Education, policy and democracy: contemporary challenges and possibilities

In 2020, we had planned to bring together researchers, educators and policymakers for a three-day dialogue on education and democracy to continue the conversations that were started at a similar event in 2017 (e.g. Riddle 2019; Riddle and Apple 2019; Riddle and Heffernan 2018). The event had to be cancelled due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, although we have persevered in continuing to draw out the threads of conversation in other ways (e.g. Riddle, Heffernan, and Bright 2022; Riddle 2022), including through this special issue.

There can be little doubt that democracy faces significant challenges in global and local contexts. The much-heralded ‘end of history’ and the triumphant ascendance of capitalism and its version of Western liberal democracy over other forms of social, political and economic life (Fukuyama 1989) has eroded, with the democratic institutions of Westernised liberal powers unable or unwilling to address the challenges posed by climate change, a global pandemic, increasing political instability, social unrest and rapidly widening economic inequality.

The COVID-19 global pandemic, now in its third year, has brought into stark relief the fault lines in our social, economic and political institutions. The limits of democracy are being tested, as the interconnected public health, social, political and economic crises widen already existing inequalities and fracture public trust and goodwill (Giroux 2020). The time is ripe for a reimagining of how we might live together in more sustainable and collective ways, through which ‘a new world will emerge, the contours of which are for us to both imagine and to draw’ (Schwab and Malleret 2020, 11).

Education and democracy have a long history, with Dewey (1916) arguing for the importance of education in helping to collectively reconstruct society to be more equal, just and democratic. However, the role of democracy in education and education’s role in democracy remain contested (Sant 2019). For example, the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration (Council of Australian Governments Education Council 2019) states that all young Australians should become active and informed members of the community, who ‘are committed to national values of democracy, equity and justice, and participate in Australia’s civic life by connecting with their community and contributing to local and national conversations’ (8). Yet, how democracy, equity and justice are infused into curriculum, education policies, practices and discourses remains unclear. In an attempt to think through these issues, we have brought together several diverse scholarly perspectives on education and democracy in this special issue, with an emphasis on the challenges and opportunities for educational administration, leadership, policy and practice.

The papers included in this issue provide a range of conceptual and empirical analyses, which engage closely with questions of education, democracy, participation, agency, power and engagement in a multiplicity of ways. Drawing on long histories and rich traditions of socially critical and comparative literatures, authors consider the complex tensions and interplay between education histories, policies, practices and research, with close consideration of implications for educational leadership and policy in contemporary contexts. They contribute to an ongoing focus in this journal by taking critical perspectives towards contemporary issues, while recognising the importance of understanding the historical context of our current circumstances.

The special issue opens with a collaborative paper, which includes reflections from Michael Apple, Gert Biesta, David Bright, Henry Giroux, Amanda McKay, Peter McLaren, Stewart Riddle and Anna Yeatman. Each author tackles the question of how education can be for democracy in complex and contradictory times, offering insights into possible forms of democratic education for the twenty-first century, from schools and early childhood through to universities and further education settings.

Noah Romero theorises punk rock and the university within the context of neoliberal discourses, arguing that punk culture provides an important frame of critique in response to the narrowing of university life and vision to economic outputs, privatisation and corporate governance. Instead, Romeo argues that an anti-neoliberal punk ethic can help to reimagine universities as vibrant sites of democratic activity, critique and dissent.

In their paper, Rhyall Barry Gordon, Matt Lumb, Matthew Bunn and Penny Jane Burke utilise Butler’s concept of performativity to explore how equity and widening participation programmes in higher education contexts can utilise anti-democratic practices of evaluation that reinscribe and reproduce inequalities. They critique the hegemonic technologies of evaluation that permeate higher education to consider possible ways in which more counter-hegemonic and democratic modes of evaluation might come to be taken up. The paper suggests that evaluation can be reshaped in more relational, co-created ways to enable different forms of knowledge and participation, which is participatory, collaborative and democratically minded.

Andrew Hickey, Stewart Riddle, Janean Robinson, Barry Down, Robert Hattam and Alison Wrench consider the contemporary education policy landscape of Australian schooling, providing a critical examination of how two decades of neoliberal reform have resulted in a policy logic of rationalisation, accountability, effectiveness and renewal that is beholden to market values. In contrast, the authors suggest that innovative pedagogical reform could be enacted through deeply contextualised policy agendas through relational pedagogies, through which teachers, students and curriculum come into meaningful relationship with each other.

In his paper, Jorge Knijnik provides a sobering account of the challenges posed by the conservative Escola sem Partido movement in Brazil, which seeks to demonise the progressive education movement and rejects the philosophical teachings of Paulo Freire. Using Horsford’s ‘3Rs’ agenda alongside Freirean concepts, Knijnik considers the framing of media narratives to examine how effective the conservative movement has been in its attempts to roll back progressive schooling in Brazil. The paper concludes with a hopeful counter to these anti-democratic forces in localised, community driven ways that support and nourish democratic schooling.

Marie Brennan, Eve Mayes and Lew Zipin argue that current education policy settings in Australia have limited the possibilities for young people to participate in democratic action. They consider the ways in which young people can engage in an activist curriculum that is truly democratic and participatory, working on solutions to local–global problems, such as climate change. In doing so, the authors suggest that curriculum needs to be reimagined as part of the project of democratising schools through student participatory knowledge and youth-led community action.

In her paper, Stef Rozitis examines how discourses of elite schooling are mobilised through technologies that seek to position gender, advantage, school choice and diversity as unproblematic and marketable commodities that promote elite schooling as a preferred option. However, such exclusionary discourses present challenges to democratic modes of being and belonging for young people, which the paper carefully interrogates in its analysis of the legitimising practices and narratives of inequality and elite schooling.

Martin Mills, Stewart Riddle, Glenda McGregor and Angelique Howell present a conceptual paper, which considers the intersections between curricular justice and democratic schooling in contemporary schooling contexts. Taking up Connell’s claims about social justice and schooling from the 1990s, the authors seek to reposition and reframe curricular justice as a contemporary problem, with broad implications for democratic modes of schooling.

The final paper in the special issue presents a collaborative dialogue between Anne Aly, Jill Blackmore, David Bright, Debra Hayes, Amanda McKay, Bob Lingard, Stewart Riddle, Keita Takayama and Deborah Youdell regarding how education could be for democracy in the twenty-first century. Authors consider how sites of informal and formal education might respond to challenges to democracy in the contexts of Australia, Japan and the United Kingdom. At the core of the dialogue is an engaged and nuanced consideration of the importance of public education and its vital place in democratic societies.

Each paper in this special issue takes a unique perspective on the problem of education and democracy, considering the challenges and possibilities for a sustained engagement with democratic modes of education in the contemporary context, drawing on the rich histories and knowledges of democratic education policies and practices that continue to be developed in local and global contexts.

There is much work to be done in the field of democratic education, whether it be in the search of a better understanding of education and democracy’s relationship to one another, questions of how education might be for democracy, the importance of teaching young people about democracy, and whether education can be more democratic. Importantly, democratic education is not simply about schools being more democratic or learning about democracy, but about the type of society we wish to live in and the political institutions and practices that will get us there (Apple, 2011). The papers in this special issue make a small, but important, contribution to these struggles for more democratic and socially just futures through education.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stewart Riddle

Stewart Riddle is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at the University of Southern Queensland. His research examines the democratisation of schooling systems, increasing access and equity in education and how schooling can respond to critical social issues in complex contemporary times.

David Bright

David Bright is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. His research investigates how educational practices are mediated by perceptions of social, cultural and linguistic difference, and explores how difference can be re-imagined to create new possibilities for democratic education. David has a particular interest in the cultural politics of English language teaching, international schooling, and international student programmes.

Amanda McKay

Amanda McKay is a Senior Lecturer in the Manchester Institute of Education, at the University of Manchester. Her research explores the contemporary challenges of principals’ work and how we can better attract, support, and keep school leaders within the profession.