In 2012, Chicago's school year began with the city's first teachers' strike in a quarter century and ended with the largest mass closure of public schools in U.S. history. On one side, a union leader and veteran black woman educator drew upon organizing strategies from black and Latinx communities to demand increased school resources. On the other side, the mayor, backed by the Obama administration, argued that only corporate-style education reform could set the struggling school system aright. The stark differences in positions resonated nationally, challenging the long-standing alliance between teachers' unions and the Democratic Party. Elizabeth Todd-Breland recovers the hidden history underlying this battle. She tells the story of black education reformers' community-based strategies to improve education beginning during the 1960s, as support for desegregation transformed into community control, experimental schooling models that pre-dated charter schools, and black teachers' challenges to a newly assertive teachers' union. This book reveals how these strategies collided with the burgeoning neoliberal educational apparatus during the late twentieth century, laying bare ruptures and enduring tensions between the politics of black achievement, urban inequality, and U.S. democracy.

The growing field of political education through environmental issues is organized around processes, which reach beyond the formal ones found in academic disciplines and national curricula into informal processes (such as social mobilization) and nonformal processes (such as those found in various international educational recommendations). Using theoretical approaches from the fields of political philosophy and the social sciences, this book develops a simultaneously conceptual and analytical framework for the political in educational content involving environmental issues. This framework is then used to empirically analyze educational content on sustainable development formulated by UNESCO, as well as the Tunisian curriculum. The theoretical and empirical studies carried out in this book lead to proposed curriculum tags for political education through environmental issues, with the intent of opening this field to inclusion in the didactics of curriculum research.

In the 1960s and 1970s there was a remarkable development of interest in political education not only in Britain but also in other countries, namely the USA, Germany and Australia. This volume provides scholars and teachers in this field with a picture of British work in the area of political education.

Democracy should enable citizens to play an informed role in determining how power is exercised for their common wellbeing, but this only works if people have the understanding, skills and confidence to engage effectively in public affairs. Otherwise, any voting system can be subverted to serve the interests of propagandists and demagogues. This book brings together leading experts on learning for democracy to explore why and how the gap in civic competence should be bridged. Drawing on research findings and case examples from the UK, the US and elsewhere, it will set out why change is necessary, what could be taught differently to ensure effective political engagement, and how a lasting impact in improving citizens’ learning for democratic participation can be made.

"In professional and academic contexts nothing is more important than helping people to understand and engage with democratic society. Sant has written an excellent book which helps greatly towards that end. She has developed incisive new arguments about the nature of contemporary politics and education. Using the most recent as well as classic literature, she explores key ideas and issues. Through wide ranging discussions and by referring to her own valuable empirical work she characterizes and creates thoughtful insights and innovative pedagogical approaches. This book achieves the very difficult task of illuminating complex ideas at the same time as helping to determine practical ways to achieve social justice through education. Political education has been neglected for too long. This book is a bold new step in its achievement." —Ian Davies, Emeritus Professor, University of York, UK This book examines political education in times of democratic crisis, polarisation and uncertainty. Using populism as a diagnostic tool, the book scrutinises current democratic practices and considers alternatives for future social studies and citizenship education. The author examines contemporary events including Brexit, the Catalan referendum for independence and protests in Chile to ask how democratic educators can respond to times of crisis. Centered on themes of knowledge and ideology, the book draws together political philosophy and educational research to map out, critically analyse and offer alternatives to dominant debates on political education. It will be of interest and value to scholars examining the relationship between democracy and educational theory and practice. Edda Sant is Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. A former social studies teacher, her research interests lie in citizenship, political and democratic education. She has published widely in this field, and in 2016 was recognized with a Children’s Identity & Citizenship European Association Award.

This book articulates an educational theory as well as a political theory of the Anthropocene. Divided into three sections it addresses educational anthropology, cultures and institutions, and educational recommendations in the Anthropocene. Topics covered in the volume measure the impact of the idea of the Anthropocene on the type of anthropology that underlies education and on a phenomenology of relationship. It links the notion of the Anthropocene with cultures and institutions so as not to 'smooth out' or erase the latter. Finally, it presents proposals and recommendations for educational practices. The work advocates rethinking education as an essential component in ensuring the sustainability of human life in society - by proposing to go beyond the approach of education for sustainable development or environmental education. The work also brings together empirical contributions in which proposals are elaborated for programs, pedagogical devices and experiments relating to the preparation of the future in the field of education. This volume is of interest to researchers of the Anthropocene.