This edited collection brings together researchers from education, human geography, sociology, social policy and political theory in order to consider the idea of the ‘pedagogical state’ as a means of understanding the strategies employed to re-educate citizens. The book aims to critically interrogate the cultural practices of governing citizens in contemporary liberal societies. Governing through pedagogy can be identified as an emerging tactic by which both state agencies and other non-state actors manage, administer, discipline, shape, care for and enable liberal citizens. Hence, discourses of ‘active citizenship’, ‘participatory democracy’, ‘community empowerment’, ‘personalised responsibility’, ‘behaviour change’ and ‘community cohesion’ are productively viewed through the conceptual lens of the pedagogical state. Chapters consider the spaces of schools, universities, the voluntary sector, civil society organisations, parenting initiatives, the media, government departments and state agencies as fruitful empirical sites through which pedagogy is worked and re-worked. This book was originally published as a special issue of Citizenship Studies.

There have been significant developments in the state of psychological, neuroscientific and behavioural scientific knowledge relating to the human mind, brain, action and decision-making over the past two decades. These developments have influenced public policy making and popular culture in the UK and elsewhere – through policies and emerging social practices focussed on behavioural change, happiness, wellbeing, therapy, resilience and character. Yet little attention has been paid to examining the wider political and ethical significance of the widespread use of psychological governance techniques. There is a pressing and recognised need to address the behaviour change agenda in relation to how our cultural ideas about the brain, mind, behaviour and self are changing. This book provides a critical account of existing forms of psychological governance in relation to public policy. It asks whether we can speak of a co-ordinated and novel shift in governance or, rather, whether these trends are more simply pragmatic policy tools based on advances in scientific evidence. With contributions from leading scholars across the social sciences from the UK, the USA and Canada, chapters identify practical, political and research challenges posed by the current policy enthusiasm for particular branches of affective neuroscience, behavioural economics, positive psychology and happiness economics. The core focus of this book is to investigate the ways in which knowledge about the mind, brain and behaviour has informed the methods and techniques of governance and to explore the implications of this for shaping citizen identity and social practice. This groundbreaking book will be of interest to students, scholars and policy-makers interested and working within geography, economics, sociology, psychology, politics and cultural studies.

Alongside Paulo Freire, Henry A. Giroux is widely considered to be the founding father of critical pedagogy. This classic work represents his best writing on critical pedagogy spanning the past 40 years. The 2nd edition includes four new chapters covering the rise of fascist culture in America and across the globe and the dictatorship of ignorance in the age of Trump and post-truth. This impassioned work opens by discussing critical pedagogy in schools before extending the notion to the educational force of culture, politics, and society. Giroux analyses the increasingly empirical orientation of teaching, focusing on the culture of positivism and examines some of the major economic, social, and political forces undermining the promise of democratic schooling in both public and higher education. He argues against the tendency by both right wing and neo-liberal interests to reduce schooling to training, and students merely to customers. He points to the increasing attack on pubic and higher education by right-wing populists and the Trump administration in an age of growing authoritarianism. Giroux also considers the legacy of Freire and issues a fundamental challenge to educators, public intellectuals, and others who believe in the promise of radical democracy.

In this completely revised and updated edition, Deconstructing Developmental Psychology interrogates the assumptions and practices surrounding the psychology of child development, providing a critical evaluation of the role and contribution of developmental psychology within social practice. Since the second edition was published, there have been many major changes. This book addresses how shifts in advanced capitalism have produced new understandings of children, and a new (and more punitive) range of institutional responses to children. It engages with the paradoxes of childhood in an era when young adults are increasingly economically dependent on their families, and in a political context of heightened insecurity. The new edition includes an updated review of developments in psychological theory (in attachment, evolutionary psychology, theory of mind, cultural-historical approaches), as well as updating and reflecting upon the changed focus on fathers and fathering. It offers new perspectives on the connections between Piaget and Vygotsky and now connects much more closely with discussions from the sociology of childhood and critical educational research. Coverage has been expanded to include more material on child rights debates, and a new chapter addresses practice dilemmas around child protection, which engages even more with the "raced" and gendered effects of current policies involving children. This engaging and accessible text provides key resources to inform better professional practice in social work, education and health contexts. It offers critical insights into the politics and procedures that have shaped developmental psychological knowledge. It will be essential reading for anyone working with children, or concerned with policies around children and families. It was also be of interest to students at undergraduate and postgraduate levels across a range of professional and practitioner groups, as well as parents and policy makers.

This book is one English professor's assessment of university life in the early 21st century. From rising mental health concerns and trigger warnings to learning management systems and the COVID pandemic, Christopher Schaberg reflects on the rapidly evolving landscape of higher education. Adopting an interdisciplinary public humanities approach, Schaberg considers the frequently exhausting and depressing realities of college today. Yet in these meditations he also finds hope: collaboration, mentoring, less grading, surface reading, and other pedagogical strategies open up opportunities to reinvigorate teaching and learning in the current turbulent decade.

What is the role of politics in the classroom? How does the desire of the teacher shape the pedagogical process? Is teaching possible? Is learning possible? Pedagogy as Encounter engages with such larger issues. The majority of discussions, workshops, conference panels, articles, and books avoid meta-pedagogical issues by focusing on technique. Such “technique talk” examines schemes, methods, and procedures that do and do not work in the classroom. It answers the “how” question at the cost of ignoring these bigger queries. Pedagogy as Encounter consists of 120 vignettes arranged in eight chapters. Most of these are first person autobiographical stories that describe encounters with students and colleagues. They portray a teacher whose classroom disappointments lead him to radical experimentation. But there are also a few theoretical sections, as well as segments that are epigrammatic in nature. All of it is grounded in a Lacanian political psychology and in a critical global political economy. The theory, however, remains largely implicit and is confined to the footnotes. The body of the text is free of jargon and presented in a conversational voice.