This quantitative research study investigates U.S. K-12 teacher perceptions of book censorship using five ethical paradigms as a conceptual framework. This study surveys 276 educators throughout the United States from all geographic regions and academic disciplines. The findings indicate that (a) most K-12 educators believe the censorship of books jeopardizes students’ abilities to build and sustain strong, equitable communities at the local, national, and international level; (b) many K-12 educators believe the censorship of classroom books undermines their professional responsibilities as teachers; and (c) the majority of K-12 educators do not want school districts or politicians to censor classroom books; however, many educators are willing or compelled by law to accommodate parental requests for their own child especially in grades K-5. Results indicate that educators—regardless of geographic location and discipline—hold similar beliefs on book censorship.

Early childhood education (ECE) teachers increasingly use social networks to advocate for their professional recognition through their political dialogues within these platforms. Yet, their strategies for gaining and being appreciated as legitimised professional signals a paradox. In deploying what Bakhtin terms authoritative discourse, language that demands acceptance as a dominant, hierarchical, profaned truth, teachers simultaneously constrain the dialogues of diverse professional voices. This paper employs a Bakhtinian dialogic methodology to examine ECE teachers’ social networking exchanges during the COVID-19 pandemic in Victoria, Australia (2020), with particular attention to how temporal and spatial contexts shape language strategies. The findings indicate that while teachers summoned authoritative discourse to advocate for their professionalism, this same discourse (un)intentionally silenced divergent perspectives, excluding certain ideas, invoking organisational impunity, and creating ‘us-them’ boundaries that limited professional agency. These insights signal how authoritative discourse operates as a double-edged sword in teachers’ political advocacy, simultaneously extending recognition while atrophying diverse exchanges necessary for robust professional and political dialogues.

Numerous worldwide studies have addressed the issue of disproportionate representation of students belonging to ethnic or cultural minorities in special education. No detailed studies on this phenomenon exist in Spain although various European institutions point to the existence of this inequality. In this study, special education in Spain is approached from an anthropological and pedagogical perspective, reflecting on its ways of functioning. The possible existence of disproportionate representation of foreign students in specific special education schools and classrooms is explored through official statistical data and interviews held with professionals (teachers and educational psychologists) in the school environment. For the statistical part of our research, a Z-Score indicator was used. Statistical significance of this disproportion in the schooling data is presented. Semi-structured interviews held with professionals in the field of special education provided the data. The results of our analyses here presented made us wonder whether cultural factors of certain school populations influence – or not – the entry into special education. In other words, is it possible that diagnostic methods for special education consider factors that are external to possible disabilities? Are diagnostic methods for special education appropriate to use with populations from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds? Are racist practices taking place? The a priori answers to these questions reveal overt discrimination. However, it is not perceived in the same manner at school. The discourses produced in this research confront this scenario of possible segregation with the firm will for inclusion and equal treatment the discourse of the school system promotes. To try to understand this apparent contradiction, the meanings of the discourses of professionals in the field of special education are interpreted. Some strategies are proposed that should be followed in an attempt to make the ‘discriminatory’ structural position of the school and the ‘well-intentioned’ determination of the professionals who work in it coexist.

Transitions into Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) have historically been narrated through developmental milestones of school readiness, positioning children as subjects to be prepared for institutional life. Such framings stabilise the child as an individual learner and the setting as a neutral space for adaptation. Yet these moments are far from neutral. They are affective, relational, and deeply political events shaped by cultural scripts, institutional rhythms, and the micro-politics of care. This paper explores the entangled experiences of parents, practitioners, and managers across ECCE settings in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the United Kingdom (UK), exploring how transitions are enacted, felt, and governed in distinct sociocultural and policy contexts. Drawing on surveys and semi-structured interviews analysed diffractively through postqualitative and posthuman perspectives, we trace how transitions materialise through intra-actions among humans, materials, and temporalities. Data are read not for themes, but for intensities, sticky moments, repetitions, and ruptures that illuminate the affective infrastructures of early childhood life, such as handover rituals, parental emotions, and practitioner improvisations that configure belonging and separation. Comparing two contrasting policy contexts reveals both shared practices of gradual entry, family engagement, and attunement to children’s needs, alongside culturally situate divergences in how care is operationalised, measured, and understood. Transitions emerge as more-than-developmental events: they are charged sites where attachment, identity, and institutional expectations converge. We offer implications-as-provocations for ECCE practice and policy by reframing transitions as more-than-developmental events where attachment, identity and institutional expectations meet. A diffractive analysis underpins concrete recommendations – staffed ‘lingering time’, ethical narrative documentation, and threshold design standards – that reconceive arrival as a relational threshold rather than a procedural start/end point.

What does organisational sustainability mean when environmental aspects are deliberately set aside? This paper reframes sustainability from a managerial model towards a policy-oriented understanding, focusing on organisational dimensions such as longevity, resilience, viability, adaptability, and persistence. As sustainability remains central to political and institutional agendas, an exclusive ecological focus constrains our ability to grasp how organisations – particularly in higher education – sustain continuity and strategic relevance under shifting socio-political and economic pressures. The paper examines European University Alliances (EUAs) – a flagship initiative of the European Commission that promotes transnational cooperation among higher education institutions. Conceptualised as meta-organisations (inter-organisational networks), EUAs encounter enduring challenges of governance, funding, coordination, and legitimacy. Analysing their sustainability, therefore, requires a framework that connects sustainability dimensions with enabling managerial, financial, legal, and ethical factors, while integrating meta-factors such as organisational culture, process management, and power dynamics. Based on an integrative review of literature across management, organisational studies, sociology, and higher education research, the paper synthesises existing conceptualisations of organisational sustainability and reinterprets them through the lens of European higher education policy. The findings reveal that managerial approaches to sustainability remain underdeveloped both in theory and practice. The paper proposes a conceptual framework for assessing the sustainability of European University Alliances. It provides policy-relevant insights for researchers, institutional leaders, and policymakers seeking to enhance the resilience and viability of complex higher education networks.

This literature-based discussion analyses the University of Tsukuba Malaysia venture, Japan’s inaugural international branch campus, by examining existinghh literature to identify potential challenges the institution may face. A thematic analysis explores five key factors. Financial motivations are contextualised within internationalist and globalist paradigms, highlighting tensions between the two. Subsequently, the strategy of delivering a Japanese higher education experience is discussed in reference to Western neocolonial dynamics. The literature then suggests that leadership challenges necessitate experienced leaders and adept stakeholder management. Finally, operational and academic factors are examined with reference to the dichotomy of global integration versus local responsiveness. Previous case studies underscore the challenges of cultural integration and the need for a nuanced approach that balances home and local contexts. This inquiry enhances the understanding of Japan’s flagship foray into international higher education and offers critical insights for strategic decision-making and future research endeavours in the field.

Australia’s housing shortage is a critical socio-economic challenge, often misattributed to the presence of refugees and international students. Moving beyond this deficit narrative, this article employs a conceptual framework of ‘education as a site of long-term integration and social cohesion’ to critically re-examine the crisis. We argue that the housing insecurity faced by these groups is not a demographic problem but a profound policy failure that directly undermines educational outcomes, future workforce integration, and social equity. Through an analysis integrating critical policy analysis and philosophy of education we demonstrate how fragmented governance, the financialization of housing, and the lack of a futures-oriented approach exacerbate exclusion. The article critiques simplistic supply-demand explanations and instead positions affordable, stable housing as foundational infrastructure for successful education and integration. We conclude with forward-looking policy recommendations that tie housing security directly to educational success, advocating for integrated, dignity-centred policies that reconceive refugees and students not as burdens, but as central to Australia’s social and economic future.

This report addresses two key issues in Chilean educational policies: the pursuit of educational quality and the development of a new institutional framework for public education. The central focus of the article is the exploration and critical interpretation of the meanings, purposes, and values of the concept of educational quality at the central level (the Public Education Directorate) of New Public Education. The reconstruction of this approach to educational quality is organized into three dimensions: axiological, ontological, and praxeological, which highlight aspects of educational quality linked to purposes and values, the conception of school, systemic work, and the consideration of knowledge. This allows us to recognize, as a potential, a way of understanding educational quality more comprehensively, rather than linking it to the standardized result evaluation. At the same time, the problematic dimension of a possible dissociation between this more integral notion of quality and its systemic operationalization, which continues to operate in public education, emerges.

This paper critically examines the disjunction between reformist rhetoric and institutional practice in Japanese English education. While policy discourse increasingly invokes progressive ideals such as “learner autonomy,” “dialogic learning,” and “global competence,” the actual implementation of reform remains deeply embedded within conservative institutional structures. Drawing on critical sociological perspectives, including the work of Bourdieu, Freire, and meritocracy theory, this study argues that progressive educational concepts have been selectively appropriated and stripped of their emancipatory potential. Rather than functioning as tools of democratic transformation, these concepts are redeployed as reform vocabularies that stabilize existing institutional arrangements. The analysis traces how English proficiency, redefined as human capital, functions as a form of institutionalized cultural capital tied to socioeconomic status in Japan. Access to high-stakes English learning opportunities is unevenly distributed, and these disparities are subsequently legitimated through meritocratic discourse within admissions and evaluation systems. By interrogating the structural logics that underpin contemporary English education reform, this paper exposes how equity-oriented language can coexist with, and even reinforce, exclusionary practice. It calls for a critical reexamination of how educational ideals are mobilized within policy frameworks and argues for a more structurally transformative approach to reform—one that confronts, rather than conceals, systemic inequality.

The UNESCO Regional Bureau for Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (UNESCO/OREALC) is an understudied actor in policy transfer analyses. This article addresses this gap by analyzing the mechanisms of influence and educational messages that the organization mobilizes to shape school policy in Chile, its host country. Drawing on the analysis, processing, and coding of documents produced by the organization between 1990 and 2024, this article demonstrates that UNESCO/OREALC has mobilized and combined diverse, multi-scalar and thematically polyphonic governance instruments within the Chilean education system. The article also shows that UNESCO/OREALC has maintained an ambivalent relationship with Chile, insofar as its mechanisms project narratives of both validation and opposition to local trends of privatization. The article suggests that UNESCO’s regional bureau performs functions that transcend the logic of a forum, positioning itself as an actor seeking to broaden the learning curve and policy options within the host country. Furthermore, it reaffirms the identity tensions that arise when the organization operates in contexts with high levels of privatization.