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The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the ways in which attention to programmatic vision and coherence – rather than foci on individual courses – might advance the work of justice-oriented, critical English education in important ways. The authors propose that consciously attending to the work of English education on the programmatic level can better enable English educators to cultivate democracy-sustaining dispositions in preservice teachers. Using Grossman et al.’s (2008) definition of “programmatic coherence”, the authors illustrate how one interdepartmental partnership is working to create a shared programmatic vision for English education.

Drawing on Cornel West’s call for the development of a three-piece democratic armor – Socratic questioning, prophetic witness and tragicomic hope – the authors describe their programmatic vision for cultivating democracy-sustaining dispositions in preservice teachers. They show how this shared vision constitutes the foundation for the organization, purpose and sequence of the four-semester cohort program. Finally, the authors describe how this vision helps facilitate meaningful and purposeful symbiosis between field experiences and university coursework.

In an effort to promote replicability regarding programmatic coherence, the authors share structural aspects of their program as well as pose generative questions for colleagues who are interested in approaching the work of critical, democratic English education from the programmatic level.

Addressing the challenges of teacher preparation – especially in this polarized and pitched historical moment – requires shifting the focus from individual courses to a more expansive view that might enable English educators to consider how courses within a program might collectively advance a particular vision of critical and democratic English education.

This chapter uses Dewey’s seminal Democracy and Education (1916) as a key text to investigate the concept of the democratic curriculum. I argue that a democratic curriculum is one where a series of educational innovations or procedures are followed. These are as follows: a removal of the existing division between ‘academic’ and ‘vocational’ education; pedagogy in the form of discussion and dialogue; negotiation of curriculum aims and objectives with students and other local stakeholders. The focus of attention will be on the English school curriculum (both primary and secondary), especially concerning the National Curriculum, and the debate over ‘standards’ and testing. A tentative link between the democratic curriculum and increased student motivation and participation is made.

This study aims to draw from overlapping scholarship in critical policy studies and governmentality studies to examine how recent standards-based education policies mark a pivotal shift in the aims and governance of English education.

The author traces this shift through a comparative analysis of the past two standards projects in the USA: the 1996 IRA/NCTE Standards for the English Language Arts and the 2010 Common Core State Standards.

An analysis of the standards’ comparative development processes, educational aims and governmentalities exemplifies a global shift toward new policy networks, neoliberal imaginaries and the interrelated policy technologies of managerialism, performativity and free markets.

This paper hopes to prompt more critical, reflexive and strategic stances towards standardization and the ways in which global education policies seek to reshape subject English and the future of teaching and teacher education.

Post-apartheid South Africa has some of the highest educational and economic disparities in the world. Taylor Salisbury’s (2016) analysis of the National Income Dynamics Study reveals that South Africa’s unequal distributions of income and wealth by race are likely to worsen over time, with Africans the most disenfranchised by low-quality education and low monthly earnings. What is missing from Salisbury’s discussion is that definitions of quality education are analogous to Western democracy, epistemologies, and curriculum. Township schools where most African children and youth attend do not draw upon African epistemologies, values, and languages to support the development of Africans’ productive capacities. Increasingly, capacities are only considered “productive” if they align with modernity and values of the labor market. In this chapter, I argue that South Africa is schooling inequality through the exclusion of African epistemological traditions and the inclusion of mainly Western liberal principles. The notion of divided (epistemological) space – separate, distinct, and apportioned – is examined from the research data I collected with African (in this case Xhosa) primary and secondary students, teachers, and principals in South Africa’s longest-standing township. The intent is to orient the field of comparative and international education to critically problematize discourse that identifies equality as central to social change but that ignores indigenous constructions of democracy informed by different epistemological traditions. This work builds on the growing argument about the need for comparative educators to learn from indigenous perspectives (Freeman, 2004), indigenous knowledge systems (Kubow, 2007), and different educational traditions for comparative study (Assié-Lumumba, 2017).

This book is a policy proposal aimed at the democratic left. It is concerned with gradual but radical reform of the socio‐economic system. An integrated policy of industrial and economic democracy, which centres around the establishment of a new sector of employee‐controlled enterprises, is presented. The proposal would retain the mix‐ed economy, but transform it into a much better “mixture”, with increased employee‐power in all sectors. While there is much of enduring value in our liberal western way of life, gross inequalities of wealth and power persist in our society.

The recent trend in globalization has had a positive impact on international education, in that it has compelled many societies to transcend national boundaries in an effort to exchange knowledge and expertize in teaching, curriculum and education policy. The practice of cultural borrowing and lending, in which one country adopts or borrows policies and practices from another, is a significant feature of international education, and has been accelerated by these globalizing trends. According to Tilly, internationalization of “capital, trade, industrial organization, communications, political institutions, science, disease, atmospheric pollution, vindictive violence, and organized crime has been producing a net movement toward globalization since the middle of the twentieth century” (Tilly, 2004, p. 13). In the area of international education, an intensification in international communication and cooperation has had a positive impact on educational research, planning and policy development (Schriewer & Martinez, 2004), and may, as some have argued, brought about a convergence of patterns in the organization of education across national boundaries. Nevertheless, globalization in education carries with it the potential to undermine developing and transitional societies in their efforts to maintain indigenous approaches to educating future citizens – a potential that may contribute to the “clash of localities” that is inherent in the globalization process, in which local tradition is frequently at odds with international trends (Mitter, 2001). A measured approach to transnational projects in education development will ensure that the process of cultural borrowing does not lead to the inadvertent export of ideas and values that are at variance with a given country's social, political and historical context, while simultaneously allowing for knowledge transfer across borders. Cultural borrowing is a necessary element in the transfer process, as it may provide the transitioning society with a model in the form of a curriculum, set of standards, or practices. However, as Dewey points out in Democracy and Education, any model or “ideal” must be adapted to meet the needs of the local context:We cannot set up, out of our heads, something we regard as an ideal society. We must base our conception upon societies which actually exist, in order to have any assurance that our ideal is a practicable one. But, as we have just seen, the ideal cannot simply repeat the traits which are actually found. The problem is to extract the desirable traits of forms of community life which actually exist, and employ them to criticize undesirable features and suggest improvement. (Dewey, 1997, p. 45)

This research examines higher education developments within transitory democratic spaces, using Tunisia as a case study. A document analysis of higher education policies in Tunisia shows a shift from an internal process of Tunisification to a focus on prescriptive global educational agendas. In examining higher education reforms during the past three decades in Tunisia, we attempt to understand the role of higher education in aiding and abiding the “Arab democracy deficit” through policies imposed upon the system through strict state intervention. We describe how higher education structures came to be, how policies were created, and detail how the issues and challenges stemming from higher education helped spread sentiments for the Tunisian Jasmine Revolution. Finally, we examine a lack of convergence, which enabled students to galvanize to overthrow a government criticized for its corruption and policy failures.

Investigates the importance of English language sources of Friedrich Theodor Althoff (1839‐1908), a German of great influence both in his own country and, indirectly, in the United States. Explores some measures of his influence in education and international understanding. Examines a wide variety of sources. Explains how it could happen that an influential person would end up in intellectual history with almost no recognition. Challenges several conventional assessments. Althoff′s most important contributions are in print and more almost certainly exist in university archives, but the material is scattered and unorganized. Because we do not yet have the full story of this remarkable and complex man, firm conclusions about his influence are not yet possible.

Through political decisions – in the North mostly willed decisions, in the South decisions forced on them by monetary institutions in the North – governments have dismantled national controls with capital movements, profits and foreign investments. By this willed or enforced political choice – the consequences of which has seldom been spelled out to the electorates – political leaders have removed those legal and administrative tools which might have protected local economic and social systems. Directed by Western interests the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have used and continue to use their creditor powers to pressure first the poor debtor countries of the South and then the collapsing members of the former Soviet Union to turn their own battered economies into the same kind of unrestricted markets. Last but not the least the World Trade Organization (WTO) has become a vehicle for assuring that practically the whole world is opened for the unhindered operations of private capital. This ideology, which I here term globalization, leads to a democratic deficit, increases income differences and forces new groups into poverty.

A dialogic approach to Ontario, Canada policy development was utilized to collaboratively re-conceptualize provincial Special Education qualification courses for teachers. The stories, perspectives and lived experiences of teachers, principals, supervisory officers, parents, school board special services personnel, students, and the public were included as essential voices and information sources within policy development conversations. These narratives of experience revealed the forms of knowledge, skills, commitments, and ethical stance necessary for teachers to support students with diverse and unique learning needs today and in the future. The transformative nature of narrative dialogue to enlighten, deepen understanding, and alter perspectives was illuminated. The policy development processes used in this publicly shared educational initiative served as a model of democratic dialogue. The inclusive and dialogic methods employed to collectively re-conceptualize special education courses illustrate an innovative framework for developing policies governing the public good. This model of democratic dialogue holds considerable promise for the future of teacher education policy and practice.