises, yet science education is an often overlooked site for engaging with the political dimensions of environmental issues. This study examines how science teachers in England experience politics--specifically political participation--in relation to the environment in school science, against a background of increased obstruction in civic space. The study draws on an analysis of theoretically informed in-depth interviews with eleven science teachers about their experiences of political participation in relation to environmental issues. We find that politics enters the science classroom primarily through informal conversations initiated by students rather than planned by teachers. When planned for, the emphasis is on individual, latent-political (civic) engagement rather than manifest political participation. We argue that this is a symptom of the post-political condition and call for a more enabling environment for discussing the strengths and limitations of different forms of political participation in school science.

This teaching case explores the complexities of teaching students about race and racism, a struggle complicated by political efforts to restrict the discussion of critical educational theories. It emphasizes the political ideologies that faculty must consider as they teach in an academic setting. The case narrative illuminates the complexity of diverse and divisive political ideologies that veer from scholarship into emotion. This case offers questions for further reflection on solutions to these challenges.

Universities in many liberal democracies, such as the US, the UK, or Germany, grapple with a pivotal question: how much room should be given to controversial utterances? On the one side, there are those who advocate for limiting permissible speech on campus to create a safe environment for a diverse student body and counter the mainstreaming of extremist views, particularly by right-wing populists. On the other side, concerns arise about stifling the free exchange of ideas and creating an atmosphere of fear and censorship. The debate is further complicated by participants' occasional uncertainties about the legal norms relevant in the given context, such as when freedom of speech is an issue and when it is not. This paper addresses the question of whether universities should allow actors with primarily political (as opposed to scholarly) agendas to speak on campus. Focusing on German universities, we begin by discussing some of the potentially relevant legal norms. We then propose shifting emphasis from "whether" we should make room for public political discussions on campus to "how" such events must be organized so that they deliver the goods that their advocates emphasize while avoiding the dangers of which critics warn. Drawing on conflict management literature concerned with process design, we make several practical suggestions on how to organize an event that brings political discourse to the university campus without causing harm.

The transformation of higher education provision by neoliberal values has been well documented. However, recent criticisms and even attacks upon higher education indicate a new politics extending beyond neoliberalism. This article draws on the sociology of conventions to unpick the distinctions at work in these new criticisms of universities. By distinguishing between values based in the market world, industrial world and civic world, we elaborate the political basis of recent value controversies around higher education (HE), reflected in policy and rhetoric. Looking to reject aspects of the neoliberal HE model, some critics have sought to revalue higher education upon productivist values, attacking universities for failing to generate 'use' value for students and society. Populist actors have launched stronger criticisms, aiming to revalue higher education on nationalistic and traditional values. This has generated the devaluation of higher education in national public spheres. As higher education has expanded globally, this new politics emerges from conflicts within and between conservative and liberal elites. Trends in Hungary and Brazil indicate the successes and failures of populist attacks on universities. Trends in the United Kingdom and Australia reflect productivist revaluations of market-based HE. Elite revaluation and devaluation is producing an emerging new global politics of HE.