This book, drawing on a political economic perspective of education development, is a comprehensive account of the question "why some education systems flourish while others falter." It provides a state-of-the-art review of the Vietnamese way of education development, figuring out the pitfalls, challenges and opportunities of neoliberal reform. It also sheds new light on the rise of neoliberal capitalism in contemporary Vietnam as the country intensifies its market-oriented economic transition. Starting from educational development concerns, this book differentiates the growth and development concepts in education. While "growth with limited development" is well reflected in many developing education systems, the Vietnamese experience of education development stands to provide readers with unique insights about education in developing economies, especially in understanding how a socialist-oriented education system is struggling to thrive in the times of neoliberal capitalism. Authored by scholars specialising in Vietnamese education and politics, the chapters address key issues pertaining to the political economy of education reform in Vietnam and the government’s enduring efforts to drive education toward international standards through its costly market-infused education reforms. This book will appeal to postgraduate students, educators, educational policy-makers and scholars interested in Vietnamese studies, Vietnam education reforms, education governance, education for sustainability, internationalisation of education and the politics of education reforms.

Education is a source of national pride in Lebanon. When the general public was asked how the education system was performing, 76 percent of respondents had a positive opinion; and these satisfaction rates have been consistently high over the years. However, perception of education quality does not reflect the reality of the sector; and learning outcomes, which are the determining metrics of success in education, have been lower than the international average, with a declining trend since 2007. This volume seeks to uncover why the education system in Lebanon is not reaching its full potential. It uses a political economy approach to study the drivers and factors that guide education operations to produce and utilize education outcomes. This includes the study of context, stakeholders, and processes that shape education policies, institutions, and activities. It also aims to identify enablers of and constraints on policy change and implementation, as well as the achievement of results. In this context, the analysis encompasses how education policies are developed; how education consumables—such as curricula, textbooks, and learning materials—are produced, distributed, and used by learners; how education services are delivered and monitored; and how achieved results are measured. It includes the identification of the most influential actors in the education arena, as well as their vested interests. It also examines unfavorable frameworks for action that are likely to block the adoption of reforms and delay or derail their implementation. The system-level analysis presented in this volume used a mixed-method approach. Qualitative and quantitative analyses were conducted based on a review and analysis of more than 1,900 research papers, articles, and books; laws and policies; expenditures; trends; and enrollment and outcome indicators. Primary methods of inquiry were also used and included interviews, focus group discussions, and a household-based perception survey.

Since the global financial crisis of 2007-08 the question of the aims of schooling have assumed greater importance. There has been no ‘return to normal’, yet young people are encouraged to ‘Keep calm and go to university’. Culture and the Political Economy of Schooling explores the possibilities for the emergence of a progressive agenda for schooling. Culture and the Political Economy of Schooling provides educators and social scientists with the essential background required to understand changes in schooling since the Second World War. It introduces theories of the economic crisis, and explores their educational implications, before going on to provide accounts of how politics and culture have shaped debates about schooling. This cultural political economy approach is applied to issues such as social class, race, the brave new worlds of work, the dangerous rise of creative education, and the increasingly urgent question of inequality. The final parts of the book explore the educational challenges of the Anthropocene and the changing conceptions of knowledge in schools and finally consider alternatives to contemporary schooling. The students in our schools today will face a future framed by the twin crises of economy and environment, prompting an urgent rethink of education. Written in an accessible and engaging manner, this book is an essential guide for thinking about the past, present and futures of education. It will be of great interest to researchers and graduate students of education studies, curriculum studies, sociology of education, education politics and education policy.

This timely book situates environmental education within and against neoliberalism, the dominant economic, political, and cultural ideology impacting both education and the environment. Proponents of neoliberalism imagine and enact a world where the primary role of the state is to promote capital markets, and where citizens are defined as autonomous entrepreneurs who are to fulfill their needs via competition with, and surveillance of, others. These ideas interact with environmental issues in a number of ways and Neoliberalism and Environmental Education engages this interplay with chapters on how neoliberal ideas and actions shape environmental education in formal, informal and community contexts. International contributors consider these interactions in agriculture and gardening, state policy enactments, environmental science classrooms, ecoprisons, and in professional management and educational accountability programs. The collection invites readers to reexamine how economic policy and politics shape the cultural enactment of environmental education. This book was originally published as a special issue of Environmental Education Research.

This edited collection offers analyses of ‘global citizenship education’ within and across different national contexts. This book illustrates the contingency of definitions, the complexities of juxtaposing demands and priorities in different educational contexts, and the difficulties and tensions of asking a question that is arguably one of the most pressing of our time: how should we live together in interdependent ecologies in a finite planet? In the discipline of education, where market imperatives and the dictatorship of 'effective replicable results' have laid siege to independent debates, this book aims to emphasize the importance of raising our intellectual game as educators to interrupt new and old problematic patterns of engagements, representations, uncomplicated solutions and conceptual straightjackets. Contributors to this volume address the tensions between homogenizing universalisms and parochial specifisms, ethnocentrisms and relativisms, deficit theorizations and romanticizations of difference, fantasies of supremacy and paralyses in guilt, the 'global' and the 'local'. The chapters take different approaches to map the origins, meanings, workings, ethics, politics and implications of initiatives, approaches, and conceptual frameworks related to the ideas of globalization, citizenship and education in different sites of knowledge production. This book was originally published as a special issue of Globalisation, Societies and Education.

A growing majority of humanity lives in sprawling, interconnected urban regions. Diversified metropolitan geographies have replaced the centuries-old divide between urban and rural areas, and transformed the local sources of electoral politics. The resulting patterns of electoral support and participation have shifted axes of partisan competition to the right. This volume undertakes the first international comparative analysis of metropolitan political behaviour. The results support a powerful new thesis to explain many recent shifts in political behaviour: the metropolitanisation of politics.

The Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology presents a comprehensive and authoritative examination of the rapidly growing field of political ecology. Located at the intersection of geography, anthropology, sociology, and environmental history, political ecology is one of the most vibrant and conceptually diverse fields of inquiry into nature-society relations within the social sciences. The Handbook serves as an essential guide to this rapidly evolving intellectual landscape. With contributions from over 50 leading authors, the Handbook presents a systematic overview of political ecology’s origins, practices and core concerns, and aims to advance both ongoing and emerging debates. While there are numerous edited volumes, textbooks, and monographs under the heading ‘political ecology,’ these have tended to be relatively narrow in scope, either as collections of empirically based (mostly case study) research on a given theme, or broad overviews of the field aimed at undergraduate audiences. The Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology is the first systematic, comprehensive overview of the field. With authors from North and South America, Europe, Australia and elsewhere, the Handbook of Political Ecology provides a state of the art examination of political ecology; addresses ongoing and emerging debates in this rapidly evolving field; and charts new agendas for research, policy, and activism. The Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology introduces political ecology as an interdisciplinary academic field. By presenting a ‘state of the art’ examination of the field, it will serve as an invaluable resource for students and scholars. It not only critically reviews the key debates in the field, but develops them. The Handbook will serve as an excellent resource for graduate and advanced undergraduate teaching, and is a key reference text for geographers, anthropologists, sociologists, environmental historians, and others working in and around political ecology.