Education University of Hong Kong
Authored and edited books
I have published broadly in the areas of philosophy of education and global studies in education, focusing on questions related to what it means to be a good person in varied social and political contexts. Some of my key texts are highlighted here. See my CV for more detailed information.
Beyond Virtue: Politics of Educating Emotions
Cambridge University Press, 2020
Educating students for emotional wellbeing is a vital task in schools. However, educating emotions is not straightforward. Emotional processes can be challenging to identify and control. How emotions are valued varies across societies, while individuals face different emotional expectations. For example, girls face pressure to be happy and caring, while boys are encouraged to be brave. This text analyses best practices of educating emotions. The focus is not just on the psychological benefits of emotional regulation, but also on how calls for educating emotions connect to the aims of society. The book discusses education for happiness, compassion, gratitude, resilience, mindfulness, courage, vulnerability, anger, sadness, and fear.
Winner of the Critics' Choice Book Award of the American Educational Studies Association.
Contesting Education & Identity in Hong Kong
Routledge, 2020
This text examines the intersection of youth civic engagement, identity, and protest in Hong Kong, through the lens of education. It explores how education and identity have been protested in Hong Kong, and the mark that such contestations have left on education. Many were astonished by youth participation in the Umbrella Movement of 2013–2014, and the anti-extradition law protests in 2019. These protests have caused people to consider what has changed in Hong Kong over time, and what education has to do with youth civic engagement.
This book provides an academic perspective on the intersection of youth identity and education in Hong Kong. This book will be of interest to educational policy makers, curriculum specialists, and educational scholars and students in liberal studies, social studies, civic education, comparative and international education, and multicultural education.
Questioning Allegiance: Resituating Civic Education
Routledge, 2019
Education about living in society and in the world is a vital task. Yet such civic education is not always critically examined, and few are encouraged to reflect on our civic education experiences. Could it be that civic education is not playing a helpful role in society? Can it be done better? This book elucidates the black box of civic education, and some of its main operations across contexts. Offering a new framework, it questions existing thinking and shifts attention from the right balance to strike between local, national, and global allegiances to the more fundamental question of what counts as ‘local’, ‘national’, and ‘global’.
Winner of the Critics' Choice Book Award of the American Educational Studies Association and the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia Book Award: Honorable Mention.
Muslims and Islam in US Education
Routledge, 2014
Muslims and Islam in US Education explores the complex interface that exists between U.S. curriculum, teaching practice about religion in public schools, societal and teacher attitudes toward Islam and Muslims, and multiculturalism. It presents multiculturalism as a concept that needs to be rethought and reformulated in the interest of creating a more democratic, inclusive, and informed society. Islam is an under-considered religion in American education. However, Muslims are impacted by ignorance that is widespread among the public. Citizens who do not have a balanced, fair and accurate view of Islam can make a variety of decisions in the voting booth, in hiring, and within their networks and spheres of influence. This book has implications for curricula, religious education, and multicultural education today.
Winner of the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia Book Award and the University of Hong Kong Research Prize.
Educational Assessment in Tanzania
Springer, 2020
This book examines teachers’ conceptions and practices of assessment in Tanzania. Adopting a sociocultural perspective, it reveals how Tanzanian teachers understand the role of assessment in relation to classroom practices, community and other factors. Although teachers in Tanzania consider assessment useful for evaluating and monitoring learning, improving student performance and for accountability, their practices are rarely seen as directly supporting student learning; it is not that teachers do not know how to implement reforms. Instead, they are reluctant to adopt and embrace reforms because they consider them contradictory to their teaching roles, and overly burdensome, if not implausible, given the context of teaching and learning. Improving traditional assessments, rather than radically transforming them, can be more effective for cultivating practices that suit the physical, political, economic and cultural contexts of Tanzanian schools.
Asian Views on Education for Sustainable Development
Routledge, 2020
This book critically considers what Asian philosophies can contribute to a more substantive discourse on sustainability education . Contributors examine how ‘east’ and ‘west’ interact in educational philosophy and practice in Asian contexts. As a collection, they provide a broad view of Asian sustainability thinking that is not dominated by Confucianism, Buddhism, Islam, and post-colonialism, but rather which regards these themes—and other frameworks for sustainable education—as dynamic aspects of Asian contexts, historically and today. As such, the book invites readers to consider the challenges and opportunities for theorising sustainability in the philosophy of education, while critically engaging with the way ‘Asia’ and ‘east’ are typically understood.
Marxism, Neoliberalism, and Intelligent Capitalism
Routledge, 2022
This book explores Marxism and political-economic theory, and its implications for education around the world, as seen in the history of Educational Philosophy and Theory. As such, it illustrates the evolution of political-economic changes across societies, as they have been brought to bear within the academic field over time. In the early decades of Educational Philosophy and Theory, only a few works can be found focused on Marx, Marxism, and related themes. However, since the mid-1990s, Educational Philosophy and Theory has published many articles on neoliberalism and educational responses to theories and policies based on political-economic perspectives. This collection serves to showcase this work, exploring the way Marxist, neoliberal and other related political-economic theories have been applied to educational discussions among philosophers and theorists of education in the history of Educational Philosophy and Theory.
Feminist Theory in Diverse Productive Practices
Routledge, 2019
Feminist Theory in Diverse Productive Practices is the second of two volumes examining gender and feminist theory in Educational Philosophy and Theory. This collection explores the difference that gender and sexual identities make both to theorizing and working in education and other fields. As the articles contained in this text span nearly 40 years of scholarship, this volume sheds light on how feminist, gender, and sexuality theory has evolved over time.
Key themes explored include women’s ways of knowing, challenges women (and girls) face in taking up professional employment across diverse fields historically and today, and how feminist and related theories can enable women in professional development to empower each other. The book tells a story of how gender and sexuality theory has been brought to bear on discussions of practice in diverse fields over decades of publication of Educational Philosophy and Theory.
From ‘Aggressive Masculinity’ to ‘Rape Culture'
Routledge, 2019
From ‘Aggressive Masculinity’ to ‘Rape Culture’ explores the relationship between gender and sex roles and socialisation and education, foregrounding inequity and different forms of oppression in various contexts. It tells a story of transformation of a field over half a century, in relation to the theorisation of gender and sexuality. The transformation of this field is mapped on to broader social trends, enabling a better understanding of the role of educational philosophy and theory in feminist, queer, and related veins of scholarship.
The collection focuses on a wide range of topics, including nature versus nurture and gender and sex roles, sexual binaries, and how power is organised and circulates within educational spaces (including online spaces) enabling or disrupting sexually oppressive or violently gendered conditions. Other trends include Internet activism and the use of intersectional theory, postcolonial theory, and global studies.
The Methodology and Philosophy of Collective Writing
Routledge, 2021
This collection covers the methodology and philosophy of collective writing. It is based on a series of articles to explore the concept of collective writing. This volume provides insights into the philosophy of academic writing and peer review, peer production, collective intelligence, knowledge socialism, openness, open science and intellectual commons. This book develops the philosophy, methodology and pedagogy of collective writing as a new mode of academic writing as an alternative to the normal academic article. The philosophy of collective writing draws on a new mode of academic publishing that emphasises the metaphysics of peer production and open review along with the characteristics of openness, collaboration, co-creation and co-social innovation, peer review and collegiality. It will be of interest to scholars in philosophy of education and those interested in the process of collective writing.
What Comes After Postmodernism in Education Theory
Routledge, 2020
This book brings together the work of over 200 international scholars, who seek to address the question: ‘What happened to postmodernism in educational theory after its alleged demise?’.
Declarations of the death knell of postmodernism are now quite commonplace. Scholars in various disciples have suggested that, if anything, postmodernism is at an end and has been dead and buried for some time. An age dominated by playfulness, hybridity, relativism and the fragmentary self has given way to something else—as yet undefined. The lifecycle of postmodernism started with Derrida’s 1966 seminal paper ‘Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences’; its peak years were 1973–1989; followed by uncertainty and reorientation in the 1990s; and the aftermath and beyond.
About
I am a philosopher of education who brings philosophical and theoretical texts and arguments to bear on matters relating to schooling in society. My work focuses on the diversity of human experience.
I am an editor for the book series New Directions in the Philosophy of Education (Routledge), and Deputy Editor for the leading journal Educational Philosophy and Theory. I am Immediate Past President of the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia and Past Director of the Comparative Education Research Centre at the University of Hong Kong.
I have worked in England, Scotland, Mexico, Turkey, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, and Hong Kong. I grew up in Oregon, and did my MPhil at Cambridge and my PhD at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I have been based in Hong Kong since 2012.
Get in touch
liz at lizjackson.org
