Teachers' unions have long been controversial and divisive organizations, but criticism and distrust of them may be at an all-time high. This volume considers the prevailing assumption that unions successfully block change in education because they are primarily motivated to protect members' interests. It challenges the conceptualization of teacher union motivation and provides a more nuanced account of unions' interests, power and impact.

Through a series of international cases from the United States, Finland and the Canton of Zurich, this volume examines the hot-button issue of...

This book investigates the effects of social and political change on the provision of primary education in post-communist and post-war contexts. Focusing on Bosnia and Herzegovina, the author considers educational developments in post-communist countries of central and Eastern Europe, the effects of the civil conflict that occurred 1992-95 and the consequences of the peace settlement.

In order to present a picture of the development of primary education in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the importance of political ideology on education provision, chapters discuss instances of the...

Local Citizenship in the Global Arena: educating for community participation and change proposes a reconsideration of both citizenship and citizenship education, moving away equally from prevailing global citizenship and fundamental British values approaches towards a curriculum for education that is essentially about creating cosmopolitan, included and inclusive, politically-engaged citizens of communities local, national and global.

Recent events have brought equality, voice and identity into fresh focus. While isolationism is futile, increased access to...

Shakespeare is revered as the greatest writer in the English language, yet education reform in the English-speaking world is informed primarily by the market order, rather than the kind of humanism we might associate with Shakespeare. By considering Shakespeare s dramatisation of the principles that inform neoliberalism, this book makes an important contribution to the debate on the moral failure of the market mechanism in schools and higher education systems that have adopted neoliberal policy.

The utility of Shakespeare s plays as a means to explore our present socio-economic...

As South Africa transitioned from apartheid to democracy, changes in the political landscape, as well as educational agendas and discourse on both a national and international level, shaped successive waves of curriculum reform over a relatively short period of time. Using South Africa as a germane example of how curriculum and pedagogy can interact and affect educational outcomes, Pedagogy in Poverty explores the potential of curricula to improve education in developing and emerging economies worldwide, and, ultimately, to reduce inequality.　

Incorporating detailed,...

Education and Political Subjectivities in Neoliberal Times and Places investigates the conditions and possibilities for political subjectivities to emerge in international educational contexts, where neoliberal norms are repeated, performed and transformed. Through demonstrating the possibility of political subjectivities, this book argues that neoliberalism should neither be considered post-political, nor a natural law by which educational practices have to abide.

This book considers how political subjectivities are made possible in education in spite of dominant...

As Asian education systems increasingly take on a stronger presence on the global educational landscape, of special interest is an understanding of the ways in which many of these states direct their schools towards higher achievement. What is missing, however, are accounts that take seriously the particular construction of the strong, developmental state witnessed across many Asian societies, and that seek to understand the politics and possibilities of curriculum change vis a vis precisely the dominance of such a state.

By engaging in analyses based on some of the best current social...

Middle-class School Choice in Urban Spaces examines government-funded public schools from a range of perspectives and scholarship in order to examine the historical, political and economic conditions of public schooling within a globalized, post-welfare context. In this book, Rowe argues that post-welfare policy conditions are detrimental to government-funded public schools, as they engender consistent pressure in rearticulating the public school in alignment with the market, produce tensions in serving the more historical conceptualizations of public schooling, and are preoccupied...

Emerging from a radical pedagogical tradition, Education and the Production of Space deepens and extends Henri Lefebvre s insights on revolutionary praxis by revealing the intimate relationship between education and the production of space. Synthesizing educational theory, Marxist theory, and critical geography, the book articulates a revolutionary political pedagogy, one that emerges as a break from within and against critical pedagogy. Ford investigates the role of space in the context of emerging social movements and urban rebellions, with a focus on the Baltimore Rebellion of...