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Two-eyed seeing: A respectful approach for K-12 learning beyond cross-cultural code switching
Get PDFEducators face challenges in identifying and implementing pedagogies that affirm students’ cultural identities, foster inclusivity, and support multiple ways of knowing. This paper explores the potential of Two-Eyed Seeing (TES), a framework introduced by Mi’kmaw Elder Albert Marshall that braids Indigenous and Western knowledge systems (Hatcher et al., 2009), as a respectful and holistic pedagogical approach that moves beyond traditional cross-cultural code switching. While code switching often requires students to shift behaviors or language to adapt to dominant cultural norms, TES offers a model that values both knowledge systems equally without requiring one to subsume the other. Through a comparative analysis of TES and code switching, and case studies in both early childhood and elementary settings, we investigate how TES promotes student engagement, identity development, and inclusive classroom environments. Findings suggest that TES supports students, especially those from non-dominant cultures, by affirming their worldviews, reducing the need for adaptive cultural shifts, and fostering deeper relationships with land, community, and curriculum. We also discuss implications for educators, curriculum developers, and policymakers, highlighting the growing need for systemic educational support and ethical community partnerships. Limitations and areas for further research are identified, including the adaptation of TES in urban, multicultural contexts and the development of culturally responsive assessment models
For rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation: The theory and practice of ideological-political education in Chinese universities
Get PDFIn official statements, the Chinese government consistently emphasizes the importance of education in nurturing students’ acceptance of official initiatives and national identity. Meanwhile, ideological-political education (IPE) is a mandatory course for Chinese students in higher education, playing a crucial role in fostering their citizenship, morality, and values. With the announcement of a series of new official catchwords, including the Chinese Dream and Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation, education is expected to incorporate these catchwords and implement them across all levels, including universities. This study provides an overview and analysis of IPE and its role in initiating, demonstrating, and discussing these official catchwords in classrooms. Through analyzing official documents, statements, and reports concerning IPE, the article argues that IPE is responsible for promoting official catchwords as standards that guarantee political and social stability, forming the foundation of students’ sense of identity and values. This reinforces the perceived legitimacy of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and justifies support for domestic and foreign policies among students. Under the ever-changing domestic and international context, IPE will be further reinforced for political agendas
Nation building, Gaelicisation and the National University of Ireland, 1908-45
Get PDFNation building both before and after the creation of the independent Irish State influenced the foundation and evolution of the National University of Ireland, which was positioned as crucial to the achievement of Catholic and nationalist objectives early in the twentieth century. This study illustrates the frequently significant tensions between Catholic and cultural nationalist narratives early in the lifetime of the university and the extent to which competing narratives around language, religion, and autonomous academic governance influenced the subsequent evolution of the NUI. University leaders adopted pragmatic, incremental responses to political and popular pressure for Gaelicisation under the Irish Free State, acting to safeguard institutional autonomy and the interests of the university while adapting to political and official demands. This unsentimental, pragmatic institutional response to Gaelicisation ultimately provoked significant conflict with cultural nationalist organisations, not least because the academic elite within the NUI successfully resisted the more transformative demands of the cultural nationalist movement
Interdependent versus independent research: An overdue shift in perspective
Get PDFTraditionally, research in the social sciences has focused on the role of individual attitudes, skills, and dyadic relationships in shaping educational outcomes. However, less attention has been paid to the influence of broader patterns of social interaction, particularly within school contexts. This study demonstrated how interaction-based data could be generated and analyzed to better capture these dynamics. Drawing on data collected from 2,682 students and 118 teachers across 10 schools, we applied an AI-driven machine learning algorithm to examine the effects of interactive dynamics on student achievement. Results indicate that while socioeconomic status (SES) remains a consistent predictor of student test scores, the most significant effects stem from interactions related to social capital, the diversity of information each person has access to, and to the degree of effort one invests in network dynamics. These findings highlight the value of incorporating social network structures into educational research and suggest that interactive dynamics within school communities may play a pivotal role in shaping student achievement
Academic freedom and (re)building the nation
Get PDFThis article examines the links between academic freedom and nationalist approaches to European higher education policies in recent years at two levels: the national (using case studies of France and the UK) and the European. Understanding these developments requires responding to two questions: (1) who defines academic freedom? and (2) for whom? Through the lens of political sociology, we show how in two so-called liberal democratic regimes in Europe, both state and non-state actors endanger the exercise of academic freedom through three types of attacks: legislative/judicial; discursive; and socio-economic. We focus on how these attacks curtail academic freedom to conduct critical scholarship on the foundational myths of nation states by framing academic freedom as both (1) a national value to be protected against outsiders, and (2) a risk to national security. Through such framing, academic freedom becomes a governmental tool, aligning with geopolitical aims and nation-building discourses. The article shows how academic freedom is mobilised with the aim of protecting both the status quo of power relations within the nation state and the current geopolitical distribution of power between “The West and the Rest”. We propose that understandings of academic freedom must take into account how, when separated from an understanding of structural power, academic freedom can become a repressive tool of nationalism, which only allows freedom for some
Introduction: Comparative perspectives on higher education, nation-building, and future imaginaries
Get PDFWhile holding a reputation as cosmopolitan or global institutions, universities have played a crucial role in shaping multifaceted conditions of social life and in the making of society in emerging nation-states. Throughout the course of Western nation-building since the start of the long 19th century, university foundations and reforms aimed to accelerate progress in science and research for the cultural, intellectual, economic, technological, and military development of the nation-states. In that sense, universities and other higher education institutions have played a powerful role in the production and distribution of forms of national consciousness among the citizenry of the respective states. A case in point was the widespread university reform movement in Germany at the beginning of the 19th century, which positioned universities as defenders of the ideas and epistemologies of a future united German nation to come and aimed to foster and strengthen a shared national identity through the intertwined principles of Bildung and Kultur after the devastations of the Napoleonic wars (Readings, 1997; Rüegg, 2004). Distinct and nationally specific strategies of nation-building through higher education also characterised developments in France and in other nation-states in Europe. Throughout the 19th and 20th century, and after struggles for national independence, universities in the (former) colonies were transformed from instruments of colonial oppression and exploitation into vectors of prospective nation-building via social and technological development (Guzmán-Valenzuela, 2025; Van Haaften, 2025)
From the search for a distinct curricular understanding to the curricular voice of a “we”
Get PDFThis text presents a two-voiced autobiographical research study, combining the perspectives of: (1) an education scholar specializing in curriculum theory research, and (2) a mathematics educator with an undergraduate background in physics. Both hold doctoral degrees and are currently developing a curriculum project for graduate studies in education and teaching, which has recently been launched at the Faculty of Sciences of the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosí, Mexico. The research explores the contextual construction of theoretical curriculum categories: lived curriculum, curriculum design and evaluation, continuous curriculum updating, craft-based processes in lived curriculum, scientific-didactic conceptual structures, and emergent curriculum code. These categories were developed over one decade, with each one significantly shaped by its specific social and educational context. The central tension throughout this curricular construction has been between the lived curriculum and the prescribed curriculum. This tension has enabled the adoption of interstitial resistance as a political project encompassing curricular, institutional, and classroom dimensions. The categories, emerging from epistemic thinking, have facilitated the proposal of an Emergent Curriculum Code as a new formative ideal. This conceptual framework has served as the foundation for creating a multidisciplinary, intercultural, and hybrid curriculum currently offered in a university graduate program
Future-proof learning outcomes for classroom music teacher education: A Europeanwide exploration
Get PDFEquipping school-based music teachers with future-proof competences for meaningful classroom music in primary and secondary education, can be approached in different ways. One way is to facilitate music teacher education by formulating and disseminating future-proof learning outcomes that capture current and future demands of the music teaching profession. As part of the Erasmus+ Teacher Academy, the ‘Teacher Education Academy for Music’ (TEAM), we are developing a data-based set of descriptors that define the expected learning outcomes for future music teachers in schools. We take two existing (and widely used) sets as a starting point, and are updating them based on data collection and discussion. The purpose of the current study is to determine current and future-oriented trends in existing institutional, regional and national sets of descriptors, throughout Europe, which have been collected from stakeholders in the TEAM project and the EAS network. Through open coding, with guiding inclusion and exclusion criteria, 6 dominant emergent themes have been defined: (1) collaborations, (2) digitisation, (3) diversity & inclusion, (4) global (artistic) citizenship, (5) interdisciplinarity, and (6) practitioner research & professional development. We discuss the findings in relation to the current (international) discourse in music education and look forward to the potential impact of the findings on the concept and formulation of the new set of learning outcomes in Europe
Local teachers’ career experiences in international schools: A currere study from Côte d’Ivoire
Get PDFThis phenomenological study explores the career experiences of 12 local Ivorian teachers working in international schools in Côte d’Ivoire through Pinar’s currere methodology. Drawing on in-depth interviews analyzed across four temporal dimensions—regressive, progressive, analytical, and synthetical—the research investigates how local teachers navigate complex institutional dynamics while constructing professional identities within international education contexts. Findings reveal systematic barriers including credential devaluation, salary inequities, and exclusion from leadership opportunities that reflect colonial legacies and hegemonic structures. Despite these challenges, participants developed various strategic responses, including contextual behavior adaptation, selective information sharing, and collective organizing. The study documents internal transformations where teachers redefined success around student-centered outcomes rather than hierarchical advancement, while simultaneously engaging in external transformation efforts through community-school bridge building and policy advocacy. The findings suggest that local teachers function as agents of institutional change rather than passive recipients of inequitable practices. The research contributes to international education literature by centering marginalized voices and demonstrating how currere methodology enables understanding of professional identity construction as an ongoing temporal negotiation between individual agency and structural constraints. The study provides insights for policy reforms in hiring practices, compensation structures, and recognition systems to better support equity in international education contexts