In this paper, we argue for the moral and not merely the legal right to education for refugee children. National education in many countries is challenged by refugee flows and influx of displaced people. However, there is a tendency to think of refugee flows as isolated events rather than parts of the dynamics of a world society that national education systems needs to respond responsibly to and build capacity for. Consequently, there is a gap between the legal right to education for refugee children and its practical realization, and granting refugee children access to national education systems is becoming part of the problem and not only a solution to the de-territorializing and cosmopolitan challenges of refugee flows and displaced people. We argue that education for children of refugees’ need to meet with a cosmopolitan design of education in order to respond responsibly to the right to education for refugee children. In the first part, we discuss the legal right to education for refugee children, and moral challenges with regard to its practical realization in nation-centred school systems and schools. In the second part, we discuss de-territorializing effects of refugees in education by reviewing research on refugee education, refugee children’s experiences of education and by discussing refugee education in Sweden as a case. In the final part, we discuss ideas for a cosmopolitan design of education. We argue for a moral commitment to the education of refugee children in order for us to respond responsibly to their legal and moral rights and situation, but also to the legal and moral rights, and situations of those affected in host countries. We also argue for the importance of critical cosmopolitan imagination in education that does not restrict education to norms of national loyalty and national integration, or to economic norms of competitiveness and effectiveness.

Buscando mirar desde la práctica directiva real, el siguiente artículo plantea la necesidad de visibilizar a las escuelas como sistemas complejos de acciones y eventos no lineales e impredecibles, rasgos que ningún líder escolar debiera dejar de atender. Ello implica gestionar con equilibrio los múltiples factores que inciden en el quehacer diario de los directivos, con la misión y metas de la escuela. Desde la narrativa de líderes escolares exitosos en Suecia, los autores destacan algunos aspectos comunes de sus relatos: visión amplia y holística de la educación, una cuidadosa atención al contexto, conciencia avanzada del rol de la comunicación, una relación dialógica entre liderazgo y aprendizaje y, sobre todo, la capacidad de asumir la complejidad intrínseca de su tarea.

A newborn interest in and growing recognition of school leadership and school leaders in education is reflected in a converging global policy climate geared to higher performance and better results in schools. School leaders are no longer chiefly seen as administrators; rather, they are expected to be learning oriented school leaders and to play crucial roles in student achievement, teacher performance, school improvement and in effective school reform. This development has prompted debate on the knowledge base of school leadership, but also tensions with regard to the general expectations of and the concrete contexts for school leadership. In this paper, we examine and analyze the narratives of Swedish principals in vocational education and training as they face the challenges and growing expectations of embracing (instructional) leadership for teaching and learning in their work. We discuss the growing global interest in school leadership for teaching and learning, or instructional leadership, and its growing institutionalization, and we define what we mean by organizational complexity as a fundamental trait of schools and an inescapable condition for school leadership. We suggest that school leadership in vocational education and training often is subject to organizational hyper-complexity, and that effective school leaders in vocational education and training must be able to manage a variety of intermingling tasks and contexts in their schools. School leadership for teaching and learning in vocational education and training can be seen as the art of embracing, using and mastering organizational complexity.

The aim of this article is to discuss recent Swedish teacher education investments and reforms, and the work of teachers in response to globalisation within the context of modern social imaginaries. I briefly outline Charles Taylor's concept of modern social imaginaries, and I examine the character of recent Swedish teacher education, teacher education reform and the work expected of teachers. I conclude that economic imaginaries are given primacy: aims and reforms are primarily linked to economic imaginaries of the competitive nation; economic norms are given primacy in the governance of schools and education; globalised and economic standards of quality and success are increasing in importance; and the concern about how to make teacher education an attractive career investment for groups the state finds important to attract to teaching is held to be vital for the quality in outcomes of education. I critically discuss the underlying globalist imaginary I think underpins Swedish education reform in the global era, and transform the teacher into a scientifically grounded economic agent for market integration and the competitive edge of the Swedish nation. I address the question of whether the modern social imaginary of democracy and citizenship should be restored and cosmopolitised in education and teacher education and in relation to the expected work of teachers rather than be reduced to or transformed into economic worldviews and agency in the era of globalisation.

In this article, I discuss teacher education reform and the work of teachers in light of globalization and reflexive modernization. Increasing globalization has meant changed conditions for national education traditionally geared toward nation building and to the nationalizing of lifeworlds. It is assumed that the global economy has made knowledge and lifelong learning essential to economic growth, and governments have considered their citizens, teachers, and schools to be poorly trained for the demands of knowledge economies. Consequently, nation-states have invested massively in teacher education because of the vital role effective high-quality teachers are expected to play in preparation for working on global markets and for the competitive edge of nations. However, recent teacher education reform can be criticized for a one-sided orientation toward principles of economic growth, effectiveness, and competitiveness at the expense of other important educational aims, such as the development of reflective and communicative capacities and education for cosmopolitan citizenship. Moreover, recent teacher education reform in various nation-states seems to neglect how processes of reflexive modernization profoundly change schools, society, and the teaching situation, and undermine the principles that marked earlier phases of nation-centered modernization. I discuss teacher education and the work of teachers as reflexive modern practices and phenomena within the framework of critical social theory, and I mainly use Ulrich Beck's theory of reflexive modernization. I argue that increased reflexivity, institutionalized individualization, and cosmopolitization constitute reasons for the re-contextualization of teacher education away from the uncritical influence of the primacy of the economy, instrumental rationalization, and other principles of modernization that are now running dry. In the final part, I discuss the importance of moving from a mainly economically oriented, globalist view of learning to a multidimensional, cosmopolitan view of learning in teacher education and education in general.

Cosmopolitans share the moral assumption that we have obligations and responsibilities to other people, near or distant. Today, those obligations and responsibilities are often connected with communication, but what is considered important for cosmopolitan communication differs between different thinkers. Given the centrality of communication in recent cosmopolitan theory and debate the purpose of this article is to examine assumptions about communication that are often taken for granted, and particularly the commonly held assumption that linguistic communication depends on shared or common languages. It is primarily Donald Davidson's philosophy of language that provides the framework for my examination. I argue that there are several reasons for reconstructing our understanding of the nature of language and communication, and that shared languages play a much more limited role in communication than many communication theorists, cosmopolitans and educators have imagined.