educational reform Archives

Inclusion, Diversity and Innovation in Translation Education

Through examples of literary and audiovisual translation teaching practices, Inclusion, Diversity and Innovation in Translation Education places a novel emphasis on equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) synergising the latest research advancements in EDI and translation curricula.

The contributors revisit how languages and translation are currently taught and explore the relevance of EDI values from an interdisciplinary perspective. The chapters contain proposals of best teaching practices and teacher training guidance alongside examples of research-led teaching scenarios. There is a twofold rationale behind this volume: firstly, identifying links between literary and audiovisual translation teaching practices, which often demand great creativity inside and outside the classroom; and, secondly, placing greater emphasis on EDI-focused methods and themes. Following this approach, readers are invited to consider pressing societal issues such as (media) accessibility, intersectionality, LGBTQI+ and race, among others, and to embed them in their language and translation teaching practices.

The Education System in Mexico

Over the last three decades, a significant amount of research has sought to relate educational institutions, policies, practices and reforms to social structures and agencies. A number of models have been developed that have become the basis for attempting to understand the complex relation between education and society. At the same time, national and international bodies tasked with improving educational performances seem to be writing in a void, in that there is no rigorous theory guiding their work, and their documents exhibit few references to groups, institutions and forces that can impede or promote their programmes and projects. As a result, the recommendations these bodies provide to their clients display little to no comprehension of how and under what conditions the recommendations can be put into effect.

The Education System in Mexico directly addresses this problem. By combining abstract insights with the practicalities of educational reforms, policies, practices and their social antecedents, it offers a long overdue reflection of the history, effects and significance of the Mexican educational system, as well as presenting a more cogent understanding of the relationship between educational institutions and social forces in Mexico and around the world.

Brian Simon and the Struggle for Education

This is the first full-length study of the life and career of Brian Simon (1915-2002), leading Marxist intellectual and historian of education in twentieth-century Britain. Using documentary sources that have only recently become publicly available, it reveals the remarkably broad range of Simon’s life as student, soldier and school teacher, Communist Party activist, and educational academic, campaigner and reformer. In a sympathetic biography that yet retains critical distance, the authors analyse Simon’s contribution to Marxism and the Communist Party. They explore the influence of both on his work as a historian of education and trace the significance of his Marxist beliefs, political associations and historical approach to the cause of educational reform. In so doing, they consider the full nature and limitations of Simon’s achievements in his struggle for education. Unlike many Marxist scholars he remained loyal to the Communist Party in the 1950s, which damaged his reputation as a public intellectual. Nevertheless, his support for comprehensive education helped to promote egalitarian educational reforms in Britain, although he was later unable to provide sufficient resistance to the 1988 Education Reform Act and to a decline in the position of the comprehensive schools.

In all this, the significance of Simon’s family, and especially his relationship with his wife Joan is to the fore. Joan and Brian forged a formidable 60-year partnership, in politics and the Communist Party as well as in life, that lasted until Brian’s death in January 2002.