FreshEd

What does it mean to think of comparative education beyond the human? Is our field based on assumptions of individual autonomy and Western Enlightenment thinking that sees time as linear and progress as possible? Does a “posthuman future” hold new possibilities for our research? And can our field live with such dissonance? Earlier this month, the Post Foundational Approaches to Comparative and Int...

Controversies over school policies that impact transgender students have increasingly made headlines in the United States for the past few years. What legal protections do transgender students have in schools? And how have the Obama and Trump administrations interpreted the law in this regard? My guest today is Suzanne Eckes, professor in the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies Department at...

Teach For America developed an alternative teacher education model that spread not only around the United States but also across the world. My guest today is Rolf Straubhaar, Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership and School Improvement at Texas State University. In his latest article in the Journal of Teacher Education, Rolf looks at the Teach For All affiliate in Brazil called Ensina! In...

Over 500 people were murdered in Chicago last year. Most of these murders were concentrated in a few historically black neighborhoods on the West and South sides of the city. And most of the victims were under 30 years old. For many people listening to this show in the comfort of their home or car or while at the gym, it’s probably difficult to grasp what such a high rate of murder and violence do...

Today we rethink Technical and Vocational Education and Training. Instead of looking at it from a human capital approach, my guest, Leesa Wheelahan, looks at it from a productive capabilities perspective. Together with Gavin Moodie and Eric Lavigne, Leesa Wheelahan has recently co-written a new report for Education International entitled Technical and vocational education and training as a framewo...

In the past few episodes, we have spent a lot of time discussing the future: the future of unions, the future of the planet, the future of propaganda, the future of democracy and so on. But how can we even begin to conceptualize the idea of future? My guest today is Noah Sobe, Senior Project officer for Education Research and Foresight at UNESCO. Later this week at the UN general assembly, he will...

Kailash Satyarthi won the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize for his activism for children’s rights and education. He has been on the forefront of creating and leading global change against child labor and child slavery. Today I speak with Kailash about his activism and the power of civil disobedience. In the context of the global climate crisis, what can we learn from Kailash’s experiences? Is there a way to...

The past few shows have focused on climate change as being the biggest issue facing teacher unions globally. There are, of course, other big issues. One of them is propaganda. Misinformation campaigns have been on the rise partly due to the turn towards right-wing extremism in many parts of the world. Social media has created new ways to spread misinformation and propaganda, making education a pow...

Teaching is a profession that must respond to the changing social world. From new technology and curriculum reforms to privatization and climate change – teachers are on the front-lines of a complex system that has huge consequences for the future. In this context, what is it like to be a teacher today? How do teachers manage the competing pressures? My guest today is Armand Doucet, an award-winni...

Unions are on the front lines of advocating human rights. That puts them in natural collaboration with non-governmental organizations doing the same. Amnesty International is one such NGO that has strong ties to global trade unions. Today I speak with Shane Enright, a Workers’ rights campaigner and global trade union adviser at Amnesty International. He recounts various campaigns organized by Amne...

How does change happen? What role do unions play in creating decent quality lives for its members? When is more militant action needed? These questions are asked by all unions. So, in our quest to explore education unions in more depth, I want to explore how transport unions begin to answer these questions. In many ways, the struggles facing teacher unions worldwide are similar to those facing the...

In the second installment of our focus on the big issues facing education unions, we focus on union renewal. My guest today is Howard Stevenson, Professor of educational leadership and policy studies at the University of Nottingham. He has researched teacher trade unions around the world to try and understand the best way to revive the power of unions. In our conversation, he talks about his findi...

Education International is the global federation of teacher unions, representing some 32 million teachers worldwide. Every four years EI, as it is commonly known, holds a World Congress to determine its policies, principles, programs, and budget for the future. It is also where the President, Vice Presidents and General Secretary are elected to new terms. The World Congress this year was composed...

How did School Based Management become an approach to educational governance found across the world? Where did it come from and what institutions advanced the idea globally? Today I speak with Brent Edwards, an Associate Professor of Theory and Methodology in the Study of Education at the University of Hawaii. He has spent over a decade researching the phenomenon of School Based Management. In his...

Many universities around the world are focused on their efforts to internationalize. But what does that even mean? And what does that look in a single country, such as like Japan? My guests today are Tom Brotherhood and Chris Hammond. Together with Yangson Kim, they have co-written a new article in the journal Higher Education that explores junior international faculty in Japanese Universities. Th...

Teach for America has altered the landscape of teacher preparation across the country. Typically TFA recruits, as they are commonly known, are given provisional certifications and put into classrooms after taking a short training course. They then take university courses to learn to be a teacher. Learning to be a teacher while already being one poses unique challenges. My guest today is Matthew Th...

What was it like growing up and attending school in the Soviet Union and other socialist societies? Did the lived experiences of children match the official rhetoric of the state or the Western bloc? What agency did children have? My guests today are Iveta Silova and Nelli Piattoeva. Together with Zsuzsa Millei, they have a new co-edited book that explores the memories of everyday life in socialis...

Teachers are striking across America. From Arizona to Oklahoma to West Virginia, teachers are not simply demanding higher pay. They are also demanding better learning conditions for students and better working conditions for all state employees. And they are succeeding. Many of these industrial workplace actions are taking place in states that have passed right-to-work laws, meaning workers cannot...

Today we have a slightly different type of show for you. One of FreshEd’s producers, Lushik Wahba, created an amazing podcast about the experiences of international students at one small college in the USA. Over 1 million international students currently study at colleges and universities across America. Why did they choose to study in the USA? What can we learn from their experiences? Lushik’s po...

Religion in American public schools is a hot-button issue. Can prayers be said in public schools? What about in extracurricular activities? Can states provide funds to religious schools? And if parents don’t vaccinate their children for religious reasons but send them to public schools, what can the State do? These questions don’t have easy answers and the US constitution offers little help. The E...

Some thirty-five percent of out-of-school children live in conflict-affected areas. These emergency situations include both human conflicts, such as, war and natural disasters, such as earthquakes. These children are in desperate need of help. Yet before anyone can act, information is critical. Information and data on education in emergencies is, however, inadequate in most cases. My guest today i...

Today Raewyn Connell returns to FreshEd to talk about her new book, The Good University. In it, Raewyn takes a deep dive into the labor that makes a university possible while also detailing the main troubles the institution currently faces. She argues that a good university must work for the social good rather than for profit. It must embrace its democratic roots and protect the process of being t...

Are there limits to what can be said on college campuses? When a far-right-wing speaker is disinvited to speak on campus, is it an issue of Free Speech? My guest today, Neal Hutchens, explores these issues in his research and writing. Ultimately, his look at the legal issues facing universities when it comes to free speech and academic freedom go to the heart of the purpose of higher education. Wh...

The World Bank hasn’t always made loans to education. Post-World War II, the Bank focused mainly on infrastructure. Even when it did start lending to education in the 1960s, it used the idea of manpower planning, the process of estimating the number of people with specific skills required for completing a project. Only in the 1970s did the World Bank begin to think of education in terms of rates o...

Climate change and its effects aren’t some future possibilities waiting to happen unless we take action today. No. The effect of climate change is already occurring. Today. Right now. Around the world, people have been displaced, fell ill, or died because of the globe’s changing climate. These effects are uneven: Some countries and classes of people are more affected by global warming than others....