This paper offers gendered accounts of girls’ schooling and childhood from urban India. It challenges global ‘girl effect’ narratives by grappling with the interplay of poverty and caste patriarchy and how it shapes families’ struggles and concerns and girls’ (re)productive labour, (un)freedoms and classroom experiences. Moving beyond the notion of ‘multiple childhoods’ it develops a conceptual framework that accounts for the way the state, the market, economic inequalities and local patriarchies inscribe poor girls’ schooling and work. Drawing upon ethnographic work with Class VIII students in a state school it also unpacks girls’ negotiation of classed and casted patriarchies.

This introduction offers an overview of the concept of populism, the debates around its definitions and its relationship with democracy and the significance of attending to populist politics in the context of education. It also lays out the political contexts in which authors have engaged with education and populist politics in the UK, Brazil and Israel, and the ways in which they understand populist shifts in education. Detailing the two main conceptions of populism used by authors in the special section, namely, populism as ideology and populism as political logic, we discuss how authors understand the construction of 'the people' and 'the elite', and the implications of the 'antagonism' between them in each case. Dividing the nine articles in the special section into three groups, we look at the ways in which right-wing populism has sought to (re)shape divisions based on race, religion and nationalities, among other things; how political and pedagogic practices are being (re)imagined to counter these divisions and populist moves; and the stakes of bringing the question of populism into education. We show how this special section has brought together different conversations and disciplinary perspectives on right-wing shifts in education, challenges to these and a potential way forward. Most importantly, we invite readers to think through the shifting role of education in democracy, as well as the divisions and hierarchies that are entailed in institutionalised education.

This article looks at the contribution of insights from theoretical linguistics to an understanding of language acquisition and the nature of language in terms of their potential benefit to language education. We examine the ideas of innateness and universal language faculty, as well as multilingualism and the language-society relationship. Modern linguistics has studied language both as a phenomenon internal to individuals and as a social reality. We argue that understandings from both these areas together should be brought to bear on the conceptualisation of language teaching-learning. Multilingualism is indicative of tremendous language ability on the part of the speaker, and needs to be acknowledged as such, irrespective of which languages form part of the individual's repertoire. It is also of great significance to learners who need to participate in a pluralistic, democratic society. Indeed, the concept of 'a language' needs to be replaced by the idea of 'multilingualism'. We discuss a possible transformation in the goals and means of language education in the light of explanations and perspectives gained from the study of language. Since such a transformation would require a much greater and longer-term partnership between the study of language and language education, we suggest directions for future research. There does not seem to be an emphasis on linking these two fields in the literature at present; this article is an effort to establish the importance of addressing this gap. Contemporary Education Dialogue 11(2) 197-220

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