Search Results (427)

The terms democracy and the pedagogy of the possible name an approach imagining schools as sites where more just, inclusive and participatory collective life can be practised, particularly in early childhood. The entry brings three traditions into dialogue. (a) Critical pedagogy, particularly in its post-structuralist, Foucauldian, and post-Marxist readings, engages with Rancièrian critiques of pedagogical mastery and offers a vocabulary for examining how power, knowledge, subjectivity, and hegemony are produced and contested within educational life. (b) Freinet pedagogy, extended through Fernand Oury’s Institutional Pedagogy, contributes a politically grounded, practice-first repertoire of cooperative techniques, classroom institutions, and democratic forms of organisation. (c) Educational commons approaches frame knowledge, space, time, and pedagogical relations as shared goods, collectively produced, cared for, and democratically governed by a community of teachers, children, and families. In this perspective, the child is approached as a commoner and agent in the here and now. The educator, in turn, is understood as a fellow commoner and reflexive practitioner, capable of acting beyond the logics of both the state and the market. Together, they co-shape the everyday life of education. Eight shared dimensions, namely the relational, the political, praxis, agency, anti-enclosure, prefiguration, community, and the schoolized mind, traverse all three traditions, with care as their transversal thread. The framework is conceived as a hospitable theoretical and practical space, not as a self-contained doctrine. It is heuristic in orientation, bringing these traditions into conversation because each contributes a complementary layer to democratic educational life. Full article

This article describes the use of dialogue, through the format of critical conversations, as a creative and reflective anti-racist tool to develop understanding of departmental values of anti-racism, equity and social justice with colleagues across academic, technical, and leadership roles. The project focused on the development and facilitation of spaces for dialogue between staff members employed in an education department in a university in a city in the Southwest of England. Making use of concepts from Smith and Lander’s critical pedagogy and critical race theory as well as philosophy for children (P4C), we developed a framework used by adult participants to encourage the development of racial literacy through reflexive practice. More than seventy staff members were invited to attend five sessions over a six-month period. During each session, staff members were given pre-prepared stimuli designed to encourage ‘epistemological shudders’ that stimulate dialogue in relation to professional roles and responsibilities of anti-racism, equity and social justice within our working context. Each session was facilitated by two colleagues, given the agency to make use of the stimuli within the sessions in any way they chose, together with their participants. Feedback from each session was non-mandatory and informal. In this article, we capture our reflections on the processes of developing and adapting P4C within a university education department. We believe that this evolving model acts as a valuable tool for dialogues, particularly when attempting to encourage discussion of topics perceived as providing professional risk due to their sensitive and controversial status within education and more broadly. Full article

This article develops a symbolic hermeneutic framework for interpreting contemporary socio-educational phenomena within the horizon of decolonial thought and Liberation Theology. It begins from the assumption that symbols are not merely decorative forms of representation but fundamental structures of meaning that shape both individual experience and collective life, especially through their educational effects. From this perspective, the article examines how the symbols circulating in social communication reveal the ideological underpinnings of imagination, authority, exclusion, and resistance. The essay then places this symbolic analysis in dialog with decolonial theory, arguing that the enduring epistemological legacy of colonialism continues to organize hegemonic forms of knowledge, subjectivity, and power. Particular attention is devoted to the concept of the frontier, first understood as a modern device of exclusion and then reinterpreted as a space of epistemic resistance, ethical encounter, and democratic confrontation among differences. The discussion further engages key authors of Liberation Theology and the philosophy of liberation—especially Gustavo Gutiérrez, Leonardo Boff, Enrique Dussel, and Paulo Freire—in order to show how religious discourse and pedagogical practice intersect in processes of emancipation. Methodologically, the study adopts a qualitative, interpretative approach grounded in philosophical hermeneutics and critical conceptual analysis. It reconstructs and compares major theoretical positions rather than presenting empirical data. The article argues that the integration of symbolic hermeneutics, decolonial thought, and liberationist theology offers an original framework for rethinking education as a transformative practice grounded in ethical responsibility toward the Other. By bringing the concepts of frontier, sentipensamiento, communality, and pluriverse into a single analytical constellation, the paper contributes to current debates in religious studies, critical pedagogy, and epistemic justice. In the context of contemporary global crises—migration, ecological devastation, social fragmentation, and the weakening of democratic participation—it proposes a renewed role for religion as a critical and generative force capable of opening new educational spaces for dialogue, liberation, and the reconfiguration of knowledge. Full article

Anthropocene pressures underscore that human well-being and societal resilience depend on both biodiversity and geodiversity, the latter providing the abiotic foundation of Earth’s life-support systems. Despite increasing emphasis on systems thinking, participation, and action, Environmental Education and Education for Sustainable Development often underrepresent this abiotic dimension and leave ethical commitments insufficiently articulated. Addressing these gaps, this concept paper develops a convergence framework that integrates geoethics, geoeducation, and geoenvironmental education within the broader domains of EE and ESD. Drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship, geoethics is positioned as a normative lens that clarifies principles for responsible human–Earth relations, including responsibility, justice, respect for Earth processes, transparency in science communication, prudent resource use, and risk-aware decision-making. Geoeducation is conceptualized as the pedagogical vehicle through which these values are translated into competencies such as geoliteracy, systems thinking, critical reflection, ethical deliberation, and evidence-informed action, while geoenvironmental education provides the integrative content domain linking biotic, abiotic, and cultural dimensions. Place-based learning functions as the primary implementation pathway, with protected landscapes and UNESCO Global Geoparks serving as exemplary “living laboratories” where geoconservation, education, and sustainable development are co-produced with local communities. The paper advances three interrelated contributions: (a) a conceptual convergence framework, (b) an operational definition of geoethical awareness, and (c) a programmatic model linking geoethical values to competencies, pedagogies, indicators, and place-based implementation strategies. Operationalized through a Theory of Change and a translation matrix connecting principles to educational outcomes, the framework provides a foundation for future empirical research, curriculum development, teacher education, and the cultivation of geo-citizenship, stewardship, and more resilient human–Earth relationships. Full article

Students’ agency and assets are increasingly recognized as central to advancing equitable educational opportunities and fostering a sense of community belonging in graduate STEMM education. However, a key question remains: where and how can students’ assets and agency be translated into forms of institutional engagement and change? We argue that course innovation and proactive pedagogy are critical sites for creating such opportunities. This article presents a case study of the design and implementation of a graduate-level JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) course. Drawing on retrospective course records from 2021 to 2025, this study demonstrates how course innovation and proactive pedagogy can foster community building while bridging students’ knowledge and skill development to institutional engagement. Within this course, proactivity, understood as a future-oriented and intentional process, emerged as a shared theme within major domains of the course design and implementation: (1) application process, (2) interdisciplinary collaboration and community building, (3) mentoring circles, (4) evaluation, and (5) supported capstone projects that help learners practice navigating institutions and leading change with the community. The course creates opportunities for institutional change, positions students as partners in reform, and translates their assets and insights into sustained institutional practices. By making the “how” of institutional change visible, this case offers generalizable, actionable design principles for curriculum reform in graduate STEMM education. Full article

Questioning is widely recognised as a key dimension of learning in science education, yet learner questioning has often been treated as a secondary aspect of classroom participation rather than as a central pedagogical and epistemic practice. This article offers a conceptual examination of questioning in relation to science education for sustainability, informed by a critical interpretive engagement with literature on questioning, participation, classroom dialogue, engagement, and science education. It argues that science education for sustainability requires more than the transmission of scientific knowledge, calling instead for pedagogical spaces in which learners can engage with complexity, uncertainty, interpretation, and the ethical and social dimensions of socio-scientific issues. The article’s main contribution lies in repositioning learner questioning as a central condition of science education for sustainability and in showing that questioning is shaped not only by knowledge and motivation, but also by participation, hesitation, silence, and broader dynamics of voice, legitimacy, and power. In this perspective, fostering questioning becomes essential to more inclusive, dialogic, reflexive, and transformative approaches to science education for sustainability. The article further argues that fostering questioning in this way contributes directly to the educational ambitions embedded in SDG 4, SDG 13, and SDG 16—making questioning-centred pedagogy not merely a methodological choice, but a condition for more democratic, just, and transformative science education for sustainable development. Full article

This paper reports on research examining how teachers of color operationalize transformative leadership through their enactment of culturally relevant teacher leadership. in four midwestern urban schools. The authors have documented the ways in which these teacher leaders: (a) frame their purpose in terms of effecting deep and equitable change; (b) disrupt deficit perspectives by challenging and reframing racialized low expectations; (c) articulate a focus on education as emancipatory, emphasizing student learning opportunities as well as community development and uplift; (d) balance the need to critique and disrupt problematic practices while respecting and supporting teachers, and encouraging change; and (e) demonstrate moral courage in the face of increasingly oppressive political environments. Drawing from a larger study on the development of culturally relevant instructional leadership data included observations, three-part long-form interviews, and relevant documents. The results document how participants enacted transformative leadership through their efforts to develop and advocate for culturally competent, academically rigorous, and critically conscious pedagogy through structural changes in their buildings and among the teachers in their charge. The discussion accounts for how transformative teacher leaders navigate (or leverage) obstacles and supports to influence organizational processes from their various positions. Full article

School physical education (PE) has often relied on linear progressions in which teachers demonstrate, pupils practise prescribed techniques, and achievement is judged through visible reproduction of preferred movement forms. Non-linear pedagogy (NLP) and the constraints-led approach (CLA) offer an alternative ecological-dynamics rationale for supporting pupils’ integral development, including motor competence, adaptable movement capability, and dispositions for lifelong physical activity and physical literacy. However, existing review work has not sufficiently explained why principled NLP/CLA designs remain unevenly enacted across ordinary school PE systems. We conducted a theory-informed interpretive synthesis drawing on critical interpretive synthesis and thematic synthesis. A structured English-language search of ERIC, SPORTDiscus, Scopus, and Google Scholar (2010–2025) was combined with title-and-abstract screening, full-text assessment, backward and forward citation chaining, and purposive retention of foundational or Singapore-context records, and reporting was strengthened through PRISMA-like transparency aids adapted to interpretive synthesis. The final coded corpus comprised 36 included sources: 9 empirical studies, 3 reviews, 9 conceptual or practitioner texts, 6 theoretical or critical sources, 4 review-method papers, and 5 Singapore policy, context, or professional-learning documents used as an illustrative policy lens. Through iterative coding, descriptive theme development, and analytical integration, we identified six coherence domains shaping enactment: teacher beliefs and knowledge; curriculum and lesson structure; assessment and accountability; systemic and resource constraints; professional development ecosystems; and stakeholder and cultural factors. These domains informed a Systemic Coherence Framework spanning micro, meso, and macro levels. The synthesis suggests that assessment coherence may be a high-leverage condition because it links curriculum legitimacy, reporting, and teacher defensibility, but its comparative influence across domains remains a hypothesis for future empirical testing. The framework is offered as an analytic heuristic rather than a prescriptive model and is intended to help researchers, teacher educators, school leaders, and policy actors diagnose where curriculum intent, assessment language, professional learning, and organisational routines support or inhibit ecologically informed practice. Full article

Preparing learners for participation in global communication requires alignment with broader curricular frameworks, yet meaningful learning also depends on engagement with students’ sociocultural and ecological contexts. Balancing these dimensions constitutes a central challenge for secondary EFL curriculum design. Drawing on Experiential Learning theory and Local Critical Pedagogy, this study explores how a place-based and experiential approach can contribute to reframing the secondary EFL curriculum through the integration of outdoor and community-based learning practices. The study pursued three objectives: (a) to explore the pedagogical potential of an interdisciplinary and non-formal approach to EFL instruction; (b) to design and implement a locally grounded curricular module aligned with national requirements; and (c) to analyse the contribution of experiential and outdoor practices to the enrichment of the formal English curriculum. Adopting a qualitative, exploratory and interpretative design, the study involved 20 tenth-grade students and consisted of the curricular reconfiguration of a 10th-grade module developed in collaboration with a local environmental education project (Bioescola). Following Orion’s outdoor learning model, the intervention unfolded in three stages: preparatory classroom work, an interdisciplinary outdoor learning experience, and a structured reflective session. Data were collected through questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, and field notes. Findings suggest increased student engagement in oral interaction and greater communicative confidence, alongside stronger engagement with local ecological contexts. The study concludes that the integration of place-based and ecologically oriented practices into EFL teaching can meaningfully enrich the formal curriculum. While limited in scope and sample size, the research highlights the transformative potential of locally embedded experiential language education in upper secondary schooling. Full article

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in education has made significant advancements in personalized learning and adaptive instruction. However, current systems remain limited by three critical gaps: (a) fragmented architectures that decouple technical performance from ethical governance, (b) the treatment of fairness and accountability as external constraints rather than embedded design principles, and (c) reliance on single-modality data that inadequately represents complex learning environments. These restrictions hinder scalability and limit the capacity of AI systems to deliver equitable, transparent, and context-aware educational experiences. This study aims to address these challenges by designing and validating an ethics-aware, multi-agent conceptual framework for adaptive education in which personalization and responsible AI are co-developed as integrated system properties. The proposed architecture uses five coordinated agents: perception, pedagogy, assessment, feedback, and ethics monitoring. These five agents share one knowledge layer containing learner profiles, domain models, competency structures, interaction histories, and machine-readable policy rules. A four-stage feedback loop comprises: (a) outcome aggregation, (b) system evaluation and validation, (c) teacher review and intervention, and (d) agent update and policy refinement. It enables real-time adaptation, teacher oversight, and iterative system improvement. Adopting a design science research (DSR) methodology and mixed-methods evaluation across functional, pedagogical, ethical, and system-level dimensions, the proposed framework is expected to demonstrate improved learner modeling accuracy, enhanced knowledge tracing, and more robust multimodal engagement analysis compared to centralized and single-modality approaches. Based on design science evaluation against established benchmarks and component-level validation in a simulated learning management system (LMS), this theoretical framework is projected to improve learner modeling accuracy, enhance knowledge tracing, and enable more robust multimodal engagement analysis compared with centralized and single-modality approaches. These projections constitute theoretically derived hypothesis and remain subject to empirical validation in live deployment studies. This study’s theoretical contribution lies in demonstrating that ethics-by-design and adaptive personalization are architecturally compatible and mutually reinforcing design principles. Full article

Artificial intelligence (or AI) is rapidly transforming digital learning environments, reshaping how educational processes are organized, how knowledge is produced, and how learning is evaluated. Despite a growing body of research on AI in education, existing studies often examine technological, pedagogical, and ethical dimensions in isolation, leaving a lack of integrative frameworks capable of explaining how AI restructures learning environments as a whole. This study addresses this gap by proposing a three-layer conceptual framework that models AI-mediated learning environments through the interaction of efficiency, pedagogy, and ideology. The framework conceptualizes AI integration as a system of interdependent processes: the efficiency layer captures the optimization of educational activities through automation and data-driven personalization; the pedagogical layer explains how AI reshapes learning processes, feedback cycles, and learner strategies; and the ideological layer examines the normative assumptions embedded within AI systems, including issues of epistemic authority, linguistic norms, and algorithmic bias. Drawing on a structured synthesis of recent empirical research across domains such as generative AI tools, automated feedback systems, intelligent tutoring systems, and AI-supported assessment, the study demonstrates how these dimensions interact to structure contemporary digital learning environments and generate both affordances and tensions. The main theoretical contribution lies in advancing a system-level analytical framework that moves beyond tool-specific approaches and enables a more integrated understanding of AI in education. In practical terms, the framework provides educators and policymakers with a lens to critically evaluate AI integration, supporting more informed decisions on assessment design, sustainable learning practices, and inclusive digital education. Full article

This article examines Mike Kelley’s Educational Complex (1995) and his culminating public artwork, Mobile Homestead (2005–2013), as speculative architectures that negotiate the fraught intersections of pedagogy, memory, and public engagement. While Educational Complex mobilizes the language of architectural models and dioramas to materialize “blanks” as forms of pedagogical repression and institutional affiliation, Mobile Homestead extends this inquiry into public space through a community-oriented artwork that simultaneously invites access and withholds subterranean, private zones. Situating these projects within discourses of socially engaged and public art, the article argues that Kelley stages a productive paradox: his sustained skepticism toward public art’s political agency is folded into works that nonetheless generate collective encounters, informal pedagogies, and disaffiliated publics. Read together, these speculative architectures reconceptualize failure, disobedience, and disaffiliation not as negations of public engagement, but as critical strategies for exposing institutional complicity while constructing alternative architectures of memory, play, and social relation. By repositioning Kelley—often read primarily through psychoanalytic frameworks—as a pivotal yet overlooked figure in the histories of socially engaged and public art, the article unsettles prevailing narratives of community, resistance, and the public good. Full article

In this mostly conceptual article, we address calls to promote heterodox thinking within business schools to develop alternative approaches to management, alternative economies and organizations that can better address societal-level ‘grand challenges’ from social justice to ecological sustainability. We illustrate our thinking by discussing the ideas behind a project: Re-Organise. Drawing on the work of Sara Ahmed, we consider the performative dimensions of introducing critical ideas in business and management schools; we argue that students will often have an affective form of resistance to new and challenging ideas, not because of their content per se, but because they are unknown and therefore experienced as challenging. To counter this resistance, we suggest there is value in introducing heterodox ideas in low-level but widespread ways in order to acclimatize students to them. We explain how within Re-Organise we have started developing this approach in three universities in the UK, by asking lecturers and professional services staff to introduce references to heterodox ideas such as cooperatives—into their work. Put simply, we want to expose students to these ideas as frequently as possible, even if this often means only superficial engagement. Whilst this approach is not intended to replace the more far-reaching change in business school pedagogy which we believe is necessary, we think that working towards what we call subtle ubiquity can help slowly produce more positive affective responses. Full article

The paper explores the implementation of inclusive, student-centered pedagogies in an internationally co-taught EAP course. Designed within the Erasmus+ W.I.D.E. framework, the course brought together students from Italy and Israel to collaboratively work on academic conference presentations delivered in English as a lingua franca. The study employs an Action Research and Case Study approach, allowing iterative cycles of planning, implementation, observation, and reflection to inform pedagogical decisions. This embraces three intersecting priorities in contemporary higher education: preparing students for global academic participation, fostering inclusive and supportive learning environments, and cultivating intercultural competence in digitally mediated settings. More specifically, drawing on a project-based teaching framework, the study examines how students are socialized into academic discourse through delivering presentations, engaging in intercultural dialogue, and developing cross-curricular soft skills. Our findings suggest that project-based work in small multicultural teams can support both autonomy and cooperation, while contributing to the development of critical thinking, mediation and confidence in public speaking, essential for participation in international academic communities. The findings also point to the potential role of responsive and compassionate pedagogy in digital collaboration. The study offers a practice-informed model that may be adaptable to similar contexts for bridging EAP and international research practices, highlighting implications for intercultural academic communication, virtual mobility, and inclusive language education. Full article

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are increasingly called upon to integrate sustainability across curricula and to prepare students to respond critically and responsibly to complex environmental challenges. While sustainability education is often associated with scientific, technological, or policy-oriented disciplines, the contribution of the humanities remains underexplored, particularly in digitally mediated university teaching. This paper argues that ancient texts, approached through the lens of the Environmental Humanities and supported by digital pedagogy, can offer a valuable framework for fostering sustainability literacy in higher education. Drawing on a humanities-based pedagogical model, this article explores how practices such as collaborative close reading, ecocritical discussion, narrative mapping, reflective writing, and digital storytelling can help students connect classical representations of nature, fragility, order, and human responsibility with contemporary ecological concerns. These activities encourage the development of sustainability-related competencies—including critical thinking, ethical reflection, interpretive complexity, and ecological awareness—while also supporting Inner Development Goals such as self-awareness, empathy, relational thinking, and responsible action. Based on a conceptual pedagogical model supported by exploratory qualitative evidence from a small-scale higher education course, this paper suggests that digital pedagogy can make sustainability learning in the humanities more dialogic and reflective. In doing so, this article proposes a practice-based pedagogical framework that may help Higher Education Institutions explore ways of embedding sustainability meaningfully beyond traditionally environmental fields. This article’s primary contribution is therefore pedagogical: it presents a humanities-based model for sustainability education while using exploratory qualitative evidence from one course context to illustrate how such a model may support interpretive, ethical, and sustainability-oriented learning. Full article