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This paper argues that analyzing education policies through the lens of affect theory provides possibilities for understanding how particular concepts are associated with certain affective ideologies. To illustrate this, the paper analyzes the case of a recent publication by the Council of Europe titled Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture. The analysis shows how various concepts related to 'democratic competences' are invested with affective meanings, cultural connotations and political rhetoric. The paper argues that democratic competences are effectively conflated with emotional competences, opening up an analysis of democratic education as a form of individual and psychological therapy. The conclusion addresses the implications of this argument for education policy research and practice. In particular, it highlights the importance of paying attention not only to the ways that affect shapes the production of policy text, but also how a policy seeks to invoke certain affective dispositions at the point of enactment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What happens when neoliberalism as a structural and structuring force is taken up within institutions of higher education, and works upon academics in higher education individually? Employing a critical authoethnographic approach, this paper explores the way technologies of research performance management, specifically, work to produce academics (and academic managers) as particular kinds of neoliberal subject. The struggle to make oneself visible is seen to occur under the gaze of academic normativity – the norms of academic practice that include both locally negotiated practices and the performative demands of auditing and metrics that characterise the neoliberal university. The paper indicates how the dual process of being worked upon and working upon ourselves can produce personally harmful effects. The result is a process of systemic violence. This paper invites higher education workers and policy-makers to think higher education otherwise and to reconsider our personal and collective complicity in the processes shaping higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

This paper examines the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which has become a major and influential component of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) educational work. This measure of comparative performance of educational systems of member and other nations is based on tests commissioned by the OECD. The paper discusses the role of the OECD in establishing the 'comparative' turn and also describes PISA, its management and effects. It provides three examples of the impact of PISA in Finland, Germany and the UK before moving the focus to its impacts at the transnational level, through an examination of how key European policy actors see PISA and its effects. The paper concludes that PISA, through its direct impact on national education systems in Europe and beyond, has become an indirect, but nonetheless influential tool of the new political technology of governing the European education space by numbers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people who have spent all or part of their childhoods in public care are at particular risk of social exclusion as adults and yet the pathway out of exclusion identified by policy-makers at both European and national levels, namely, education, is very difficult to access. Using data from a five-country study of the post-compulsory educational pathways of young people in public care, this paper examines the rates of participation of young people in further and higher education and considers what might account for the gap, looking at two factors: the impact of background social class on educational support and the educational intentions and practices of the care system. The paper concludes by considering the policy context and some possible tensions between policy aims and young people’s contexts and experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Accreditation is fast becoming the dominant method of evaluation used in the European Higher Education Area. This paper traces the political process supporting the introduction of this method in Europe and identifies different theoretical understandings and practices which shed light on how we can interpret the spread and role of accreditation in Europe, before discussing current trends in European and US accreditation, which could pave the way for a joint research agenda. In the conclusion, some possible implications of current developments are briefly presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One area where the financial crisis has shown the limitation of neo-liberal thinking is the area of educational reform. By studying the different ranges of national responses and by understanding the differing contexts for educational change in historical periods, we can begin to think differently about educational restructuring. In this paper I report on some of the findings from a four-year study of educational reforms in seven European countries undertaken for the European Commission. The countries covered are: England and Wales, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Finland, Sweden and Greece and the research was conducted from 2004 to 2008. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governing processes in Europe and within Europeanization are often opaque and appearances can deceive. The normative practices of improvement in education, and the connected growth in performance measurement, have been largely understood in their own terms. However, the management of flows of information through quality assurance can be examined as a new form of governance, not just at the national level but within the broad policyscape of the European Union. The shaping of policy through data and the constant comparison for improvement against competition has come to be the standard by which public systems are judged. Indeed, public systems of education are recreated, and Europe is formed. The mediation of travelling policies and policy discourses across Europe constitute a polymorphic policyscape in which quality assurance and evaluation (QAE) has become a major instrument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the policy approach in Urban Regeneration Partnership tends to be viewed as participatory governance using an urban studies lens, this article posits an alternative theorisation that takes an adult education perspective. We draw from Lefebvre’s notion ofspace, Engeström’sCultural Historical Activity Theoryand Holand et al.’s concept ofpositionalityandsocial identityto theorise Urban Regeneration Partnership asexpansive participationthat acknowledges discursive struggle and contradiction in authentic democratisation. We argue for a multiscalar understanding of citizenship that attends to sociocultural conditions, challenges hegemonic spatial modalities and inculcates conditions for transformative agency. Our theorising is illustrated using data from a doctoral study examining one Urban Regeneration Partnership in the Republic of Ireland. Three themes emerged from the study: market-led discourse of transformation versus a narrative of community; rhetoric of empowerment versus the unequal positioning of residents, and the dominant hegemony of official knowledge versus community-based experiential knowledge. The article examines whether the academy can make a difference in people’s lives through challenging the prevailing orthodoxy, revealing unexamined assumptions and offering alternative frameworks for deeper understanding of the policy cycle in Urban Regeneration Partnerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The belief in the central role of the teacher has a long and comparative history. This article aims to critically analyse the discourse of the centrality of the teacher by both historicising and problematising the ideas and practices associated with this discourse. First, the article describes the discourse as it was taken up during the twenty-first century when the teacher was viewed as the linchpin to building universal education systems. The idea that the 'master makes the school' is examined and the policies that stemmed from this thinking (e.g., the establishment of formal teacher training, teacher testing and certification) are outlined. The contemporary manifestations of this discourse are then described to show how the pervasive belief in the central role of the teacher has influenced education policy reforms, which like teacher policy reforms in the nineteenth century operate to shape and regulate the profession. Further discursive effects are analysed including the de-contextualisation of educational reform and the de-professionalisation and de-politicisation of teachers and their work. The relationship between effective schools research and the centrality of the teacher discourse is also considered within the contemporary moment. This comparative study refers to the discourse of the centrality of the teacher in Australasia, Europe, Great Britain and North America, and suggests that our collective focus on the teacher has had some serious, unexpected effects on teachers and the work they do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to argue that the evident exchange of information on performance (and its supply, demand and use) should be regarded as a symptom of a new governmental regime that installs less evident power relations. Educational policy in Flanders (Belgium), and in particular the need for feedback information from the Flemish government, will be used as a case to describe this regime. Based upon the analytical framework of 'governmentality' (Foucault), the article focuses on the 'governmentalization' of Europe and Flanders that accompanies the need for feedback information. The main result of the analysis of European and Flemish policy documents can be summarized as follows: government or the 'conduct of conduct' currently takes the form of 'feedback on performance'. This means that the strategy of the governmental regime is to secure an optimal performance for each and all (member states, schools), and acts upon the 'need for feedback' and 'will to learn' of the actors involved. On the basis of these findings, the article introduces in conclusion the notion 'synopticon' in order to grasp the exercise of power in 'feedback on performance'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the rise of the discourse on lifelong learning across Europe and the variety of national policy trends which its rhetoric occludes. The ubiquitous presence of this meta-discourse in education and training policy-in-theory is seen as a singular event, which can be ascribed to the impact of the variety of global forces on the education arena. It serves specific political functions in addition to signalling real changes in education and training systems. The duality of convergent rhetoric and divergent policy-in-practise is seen as a challenge to education policy analysis which requires multi-layered interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]