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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]

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]

This article is a response to recent work by Jordi Collet-Sabé and Stephen J. Ball who have argued that modern schools are intolerable and irredeemable and therefore must be abandoned. Basing their project in Foucault, they have advocated for an alternative project of commoning a new episteme in education based in self-formation. I argue that this represents a more general problem in educational studies, particularly in new materialism and post theories, which I refer to as epistemic exodus, or the idea that by simply thinking different thoughts we can escape an image of modernity framed as totalizing domination. My argument is that the problems with Collet-Sabé and Ball's approach mirror the limitations of Foucault's project, particularly his inability to articulate what Antonio Negri calls constituent power and what Harney and Moten refer to as the general antagonism. These concepts do not move from above, rather they move from below. They encompass not only epistemic shifts but also material and political ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on data and analysis from a case study investigating policy enactments in a multi-academy trust (MAT) in England. The focus is the influence of a policy intermediary organisation (PIO), The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), on policy making by school leaders. The case is located in the literacy policy of a MAT of 15 schools. Data gathering consisted of semi-structured interviews and observations of meetings as a new literacy policy was developed. I argue using Bourdieu's thinking tools that the EEF functions as a policy entrepreneur actively engaged in policy making in the MAT. Data evidence that the EEF influences the field agents of the MAT to underpin local policy with functionalist, standardized solutions to literacy problems. The EEF offers one example of how PIOs can be used to steer enactments to fit with government agenda, by triggering a misrecognition, which limits the capacity of education professionals to consider alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]