ABSTRACT This paper moves beyond traditional notions of formal schooling and liberal peace, conceptualising edu-peace through the hyphen as a liminal third space. Drawing on poststructural theory, it engages Lyotard’s 'trait d’union' (1993), [Bhabha, H. K. (2004). The location of culture: with a new preface by the author. Routledge] concept of hybridity, and [Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (2004). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (B. Massumi, trans.) London: Continuum] notion of the plateau, highlighting the fluid and interconnected nature of these fields. Examining the ambiguous role of the edu-peace worker, we explore how they navigate the uncertain terrain between conflict and peace. Edu-peace becomes both a site of resistance and a performative space where theory and practice intersect. Through theoretical inquiry and experiential reflections from Bangladesh, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Thailand, we analyse the edu-peace worker’s role, offering insights into edu-peace as a transformative field in conflict-affected settings.

ABSTRACT This article introduces two concepts from contemporary social-theory to Global Citizenship Education (GCED) to offer ways of thinking about teaching and learning in the face of anti-democratic politics. The first part discusses such politics in relation to GCED which, in its critical and liberal modes, seeks to instil confidence in democratic ideals. The second part delineates Wendy Brown’s critique of ‘nihilism’ and Jeffrey Alexander’s idea of ‘civic repair’ to establish, in the third part, how these concepts are generative for GCED’s ways of combating anti-democracy in the present and future. The paper argues that nihilism is a keen diagnosis of the current times and civil repair demonstrates precedents and lineages through which anti-democratic damage can be undone. As a piece of theoretical research, it shows how engaging with such thinking can help GCED’s advocates steel their resolve in cultivating civic engagement through critical reflection and political action.

ABSTRACT Contemporary research on sexuality education reveals its entanglement with racist and colonial discourses. Similarly, the examination of West German and Austrian sexuality education discourse in the early 1970s shows a consistent, albeit seemingly unnecessary, reference to the sexual ‘Other’. However, a Foucauldian methodological framework based on subjectivation and cultural techniques of self-relation is insufficient to fully account for this exclusion. This paper therefore seeks to expand Foucault’s analytical framework by incorporating postcolonial, decolonial, and Black feminist critiques of his concept of the subject. It then applies this expanded framework to an analysis of Christian-conservative sexuality education discourse of the early 1970s, aiming to understand the role of the abjection of the sexual ‘Other’ in the formation of Western sexual subjectivity and its education. The findings reveal that Western sexuality education makes use of the sexual ‘Other’ as a pedagogical figure, constructing this ‘Other’ as the negation of freedom, humanity, rationality, and self-mastery through the imposition of Western concepts.

ABSTRACT This article explores the potential of using Non-representational theory (NRT) in higher education student voice research. NRT emerged from the work of human geographer Nigel Thrift in the 1990s [Thrift, 1996. Spatial formations. London: Sage]. NRT seeks to go beyond representation in social research focusing instead on the geographies of ‘what happens’. Building on previous work exploring the potential of NRT in educational research [e.g. Fendler, 2014. The ethics of materiality: Some insights from non-representational theory. In P. Smeyers & M. Depaepe (Eds.), Educational research: Material culture and its representation (pp. 115–132). Cham: Springer; Zembylas, 2017. The contribution of non-representational theories in education: Some affective, ethical and political implications. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 36, 393–407] this article argues, with caveats, that NRT has the potential to offer valuable insights into the richness and complexities of student voice not uncovered by representational approaches.

ABSTRACT This paper describes a fundamental ambivalence in the ‘tools’ deployed in education. These aim to support critical reflection, yet undermine criticality by reproducing the dominant discourse which they aim to critique. This ambivalence is illustrated with materials from high-school economics textbooks. Drawing on theories of hegemony and subjectivation, and qualitative analysis of textbooks, the paper identifies a tension between student tasks that invite students to (i) critically reflect on the figure of the homo economicus, and activities that invite students to (ii) think in models, play strategy games and simulations, and follow rational decision-making strategies. These latter activities uncritically enact the figure of the homo economicus. The concluding sections reflect on utilising ‘tools’ as a concept, and on the urgent need to analyse quotidian aspects of educational technologies like textbooks, alongside the more widely discussed controversies over commercialisation, corporate ownership or democratic deficits surrounding the media used in state education.

ABSTRACT This study explores how Liberal Studies is remembered and reinterpreted by 1.5-generation immigrants – young people who migrated from mainland China and completed their senior secondary cycle in Hong Kong – focusing on Liberal Studies as a contested pedagogical space embedded in postcolonial governance examination regimes and shifting political regulation. Drawing on biographic narratives and in-depth interviews, and informed by a performativity-oriented lens, the study analyzes how participants retrospectively narrate their engagement with Liberal Studies as they negotiate belonging and political positioning at a temporal and institutional distance from Hong Kong schooling. Findings suggest that Liberal Studies operated as an ambivalent curricular dispositif in which critical inquiry, institutional discipline, and political silence coexisted. Participants’ accounts foreground everyday affective performances – silence, alignment, caution, and ambivalence – through which they managed risk, relationality, and identity amid sociopolitical upheaval. The dismantling of Liberal Studies thus reflects broader attempts to resolve ideological ambiguities surrounding national identity and political belonging in a rapidly transforming governance context. By centering memory, distance, and positionality, this paper contributes to current debates on curriculum change, youth political subjectivity, and education as a site of affective governance and contested memory in transitional societies.

ABSTRACT This article explores how students at International Baccalaureate schools in southern China rearticulate ideals of global citizenship. Although global citizenship education is widely promoted within international agendas, it has been criticised for reflecting Western-centric and neoliberal biases. The International Baccalaureate's implementation of international education has attracted similar criticism. Taking a different approach, this study considers how students themselves understand, practise, and imagine their futures as global citizens. Drawing on interviews (n = 50) with International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme students at five international schools in Hong Kong, Macao, and Guangdong, three heuristic rearticulations are identified: ‘self-professed global citizens', ‘globally minded citizens', and ‘globally floating citizens'. The core argument is that academic critiques of global citizenship agendas need to be distinguished from the perspectives of these students, who are capable of offering alternative, critical, and varied conceptions of what it means to be a global citizen. Nevertheless, a persistent tension remains: these students’ conceptions of global citizenship can be viewed as part of an elite culture, deeply intertwined with their privileged educational backgrounds and opportunities.

ABSTRACT This paper explores how multilingual learners (MLs) are described in recent news media related to U.S. education. Drawing on narrative and languaging lenses, we use qualitative methods to identify terms used to describe MLs across popular news media platforms in 2022-2024. Specifically, we ask: (1) What terms for multilingual learners are used across news media platforms? (2) What topics are discussed in relation to terms? and (3) What discursive moves and narrative trends are used when describing these learners? Terms used to describe MLs included English Language Learner, multilingual, bilingual, immigrant, migrant, refugee, international, and undocumented. Topics discussed in relation to these terms included: assessment/testing, bilingualism, demographics, financial aid, instruction, program/service models, resources, staffing, student academic performance, student experience, and visa/legal status. Discursive moves examined speakers, definitions for MLs, locations, and whether MLs were acted/acted on, while narrative trends included: support, special groups, surge, strain, and uncertain times.

ABSTRACT Digital games have become ubiquitous educational technologies, deployed across a range of contexts for the purposes of supporting diverse teaching and learning goals. This deployment has been underpinned by instructivist and constructivist learning discourses that employ imaginary visions that are overly deterministic and which risk inadequately preparing learners for critical engagement. This paper argues for conceptualising the relationship between digital games and learning in terms of more critical imagined digital futures. It explores a case study of game-centred school learning, whereby two Australian middle-schools replaced a print-centric curriculum with one focussing on digital games. Informed by postdigital theory, analysis of the entanglements that emerged from extensive teacher interviews reveals how critical perspectives can support breaking away from totalising theories and knowledge claims regarding digital game learning, while offering productive conceptual tools, such as critical digital game literacies, for imagining learning differently.

ABSTRACT This paper explores student participation in sexuality education. Framed through a posthumanist lens, the exploration is guided by the notions of assemblages, embodiment and affectivity, attending to student participation as relational processes. With collaborative and ethnographic methodologies across three secondary schools in Sweden, the empirical material includes interviews with teachers and students, workshops with teachers, and involvement in classroom teaching. The analysis maps how the sexuality education assemblage generates particular conditions through which student participation becomes enacted in relation to two key practices: the planning of teaching and classroom discussions. These practices are not viewed as discrete actions, but as vital components in the collective enactment, as they highlight the frictions of student participation in sexuality education and beyond. In the concluding remarks, the discussion turns to how listening with multi-dividual voices can afford the co-creation of both relevant and responsive sexuality education.