Search

The history of subjects is often told analysing notions of knowledge in historical reforms, policies, curricula, and textbooks. In this article, we analyse student papers from 1968, focusing on their responses to the topic 'Social distinctions and prejudices in Denmark'. The students present a number of concepts and categories of social differences and prejudices, depict a contemporary problem, refer to theoretical or categorical frameworks, provide a historical account, state bold claims and/or present conceptual definitions. Then, by giving different examples from their everyday life and by establishing some form of line or structure in their writings, they form an argument or narrative. They do this by using—we assume—information from their textbooks, from what have been discussed in teaching, in the public debate, and in the students' homes. The student papers not only passively reflect but are part of the ongoing constitution of the subjects and subject matter, during a period of tremendous educational change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the special section of the Journal of School Choice, which features the winners of the 2024 Patrick Wolf ISCRC Best Paper Prize. The International School Choice and Reform Conference (ISCRC-2024) took place in Madrid, Spain, and showcased the best research on school choice and reform from around the world. The article expresses gratitude to the conference planning committee and the Best Paper committee for their hard work. The three winning papers cover diverse topics, including the importance of a sense of belonging in educational decision-making, the historical significance of Father Virgil Blum in the school choice movement, and the philosophical underpinnings of school choice in US politics. The article emphasizes the need for interdisciplinary perspectives and approaches to understand the complexities of school choice and educational reform. The authors invite readers to attend ISCRC-2025 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and provide contact information for further inquiries. [Extracted from the article]

The article announces the winners of the 2022 Patrick Wolf International School Choice and Reform Conference (ISCRC) Best Paper Prize including T. J. D'Agostino and Ignasi Grau i Callizo for their paper "Towards Understanding the Global Landscape of Educational Pluralism," Kaire Poder and Triin Lauri for their paper "The Legitimacy of Private Schooling: Education Preferences in Nine European Contexts," and James Shuls for his paper "Papists and Pluralists: The Founding of America's First Grassroots School Choice Organization."

A major admissions reform was carried out in Finnish higher education at the end of the last decade. This paper focuses on three main policy papers connected to the reform and examines the use and production of evidence therein. Drawing on bibliometric research and research on educational policy, we aim to provide insight into how to utilize citation analysis when examining evidence in educational policymaking. In the three policy papers, domestic legislature was cited the most frequently, and research from higher education institutions was cited the least. Affirmational citations were the most prominent; perfunctory, assumptive, conceptual, persuasive, contrastive, and negational citations were found to a lesser extent. When cross-examined in relation to citation types, sources were mostly cited as affirmational, with the exception of research from higher education institutions, which was cited as conceptual information. We also found that the writers cited their own previously written ministry-affiliated policy brief as central information in one of the policy papers connected to the reform. Our study is in line with the earlier literature showing that certain sources, such as domestic publications, are favoured over others. It also illustrates the different citation strategies experts employ to substantiate and legitimize educational policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how superintendents and school principals enact national policy reform expectations and what characterises their local organisational arrangements. Furthermore, the paper investigates how superintendents and school principals deal with tensions as entrepreneurs. The study builds on qualitative interview data from two municipalities in Norway. Analytically, the study draws on institutional theory, more specifically, on entrepreneurship, which to a limited degree has been applied in educational and empirical studies. The superintendents and principals interviewed referred to various local arrangements and resources that were partly adapted and changed through reform work to better fit local needs. Such arrangements included intra and interorganisational dependency and cooperation with several actors and organisational resources. Superintendents and principals seemed to partly break away from existing patterns of interaction. The entrepreneurial work entailed dealing with several tensions emerging within and across institutional boundaries in the process of enacting national reform policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internationally, the emphasis on school reforms is increasing, and school leaders play a key role in realising reform initiatives for school development and change. Often, the formation of partnerships between researchers and practitioners for school improvement is promoted to facilitate professional development and enhance student learning. However, limited attention has been directed towards the underlying ideas, values and beliefs in government-initiated strategies for partnership in the policy context of educational reform. This paper examines how partnerships between schools and higher education institutions are conceptualised and legitimised in Norwegian reform policy documents. We analyse three government white papers, each coupled with an executive partnership strategy document. The analysis applies a discourse analytical approach to policy as text and transmission. Our findings show a shift in the official national discourse on partnerships in education, underscoring new tensions regarding the power to define focus areas in the local reform work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I argue that power promised to England's teachers by the 2010 'Importance of Teaching' white paper has rather played out as a reformulation of methods of policymaking to more indirect modes of government control. I trace the growth of government control in English schools, promised front-line power in 2010 and a rise in non-statutory guidance after this point. Taking an actor–network theory approach to ethnographic data I then describe how a school takes up one such non-statutory educational initiative – 'Maths Mastery'. Focusing on early stages of the school's adoption of the initiative, I trace associations of actors which problematize existing practices for the teaching of maths and how the initiative is imbued with authority in relation to these. I argue that the ways in which certain actors – statutory education policy and government funding – associate with the 'optional' initiative reveals a 'back door' control of teacher agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to compare the educational attainment of a conflict region (the Deep South) and a non-conflict region (the rest of the South) of Thailand using the Socio-Economic Survey, 2015. This paper employs the Instrumental Variable approach and Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition in an intergenerational regression model. When controlling parental schooling, household income and size, religion, and gender, the results show that children from the Deep South obtain almost one year less schooling than children from the rest of the Southern region. Interestingly, Muslims are ahead in terms of educational attainment when compared to non-Muslims in the non-conflict region, but not in the conflict region. Females outperform males in both regions, but the coefficient of female dummy is higher in the non-conflict region. Moreover, the rate of intergenerational transmission of educational attainment is higher in the Deep South compared to that in the rest of the southern region, which may lead to long-term educational inequality in the Deep South region. The Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition confirms that the 40% schooling gap between these two regions is unexplained but might be due to the chronic social unrest. The findings of this paper show that customized educational reforms and policies to resolve the conflict in the Deep South of Thailand should be employed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Public Money & Management is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

While much literature has been produced on globalization, privatization, and the State individually, it has not been common to treat them together, at least not in the field of comparative and international education. There is excellent work that has documented the ways in which globalization and privatization have influenced education reform, but extant scholarship typically has not engaged with theories of the State. In this paper, through the case of Honduras, we explore the aforementioned issues. First, we draw on the approach of Critical International Political Economy (CIPE) to understand the ways that (political-economic) globalization and privatization have affected and manifested in both policymaking and the provision of education. The second half of the paper then turns the gaze back on the Honduran State and draws on State theory literature to consider why globalization and privatization have been able to be so influential in the first place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational reform in China has brought about many Western educational approaches for teachers to consider as part of their pedagogy. An example of this is the theory of multiple intelligences (MI theory). This paper presents how a theory grounded in a Western context is locally reconceptualised by kindergarten teachers who grew up in a different context. A qualitative case study was selected to investigate seven kindergarten teachers' understandings of MI theory in China. Three methods were employed to gather data; semi-structured interviews, field observations and documentation. Evidence from the three sources were analysed using a thematic approach. This paper reports contextual factors that had an influence on the teachers' understandings of MI theory and thus its implementation, and argues that the introduction of new educational theories or approaches should be grounded in the local context in which the teaching will be embedded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates changes in the promissory visions articulated in education reforms around the world. We use structural topic modeling to inductively analyze the content of 9,268 reforms from 215 countries and territories during the period 1970–2018 using the World Education Reform Database. Our findings reveal a decline in traditional management-focused reforms and a rise in reforms related to data and information. We also find an expanding commitment to educational access and inclusion, but reforms framed explicitly in 'rights' language diminish. We argue that the rise of data-centric reforms and the retreat from rights-based approaches may both reflect and contribute to a broader erosion of the liberal world order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education institutions have always been changing concurrently with larger societal developments. This paper addresses digital transformation in higher education (DTHE) during a disruptive crisis, e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic. Understanding different perspectives on DTHE during the pandemic is important, as the meaning allocated to the unfolding events holds the potential to shape future decision making. We conducted a critical review of 22 academic papers published in the first year of the pandemic. A thematic analysis revealed divergent perspectives of how the pandemic was affecting DTHE, with the material pointing in the direction of the pandemic as an accelerator of ongoing changes in higher education. The papers unanimously understood DTHE as multi-dimensional and as an ongoing, long-time process entangled with digital transformations in other sectors already initiated before the pandemic. Although this review is limited to research carried out during the first year of the pandemic, further studies might address a longer time-period, by studying changes in higher education and research in consequence of a disruptive crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dialogic teaching approach has been studied widely, both empirically and theoretically. However, despite four decades of research suggesting that dialogical interactions promote student learning, it has been very difficult to reflect this in practice. Teachers' professional development programmes oriented towards promoting dialogical pedagogies have been based on sociocultural approaches centred on teachers' reflective analysis of classroom practices. Studies show that reflecting on pedagogical practices is necessary but insufficient to promote the desired changes. Beyond reflection, initiatives centred on scaffolding the practice with dialogic discursive repertoires have seen more successful results. This suggests that centring on the practice seems to be fundamental to change. Nevertheless, the theoretical basis has not been elaborated further to understand why centring on the direct scaffolding of practice would promote teachers' learning and pedagogical practice transformation. In order to account for the available empirical evidence, drawing on the works of Bakhtin and Vygotsky, the aim of this paper is to elaborate on a dialogical theory of teacher learning. Using this theoretical approach, different theoretical views of learning, teacher professional development programmes and the main tensions therein are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Korea implemented many-pronged educational reforms, notably to transition from heavy reliance on a high-stakes standardised test to more diversified assessment for university admissions. Nonetheless, this effort created another arena of competition towards meritocratic credentials—such as academic publications. The South Korean government, in 2014, prohibited high schools from documenting students' extracurricular accomplishments earned outside schools. This paper analyses the impacts of these reforms. We queried large-scale bibliographic databases with prestigious high schools' names in South Korea and retrieved publications where high school students were granted authorship between 2001 and 2021. We examine associations between school types, research topics, and the status of scholarly venues. We also show the number of papers from Korean high schoolers rose until the mid-2010s but declined after the 2014 intervention. Our findings suggest that diverse adaptive strategies can evolve as long as meritocratic ethos persists. We discuss further implications beyond the context of South Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transition to school is a critical period for children and families. Successful transition predicts later school achievement and socio-emotional outcomes with sustained long-term benefits. Educational disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic meant that support for the transition of children from nursery to school was limited. The study aimed to investigate the impact of the pandemic on early years transitions in the U.K., with a focus on children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities. Using a sequential mixed-methods research design, data was gathered from a survey before children started school, and semi-structured interviews after starting school. Results revealed that support for the transition of young children from nursery to school was inevitably affected. Key challenges and facilitating factors in planning for transition are reported as well as the impact of the pandemic on children, families and early years practitioners. The paper concludes with recommendations for policy and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education is increasingly becoming central to debates about how to promote peace in conflict-affected societies. Equitable access to quality learning, promotion of social justice through educational reforms and conflict-sensitive curricular and pedagogical approaches are viewed as peace supporting educational interventions. Drawing upon the existing body of literature in the area of education, conflict and peace in Southern Thailand and reflecting on Nancy Fraser's theory of social justice and applying the 4Rs framework, this paper provides a critical analysis of inequalities, cultural repression and epistemic domination through education. The paper argues that the 4Rs framework usefully exposes underlying structural tensions in education but does little to show avenues for rupturing unequal power relations and hegemonies that reproduce systems of domination and social exclusion at the macro level. The real hope, however, lies in the potential use of the 4Rs as a tool for grassroots political socialisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of great changes in the food industry, the aim of this research is to investigate if and how the implementation of 4.0 enabling technologies can enhance the economic, environmental and social sustainability of the food sector. A systematic literature review, using a combination of 12 keywords, was carried out on Scopus database with defined inclusion and exclusion criteria in order to answer four selected research questions. Overall, 50 relevant papers were retrieved and analysed by Mendeley and Excel with descriptive statistics. VOSviewer was used for co-occurrence and co-authorship analysis. Results illustrate that the interest in the topic has grown, in particular in Italy, and resume the benefits achievable by the implementation of 4.0 technologies in food industries. Social impacts are new job positions, ergonomic design of workplaces, changes in educational institutions, improved nutrition and better animal welfare. Positive aspects are related even to economic growth, improving food chain performances and decreasing companies' costs. Finally, it allows energy, water, CO2 emissions and food savings. Overall, the work provides a helpful overview to food manufacturers and producers, recommending the introduction of I4.0 technologies to positively influence the sustainable development of the sector and remain competitive in the market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, the aims and objectives of education – and therefore public discourse on the appropriate skills and attributes of mathematics teachers – have been rapidly shifting due to forces from outside the teaching profession. The forces driving change in mathematics are as diverse as the emergence of "Industry 4.0" and "STEM," new directions in transnational education policy making, and the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper contributes to a growing literature seeking to empower teachers to respond to the complexity of such multifaceted change expansively rather than defensively. It does so through the refinement and application of practical theories of educational change and approaches to building actionable practice knowledge. Specifically, this paper will argue for the use of the epistemic object as a practical focus for changes to practice chosen by the profession. This argument will be made within the framework of practice architectures offered by Kemmis and others. The paper first considers the impact of some recent disruptions on teaching and then provides a "worked example" of using mathematical proficiencies as an epistemic object able to practically support teachers to develop actionable knowledge grounded in the specifics of their own professional context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural and linguistic diversity in educational settings is the new normal internationally. However, domestic research shows that Indigenous Australian students are still not benefiting from school. Despite global research on Culturally Responsive Pedagogies and Reggio Emilia being proven to work with minoritised groups in settler societies, little research exists in Australia. This paper addresses this noticeable gap in the literature, bringing into dialogue the culturally responsive pedagogy movement with Reggio Emilia principles for theoretical nuanced examination of listening pedagogies. This dialogue seeks to shift epistemological and ontological framings of the child and their schooling experience. The paper argues for a deterritorialising of Indigenous ways of being and knowing that view learning as socially and culturally mediated. A central finding is that culturally responsive Reggio Emilia inspired practice offers educational change through a decolonising frame using instructional dimensions of relational and dialogic teaching. The paper concludes that reductive pedagogy constrains Indigenous listening and learning and that explicitly connecting curriculum to students' cultural strengths is an instructional reform opportunity for reterritorialising pedagogy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how students can be positioned as contributors to leading practices that shape the nature of their schooling experiences. Student voice and agency agendas have grown in popularity over recent years but understanding the possibilities and boundaries of the ways that students can contribute to their educational experiences requires continued exploration. This paper presents a case study of an alternative learning setting where previously disenfranchised learners were productively contributing to leading practices that shaped their school experience. Using the theory of practice architectures, the relational arrangements that supported students to shape the practices that influenced their re-engagement with schooling are examined. Through the prioritisation of authentic connections between educators and students, practices of leading were established that disrupted normative experiences of schooling and positioned students as empowered agents in their own education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to describe an alternative understanding of Bildung-centred Didaktik through an examination of Wilhelm von Humboldt's conception and practice of educational reform—Bildungsreform, 1809–1810—in which the concept of science (Wissenschaft) was regarded as the fundamental goal and principle for curricular and didactic structure. Willbergh's call to revise Bildung with more emphasis on the pedagogical concepts is congruent with Deng's challenge to overcome the 'moribund' state of the contemporary Anglo-American curriculum studies. Re-examination of the classical figure, Wilhelm von Humboldt, who is quoted and referred to in almost every paper about Didaktik and Bildung theory in the context of curriculum research, but never examined in detail, provides a fruitful reframing of Bildung to the didactical principle. This paper utilizes unpublished archived material in which Humboldt argued for the roles and relationship between Wissenschaft and education for Bildung process as relational development with self and world. Humboldt argued that the purpose of school education is to encourage students to deepen their view on the world, resulting in both intellectual and moral development towards self-determination that consists of five categories: language, mathematics, science, arts and gymnastics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the widespread implementation of COVID-19 prevention and control measures during the pandemic, online classes have become a normal and indispensable part of college students' lives. Analysis of the factors affecting college students' behavioural intention towards online classes will help improve online class quality. This paper sets up a model to analyse the factors that may affect such intentions. The results show that social influence, performance expectancy, effort expectancy, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use have a significant positive effect on college students' behavioural intention, and enabling environment(i.e. the infeasibility of offline teaching due to the pandemic)has a significant negative effect on it. Gender and voluntariness, as moderator variables, also clearly influence behavioural intention. Based on pandemic prevention and control measures, along with education reform and modernisation, this paper offers valuable suggestions to online learning platform and education administrators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the fall of the communist regime, Romania launched the first multi-systemic reform in the education sector in 1995. The reform was largely financed through a World Bank loan and closely followed the neo-liberal ideology promoted by Bank officials. It aimed to privatize and to implement private sector management principles in the public education sector. This paper argues that in order to introduce neo-liberal policy models, the Bank first created a structure of knowledge around the Romanian system of education, which diagnosed it as inefficient and underperforming. Specific representations of domestic institutions, bureaucratic processes, and actors were used to legitimate the forms of intervention proposed and the role of the Bank in internal governance. I argue further that the main stake of the project was reforming governance in education as new mechanisms for power distribution and money allocation were set in place. By manufacturing their role as impartial, apolitical "experts," and by ignoring the political nature of government, they created a niche in governance and imposed neo-liberal understandings in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education markets have spread worldwide over the past few decades. Frequently, the expansion of markets in education is presented by their promoters as a means to improve the opportunities of the most socioeconomically disadvantaged students. However, the evidence available shows that market-oriented policies that enhance competition and choice tend to produce negative effects on equity by boosting school segregation and social stratification among public and private schools. This paper aims to unpack the mechanisms through which market-oriented policies and the involvement of private actors in education can foster the uneven distribution of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. By using a mechanism-based explanation, this paper identifies and describes the functioning of three main mechanisms by which pro-market policies generate school segregation. Finally, the paper addresses the analytical benefits of the mechanism-based approach and reflects on its policy implications regarding market-oriented reforms in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since a nationwide reform of pre-primary education in 2010, Ethiopia has experienced a massive expansion of pre-primary enrolment that increased tenfold in six years. Our paper aims to assess the distribution of early literacy outcomes between children who attended preschool and those who did not and explore how that distribution has changed throughout the reform and by factors such as gender, location, and parental literacy. We find an overall increase in the achievement gaps associated with pre-primary participation between 2010 and 2016. There are also differential patterns in the learning gaps over the reform, with a particular disadvantage for rural students and a relative advantage for students with parents who are not literate. This study suggests that understanding a fuller picture of learning inequality is critical to designing policy to leave no one behind aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sabbatical provides an important illustration of the changing nature of academic life and is a symbol of the growing demands of performativity. Drawing on historical literature and archival sources concerning university sabbaticals at Australian and English universities, the paper demonstrates that underlying assumptions about its purposes have changed slowly, but markedly, over time. A shift has occurred from a conception of the sabbatical as a period of rest, recuperation and academic travel to one of hyper-productivity. This change is linked to the emergence of the so-called research university, the rise of performativity, and the increasing demands of an audit culture. The academic sabbatical is also an often forgotten but significant indicator of the internationalisation of universities in the nineteenth and early to mid-twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses qualitative data from a survey of Higher Education students, who are also parents, to reveal changing attitudes towards, and perceptions of, education during the pandemic school closures in England. Thematic analysis reveals the stresses of 'homeschooling' and how parents reacted and adapted to these, including adjusting ideas around education. This adaptation mirrors the changing attitudes of parents found in pre-pandemic home education. The paper suggests that post pandemic education could be enriched by taking forward some of these ideas, particularly greater flexibility, personalisation and child autonomy in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects an effort to consider the history of Albanian education within the context of the country's history. In it, the origin and evolution of Albanian education are described in connection with the country's social and political standing. It is divided into sections, each corresponding to a major historical period in the formation of the Albanian state and intertwined with major reforms in education: education during the Albanian National Renaissance (1830s–1912); education after the Declaration of Independence (1912–1928); education under King Zog (1930s); the 1946 education reform; the 1960s reform, which involved reorganising the system of education for long-term success; and education after the decline of communism in the 1990s and beyond. The paper chronicles how the dawn of the educational system, its organisation and its curriculum were designed to prepare "period-specific" citizens. It is concluded that the roots of the Albanian national education system took hold during the Albanian Renaissance as a necessity of national survival and that the system's development through time is intertwined with the country's constitutional standing, echoing the secret workings of national life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This discussion paper explores the development and implementation of a new flexible route into the teaching profession. This flexible route is offered within an education system in the midst of wide reform, which has partnership working between universities and schools at the centre of its Initial Teacher Education. Key elements of the new programme examined include how student teachers acquire the knowledge they need, with interconnectivity, immersive practice and blended learning of significance. This case study illustrates the importance of flexibility in the development of the student teacher's personal construct and communities of practice. The programme's adaptive learner-centred approach is delivering an alternative, flexible route into the teaching profession, broadening the experience base of the future teaching workforce and beginning to successfully address key government policy drivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some might fear that the local flavours of education will evaporate when encountering the hegemony of global, cognitive standards of the knowledge economy. This paper, however, shows that the evolution of curriculum can emerge in surprising directions, creating hybrid forms of education. We will investigate forms of meaning that emerge in Norwegian curriculum in the timespan 1988-2020, and show how systems theory can contribute to studying curriculum changes in a temporal perspective. The empirical case for investigation, is a diverse range of material, documenting curriculum changes in the mentioned period. Concepts from the late Luhmann's 'theory of distinctions' will thus be used to give meaning to the emergence of school reforms in Norway. The paper shows that Norwegian policy makers use increasingly complex deparadoxification strategies to deal with an uncertain future, conceptualized as externalization, oscillation, asymmetrisation, and internalization (re-entry). This is most pertinently demonstrated in the latest Norwegian reform LK20, in which a new, hybrid, 'temporal' construct of education, called "new-old-curriculum" or 'competence-Bildung' emerges. We thus contribute to the field of curriculum studies by observing how changing observations of the past and future fuel and legitimize the evolution of new reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A 1987 paper by Sandra Acker remains a seminal academic contribution that identified and discussed the differences between three feminist schools of thought and their application to research and practice in education. Her analysis identified three Western feminist approaches- Liberal, Socialist and Radical and omits mention of Western Black feminist thought and any anti-imperial/indigenous feminist scholarship relevant to education. This article responds to Acker's analysis presenting some of the work she omitted. Drawing on Black and African-feminist thought, the discussion distils some of their insights about gender issues in schools and considers some consequences for the scholarly field of gender, education and development of a canon based on a narrow range of feminist thought [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a comparative analysis of policy texts from UN organisations and scholarly work since the 1990s this paper examines how mothers are portrayed in simplistic terms, as educated thus beneficial for their daughters' schooling, or deprived of education causing detriment to their daughters' future prospects. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with mothers from rural Pakistan, these global comparisons are brought into conversation with local narratives showing how mothers' aspirations facilitate daughters' educational opportunities. It is argued that mothers' subjectivities have a potential to inform global policy discourses for investigating the aspirational and transformational potential of mothers in contexts of material and social constraint. The paper proposes an informed approach to educational research and policy making which seeks to understand the processes surrounding mothers' support for their daughters' education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education is among the most powerful gateways to social change and mobility. It is also a potentially vital backbone for the development of young people's sense of meaning, purpose, and responsibility, enhancing their ability to face the unique challenges of our volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world. The global scale of the current wave of political and social changes heightens the need for a renewed examination of the educational system and its challenges. This paper asserts the importance of education for meaning and meaningful education as essential ingredients in preparing children and adolescents for the changing and uncertain world of the future. Yet meaning in life, which is almost unanimously recognized as a fundamental component of subjective well-being, has received little attention in education. This paper considers empirical evidence of the importance of meaning to the education and healthy development of children and adolescents and then proposes a heuristic model for intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 20 years, since the launch of its flagship study the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has become a behemoth of transnational influence on education policy making. To better understand the evolution of the OECD's perspective on education and the importance of PISA within the OECD's overall publications, I analysed over 900 OECD publications on education with a topic modelling approach. The analysis revealed that contrary to popular belief, the OECD is a multi-centric organization with various agendas in education policy making, focusing on economic changes, higher education, management, planning, and budgeting. PISA made up only 12% of the overall text corpus and was therefore far less discussed than expected. This is in sharp contrast to the general impression held, namely that the OECD's work in education mostly relates to PISA. Therefore, this study reveals that the OECD has a far broader agenda than anticipated. This paper acts as a systematic review of OECD literature to gain insights into its institutional objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With some of the propositions from the literature on 'policy enactments' as a backdrop, this paper addresses the circulation of a research policy innovation and its effects on the knowledge territory of an unlikely profession. Specifically, I show how the Research Excellence Frameworks' impact policy in the UK was an object first managed by policymakers but later released as an object of concern for professional academics, including philosophers. I follow 'impact' through texts, events and testimonies about its doings with a special interest in its creation, its polemical encounter with philosophers, its management and issues about its definition and the assessment criteria used and experienced by philosophers. I conclude with some remarks on the effects that the circulation and writing of impact case studies had on producing a social valorisation and attachment to impact, even amongst philosophers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teachers stand at the face of educational change, and it is therefore important to understand the identity work that they do if reform is to be successful. This paper explores how two Vietnamese university language teachers renegotiated their professional identity in the context of dramatic changes to language provision in the tertiary-sector in Vietnam. These changes were brought about by higher education reforms and the national plan to improve the quality of English language teaching, commonly referred to as National Project 2020. The authors use the concept of Figured Worlds, and the related notions of figurative and positional identities, to analyse the narratives that permeated these teachers' professional identities. Their storylines provide an illustrative case which highlights the complex forces that reshape teacher professional identities in times of externally imposed reform and professional transition. The findings of our study show that prior experience, language affiliation, emotional responses to change, professional orientations and actions, confidence, and self-esteem were key influential forces shaping the teachers' identities. The findings have relevance for the broad field of teacher professional identity as well as for language education in Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the origin, development and fall of the 'school voucher' system in Spain. It was called the Ley de Financiación de la Enseñanza Obligatoria (Compulsory Education Financing Law) (LFEO), and this reform represented the first attempt at an international level to establish a school voucher model for a whole country. This article attempts to explain the importance of the new ideas that emerged from the Economics of Education and International Organisation to understand the origin of the proposed LFEO. It also focuses on its development and the parliamentary debate of the law. Finally, it explains how other foreign ideas began to compete to establish models of equal opportunities in education different from the one proposed. The paper provides a valuable insight into how educational transfers take place, and the importance of the role that local actors can play in the development and, in this case, the failure of such transfers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-transformational neoliberal reforms in the Czech Republic have established a competitive quasi-market, in which – at the lower-secondary level – academic-track schools (grammar schools or gymnasia) compete for students in the regular-track schools. These reforms have also brought a rise of shadow education (private supplementary tutoring) provided by individuals and private companies. Even public schools are sometimes providers of shadow education. The study explores gymnasia principals' motivations to provide paid courses to prepare students for entrance examinations to their study programmes and the challenges they experience in doing so. The findings are drawn mainly from semi-structured interviews with principals and other school management members in eleven gymnasia. The study conceptualises such courses as a 'double-edged sword'. First, because it serves as a 'weapon' that academic schools use in the quasi-market competition to attract more (high-achieving) students from regular track schools, and second, because it may have both positive and negative consequences (e.g., for equity in education), depending on the conditions of its provision. The paper contributes to a wider scholarly literature by expanding the understanding of ways schools behave in the competitive educational quasi-markets and by opening a new branch of shadow education research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education played a vital role in the shifting nature of colonial administration and the reshaping of colonial relations in the nineteenth century. The activities that occurred within classrooms shaped the behaviour and identity of children towards an imperial norm while beyond the school walls the changing management structure tied various local actors together within state regulations. This paper examines the process of centralising education in Trinidad. While influenced by the model of nationalised education emerging in white-settler colonies, the constellation of local relations resulted in something uniquely different. Reforms in Trinidad demonstrate how colonial governance was reshaped by co-opting non-state actors into its functioning but had to ensure that those actors maintained their field of independent actions to do so. While educational reforms took a unique path in Trinidad, the expanding influence from the colonial centre eventually shaped the education system to align with other systems elsewhere in the Empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper unpacks the discursive work of global education philanthropies to shed light on how the work of educational actors inscribes and directs global forces, connections and imaginaries to specific local ends. We do so by analyzing the discursive work of two educational philanthropies – in the US and India – that are similar but also vary in ways related to their global reach and networks. Building on Appadurai's notions of -scapes we show the use of technocratic discourses in the construction and enablement of imagined educational futures of the socially disadvantaged. This paper speaks to theoretical concerns that often club broad concerns of globalization and neoliberalism in education and shows specific empirical openings that manifest as local choices and adaptations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent decades have seen important changes in education to work transitions in the UK. For secondary and further education leavers there are extensive challenges in accessing jobs with prospects. Recently, policy makers have renewed their focus on this middle grouping who are not bound for HE or NEET. However, there is a relative paucity of research into the experiences of these young people and surprisingly little youth researcher engagement with vocational pathways and their framing in policy. The paper interrogates changing experiences and opportunity 'in the middle' and linked policy framings and interventions. Policy remains framed in individualising terms which focus on young people's capacities and positions them, and represents their interests, in very specific ways. School mediated employer engagement is an interesting exemplar here, and is contrasted with alternative interventions which seek to restructure opportunities more fundamentally. The paper argues for a new agenda for youth research which would hold a mirror to experiences in the middle, critically interrogate assumptions embedded in policy and practice and enhance understanding of differentiated pathways and prospects for young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how and why test-based accountability (TBA), a global model for education reform, began to dominate educational debates in Norway in the early 2000s, and how this policy has been operationalised and institutionalised over time. In examining the adoption and retention of TBA in Norway, we build on the cultural political economy framework, in combination with a political sociology-driven approach to policy instruments. The analysis draws on two data sources: four White Papers and 37 in-depth interviews with top-level politicians, policy-makers and stakeholders, conducted between September 2017 and February 2018. The findings indicate that 'scandalisation' of Norway's below-expected PISA results and promotion of standardised testing as a neutral device contributed to the relatively abrupt adoption of national testing in the early 2000s. The increasingly dominant policy discourse equalising education quality and learning outcomes led to the institutionalisation of TBA, developed to ensure equity and quality standards in a decentralised education system. Increased visibility, benchmarking and administrative control are identified as key mechanisms in putting pressure on local actors to re-orient their behaviour. The study provides original insights into the drivers, expectations and strategies underlying TBA in a social democratic institutional regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the 1908 Oxford Report, a founding document for the Workers' Educational Association, as a window onto the internal contradictions of the university adult education movement, an issue that has been neglected by historians of education. Examining the early history of the WEA shows that while the movement was inspired by Oxford Idealism and set itself the aim of democratising higher education, it also drew support from people who intended to professionalise the university by introducing the principles of trained expertise and selection by merit. The confluence of Idealism and professionalism resulted in a ground-breaking but inconsistent educational programme outlined in the Oxford Report. This paper suggests that the attempt to simultaneously democratise and professionalise higher education was untenable and foreshadowed later tensions within the WEA movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an analysis of quality culture (QC) development in Taiwan which has recently undergone major reforms of quality assurance (QA) policies. The implementation of internal quality assurance (IQA) initiatives has been an indispensable condition to form a QC in higher education which contributes to a fundamental and comprehensive evolution of Taiwanese higher education. To explore the government's policy strategies and transformation of QA approaches, this paper interviews policymakers, QA experts and academics. This paper identifies common features and distinct characteristics of QC in Taiwan's higher education, and its relations to QA mechanisms. These perspectives offer a different way of conceptualising QC in QA policies. Furthermore, QC development has not only served the purpose of enhancing quality in higher education but has also acted as a driver for QA and higher education changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically analyzes gap discourses in student learning, starting from the achievement gap, education debt, and opportunity gaps, applying the lens of coloniality, racial-capitalism, and modernity (CRCM). Gap discourses are the prevalent rationale behind educational policies and school reforms globally. Specifically in the United States, achievement gap discourses contribute substantially to the educational framework that minoritized students (students of color) are inherently – intellectually and academically – behind White students. This paper will show the pervasive power of achievement gap discourses and their influence on school policy, practices, and norms. Additionally, we highlight how some of the most formidable achievement gap critiques fail to grasp the power of gap discourses. In some cases, these critiques end up reifying White supremacy ideologies. We propose a decoloniality framework or a layered and multi-disciplinary response to help re-think the entire gap discourses informed by White supremacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent science education reforms emphasize the goal of developing students' science and engineering practices. To foreground those practices during science instruction, teachers need conceptual tools to guide their instructional decision-making. In this conceptual paper, I propose that thinking about science and engineering activities as educative games provides a useful model for designing productive educational experiences. Central to this argument is a recognition of the ways that games allow learners to experience and cultivate new forms of agency—including those aligned with the practice of science and engineering. When immersed in a game, a student/player pursues clearly defined goals using a limited set of available actions, and in doing so they act out and experience a form of agency that they might not otherwise have been able to access. Viewed in this way, science and engineering activities can be analyzed and evaluated with respect to the forms of agency that they cultivate in students, including the extent to which those forms of agency are consistent with those of science and engineering. In addition to presenting this way of thinking about science and engineering activities, this paper proposes a practical model to assist teachers in analyzing and designing science and engineering learning activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education reform in early childhood education in China has often adopted western theories and pedagogies in efforts to facilitate educational change. The theory of multiple intelligences (MI) is an example of one adopted. This paper reports on a study that examined factors that influence Chinese kindergarten teachers' use of MI theory in their pedagogy. The study was a qualitative case study with seven participants from two kindergartens. Multiple methods were used to understand the contexts of these teachers' work, their understandings and practices, and ways that they had become exposed to ideas about MI. A number of influences were apparent in shaping teacher understandings and practices. These influences at times motivated teachers to incorporate MI, but there were also instances where teachers were unsure and confused about MI and struggled to meld it with their existing beliefs and practices based on longstanding Chinese values and pedagogies. The paper argues that if the policy goal of any educational reform is to facilitate teacher change then the introduction of new educational theories or approaches should first be grounded in, and connected carefully with, teachers' practices and, second, take careful consideration of the context in which their teaching will be embedded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to growing pushback to decades of privatization and disinvestment in high-poverty communities of color, elected officials and business leaders in the United States have turned to 'community-engaged strategies' to advance education reform. This qualitative case study of a California school district, the Oakland Unified School District, from 1989 to 2019 uses a Gramscian analysis of hegemony to illuminate the shift from coercive practices of financial audits to building consent through the district's formal engagement strategies as tools to manage public dissent around divisive decisions. Findings reveal that a manufacturedscrisis facilitated the 2003 state takeover of OUSD to further advancesausterity measures and audit processes that served as racialized formssof fiscal surveillance. When local resistance to these measures intensified, district actors shifted tactics to 'engage' community members through a portfolio strategy to manage school choice options and other public-private partnerships. Oakland public schools are a prime case of how democratic mechanisms serve as the vehicle to manufacture public consent for district redesign by way of marketization. This paper contributes new insights into local and global debates on educational privatization by critically examining the role of parastatal audit agencies in shaping community support for public-privateeducation governance along with tracing the shifting tactics of elite policy actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]