Search

This paper looks at Ofsted and particularly special measures regimes as part of a disciplinary mechanism. It examines issues such as school effectiveness theories, the increasing powers of Ofsted, and life under special measures and links it to performativity, discipline and surveillance using the metaphor of the panopticon. The change in teachers’ accountability is traced, along with the rise in the audit culture in teaching, and the increase in the power of Ofsted. The research context is a case study of a school over the period 1999–2003. During this time the school was placed into special measures and provided an opportunity to examine the effects of a key Government policy. The issues researched were Ofsted, special measures and the effects that these had on schools and teachers. The paper argues that a special measures regime is an example of panoptic discipline which I call panoptic performativity. The primary research is echoed by much of the existing research and first hand accounts of Ofsted inspections. I also locate special measures regimes in the context of Lyotard’s ‘performativity’, Foucault’s ‘normalization’, and the school effectiveness literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasingly there is interest in development studies and specifically in the field of education in taking up Amartya Sen’s capability approach as a framework for theorizing, implementing and evaluating education policy as a matter of social justice. This paper sets out to contribute to the emerging debate and to show how the capability approach offers an assertive alternative discourse to dominant human capital ideas in education. It considers core ideas of capability and functioning, and the emphasis in Sen’s approach on each person’s freedom and opportunities to develop valued beings and doings. The article then shows more concretely how the ideas might be operationalized by producing a provisional, situated list of education capabilities, with specific attention to gender equity in contemporary South African schools. It closes by presenting and emphasizing the importance of public debate and discussion around the policy potential of the theoretical and empirical ideas raised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses Bourdieu to develop theorizing about policy processes in education and to extend the policy cycle approach in a time of globalization. Use is made of Bourdieu’s concept of social field and the argument is sustained that in the context of globalization the field of educational policy has reduced autonomy, with enhanced cross‐field effects in educational policy production, particularly from the fields of the economy and journalism. Given the social rather than geographical character of Bourdieu’s concept of social fields, it is also argued that the concept can be, and indeed has to be, stretched beyond the nation to take account of the emergent global policy field in education. Utilizing Bourdieu’s late work on the globalization of the economy through neo‐liberal politics, we argue that a non‐reified account of the emergent global educational policy field can be provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the first paper from a project which is part of the Economic and Social Research Council's programme of research into 'Teaching and learning'. The project, entitled 'The impact of policy on learning and inclusion in the new learning and skills sector', explores what impact the efforts to create a single learning and skills system are having on teaching, learning, assessment and inclusion for three marginalized groups of post-16 learners. Drawing primarily on policy documents and 62 in-depth interviews with national, regional and local policy-makers in England, the paper points to a complex, confusing and constantly changing landscape. In particular, it deals with the formation, early years and recent reorganization of the Learning and Skills Council (LSC), its roles, relations with government, its rather limited power, its partnerships and likely futures. While the formation of a more unified learning and skills system is broadly seen as a necessary step in overcoming the fragmentation and inequalities of the previous post-16 sector, interviewees also highlighted problems, some of which may not simply abate with the passing of time. Political expectations of change are high, but the LSC and its partners are expected to carry through 'transformational' strategies without the necessary 'tools for the job'. In addition, some features of the learning and skills sector policy landscape still remain unreformed or need to be reorganized. The LSC and its partners are at the receiving end of a series of policy drivers (e.g. planning, funding, targets, inspection and initiatives) that may have partial or even perverse effects on the groups of marginalized learners we are studying. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the previously quite marked absence from English policy debates on 14-19 education of issues that, in other developed countries, would be seen as key elements in the policy landscape. These are: the role of employers as providers of learning; the structure of employers' demand for skills, their recruitment and selection practices and the incentives this creates; the impact of labour market regulation on patterns of post-compulsory participation in vocational education and training. This article argues that these issues help explain our comparatively modest participation rates at 16-18 and that failure to confront such underlying structural factors makes progress on the kind of agenda raised by Tomlinson and the subsequent White Paper extremely problematic. It is suggested that recent developments may mark the start of a change in policy, with labour market issues gaining a new prominence. The article concentrates on the English institutional context, but many of the general points about the labour market and its interaction with young peoples' decisions about education and training hold good across the whole of the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little attention has been paid to the relationship between policy and space in the sociology of education. This paper analyses the relationships between educational policy change, in the form of the Excellence in cities policy initiative, and urban change in inner London. I propose, and apply, a framework for a spatialised policy analysis explicitly linking space and policy. I suggest that the intersections of policy, schools, place and space provide new opportunities to explore the interconnection of educational policy change and urban change. I argue that relationships between physical locations and students are significant enabling and disabling factors in neo-liberal educational policy-making. These relationships form what I term the educational renovation of identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ideology without competence is a dangerous vice. But competence without ideology is a limited virtue. (D. Miliband, Minister of State for School Standards, DfES) Opportunistic attempts have been made by successive governments to establish--some would say impose--sets of criteria against which the effectiveness of not-for-profit organizations like schools can be gauged. Most have been subjective: the extent of staff involvement in decision-making, the appropriateness of the leadership shown by senior managers, the percentage of inspected classes regarded as 'good', and so on. Lately, UK government rhetoric, using a lexicon borrowed from Business and Economics, suggests a willingness to move to new systems of reportage; centred on improvement rather than blame, on critical friendship more than on confrontation. There appears no longer to be the puritanical tendency among policy-makers to adopt measures that cause pain in the belief that they alone can be right, but do they constitute (as critics like Thrupp suggest) a random collection of well-intentioned but poorly theorized policies, or can they be cogently conceptualized into a whole? Previously, improvement measures judged schooling simply, in terms of external stakeholder outcomes, but failed to capture the essence of what it was to be (or what it took to become) a successful improving school. This paper suggests that current government policy, whether knowingly or not, is essentially describing improvement from a different perspective--an internal perspective of 'intellectual capital'. The paper knits together government policy statements on school improvement with a re-conceptualization of intellectual capital specifically designed for schools, offering an imposed coherence to government policy that could potentially change the way we think about inspection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how recent Labour governments have tried systematically to package educational and other social policies for media presentation and public consumption. This concern has resulted in the criticism that Labour is concerned with policy presentation above content: strong on policy spin but weak on policy delivery. The first section explores Labour's attempts to set a favourable agenda in news media for its educational policies by implementing a rigorous news management strategy: the subsequent section analyses Labour's unprecedented use of advertising to promote key areas of government policy. There is a particular focus on government advertising in the run up to the 2001 general election. The paper concludes that governments' increasing reliance on advertising may cross the line which should separate the provision of public information from any attempt to persuade the public to support particular policy choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education in Hong Kong has developed rapidly since the 70s in parallel with the economic boom. To support such development, the government has invested heavily in initial teacher education and will soon impose professional training and graduate qualifications as prerequisites for entering the profession. Continuous teacher education (CTE), generally regarded as equally important as initial teacher education if not more so, is not given comparable emphasis. This paper aims to study CTE in Hong Kong, including its policy, practice and provision at the system level. Some special features of the system are identified and scrutinized, including ad hoc, policy led, and competence based. The centrally provided CTE is also closely examined in terms of its relevance to the profession, impact on schools, and cost-effectiveness. The paper ends with a close look at its latest developments, obstacles encountered and prospects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws upon critical discourse analysis, cultural studies and communication theory, studies on media and educational reform, and the work of Bernstein, Bourdieu and Luhmann in particular, to explore how the print and media 'mediated' a period of educational change marked by moves to self-management in schools in Victoria, Australia. It considers how the media was mobilized by various education stakeholders, and in turn informed relations between schools and government, through policy discourses and texts. It considers why and how particular themes became media 'issues', how schools and teachers responded to these issues, and how the media was used by various stakeholders in education to shape policy debates. It is based on a year-long qualitative study that explored critical incidents and representations about education in the print media over a year in the daily press. It illustrates the ways in which a neo-liberal Victorian government mobilized the media to gain strategic advantage to promote radical education reform policies, considers the media effects of this media/tion process on schools and teachers, and conceptualizes how school and system performance is fed from and into media representations, public perceptions and community understandings of schools and teachers' work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the process of policy-making within the Scottish Parliament, focusing in particular on the activities of the All Party Committee of Sport, Education, and Culture. I report on the Inquiry process from an insider/outsider position as advisor to the Committee in its Inquiry into special educational needs provision in Scotland and explore the contrasts between the 'Inquiry' and more conventional forms of policymaking. It is argued that the Scottish politicians have attempted to understand problems in their complexity, displaced party politics, and avoided the closure of the simple 'solution' or 'standard' by articulating the challenge of inclusion as a series of aporias. Perhaps most importantly, it is suggested, the Inquiry format has provided a new space in which the politicians could hold their Scottish Executive officials to account, and they did so tenaciously, by requiring accountability in terms of action and responsibility rather than retrospective transparency. The paper concludes with a discussion of the possibilities opened up within the Parliamentary Inquiry space. It is argued that the Inquiry format has created a long awaited opportunity for resituating the debates on inclusion within an ethical framework. More generally, it is argued that academics need to find ways of bringing politics back to policymaking by exploiting the new spaces they find themselves in. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws upon data collected from 20 working class, inner city pupils in a British (London) school (in Year 11, aged 15/16 years) as part of a research study exploring the ways in which young people understand their options and identities. Pilot study data is used to develop an analysis of the processes through which inner city, working class young people come to leave school at the age of 16. Attention is drawn to issues of identity and inequality within processes of leaving education. In particular, we highlight the ways in which the young people viewed themselves as 'not good enough' and 'knew their limits' in relation to post-compulsory educational routes. It is suggested that these views were constructed and compounded by complex social and institutional factors, and were exacerbated by educational policies that impact upon inner city 'failing' schools and disadvantaged communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the UK policy context, skills, education and learning are seen as a universal solution to a vast array of economic and social problems. In challenging this view, this paper argues that those educationalists calling for progressive reforms to the education system need to acknowledge the reality of the contemporary workplace and the institutional context of UK capitalism. When it comes to the question of how the UK might move towards a more inclusive high skills society, no matter where we start to look - be it the economy or a highly class-divided English education system - it all seems to add up badly. In challenging the current policy agenda, educationalists will need to insist that progressive educational reform cannot be separated from the struggle for broader political, social and economic change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to assess the democratic potential of New Community Schools (NCS) as developed by the Scottish Executive in one of its first major educational initiatives. It traces the background to the initiative, locates it within the particular circumstances of the historical, political and cultural contexts of Scotland, and defines its particular ambivalence with regard to deliberative democracy. This ambivalence, it is argued, results from the mediation of state policy. Policy, we argue, does not so much 'migrate' as become culturally 'mediated' in generative local contexts. It has to accommodate itself to, and be assimilated by, different national cultures - even, perhaps especially, across the national boundaries of an increasingly devolved UK, framed simultaneously by a global context. The paper evaluates NCS in terms of the ends and purposes of deliberative democracy under such conditions of possibility. Finally, it infers from the early NCS experience a number of conditions for democratic renewal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares educational decentralization policies implemented in Argentina and Brazil during the 1990s, focusing on the rationales and contexts of the policies, and through a review of secondary sources and some official documents. The paper argues that school decentralization, the movement toward transferring functions and responsibilities to schools, appears as a new and extended reform that was accompanied by more traditional forms of decentralization, but also by a process of centralization of planning and evaluation at the national level. This new form of centralization/decentralization is seen as linked to the neoliberal restructuring of the state, to pressures from globalization processes and forces, and to various internal demands for improving quality and efficiency in the delivery of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his speech to the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) in July 1999, the UK Secretary of State for Education, David Blunkett, set out New Labour's vision for a system of education in which there is 'excellence for the many not just the few'. He outlined what is essentially a bi-focal strategy for achieving this vision. The first focus is on the education system itself, the structures and practices that New Labour believes need to be in place if schools and services are going to meet the needs of all children and not just a privileged minority. The second focus is on the need to promote 'a culture of achievement', as, according to Blunkett, the vision 'depends on changing attitudes as well as the system itself'. This paper focuses on this second strategy, more specifically the government's attempts to change the attitudes of parents. It is argued that this strategy aims to eradicate class differences by reconstructing and transforming working-class parents into middle-class ones, that it represents possibly the most important and far-reaching aspect of New Labour's policy agenda, and that it has not so far received the attention it deserves. The paper is in two parts. The first part sets out what is involved in New Labour's programme of re-socialization and explores the mechanisms by which New Labour is attempting to universalize the values, attitudes and behaviour of a certain fraction of middle-class parents. The second part develops a critique of this programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the changes, which have been introduced to public education in Australia, particularly over the last decade. These changes are analysed against the background of the free, compulsory and secular Education Acts that were implemented in every Australian colony during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. This legislation has formed the cornerstone of public education in Australia since that time. The principles of free, compulsory and secular public education and the underlying social values which underpinned the legislation are re-examined, together with the factors leading to the development of the centralized state education bureaucracies which were set up to administer the Acts. In considering current changes to public education policy in Australia, the paper argues that the principles underlying the establishment of public education have been significantly eroded. In the space of little more than a decade, the social values underpinning the Education Acts have been dramatically changed, leading to a re-invention of what public education means in this country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Involving around #1 billion of expenditure over a five-year period, the National Grid for Learning (NGf L) initiative embodies the fast growing influence of both market and technological forces in UK education. The formation of the initiative can, therefore, be seen as a pivotal signpost for the direction of New Labour education policy-making, particularly with regard to the increased roles of the private sector and quasi-governmental actors in the development and eventual implementation of educational policy. Based on data gathered from a series of in-depth interviews with 'key actors' in the formation and initial implementation of the NGf L, this paper details the formation of the initiative and explores the mechanisms and structures of power and decision-making employed during its formation. Adopting the analytical frameworks of 'policy community' and 'policy network', the emergence and 'roll-out' of the National Grid for Learning is discussed in three distinct phases: the origins of the initiative; its initial policy formation; and, finally, its ongoing implementation and first stages of becoming a policy-in-practice. The paper concludes by discussing the NGf L as an example of current UK education policy-making and examines the national and global precedents underlying the nature of its formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the conceptualizations of social justice embedded in the education action zones (EAZ) policy which has recently been implemented in England. Drawing on distinctions developed from Nancy Fraser's work, it argues that zone populations suffer three forms of social injustice – economic injustice, cultural injustice and associational injustice. Documentary analysis of the discourse surrounding the policy and of a sample of EAZ applications reveals that while the initiative may be based on a more complex understanding of social injustice than many preceding policies, this understanding remains inadequate. Economic injustices are recognized, but cultural and associational injustices are inadequately acknowledged. In addition, there is a mismatch between the remedies proposed in the bids and the problems they are designed to address. Although there are some redistributive and associational measures, these are likely to be superficial. For the most part, it is cultural remedies that are proposed – but the nature of the cultural 'problem' to be dealt with is either unacknowledged or misrepresented. The paper concludes by arguing that while policy pronouncements and zone applications do not determine practice, it is difficult to see how some of these injustices can be tackled if they are not acknowledged or tackled at a discursive level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of information technology coupled with the globalization of the economy has thrust the identity and sovereignty of the nation-state into sharp focus over the last two decades. Against this fast-changing background, the response of many countries has been to develop policies aimed at creating national information infrastructures (NII) – often with educational networking initiatives as an integral or pioneering element. Given the emerging global policyscape (Ball 1999) towards creating educational information networks this paper presents a comparative analysis of policy-making across Europe, East Asia and the USA. In analysing education networking in seven case-study countries, the paper emphasizes a political economy perspective; thus focusing attention on the role of the state and the varying relationship between education, economy and society. Having explored the varying motivations and objectives behind countries' education networking programmes the paper concludes by outlining an educational research agenda for future examination of NII policies as they continue to be implemented in developed nations over the next decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School funding is a principal site of policy reform and contestation in the context of broad global shifts towards private- and market-based funding models. These shifts are transforming not only how schools are funded but also the meanings and practices of public education: that is, shifts in what is ‘public’ about schooling. In this paper, we examine the ways in which different articulations of ‘the public’ are brought to bear in contemporary debates surrounding school funding. Taking the AustralianReview of Funding for Schooling(the Gonski Report) as our case, we analyse the policy report and its subsequent media coverage to consider what meanings are made concerning the ‘publicness’ of schooling. Our analysis reveals three broad themes of debate in the report and related media coverage: (1) the primacy of ‘procedural politics’ (i.e. the political imperatives and processes associated with public policy negotiations in the Australian federation); (2) changing relations between what is considered public and private; and (3) a connection of government schooling to concerns surrounding equity and a ‘public in need’. We suggest these three themes contour the debates and understandings that surround the ‘publicness’ of education generally, and school funding more specifically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the movements of some Swedish former education policy-makers that are currently active as commercial edu-business actors with the ambition to expand in the Global Education Industry (GEI). The aim is to map and analyze how a selection of Swedish edu-preneurs affiliated with a particular Swedish school chain enter the GEI and thereby market both their commercialized servicesandthe policy ideas about so-called free schools, in its Swedish version. The study shows how these edu-preneurs move from the domestic to global arenas and how their business and policy advocacy activities are framed and represented. Mobilization and public exposure of previous and present policy advocacy networks are important assets for these edu-preneurs as they navigate the GEI. The study illustrates how these actors make use of particular forms of knowledge, from department ministerial work and party politics, which blends with work in public relations and various edu-businesses, pointing to the interrelatedness of politics, policy, business, power, and ideology. The paper concludes by raising issues in need of further exploration and debate, pertaining to our understanding of education policy-making and, ultimately, democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores changes to the educational policy-making arena through case study analysis of a Massachusetts law passed in 2012 that limits seniority-based job protections for public K-12 teachers. I use data from interviews with policy stakeholders, observations of public meetings, and policy artifacts to explore struggles over democratic engagement in what unfolded as a highly undemocratic policy development process. Using the policy cycle framework, I explore the ways that political pressure and political discourses shaped the policy development process through various contexts of political struggle. Ultimately, I argue that the case is indicative of what I am calling ‘neo-democratic’ decision-making, in which high-level interest group conflict leads to narrow forms of democratic engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper considers the educational experience constructed under Australia’s policy decision in 2009 to extend compulsory education by requiring that students must be ‘earning or learning’ till 17 years of age. The discussion draws on an empirical project that explored the moral order operating in classrooms for students retained under this policy in non-academic pathways in high schools and Technical and Further Education colleges across three towns experiencing youth employment stress. It asks how the policy regulating these students’ prolonged engagement with formal education plays out in classroom interactions, to what end and to whose benefit. A theoretical lens informed by work by Standing and Wacquant is used to understand the contemporary moment, and work by Durkheim and Bernstein unpacks the moral work implicated in classroom interactions. The analysis describes the light curriculum and the heavy compliance demanded in these ‘edufare’ programmes then argues that in essence the policy seeks to manage the social risk posed by the future precariat. The conclusion reflects on whether this is an adequate policy response to broad generational changes in fortunes and prospects to which education may not have the answers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The meaning, measurement, and implications of ‘public opinion’ have long been a source of debate. In this paper, we examine the extent to which the educational priorities of elites in the US reflect the educational priorities of the American public. To do so, we focus on one particular segment of the education policy-making elite – education poll creators. Through a content analysis of questions asked between 1969 and 2013 in the Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes toward the Public Schools, we examine the salience of key educational issues over time. We compare these trends to the proportion of poll respondents who label those issues the ‘biggest problem’ facing schools, thereby approximating two different conceptions of public opinion regarding education. We find that the issues that receive the most coverage by pollsters do not typically match the issues that respondents claim to be the biggest problems in schools. In light of the important role that opinion polls may play in shaping discussion and debate over educational issues, we argue that further study of the construction of public opinion is warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since 2000, the PISA test implemented by OECD has become the prime benchmark for international comparisons in education. The 2015 PISA edition introduced methodological changes that altered the nature of its results. PISA made no longer valid non-reached items of the final part of the test, assuming that those unanswered questions were more a problem of motivation than skills. Latin American countries were the only ones that had a large proportion of non-reached items in the first PISA editions. The methodological change had a large impact in these countries and was miscommunicated by the OECD reports. This makes the first two PISA editions (2000 and 2003) no longer comparable with the latest ones (2006, 2009, 2012 and 2015). We analyze hypotheses for the Latin American exception in PISA, suggesting that the introduction of the new Computer-Based Assessment of PISA in 2015, combined with an increasing culture of evaluation and political influences damaged intertemporal comparisons of PISA. Although PISA is a low-stakes assessment for students, it has become high-stakes for governments. This triggered mechanisms to increase test-taking motivation, and students tended to answer more questions of the test, but at the same time, these changes made intertemporal comparisons flawed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite widespread commitment to inclusive education as government policy, global progress in the last two decades has been slow and uneven. This article explores the relationship between policy and its enactment to examine what conditions make inclusion available as a course of action within education systems. Focusing on learners with additional learning needs, evidence from the Welsh context is presented in relation to two policy turns in the last decade, the most recent of which is a turn towards a Fourth Way 'professional capital approach' that appears to signal movement towards more inclusive education. It is noted that, at the level of practice and practitioner beliefs about learners with additional learning needs, these policy movements appear to have had remarkably little impact. Drawing on a hybrid model of analysis, we argue that the collective agency needed for inclusion requires an account of the belief systems of a range of policy actors, particularly in education systems where hierarchies of learners are fundamentally upheld. Using evidence from educational reform in Wales, we describe how conditions for collective agency for inclusion may be experienced as unavailable within education systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the implementation of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in Germany and explores the possibilities of Social Network Analysis (SNA) for uncovering influential actors in educational policy innovation processes. From the theoretical perspective, an actor’s influence is inferred from its relative position within issue-specific information flows and the trust placed in its capacities and expertise, instead of relying on an actor’s openly expressed role and policy preferences. Drawing on techniques from quantitative SNA enables to analyse the social interactions as well as the frequency and type of information exchange amongst actors in a particular issue area. Empirically, I focus my attention on the educational innovation of ESD, which has been initiated at the global level, but is mainly put into practice at the national or regional level. Data for the study come from mixed mode interviews with a standardised questionnaire. The interviews were conducted and analysed using egocentric and complete SNA. I find, amongst others results, that NGOs and governmental actors occupy significantly more central, prestigious and influential network positions than schools in the course of implementing ESD in Germany. Furthermore, school representatives exhibit few and weak relations, and mostly share links with other formal education actors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper provides a critical policy analysis ofThe Learning Curve (TLC)(2012), an initiative developed by the multinational edu-business, Pearson, in conjunction with the Economist Intelligence Unit.TLCexemplifies the commercialising of comparison and the efforts of edu-businesses to strategically position themselves in education policy processes globally. In analysingTLC, our account seeks to proffer a critical analysis of this emerging policy genre, and the way it functions as part of the new ‘soft capitalism’. We analyseTLCin relation to Pearson’s new business strategy, which emphasises corporate social responsibility and accountability to consumers for the efficacy of its products and services. We argue that Pearson is now generating and appropriating various data to legitimise its products and services according to a ‘neo-social’ mode of accountability. Network ethnography is employed to document the global networks of both people and data associated withTLCand we reflect on the emergence of Pearson as a potential education policy actor. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we describe one secondary school’s radical attempt to rethink the shape and purpose of education for its pupils, and its subsequent return to more traditional methods in the face of pressures of performativity and accountability. Framing our analysis within activity theory and its emphasis on contradiction as a driver for change, we describe the school’s move towards a thematic curriculum and ‘personalised learning’ as a process of productive tensions which enabled the development of new approaches to education. While these innovations were considered to be of major benefit to both teachers and pupils, a fundamental contradiction between the focus on individual development underpinning the new approach and the demands of accountability in a persistent culture of performativity proved to be insurmountable. We argue that this particular contradiction highlights the dominance of measurability in judgements of school success and individual progress, with consequences for the pupils’ longer term education futures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ in Venezuela is conceptualised as a pedagogical project that aims to develop ‘twenty-first century Socialism’ through state-grassroots collaboration in the reorganisation of political space in order to develop participatory, democratic institutions and processes. The cornerstones of this project to deepen and expand democracy in and through education are the adult Education Missions, set up in parallel to existing educational structures, and with an explicit focus on socio-political education and community projects aimed at promoting a new hegemony based on active grassroots citizenship. While the struggle to extend democracy in and through education is not unique to Venezuela, the conceptualisation of democracy as protagonist and participatory, and the explicit links made between education and democratic social change within the broader framework of twenty-first century socialism, makes Venezuela a dynamic site to revisit and reinvigorate classical debates as to the role of education in promoting democratic social change. Based on 15 months of empirical research, this paper examines the extent to which adult education in Venezuela is contributing to the development of a counter-hegemonic movement to build socialism for the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper uses Margaret Archer’s morphogenetic approach to analyze the emergence of civil society within global educational governance. The purpose is to understand the intersection of historical structures with global actors and spaces that have accompanied the globalization of education. Based on findings from a study on the impact in Cambodia of the Civil Society Education Fund – sponsored by the Global Campaign for Education – we first identify the relevant sociocultural, political-economic, and governance structures within which the politics of education is embedded in Cambodia. Then, we detail the relational processes through which Cambodian civil society has been able to join and, in so doing, modify the structures of education governance. The value of the morphogenetic approach is its treatment of time – that is, the way that it temporarily separates structure and agency in order to make possible an analysis of the dynamics of global education governance. While this approach is not new, we suggest that a morphogenetic approach can help in understanding the ways actors come together to create the processes and co-constitute the spaces through which existing educational structures and policies are made and remade across time. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper contributes to conversations about school, post-compulsory and further education policy by reporting findings from a three-year study with disaffected students who have been referred to special ‘behaviour’ schools. Contrary to popular opinion, our research finds that these ‘ignorant yobs’ do value education and know what it is for. They also have aspirations for a secure, productive and fulfilled life, although it may not involve university-level study. Importantly, we found that students who responded negatively with regard to the importance of schooling tended to envision future lives and occupations for which they believed school knowledge was unnecessary. The implications of this research for school, post-compulsory and further education policy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the 1980s, state schools in England have been required to ensure transparency and accountability through the use of indicators and templates derived from the private sector and, more recently, globally circulating discourses of ‘good governance’ (an appeal to professional standards, technical expertise, and performance evaluation as mechanisms for improving public service delivery). The rise of academies and free schools (‘state-funded independent schools’) has increased demand for good governance, notably as a means by which to discipline schools,in particular school governors– those tasked with the legal responsibility of holding senior leadership to account for the financial and educational performance of schools. A condition and effect of school autonomy, therefore, is increased monitoring and surveillance of all school governing bodies. In this paper, I demonstrate how these twin processes combine to produce a new modality of state power and intervention; a dominant or organizing principle by which government steer the performance of governors through disciplinary tools of professionalization and inspection, with the aim of achieving the ‘control of control’. To explain these trends, I explore how various established and emerging school governing bodies are (re)constituting themselves to meet demands for good governance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Competence as a measure of 'fitness to practice' and its evaluation through mechanisms of personal performance review, has led to the introduction of systems in a number of professions which link appraisal to the maintenance of professional registration (variously referred to as re-validation, re-certification, re-accreditation, etc.). This shift towards the requirement to actively maintain registration is becoming increasingly common in the teaching profession in many countries too. This paper presents an examination of the enactment of this global policy trend towards teacher re-accreditation at a national level. Here, we analyse the policy discourse and rhetoric around the introduction of professional re-accreditation of teachers in Scotland, where it is referred to as 'Professional Update', and track this through to the preparation of those carrying out interviews for re-accreditation in one of the three local authorities involved in piloting the initiative. In doing this we aim to show the ways in which policy serves to construct teacher subjectivities though processes of appraisal and how policy actors positions themselves and are positioned within these policy-making processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we illustrate the relationships between Teach For America (TFA) and federal charter school reform to interrogate how policy decisions are shaped by networks of individuals, organizations, and private corporations. We use policy network analysis to create a visual representation of TFA's key role in developing and connecting personnel, political support, and financial backing for charter reform. Next we examine how the networks unfold at a local level by zooming in on a case study of New Orleans. By mapping out these connections, we hope to provide a foundation for further investigation of how this network affects policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debates continue about how high-stakes testing regimes influence schools at all levels: their impact on teaching practices, distribution of resources and curriculum provision, and whether they achieve the intended increases in student achievement in targeted areas. In 2008, the Australian government introduced a national testing scheme, the National Assessment Program -- Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), in which all Australian students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 are required to participate, and a national website, MySchool, was established in 2010 to publish the results of all schools. This paper reports on the first national study of educators' views on the impact of NAPLAN on Australian schools and students. Over 8000 educators from all states and territories participated in the study, and the findings indicate that the testing regime is leading to a reduction in time spent on other curriculum areas and adjustment of pedagogical practice and curriculum content to mirror the tests. The findings suggest that the modification of teaching and curricular practices is in response to concerns regarding the use and reporting of NAPLAN data and the potential impact on schools. This confirms findings of researchers in other countries on the capacity of high-stakes regimes to distort teaching practices, constrain the curriculum and narrow students' educational experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a response to an earlier article in the Journal of Education Policy, which calls for 'new ideas and constructive principles and practices for the provision of socially-just education'. We first discuss how an economistic approach to education entrenches socioeconomic disadvantage and argue that, in the light of evidence that inequalities are increasing both nationally and internationally, it has become increasingly important that we understand models of social justice in schools in deprived locations. Reporting on original longitudinal research with schools in disadvantaged coastal areas in England, and drawing on the notion of the insistent affirmation of possibility, we then discuss three dimensions of active social justice undertaken by participating school leaders. By examining practical examples of social justice, we aim to shift the debate into more positive territory, in which there can be more appreciation of the efforts and outcomes of some leaders in highly disadvantaged areas and more leaders can take heart in following their example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public policies have a moral order, an ethical horizon. They offer a vocabulary of imagined micro-policies. Using the case of Chile, this paper examines the ways in which accountability policies are reworked within schools and how they affect actors' subjectivities. It adds new findings to the existing body of research on school accountability policies, offering in-depth evidence based on the case of Chile, which has a high-stakes testing model and a widespread competitive voucher system. The research is based on case studies of ten public and private subsidised schools, framed by a sociological perspective of policy enactment theory. The research findings show the ways that accountability policies are recreated, expanded, and intensified at the local level, permeating an ethic of competition. The analysis focuses on three qualitative trends: school actors' sense-making of test scores and labels; zones of safety and risk for teachers under an accountability regime; and the emergence of a sticky web of persuasion, surveillance, and coercion among school members in order to improve performance. The practices examined are not understood as 'secondary effects' or an 'implementation problem', as if they occur unconnected from the policy rationale. The outcomes are consistent with the policy itself in interaction with school life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessment is a major component of education, significant in directing what is identified as valued student learning. This paper is framed within an understanding of imperative and exhortative policy. Two paradigmatically different, and potentially contesting, assessment policy directions in Australian education – educational accountability to monitor school and teacher performance, and teacher assessment practices to improve learning (assessment for learning [AfL] or formative assessment) – are examined for their impact on teacher professionalism. Both approaches have official endorsement in Australian policy. Mandated participation in national tests is indicative of educational accountability assessments under national direction. While also endorsed nationally, AfL implementation is reliant on state and territory direction. Our examination reveals tensions in the alignment of both policies. This is evident in the impact of accountability assessment on AfL implementation, in particular, teachers' understandings of valued assessment evidence. We conclude that a paradigmatic shift to support student learning in Australian schools is a policy imperative that includes the need for professional development and learning support for teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We defend in this paper the importance of redistributing power in the field of education development by enhancing the self-sustainability of education initiatives and minimizing their roots in dependency – these as pre-requisites for improving their sustainable development outcomes. We do this by considering an education development initiative run by the Barefoot College in India, and then developing an explanatory model based in complexity theory (as expounded by Edgar Morin) and in the capability approach (as developed principally by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum). We conclude that such a redistribution of power would help to ensure that education is better connected to its development context, more relevant to the interests and needs of the community it serves, and its quality enhanced. More generally, we reinforce existing arguments – but from the perspective and imperative of sustainability – why it is in the interests of policy-makers to devolve power and to provide resources to such initiatives. Doing so would enhance governments' prospects of realizing their education and social development goals. The arrogation of power and resources towards the centre, an almost natural impulse in policy-making, is, in the end, counter-productive, and threatens sustainable education and social development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to problematise the discourses of inclusive education by analysing the experiences of disabled people in the Portuguese regular school system. Individual interviews and focus group, held in different areas of the country, exposed the main debates, contradictions and continuities between policies and practices coming from irreconcilable paradigms. These barriers to learning and participation were traced at the organizational, curricular, and pedagogical levels, and at the socialization with peers, suggesting a political, temporal and contextual transversality of an individualizing and disabling gaze, with immediate and long-term discriminatory, segregating and excluding effects on the lives of disabled people. These experiences could be the basis for recognizing the ubiquity of exclusion in school as we know it, and for creating solidarity and democratic educational communities where these barriers are systematically denatured and eliminated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how the concept of affective infrastructure might offer a productive vantage point from which to theorize the ways that affects condition education policy and politics in education. In particular, the article theorizes 'affective infrastructure' to discuss the potentialities that emerge in struggles to formulate and enact new political imaginaries for a more inclusive and equitable future in education. The analysis turns to recent literature in education policy in order to identify the extent to which the notion of 'affective infrastructure' is used, and emphasizes the political significance of 'affective infrastructure' in education policy. Finally, the article explicates a number of future research trajectories in education policy along two 'sides' of 'affective infrastructure,' namely, affects as products of infrastructures, and affective conditions as producers of infrastructures. It is argued that an affective infrastructural lens can offer new insights into education spaces, practices, and policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines ethnic segregation in schools as a field where policy inaction, or non-decision making, is rife. A theoretical framework rooted in historical institutionalism and combining critical junctures with path dependencies enables the study of non-decision making and policy inaction. Moving from non-decision making as a general phenomenon to the specific case of British education policies, the focus is on ethnoreligious segregation between White British and South Asian Muslim students, which has become a salient issue in British politics and society. After a general discussion, the article zooms in on a North English town presenting typical constellations of ethnic segregation and mixing in neighbourhoods and schools. The subsequent policy analysis shows how, from the mid-1980s until recently, non-decision making has been predominant. Given the ongoing problematization of ethnic segregation in British politics and society, a reversal from policy inaction to formal decision-making seems possible. The article offers insight into the inner workings of non-decision making that have wider application, transcending any given locality and policy sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Trends in Mathematics and Science Study are two highly respected studies of school pupils' academic achievement. English policy-makers have been disappointed with school children's performance on these tests, particularly in comparison to the strong results of young people from East Asia. In this paper, we provide new insight into the England-East Asia gap in school children's mathematics skills. We do so by considering how cross-national differences in math test scores change between ages 10 and 16. Our results suggest that, although average math test scores are higher in East Asian countries, this achievement gap does not increase between ages 10 and 16. We thus conclude that reforming the secondary school system may not be the most effective way for England to 'catch up' with the East Asian nations in the PISA math rankings. Rather, earlier intervention, during pre-school and primary school, may be needed instead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fiascoes that seem to accompany the annual publication of examination results in England, the subsequent inquiries instituted to ensure they 'never happen again' and the Secretary of State's decision, reversed six months later because of fears about possible EU legal challenges, to 'end competition between exam boards' raise some interesting issues about the way Examination Boards (or 'Awarding Bodies') operate in what is partly a competitive and partly a cooperative market. At the operational level, they need to make sufficient profit from the fees they charge schools to operate the assessment and awards system effectively; at the strategic level, they need to police the proliferation of awards so that some reasonable level of efficiency is obtained in the system. This paper models the education awards market such that the implications of the various alternative strategies for achieving the twin objectives of effectiveness and efficiency can be understood. It describes how Awarding Bodies cooperate and compete to maximise profit, and justifies the original decision in September 2012 by minister Gove to create a monopoly in the awards and assessment market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, from the particular positioning of educational researchers working in Australia, we unpack the figure of the '21st century learner' from both broad and specific perspectives. The paper begins with a policy genealogy that traces this figure through networks of documents, events and bodies that transcend borders and hemispheres. We suggest that although there appear to be multiple origins for current Australian policies on educational innovation, they are intricately entangled and interdependent. We identify the steady 'economisation' of the learner, and a concomitant corporatisation of educational innovation. The second section of the paper presents a discursive analysis of an extract from a recent book that frames up educational innovation through technology in order to further trace the operations of these regimes of thought. Our analysis here indicates the kind of critical work that needs to be done to interrogate and deconstruct aspects of current education policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The predominant focus in this paper is on issues of school context and, in particular, on the dimensions of context at a large English comprehensive school that enable it to thrive within the current demands of the contemporary audit culture. Featuring interview data gathered from a number of senior educators, the paper draws on Braun et al's. (Braun, A., S. Ball, M. Maguire, and K. Hoskins. 2011. "Taking Context Seriously: Towards Explaining Policy Enactments in the Secondary School." Discourse: Studies in the Politics of Education 32 (4): 585 -596) heuristic device for thinking about the 'situated', 'professional' and 'external' dimensions of context at the school. This device supports an analysis of the school's intake (in particular the high cultural and class related aspirations of parents and students) and its values (namely the school's traditional ethos of academic and behavioural excellence). The central argument of the paper is that these contextual dimensions contribute significantly to the school's capacity to forge a worthy school identity within the current hyperaccountable and competitive environment where academic achievement (along increasingly narrow and conservative lines) and maintaining standards in relation to this achievement are utmost priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the concept of participation in relation to a range of recently imposed social and education policies. Drawing on recent empirical research, we explore how disciplinary technologies, including government policy, operate at the interface of service users and providers, and examine the interactional aspects of participation where the shift from abstract to applied policy creates tensions between notions of parental responsibility and empowerment, participation and 'positive welfare'. In this, our analysis raises three important issues/questions: whether existing mechanisms for engagement between service users and service providers enable any meaningful participation and partnership in decision-making; whether multiagency service provision is successfully incorporated within a participatory framework that allows service users to engage across and within services; and whether on the basis of our findings, there is requirement to remodel mechanisms for participation to enable user-experiences the opportunity to shape the way that services engage with families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Italy is well known for its difficulty in introducing any educational evaluation system. This paper explores the dynamics which occurred in Italy in 2010-2011, within the context of the umpteenth national pilot of school and staff evaluation. Our research object is an unfinished project, observed in its development. We get close to the struggles of policy enactment, capturing the processes of borrowing, bricolage, translation and mediation involved in the vernacularisation of the global accountability trends in a national context. Using governmentality and the repertoire of Callon's sociology of translation, we deconstruct events and displacements and reshape them in a policy 'storytelling'. We show a paradoxical story of resistance, where teachers and their unions displayed a strong capacity of effective counter-action, becoming active members of the policy trajectory, but were eventually confronted with displacements which weakened their resistance. Although still open-ended, our story provides evidence of the uncertainty, unpredictability and disputability which characterise policy trajectories. We talk of this process of translation as a still-missed opportunity to develop a situated dialogue about more democratic forms of accountability, where a real account is given of what happens in schools and why, and evaluation is interpreted as a form of contextualised and knowledge-grounded reflection on professional practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]