This book brings together diverse, international scholarly perspectives on education and democracy in response to contemporary challenges for educational leadership, policy and practice.

The contributions meaningfully engage with a range of local and global issues regarding democratic participation and agency, with a particular focus on implications for educational access, engagement and justice. Each chapter considers the complex tensions and interplay between education histories, policies, practices and research to better understand how education can be for democracy in the twenty-first century. 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. This book makes a small, but important, contribution to these struggles for more democratic and socially just futures through education.

Education, Policy and Democracy: Contemporary Challenges and Possibilities will be a key resource for academics, researchers, and advanced students of education leadership and policy, educational administration, politics, research methods, and sociology. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Educational Administration and History.