Search

Fair access and widening participation currently occupy a prominent position in the UK higher education agenda, but these terms remain ambiguous. In this paper we identify two prominent strands of policy in the government's approach to access and the widening of participation and contrast these with a third, more progressive perspective. The academic strand seeks to attract 'gifted and talented' young people into an unreformed higher education system. The second strand, which we term the utilitarian approach, posits a need for reform. However, this is undertaken largely to meet the requirements of employers and the economy. In contrast, a transformative approach values diversity and focuses on creating a system of higher education that does not place the burden of change upon potential entrants. This framework is used to explore some of the implications of the government's White Paper The future of higher education. First, the purpose of higher education is discussed, with particular reference to the distinction between economic and social objectives. Second, the government's view of the structure of the higher education sector is examined, by scrutinizing the notion of institutional differentiation and the role of the access regulator. We conclude that within a more differentiated higher education sector different aspects of the access discourse will become dominant in different types of institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In July 2021 the Chinese Government unexpectedly released what has become known colloquially as the 'Double-Reduction' policy. The policy decreed the reduction of homework pressure on students and greater control of private tutorial companies. In this paper, we set out to understand why the Chinese central government launched the 'Double-Reduction' policy in mid−2021 by using narratives to analyse the three most circulated explanations for the policy and its timing. We use data from a range of formal and informal policy texts. The three narratives, including one policy narrative dominant in the official discourse and two alternative ones, constructed the causal stories about the policy's rationale from multiple perspectives. The combination of multiple perspectives and a narrative approach helps reveal the policy event's complexity and lays a foundation for researchers interested in tracking the development trajectory of this new policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops previous work in which we deployed a form of Foucauldian critique to clear a space in which it might be possible to think education differently. Here, in that space, we are hoping to 'get lost' in some unexplored spaces of possibility. We sketch some starting points, some 'lines of flight' for such thinking. To do this, we identify a concatenation of three crises and discuss briefly their inter-relationship. But the paper focuses primarily on education. The first of these crises, COVID, offers a moment, a space, in which we might think of ourselves, others, and the world differently. The second, climate, brings to bear a pressing urgency for change in the way that we think of our relation to the world in practical, political and epistemological ways. The third, education in relation to crises, is an opening within which some thinking might be undertaken about what it means to be educated, and in which the relation between education, community and sustainability, in a variety of senses, might be pursued. In the final sections, using concepts from Foucault, Olssen, Lewis and others, we seek to find inspiration from and an accommodation between Foucault's self-formation and commoning – a practice of collaborating and sharing to meet every day needs and achieve the well-being of individuals, communities, and environments – as a new way to think education beyond modern episteme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the policy logics of privatisation through service provision for students with English as an Additional language or dialect (EAL/D) in the state education system of Queensland, Australia. In the context of EAL/D, specifically targeted policy has been subsumed by a broader umbrella or meta-policy of inclusion, whilst at the same time, funding support for EAL/D learners is substantial. The devolution of EAL/D support to individual schools through autonomous targeted funding results in policy 'everywhere', distributed across broad portfolios dedicated to ensuring schools provide quality education services for all learners, but also 'nowhere', lacking systemic support and detail on how inclusion should be enacted for EAL/D and with no accountability placed on schools to demonstrate that they are addressing EAL/D learner needs. The co-location of EAL/D policy with a broad systemic policy of inclusion, the absence of systemic professional support, combined with devolution to school sites has had real effects on the policy in practice. The analysis demonstrates there is the potential opening of EAL/D provision to market forces at school sites, where the private sector can potentially sell commercial 'solutions' directly to schools, which have greater autonomy over one-line budgets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how teachers see policy and how the visibility of various aspects of policymaking are mediated by our school contexts. As a perspective from a K-12 classroom teacher conducting policy research with other classroom teachers, this paper also explores how teachers, in turn, might make our policy work visible to ourselves and the implications for teacher agency. Teachers in the study took part in a two-year participatory action research endeavour, joining school-based policy inquiry groups where we identified policies, mapped policymaking processes, and discussed the implications of our contexts. On one hand, these engagements highlight the central role a school's institutional narratives and professional culture play in constructing the ways we see policy. At the same time, they point to how our seeing exceeds and moves with and through such constraints. With reference to postcolonial interpretations of agency, I describe how as part of inquiry teachers constructed spaces for ambiguity and alternative accounts, and in doing so movement and difference, in policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term 'governance' is one of the most widely applied concepts in education policy and research. Yet its meaning has changed over space and time both analytically and normatively. This history is a complicated one marked by both shifts and continuations in the politics of language and the development of unique intellectual histories and conceptual and empirical turns in the field of education. In this paper we systematically delineate the different meanings ascribed to governance within education with a focus on its polyvalence as a political project, empirical object and research analytic. Specifically, we highlight the various complementarities and tensions flowing from this rich and evolving language. We conclude by calling for more education researchers to reflect on this complicated history and attendant language as part of their framings and interpretations of governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we reveal and describe the context in which education policy networks in Israel have expanded recently, given the evolving interdependent relationships among the actors involved. We draw upon resource dependence theory, which assumes that actors' power relations within a network depends on their own and others' perceptions of the dependency relations among the different actors in the network. Policy documents and committee reports were identified and analyzed qualitatively, alongside transcripts of semi-structured, in-depth interviews conducted with stakeholders in Israeli education policy. We identified significant changes regarding which stakeholders take initiative for policy-making and implementation processes in Israeli education. We related these changes to the dynamics of resource dependence relationships among actors. In addition, we revealed a new stage in the evolution of educational governance in Israel – a transition from intersectoral collaboration within a top-down policy process defined and led by the Ministry of Education to a situation in which policy networks including non-governmental stakeholders initiate and subsequently lead many education policy processes. At this new stage, certain non-state actors increased their power, presence, and influence over Israeli education policy and can thus shape existing policies by leveraging their perceived control over a range of resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the rise of social enterprise in relation (and in response) to the contemporary nexus between education and work. Contextualising social enterprise within the broader trend toward private influences in education, the paper explores how diffuse networks driven by both market ideals and a social conscience are shaping new sites of education and work on the margins. Drawing on in-depth research undertaken on the experiences of homeless street press sellers of the social enterprise The Big Issue, I bring focused attention to the lived experience of these transformations in policy and practice. The analysis reveals how entrepreneurialism intersects with precarious poverty to frame sellers' cultivation of their skills and techniques as enterprising workers on the margins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Primarily developed as an alternative to narrow measures of well-being such as utility and resources, Amartya Sen’s capability approach places strong emphasis on people’s substantive opportunities. As a broad normative framework, the capability approach has become a valuable tool for understanding and evaluating social arrangements (e.g. education policies and development programmes) in terms of individuals’ effective freedoms to achieve valuable beings and doings. This paper explores the recent emergence of ‘capability’ in Australian education policy, specifically in theAustralia in the Asian CenturyWhite Paper. We explore capability as a framing device and reveal how its various meanings are at odds with the scholarly literature, specifically Sen’s conception of capability and its implications for social justice in and through education. The analysis shows that the social justice intent of a capability approach appears to be overtaken in the White Paper by an emphasis on outcomes, performance and functionings that seek to serve the nation’s economic interests more than the interests of students, especially the disadvantaged. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Ontological politics has received increasing attention within education policy studies, particularly as a support for the notion of policy enactment. While policy enactment offers serious challenges to traditional approaches toward policy implementation, this paper takes up ontological politics as a concept that extends beyond implementation and holds consequences for policy formation as well. Analysing the different uses of evidence in recent policy documents from Aotearoa New Zealand, this paper argues that an ontological politics of evidence grounds policies in ways that define what can and cannot be enacted, what this paper terms policy enablement. The analyses illustrate an ontological politics of evidence that excludes non-experts in the first instance, and that sanitises the critical elements of enactment in the second. Both analyses highlight the ways policy enablement emerges from ontological politics and offers a supplement to policy enactment. Following these analyses, the paper offers some provisional thoughts on the relationship between enablement and enactment as an approach that attends to context as a constitutive element of policy-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is growing research interest in school inspection throughout Europe; however, there have been few comparative studies between Swedish and Norwegian school inspectorates. Such a study is necessary since little is known about how inspection policies are shaped through ‘governing modes’ in the two Nordic countries. This paper explores the similarities and differences between state school inspection policies within the two countries from 2002 to 2012. Based on a rigorous, comparative document analysis of 23 policy documents, a particular focus is given to how school inspection adheres to professional-bureaucratic control as a mode of governing and/or details national expectations through performance audit, potentially intervening into school practices. We demonstrate that even if the cases of public administration seem to be somewhat homogenous from the outside, there is substantial evidence of major differences in the inspection policies of these two countries which can be explored by comparative analysis. Specifically, this paper contributes both conceptually and comparatively to understanding how a study of purposive and evaluative modes of governing can add to the field of school inspection studies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper challenges the notion that quantitative data – as a numeric truth – exist independent of a nation's political and racial landscape. Utilising large-scale national attainment data, the analysis challenges the belief that 'White working class' children in England, especially boys, are 'the new oppressed' – as a former equality adviser has publicly claimed. The analysis applies Quantitative Critical Race Theory, or 'QuantCrit', an emerging quantitative sub-field of Critical Race Theory in education. The paper argues that far from being 'oppressed', White boys continue to enjoy achievement advantages over numerous minoritised groups; especially their peers of Black Caribbean ethnic origin. Additionally, the analysis uniquely exposes racialised trends of 'equivalency' in core subject qualifications, whereby minority ethnic children are over-represented in certain lower-status qualifications that are counted as equivalent in education statistics but not in the real world labour market. The analysis concludes that knowing misrepresentations of quantitative data are at the heart of an institutional process through which race and racism are produced, legitimised and perpetuated in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New cognitive infrastructures are emerging as digital platforms and artificial intelligence enable new forms of automated thinking that shape human decision-making. This paper (a) offers a new theoretical perspective on automated thinking in education policy and (b) illustrates how automated thinking is emerging in one specific policy context. We report on a case study of a policy analysis unit ('The Centre') in an Australian state education department that has been implementing a BI strategy since 2013. The Centre is now focused on using BI to support complex decision making and improve learning outcomes, and their strategy describes this focus as becoming 'information centric'. The theoretical framework for our analysis draws on infrastructure studies and philosophy of technology, particularly Luciana Parisi's recent work on automated thinking. We analyse technical documentation and semi-structured interview data to describe the enactment of a BI strategy in The Centre, with a focus on how new approaches to data analytics are shaping decision-making. Our analysis shows that The Centre is developing a cognitive infrastructure that is already creating new conditions for education policy making, and we conclude with a call for research designs that enable pragmatic exploration of what these infrastructures can do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how university staff in Denmark, Germany, and England perceived higher education (HE) policy as impacting the experience of being a student in their respective countries. While, in each nation, different policy mechanisms were identified as having triggered transformations in the experience of being a student, the transformations themselves were described in a strikingly similar manner across all three countries: staff stressed that students had become more instrumental in their approach to learning; that the student experience had become more circumscribed; and that students were under greater stress. We analyse how staff's narratives about the impact of policy on the experience of being a student were mediated by their own ideas about what constituted 'good education', which in turn were strongly rooted in national traditions. Furthermore, in each country, staff's assessment of the impact of specific policies on HE differed sharply from those of policy actors. Our findings contribute to the scholarship on the marketisation of HE, through drawing attention to how the rationality underpinning policy does not determine how it is engaged with by key stakeholders on the ground, and by demonstrating how the neoliberalisation of HE can unfold in different formats, some more explicit than others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School governing bodies in England have considerable powers and responsibilities with regard to the education of pupils. This paper draws on an analysis of policy and on qualitative research in the governing bodies of four maintained schools. It explores two policy technologies through which education and the work of school governing bodies are constituted as apolitical. Firstly, it considers the move to recruit governors with (unspecified) ‘skills’, rather than those with a representative role who might provide diverse perspectives. Secondly, it considers the technology of ‘prescribed criticality’, through which ‘effective’ governors are provided with the ‘right’ questions to ask. The paper argues that the operation of these policy technologies has significant implications for possibilities for democratic engagement in schools. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the Spring of 2002, The SCRE Centre at the University of Glasgow was commissioned to conduct focus group research on behalf of the the Education, Culture, and Sport Committee at the Scottish Parliament. The study, which was conducted over a 3 month period, was intended to inform the Committee's inquiry into the purposes of education. Inquiries of this type are a common feature of the working practices of the Scottish Parliament. The aim of this particular one was to promote 'an in-depth discussion on key issues on the future direction of education'. The main theme of this paper is the dissonance between those who framed the inquiry and those who participated in the focus group study. The meanings of that dissonance are explored—as, briefly, are the conditions under which the research was conducted. The factors that contribute to mismatch in intention or meaning are also discussed. This study also comments on the continuing dominance of academic education in Scotland, and the consequences for those who see themselves as failures while subscribing to the centrality of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper theorises how politics, economy and migrant population policies influence educational policy, utilising Bourdieusian theoretical resources to analyse the Chinese context. It develops the work of Lingard and Rawolle on cross-field effects and produces an updated three-step analytical framework. Taking the policy issue of the schooling of internal migrant children as an example, it analyses how a range of fields – political, economic and public policy – ‘export’ their logics of practice into the educational policy field (as a sub-field of the public policy field) and consolidate the changes. The cross-field effects shape the state school enrolment policy and the relative positions of agents and the relative value of their capital in the educational policy field. This paper demonstrates the analytical capacity of Bourdieusian theoretical resources for policy analysis in the Chinese context, by illustrating how the inequalities experienced by migrant families have been intensified in education by cross-field effects. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Within the EU, answers and responses to detected issues and problems facing young people are regularly searched for within and through education and learning. The EU's Structured Dialogue on youth is one of the consultation-based policy processes where education is often suggested as a solution and a highly relevant field of action helping to improve youth's status and life. Using Foucauldian discourse analysis, this paper examines discourse about education present in selected policy texts and statements of various stakeholders and individuals active within the EU's Structured Dialogue on youth. As an example, the first two phases of the fifth cycle of that dialogue are considered and examined, exploring perceptions of the dialogue and education and their role. The paper aims to explore the underlying political rationalities of education via which the field is governed and programmable realities created, while young people's specific role and conduct is suggested and framed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a sociological analysis of the knowledge and actors that have become central to international assessments, the paper focuses on the processes that influence the production of shared narratives and agendas, adopting the position that their existence is not organic, but rather the product of undertakings that often fabricate and manage, rather than strive for 'real' consensus. The paper suggests that limiting the analysis to the role of travel and exchanges of experts and policy-makers in the making of policy is, in fact, the construction of an 'ideal-type' of an international policy-making world. Recent research on these encounters suggests that one needs to focus on actors' conflict and struggles, rather than processes of 'collective puzzling'. Using the concept of 'political work', as well as elements of Bourdieu's field theory, the paper shows the ways that international comparative testing in the field of education has not only offered policy-makers with much needed data to govern, but has in fact almost fused the realms of knowledge and policy; expertise and the selling of undisputed, universal policy solutions have now drifted into one single entity and function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With its shift to a market economy gathering speed from the 1990s, the Chinese Government embarked on an agenda that brought neoliberal forces into almost all sectors including education. The policies underpinned China’s spectacular economic growth, but in education have had consequences that arguably are problematic. Drawing on a mixed-methods study in Shanghai, this paper examines ‘micro-neoliberalism’ in China’s education system, i.e. privatization and marketization at the individual, family, and institutional levels, with focus on blurring boundaries between public schooling and private supplementary tutoring. Some dimensions of these processes resulted from deliberate macro-level policies to decentralize control of schooling, raise performance, and empower private education. Other dimensions arose from the market behavior of individuals, families, and institutions that countered government efforts to steer parental choice of schools and to reduce disparities between schools. Education policies are enacted not only in schools but also in the shadow sector which is commonly overlooked. This paper focuses on Shanghai but has implications for other parts of China; and since shadow education is expanding as a global phenomenon, it also has relevance to many other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Discussions charting the changing role of local government in education have often focused extensively on 'concrete' policy changes over time, but have provided less detail on the contribution to changing power relations of less tangible shifts. Drawing on Foucauldian notions of discourse and governmentality, in this paper, detailed rationalities of local third-sector and other 'arm's length' actors in English education are explored, with a focus on their relationship to local authority (LA) school admissions teams. The paper aims to provide deeper understanding of tactical struggles for authority which happen within competitive local sociopolitical spaces. Data is utilised from a study of 'Choice Advice' (CA) in 10 LAs, within a background context where arm's length agents deployed to deliver CA have been co-opted into central government marketisation regimes, but local state planning of schooling is arguably more equitable for vulnerable families than are logics advancing a marketisation of education. The research reveals: (1) discourses valourising 'independence' and 'distance' from local state 'agendas'; (2) discourses separating the interests of 'parents' and 'schools', with LAs positioned as representing the latter; (3) dehumanising representations of LA officers as 'faceless', obstructive and requiring regulation from 'critical friends'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses constructions and redefinitions of teacher professionalism by focusing on the discursive negotiations between the government and the teachers’ union in Norway. Based on an examination of three white papers on teacher education from the past 15 years and policy documents put forth by the Union of Education Norway during the past decade, the authors argue that new constructions of teacher professionalism are produced both by the government and from within the teachers’ union. However, there are differences between the government and the teachers’ union concerning what the main aspects of teacher professionalism are. The government emphasises teacher accountability, research-based practice and specialisation. By contrast, the teachers’ union highlights research-informed practice, responsibility for educational quality and professional ethics. There are three main areas of discursive struggle focused by the teachers’ union: the resistance to accountability policies, the redefining of research-based practice and the lengthening of teacher education. The authors argue that the teachers’ union is adopting an increasingly more active approach, thereby also challenging the idea that the teachers’ union is less interested in developing and taking responsibility for the quality of school education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper we draw on Mettler's concept of the policyscape and apply it to an examination of policy-making processes and events as they pertain specifically to an analysis of transgender inclusivity and gender diversity in the Ontario context. We employ Ball's focus on policy as text and policy ensembles alongside Bailey's employment of policy dispositifs to map key events that characterize important legislative developments that define the Ontario education policy landscape with regards to addressing gender identity and gender expression as a basis for anti-discrimination. We situate particular events such as the GSA (Gay Straight Alliance or Gender and Sexuality Alliance) and sex education controversies within a broader context of trans activism, which we identify as pointing to quite specific contingencies that characterize the Ontario policyscape. Overall, the paper extends a consideration of the specificities of the Ontario case in Canada to a broader reflection on the utility of the policyscape as a crucial concept for making sense of the relevance of more general characteristics of a spatially-focused trans informed policy analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an era of expanding global educational privatization and shifting policies on how to fund educational facilities in many states in the US, this study engages the lenses of critical policy analysis and fiscal sociology to examine educational privatization in the school facilities industry in California. Employing critical policy document analysis to examine approximately 40 primary and secondary source documents including propositions, bills, government and education codes, facilities reports, and state public debt data, this paper addresses the following research question: How have education finance policies shaped the system of school district facilities financing over time, specifically with regard to the field of private actors involved in the school facilities industry? This paper examines the historical policy context for privatization in school district facilities financing, evaluating how policies have evolved, been implemented, and affected stakeholders over time in the broader neoliberal context. Findings indicate that policies promoting privatization in education finance impact school districts’ abilities to provide equitable facilities to their students. Also, the complex and intermittent process of financing school facilities has facilitated the rise of specialized private actors in the school facilities industry that has now organized to engage in private-sector policy setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the relationship between education, meritocracy and redistribution. It first questions the meritocratic ideal highlighting how it relates to normative expectations that do not hold fully neither in their logic nor in practice. It then complements the literature on persistent inequalities by focusing on the opportunities for change created by current trends in the economy and in social aspirations. As the meritocratic argument that education is strongly linked to certain rewards in the labour market comes under pressure, increasing social dissatisfaction with education and skills wastage could be expected, as already noted in part of the political economy literature. This literature, however, has tended to conclude from such observations that educational expansion cannot deliver equality. The paper contributes to the debate by focusing on the opportunities created by current trends for the reorganisation of the relationship between education, the economy and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to contribute to existing understandings of the impacts of education policy reform by drawing together analyses of state-level policy reforms; institutional responses to these; and day- to-day school- and classroom-level practises that constitute particular sorts of learners. The paper draws on data generated through a school ethnography, with detailed interview and observational data set alongside school- and state-level documentary evidence. The paper suggests that, in a marketized context marked by hegemonic individualism, practises of educational triage become both acceptable and necessary. A preliminary refinement of the notion of educational triage is offered, with such practises identified at bureaucratic, institutional, and classroom levels. In addition, the paper draws on the notion of subjectivation to demonstrate how intersecting discourses of ability and conduct are deployed in the constitution of ideal, acceptable and unacceptable learners—learner identities that are deployed and inscribed through practises of institutional and classroom triage. The paper concludes that deep connections exist between the macro- and meso-level impacts of marketization and the ongoing constitution of students as learners at the micro-level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The publication of A-level examination results in England, Wales and Northern Ireland has become one of the major diary items in the news media's calendar. This paper is based, in part, upon the findings of an inter-disciplinary study funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). It explores two key questions about the relationship between the education sector and news media in the UK. Firstly, it asks why educationalists appear to have become pessimistic about the possibilities for raising the quality of media debate about education. Secondly, it takes the example of the annual coverage of A-level results, in order to discuss why education news coverage tends to adhere to templates that many educationalists criticize as producing ritualistic and polarized coverage. The paper concludes by exploring some suggestions for those who are seeking ways to influence the quality of education news coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the Tomorrow’s Schools administrative restructuring, a second wave of educational change installed globalised discourses as governmentality policies in Aotearoa New Zealand. Drawing on Foucault’s ‘toolkit’, this genealogical policy chronology traces the transformation of curriculum and assessment into a specific political rationality, unsupported by national standards (NS) or testing. Its inscription into students and teachers through technical-managerial and business-market discourses, sought to remake them as enterprising, industrious and governable within an Enterprise Culture. The paper traces the microphysics of the institution of this rationality, through the fusion of curriculum, assessment and economic policy, and the imposition of a NS accountability framework onto curriculum. Learning discourses encouraged teachers to locally breakdown objectives and activate them as NS to initiate governance by outcomes, targets and results. Reinforcing market relations, this installed the basis of performativity and measurement. By 1995, the failure to attain reliable, comparable data, calculate productivity gains and leverage standards, resulted in the government’s review and audit agency declaring standards non-existent and the framework unworkable. This paper demonstrates the centrality of curriculum assessment, even with ostensibly failing purposes, to the construction of malleable human capital and the embedding of a calculative governmentality for future population knowledge, management and control. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper investigates the work of media discourses on education policy in public debates over the Queensland school curriculum. It draws on theories of discourse, theories that have recently influenced the field of policy sociology, to outline a conceptualization of policy and media texts as discourses in the public sphere. In so doing, it notes the significant contribution such public discourses on education make to the policy process. The paper employs critical discourse analysis to investigate the discursive constructions of curriculum during one particular policy initiative. The analysis focuses on newspaper debates over the inclusion of a subject called Health and Physical Education (HPE) in the Queensland secondary school curriculum. The paper shows how educational policy issues were discursively constituted and contested through the construction of public discourses on education policy. In particular, it demonstrates how such public discourses worked to construct authoritative voices on educational policy. The paper concludes with a call to teachers and policymakers to seek opportunities to construct an authoritative public voice on issues of education policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A lack of esteem for teachers and the teaching profession is a central tenet underpinning policy reforms put forward by the 2010 UK Government White Paper ‘The Importance of Teaching’. This article argues that the policy problem and solutions presented in the White Paper lack awareness of the historical and social positioning of teaching. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 32 London-based secondary teacher training students from various social class and ethnic backgrounds, this paper asks how the profession is perceived and what sort of choice it is for the trainees. It employs a Bourdieusian lens and concepts of social and cultural capital to examine the interplay of gendered, classed and ‘raced’ biographies in relation to individuals’ decisions to become teachers. Understanding the social world as ‘accumulated history’, as Bourdieu does, stresses that experiences and outcomes are rooted and collected in a series of historical structures and functionings. The paper argues that the ambiguous status of the profession is both a function and an effect of its conceptualisation as feminised. It also asks whether the weak professional standing of teaching has further destabilising consequences in the present political moment where a string of neoliberal and neoconservative policy reforms reshape the profession. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper reports on the findings of an in-depth genealogical study of the discourse of quality in Australian Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) policy. Quality reform has become the foremost global policy agenda for ECEC due to assumptions about the economic potentials of quality services. In Australia, the recent National Quality Framework elevated early childhood policy in Australia from the margins as the lynchpin of a broader economic reform agenda. However, quality ECEC - what it is and does - is a complex, contestable notion that could be considered problematic for the sector to execute, particularly through market models of provision. Drawing on Foucauldian notions of discourse as the ‘already said’, the truth assumptions that have underpinned policy uses of quality ECEC in Australia are identified and critiqued. It is shown that the discourse of quality has been tactically deployed in Australian ECEC policy to realign quality ECEC outcomes with educative outcomes, as a means for government to selectively grow and govern human capital. This positions quality as a high-stakes reform discourse for early childhood stakeholders, entwined with the expanded reach and intensification of selective, performance-related standards and incentives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The attainment gap associated with socio-economic status is an international problem that is highly resistant to change. This conceptual paper critiques the drive by the Scottish Government to address the attainment gap through the Scottish Attainment Challenge and the National Improvement Framework. It draws upon a range of theoretical perspectives but principally examines the problem through the lens of Steiner-Khamsi’s concepts of ‘reception’ and ‘translation’ of policy and through examination of the international and national (Scottish) policy contexts. The paper argues that, rather than focussing narrowly upon attainment outcomes, an holistic approach should be adopted which takes account of the economic, social and relational constraints which impact upon families in poverty, calling for a systems-level approach. ‘Schools cannot go it alone’: there is a need to focus upon a wide range of public policy to redress inequalities in society. Whilst the Scottish Government has looked to the London/City/National Challenge as a potential solution to the problem, the complexities and limitations of policy borrowing need to be understood. Higher Education Institutions, government agencies, local authorities and schools need to work in partnership to develop research informed practice which will impact upon learning outcomes forallchildren and young people. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a case study of a local school network in England that is well established as a provider of initial teacher education (ITE). School networks are now the favoured providers of ITE in England in a 'school-led' system. Our evidence comes from participant observation and interviews conducted over a five-month period (more than 400 h of data collection). We present evidence of the strategic intent and enactment of this programme. The policy of 'school-led' ITE has been directed by statements suggesting that governance will operate through local networks. However, we also observe the impact of hierarchical and market governance. We review this evidence in terms of interactions between hierarchies, markets and networks and use this review to reflect on the discourse that has driven policy and the discourse that has resisted this policy direction in England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the vexed educational policy aspects of area-based interventions (ABIs) in neighbourhoods designated as 'disadvantaged' in an Australian context. We find that the way in which the policy of ABIs is supposed to operate and impact education is highly problematic. What we present instead in this paper is a much more complex process by which aspirations are formed, sustained, contested and maintained by young people who regard themselves as 'ordinary' and as being engaged instead in a process of navigating educational opportunities on the basis of resources available to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the perverse effects of the new accountability regime central to the Labor government's national reform agenda in schooling. The focus is on National Assessment Program -- Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) results that now act as 'catalyst data' and are pivotal to school and system accountability. We offer a case study, with two embedded units of analysis, in which NAPLAN has become high stakes testing for systems. The first involves the relationships between the federal government and three States (Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland) in negotiating performance targets on NAPLAN for reward payments in respect of a national agreement to improve literacy and numeracy. We show how Victoria used 2009 data as baseline, set ambitious targets and failed to meet them, while Queensland set much less ambitious targets, met them and was rewarded. New South Wales created targets that combined literacy and numeracy scores, obfuscating the evidence, and met their targets. The second focuses specifically on Queensland and the ramifications of the poor performance of the State on the 2008 NAPLAN. This resulted in a review commissioned by the Premier, a Report on how to improve performance, and the introduction of Teaching and Learning Audits and State-wide targets for improvement on NAPLAN. This unit of analysis focuses on the perverse effects of this highly politicized agenda. This paper shows how States seek to protect their 'reputational capital' and as such, 'game' the system. The data for the analysis draw upon interviews with relevant senior policy-makers and on analysis of relevant documents and media coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employing the analytical framework of a discourse-driven social change, this paper unpacks the neoliberal concept of ‘educational quality’ in the course of Russian education modernisation reform from 1991 to 2013. Since the early 1990s, the global neoliberal discourse has served as the backbone for post-Soviet educational ideology. Alongside other major reform initiatives, the ‘quality revolution,’ proclaimed by the Russian Government in the early 1990s, signified a rhetoric shift away from the Soviet-era quality control towards a neoliberal quality assurance paradigm. Through fine-grained textual analysis of policy documents and political statements by key educational stakeholders, the analysis unpacks the discursive underbelly of the new quality paradigm, in an attempt to determine whether a paradigmatic transformation has taken place. The paper argues that despite the nominally proclaimed shift towards a quality assurance model of educational governance, the representation of educational stakeholders and responsibilities within the new quality paradigm continues to correspond to the Soviet-era command-and-control authoritarian model. The study challenges the popular claim of a neoliberal turn in Russian education and suggests that a neoconservative authoritarian approach to education governance has been smuggled in under the disguise of ‘quality assurance.’ [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper aims at providing a theoretical and empirical discussion on the concept of pedagogisation which derives from the hypothesis of a new era of 'totally pedagogised society' in Basil Bernstein's work. The article is based on empirical research on higher education policy, with a focus on the implementation of curriculum change policy in French universities. Observations provided by this research show that current orientations of policy, such as efficiency-oriented policy discourses and quality-assurance mechanisms, entail social effects on the organisation of work in universities towards pedagogisation, that is the positioning of the University itself and of its agents into pedagogic relations. Pedagogisation refers to the establishment of a certain type of social relation which involves an attempt to modify the sociocognitive and practical frameworks of social agents engaged in practice. The paper argues that the concept proves to have a descriptive potential in how power relations and social control operate within processes of policy implementation. First, it provides understanding of how categories of reform circulate from official policy discourse to local practices. Second, it enables to consider consequences on communication and social relations between agents/agencies, especially in regards to the conditions of their participation and contribution in the construction of the higher education debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bicultural educational policy is part of a much broader ensemble of bicultural policies that were first developed by the Fourth Labour Government elected in 1984. These policies were an acknowledgement of, and response to, the historical injustices suffered by Māori people as a consequence of colonisation. Bicultural education policy is thought to be a means of addressing the ongoing challenge of educational underachievement of Māori students in the compulsory schooling sector. At present, the dominant discourse in New Zealand education frames the educational underachievement of Māori as a problem associated with cultural differences; however, this tends to obscure explanations that focus on socio-economic disparities. This paper shows how the dominant discourse relating to the underachievement of Māori students is established in policy and maintained through various auditing systems, and how this leaves little space for other explanations or solutions. The paper advocates a move away from an either/or approach to the problem of the educational underachievement of Māori and argues for greater critical engagement with bicultural education policy in order to open up space for conversations that address both the cultural and the socio-economic factors which may affect achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Based on the ‘case’ of educational reform in India, this paper explores the emergence of both new trans-national spaces of policy and new intra-national spaces of policy and how they are related together, and how policies move across and between these spaces and the relationships that enable and facilitate such movement. The paper is an attempt to think outside and beyond the framework of the nation state to make sense of what is going on inside the nation state. In particular, it takes seriously the need to rethink the frame within and scales at which the new policy actors, discourses, connections, agendas, resources, and solutions of governance are addressed – and the need to move beyond what Beck calls ‘methodological nationalism’ . In other words, the paper argues that thinking about the spaces of policy means extending the limits of our geographical imagination. To address this argument, it combines the presentation and discussion of data with some more general discussion of policy networks and mobilities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper draws on the idea of neo-tribal capitalism to argue that in New Zealand educational disadvantage is typically understood through the lens of ethnicity and that policy-makers appear blind to disadvantage that is related to socio-economic status. A clear expression of this gap is the fact that while New Zealand has strategies to lift the achievement of Māori and Pasifika school students (many of whom come from relatively poor backgrounds), there is no strategy to lift the achievement of European/Pākehā students from similar backgrounds. Drawing official statistics, this paper argues that a significant proportion of those who do not succeed in New Zealand's education are Europe-ans/Pākehās from poor socio-economic backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While a great deal of attention has been given to evaluating how well policies are implemented, that is, how well they are realised in practice, less attention has been paid to understanding and documenting the ways in which schools actually deal with the multiple, and sometimes opaque and contradictory demands of different ‘types’ of policy. This paper addresses the question of how it is that some education policies ‘fail’ to translate into a continuing and effective set of practices in schools, and instead, are subjected to processes of dissipation and mutation. In this paper, we take as our case personalised learning (PL) launched in England in 2004. In understanding complex processes of enactment, the challenge is to understand how policies differ and analyse why some policies ‘work’ in ways that are unexpected – not as failures of implementation but as mutations. As a ‘case’ of policy dissipation, PL highlights the changing relationships between national and institutional imperatives, and the creative mutations to which some policies are subject within schools. It is not that they have no effects, but rather their effects are marginal or nuanced rather than immediate and obvious. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper draws on ideas of assemblage to examine the contingency and (in)coherence of education policy. The paper is a conceptual and thematic attempt to understand the policy terrain, broadly conceived, pertaining to opposition to the establishment of private Islamic schools in Australia and public Afrocentric schools in Canada. This opposition is located within complex policy terrains relating to multiculturalism, whiteness and race/racism. The paper focuses on the complex racialised politics surrounding education policy initiatives that support marketisation and choice in private and public K-12 schooling – with an interest in what forms of choice are legitimated in and by a racialised education market. The paper concludes that opposition to Islamic and Afrocentric schooling highlights the ambiguity of equity, and the fragility of identity in racialised education policy environments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper starts from the propositions that (a) pedagogy is central to the achievement of socially just education and (b) there are existing pedagogical approaches that can contribute to more socially just outcomes. Given the ostensible commitments of the current English Government to reducing educational inequality and to the importance of teaching, we set out to explore the conditions that would need to be put in place to enable these approaches to be developed and sustained consistently in disadvantaged schools in England. We start by analysing classroom observation and interview data from four primary schools with contrasting socio-economic composition, highlighting the different pedagogical practices that emerge in working- and middle-class schools and also in working-class schools in different circumstances. Interviews with pupils show the impact of these practices on learner identities. We then draw on a variety of literatures on school composition, markets, leadership and teacher identities to present an account of the ways in which these different pedagogies are consciously or unconsciously produced. We point to systemic constraints: a mismatch between student demands and organisational capacity; teachers’ attitudes and professional identities and performative pressures on school leaders. All of these suggest the need for fundamental reforms to educational purposes and system architecture, rather than the naïve reliance on teacher agency to transform educational outcomes. Nevertheless, the current policy environment in England does offer some possibilities for action and we close the paper with some suggestions about ways in which capacity for more socially just pedagogy could be built within English schools. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

'Widening participation' and 'fair access' have been contested policy areas in English higher education since at least the early 1990s. They were key facets of the 2003 White Paper - The Future of Higher Education - and the subsequent 2004 Higher Education Act, with stated objectives that the reach of higher education should be wider and fairer. In particular, there has been considerable concern about admissions to 'top universities', which have remained socially as well as academically exclusive. The principal policy tools used by the Act were the introduction of variable tuition fees, expanded student grants, discretionary bursaries and the new Office for Fair Access (OFFA). This paper draws on publicly available statistics to assess whether the changes implemented by the 2004 Act have indeed made access to English higher education wider and fairer in relation to young people progressing from state schools and colleges and from lower socio-economic groups. It concludes that, while there is some evidence for modest improvements, these have been concentrated outside the 'top universities', which have seen slippage relative to the rest of the sector. The paper concludes with a discussion of the reasons why financial inducements appear to be a flawed and naive approach to influencing student demand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of CCTV in schools is now commonplace in the UK. It is estimated that 85% of all UK secondary schools currently have CCTV systems in operation. The introduction of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) (enacted in March 2000) meant that for the first time CCTV had direct legislation governing its use in the UK. This paper attempts to apply the decree to the widespread introduction of CCTV technology in schools and argues that the various elements of statute are impractical or inappropriate to educational institutions. The ill-defined and vague legislation presented in the DPA 1998 provides very little protection to the data subjects in schools (mainly pupils and teachers). In addition, the ubiquity of CCTV in schools in the UK far surpasses the enforcement capabilities and resources of the Information Commissioner's Office and as such any contravention of the scant provisions of the Act is likely to go unidentified and under-enforced. In consideration of the DPA, the paper elucidates numerous examples to suggest that a large number of schools are in contravention of the law. The paper outlines the need for bespoke policy to govern and regulate the use of CCTV in schools. Whilst the paper focuses on the case of the UK, it speaks to an international audience in concluding that the use of CCTV and surveillance technologies in schools requires greater scrutiny and regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks an explanation for the persistent social phenomenon of segregated schooling in England whereby children from families with broadly the same characteristics of wealth, education and social networks are more likely to be educated together and therefore separate from children from more socially distant groups. The paper outlines the historical legacy and the current level of segregation in English schools. It considers explanations that focus on the effect of marketisation of education and finds these explanations limited. A deeper explanation in terms of the practices of more affluent and more highly educated parents is found to be more adequate but in need of amendment in its characterisation of collective action. The complementary practices of poorer parents with less education are highlighted. The way in which these class mechanisms operate in England at the present time is illustrated by considering the different ways in which segregation is generated in selective, faith and community schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1980s, education in Canada has been through a process that led to school choice, targeting the improvement of students' performance through school competition. These policies fostering an education quasi-market became an ideal framework for the expansion of IB schools. Since the Diploma Programme of the International Baccalaureate (IBDP) offers a differentiated international curriculum and is perceived as a program that contributes to students' achievements, it has been increasingly adopted in school districts and schools. This paper explores the marketing strategies developed in schools and districts in response to school competition by tracing the incorporation of the IBDP in high schools in different districts in British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec. Based on interviews with school staff, district officials and IB local association representatives, this study analyzes schools' marketing decisions from a consumer and producer orientation taking into account the macro environment (federal government) and micro-environment (provincial government and districts). Rather than fostering efficiency and improving students' achievement as intended, marketization policies resulted in an increased focus on the recruitment of high achieving students, which led to a competition between schools, between districts and between other programs in the districts or in other words –an 'all against all' competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the changing roles and purposes of vocational education for young people in what has been called a 'knowledge' society, using the General National Vocational Qualification (GNVQ) as an example. This qualification dominated the broad, vocationally-related route within the English qualifications system throughout the 1990s. The paper considers how lecturers in a college of further education understood the role and purpose of GNVQs, and explores the ways in which they engaged in mediating national qualifications policy in practice, through their engagement with students and constructions of students' learning identities. The paper draws on data from a case study of one college of further education in the English Midlands, which involved interviews with lecturers and students across three vocational areas of the GNVQ. The focus in this paper is on the ways in which lecturers constructed GNVQs around what they perceived to be students' needs. They encouraged students to use GNVQs to shape a future, which involved progression to further and higher education. The paper argues that, whilst such attempts to create a constructive and meaningful role for vocational education are important, they do not overcome the hierarchical structure of participation in formal learning which remains inherent in the education system. The paper concludes by considering the implications of this study for the future role of vocational education for young people within a wider system of education and training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of writers have drawn attention to the increasing importance of language in social life in 'new times' and Fairclough has referred to 'discourse driven' social change. These conditions have led to an increase in the use of various forms of discourse analysis in policy analysis. This paper explores the possibilities of using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in critical policy research in education, drawing on a larger research project which is investigating the equity implications of Education Queensland's reform agenda. It is argued that, in the context of new times, CDA is of particular value in documenting multiple and competing discourses in policy texts, in highlighting marginalized and hybrid discourses, and in documenting discursive shifts in policy implementation processes. The last part of the paper discusses how such research might be used by policy activists inside and outside education department bureaucracies to further social democratic goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the 'joined-up thinking' and attempts at 'joined-up working' that policy architects recommend for the successful operationalization of the New Deal for 18-24 year olds. In particular, it examines the difficulties arising around the full-time education and training option. The research project reports upon the 'implementation gaps', in particular the workings of Employment Service Personnel and College staff who strive to interpret and work within the relevant policy guidance for the New Deal for Young People (NDYP). The paper draws upon semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis from a qualitative case study in South Wales to describe the interaction and articulation of the 'main players' who facilitate New Deal education and training options. Centralized and mandatory programmes like the New Deal for Young People which aims to be integrative and ameliorative, but which are framed within a strong sanctioning policy, have created tensions between those professionals trying to work in a 'joined-up' manner. The guidance, educative, and social work elements which contribute to a positive learner/trainee identity are at odds with the surveillance and policing roles involved in monitoring claimant participation. FE staff who facilitate and manage the 'New Deal' full time education and training option emerge as a seriously challenged group, which has to forge workable and practical applications of a policy which somewhat undermines notions of a learning society and lifelong learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]