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This paper critically examines the White Paper, "Opportunity for all," published by the UK Government's Department for Education (DfE) in March 2022. This has a number of recommendations for schools in an attempt to 'level up'. In particular, there is a promise to deliver 'a fully trust-led system with a single regulatory approach [and] a clear role for every part of the school system'. Such a system provides a serious challenge to the way that Religious Education (RE) structures in England are currently built: in short, when Local Authorities no longer have schools under their control -- what is the point of a SACRE? Arguing that the 'local settlement' for RE serves two purposes -- a curricular purpose and support and monitoring purpose -- this paper will suggest that future RE curricula will be planned at the Trust level, with the monitoring and support functions being moved from the local to the regional.

The NAEYC DAP position statement and book are widely used as guides for implementing equitable early learning in settings serving children birth through age 8. Building on the spirit of Sankofa, which in translation from the Akan expresses, 'It is not taboo to go back and fetch what you forgot,' this article documents the revision process for the position statement and highlights critical early childhood research on cultural contexts and equitable practices that particularly informed the fourth edition. Looking back to move forward and engaging in critical reflection is essential to DAP. This article outlines the extensive development process behind NAEYC position statements beginning with a historical understanding of DAP. We highlight the importance of feedback, as well as the diversity of thought behind the fourth edition of the position statement, which challenged old practices and illuminated new possibilities, eliciting both positive and negative critiques. We underscore that DAP, an imperfect living document, requires ongoing reflection. We conclude by encouraging critics of DAP and those defending it to do so with the understanding that research and scholarship must undergo updates/revisions, and DAP is no different. Thoughtful discussions are at the heart of DAP as anchored in intentional teaching.

This article contextualises "Education in Pakistan, a White Paper" (2007), an influential education policy paper in Pakistan. The focus is on the ways the White Paper constructs its own contexts as a complement to the policy solutions proffered. Here we recognise Seddon's point about the discursive work of policy in constructing context. We focus on the way the White Paper constructs its political/ideological context and its global/national context. The White Paper works with the trope of a binary construction of Islam--fundamentalist or moderate--which rearticulates Orientalist Western constructions. The analysis of the construction of the global/national contexts demonstrates the framing of the policy by the Millennium Development Goals, and the Washington and post-Washington consensus. (Contains 18 notes.)

Understanding how to make the world a better place requires interdisciplinary knowledge. Public policy analysis helps policymakers arrive at informed policy decisions. The policy analysis process involves public problem definition and data collection, stakeholder identification, a rationale for government involvement, evaluation criteria, identification and analysis of policy alternatives, and a recommendation. Economics informs not only the identification of market failures but also how we think about public problems, evaluate relevant research, identify policy alternatives, weigh objective criteria (costs, benefits, equity), and select optimal solutions. Students of policy analysis gain experience through in-class examples of contemporary topics and an iterative policy paper, where each student selects a public problem, conducts research, and writes an analysis. Students become effective consumers and beginning producers of policy analysis.

Based on a research project comprising data from an interview study and a survey with teachers and school principals in four German federal states ("Bundesländer"), this paper questions the claim that the side effects of accountability in education are bound to high-stakes contexts, and also provides evidence of side effects occurring in no- and low-stakes contexts. The findings suggest that side effects cannot be fully explained by certain implementation features of accountability regimes (e.g., high stakes), but should rather be understood as a result of implementation features as well as systematic effects of accountability in education.

This paper has two main objectives. First, it aims to analyse the connections between education and poverty established by the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), a central policy tool for the articulation of the Post Washington Consensus. Second, it intends to study how the PRSPs have been consolidated and expanded through different international organisations. With these objectives, the paper includes four sections: the first and second sections present the "model of poverty" and the "model of education" defined in the PRSPs. The third analyses how different international actors have adopted the PRSPs as a guide to orient their strategies and policies in the field of education, development and poverty reduction. The fourth and final section critically explores the current global development agenda and identifies some of its main challenges in terms of conceptualisation and implementation.

Education reform is increasingly portrayed as a quest to achieve a "world class" education system through a process of identifying and adopting the practices of those systems whose pupils perform best in league tables of achievement. This is the rationale for the range of new policies proposed by the coalition government in the schools White Paper published in November 2010, which promotes whole-system reform in England. This article examines the White Paper and analyses the sources and nature of the evidence for reform and the congruence between the policy intentions and their associated policy actions. The analysis suggests that the evidence for the proposed reforms and policy actions is at best tenuous. Both the White Paper and its key sources of evidence are characterised by: a selective use of data: a propensity to mix and match the sources of comparison; and an overall tendency to employ comparisons with high-performing systems elsewhere as a facade to legitimate preferred policy options. (Contains 1 table and 3 notes.)

The purpose of this article is to examine two policies in an attempt to measure their impact and ascertain any potential trajectory from government-level agenda to borough-level contextualisation. Inspired by content analysis, but also taking into account the implementation of the documents, this study draws upon the Every Child Matters green paper (2003) as a government initiative and seeks to establish the progression route taken by one particular borough (Knowsley). Knowsley, a borough with high unemployment figures for school leavers, aims to address its problematic areas through policy implementation and strongly acknowledges the significance of Every Child Matters. The two policies looked at here are the government green paper "Every Child Matters" (2003) and "Knowsley's Children and Young People's Strategic Plan 2007-2010" (2007). Both policies concern themselves with progression routes for young people and problematic areas are identified at an early age. (Contains 2 tables.)

This paper examines the tensions between education policy's attachment to notions such as excellence and inclusion and its investments in managerial tropes of competition, continuous quality improvement, standards and accountability that are at odds with and which undermine its attachments. In order to explore these tensions, I draw on the psychoanalytic notion of fantasy, explained through Stanley Kubrick's final film, "Eyes Wide Shut". My argument is that while the individual and society are both constituted through unavoidable division, antagonism and opacity, these notions are obscured through the operations of fantasy which holds out the promise of wholeness, harmony and redemption. In particular, education serves as a key site in which these fantasmatic ideals are promoted and pursued, a claim I substantiate via an analysis of the UK government's 2016 White Paper, "Educational Excellence Everywhere". Specifically, I read the White Paper in terms of five fantasies of: control; knowledge and reason; inclusion; productivity; and victimhood. My argument is that while fantasy is an inescapable element that inevitably structures what we take to be 'reality', education policy might strive to inhabit fantasy differently, thereby finding ways of escaping its current mode of seeing education with eyes wide shut.

The state mandated public hearings concerning school closing proposals in New York City provide a window into a diverse set of policy actors and their deliberations. Opposition to school closures is often cast as entrenched interests, emotional attachment, support for the status quo or at worst negligence. However, content analysis reveals that testimony offered by parent, community, and educator leaders contained a range of substantial critiques of school closing proposals, their motivations, justifications, and expected results. I argue that the hearings did not fully constitute a public sphere by Habermasian criteria, nor a counter-public by Fraser and Dawson criteria. In fact, the hearings had contradictory effects; one school successfully fought closure by both resisting and reifying neoliberal logic in education policymaking. Some data demonstrates that this school's market-based argument resonated with state authorities, while other data indicates that this market-based argument coincided with the state's own interest to defend its legitimacy in policymaking.

In 2007, the Malaysia government initiated twinned primary teacher education arrangements with five Southern Hemisphere higher education institutions (HEIs). Participating students completed their teacher education in both Malaysia and a partner HEI. In this paper, we consider the preliminary findings of a comparative study tracking the beginning teacher journeys of 13 Malaysia based twinning programme graduates and six New Zealand based teachers. The study involved two aspects: (1) a comparative discourse analysis of key Malaysia and New Zealand education policy documents; and (2) thematic and discourse analysis of participants' reflections on their early teaching experiences. Our focus is on beginning teachers as "policy workers": policy subjects whose work is shaped and constrained by policy discourses and imperatives, and policy actors who mediate, translate and resist these. We compare the two policy contexts and consider how policy discourses appeared and were contested in teachers' initial online questionnaire responses.

The proliferation of information technology tools in higher education has resulted in an explosion of data about students and their contexts. Yet, current policies governing these data are limited in their usefulness for informing students, instructors, and administrators of their rights and responsibilities related to data use because they are based on antiquated conceptions of data and data systems. To understand how data privacy policies conceptualize and represent data, privacy, student agency, and institutional power, we conducted a policy discourse analysis of 151 university policy statements related to student information privacy and the responsible use of student data from 78 public and private post-secondary institutions in the U.S. Three common discourses emerged: educational records are static artifacts, privacy solutions are predicated upon institutional responsibility and student agency, and legitimate educational interest in data are institutionally defined and broadly applied. We explore the assumptions, biases, silences, and consequences of these discourses and offer counter- discourses to begin a foundation for the development of privacy policies in a new data age.

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the motivations that key policy documents have put forward as justifications for Sweden's mother-tongue instruction in immigrant and historical minority languages as a multicultural policy that has endured for nearly half a century. The diachronic development of these motivations is analysed in four periods and interpreted with the help of Ruiz's (1984) orientations in language planning. The corpus consists of 26 key policy documents making up the coordinative discourse among policy actors. Based on an innovative mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, the motivations are presented in a three-tiered taxonomy consisting of motivational units, themes and language-planning orientations. The results point to both continuity and change in how mother-tongue instruction has been justified over time. Confirming previous research, the results show that the language-as-resource orientation has played a central role in justifying both the establishment and the maintenance of mother-tongue instruction in Sweden and that language as right complemented this orientation. Furthermore, the study illustrates that the language-as-problem orientation need not always be detrimental to bilingualism and minority-language maintenance. Contrary to some claims in the literature, it is argued that language as extrinsic resource is not necessarily underpinned by neoliberalism, as there are also social liberal and conservative inroads to this orientation. The paper concludes that although the language-as-resource orientation plays an indispensable role in supporting bilingualism in education, not only the language-as-right orientation but also the language-as-problem orientation should not be neglected.

Various scholars have confirmed that teacher safety against learner victimization is a growing concern worldwide, and this problem is exacerbated by a lack of understanding and readiness to implement policies to address this matter. In this regard, policy implementation by middle leaders (MLs) in creating safe school environments has attracted much less interest as a possible way of addressing issues of teacher safety and the prevention of learner victimization. MLs are regarded as individuals who have the potential to lead, plan, inspire and persuade, and in so doing, they are in an ideal position to translate policy into practice. As such, this paper provides a qualitative policy document analysis of The National School Safety Framework (NSSF) premised on the theory that every individual in the school experiences safety in dissimilar ways and has unique safety needs. The NSSF is endorsed by the Department of Basic Education to guide in addressing issues of violence and safety in South African schools. Underpinned by the rational choice theory and utilizing policy document analysis, texts in the NSSF were analysed and interpreted to propose transformative policy strategies that can assist MLs in managing teachers' safety at schools more effectively. The findings suggest that administrative duties and a lack of time make it difficult for MLs to create a safe and supportive learning environment in schools. Another finding was that there is no clear plan outlined in the NSSF to guide MLs to pursue teacher safety against learner victimization in schools. To assist MLs, this paper proposes transformative policy strategies that can assist them in promoting teacher safety and preventing learner victimization in schools. The paper recommends that more explicit interpretation and implementation strategies be communicated with schools to assist them in fighting the war against violence in schools.

This article reports on findings from a scan of 465 policies relevant to the handling of cyberbullying in 74 Canadian universities. It first assesses the commonalities and differences in the policies. Second, it considers how their various lenses--a human rights perspective versus a student conduct perspective, for instance--can affect the directions and outcomes of university responses. The majority of the policies reviewed were codes of student conduct and discipline, policies on electronic communication, and policies on harassment and discrimination. Most of the policies outlined complaint procedures and possible sanctions, but relatively few addressed prevention of unacceptable behaviours. Only about a third made reference to "cyber" behaviours, suggesting that the university policy environment is not current with the information and communication technologies that permeate the daily lives of university students and faculty.

South Africa is rapidly obliterating its cultural resources and indigenous values. Particularly, this is the case in rural South Africa where manifestations of socio-economic declensions are evident. However, a number of the policies that are meant to enhance rural development lack a cohesive strategy that is based on culture-based theoretical frameworks. The paper argues that the conspicuous disregard to address rural development and its concomitant socio-economic challenges in the Revised White Paper on Arts, Culture, and Heritage, 2017, by the Department of Arts and Culture (DAC), now (DSAC); poses a great threat to sustainable rural development [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

Examining legislative change between 1997 and 2013, and analyzing the governance of Manitoba's post-secondary system using military concepts of strategy, operations, and tactics, this article argues that there has been a trend since 2006 of a general loss of university autonomy in the province. The article finds that changes in public policy in Manitoba's post-secondary system, and how that policy is implemented, have led to a progressive movement towards greater government intrusion in what heretofore have been internal matters at the province's universities.

California legislature made a policy change with Senate Bill (SB) 1644 (2000), shifting Cal Grant Programs to focus on entitlement; counter to the national trend of merit based grant programs. This article describes a study examining effectiveness and extent to which SB 1644 is meeting its legislative objectives: increase in higher education opportunities and lower student loan debt. Additionally, demographic characteristic differences of student populations seeking higher education opportunities (20-year period) and factors influencing California policy to embrace entitlement grants are presented. The national implication and political (value) question derived from this study was: Is higher education a right or a privilege?

Lower division transfer preparation for the university has been the primary mission of community colleges since their inception creating an important pathway to baccalaureate degree attainment for many students who may not otherwise have the opportunity for higher education. Once considered fairly straightforward, the transfer pathway has become overly complex and difficult for students to navigate. The underlying issues with community college transfer are multifaceted and profound, and often the focus of much attention by public policy makers. This study explored the extent to which the complexity with transfer is rooted in flawed state and local policy coupled with insufficient capacity to meet the growing demand for postsecondary education at many public universities in California. Interviews with key players in higher education in the state, a focus group of community college professionals involved with transfer, observations of meetings where transfer was discussed and a review of state and local documents concerned with transfer comprised the methodology of this study. Results suggest that legislative interference in the transfer pathway, university elitism and selectivity, uneven placement of state resources, the confines of the state master plan for higher education and inadequate capacity at the state universities all contribute to damaging the transfer pathway. This embedded case study examined the transfer pathway in one large region in southern California in the first decade of the 21st century.The study investigated the implications of flawed public policy and insufficient capacity at some public universities on the development of local policy, and the unintended consequences for transfer students who are denied admission to transfer.Further, the study described how these policy decisions are hindering access and equity in the public postsecondary education system in the region under investigation. Amidst fluctuating economic conditions, the public higher education system in California has struggled to meet increasing enrollment demand. With the ongoing deterioration in state appropriations for higher education in California, the need for increased baccalaureate degree attainment to meet the future economic demands of the state is more critical than ever.

The Salamanca Statement is a primary point of departure in research and policy on inclusive education. However, several problems have surfaced in the 25 years since its publication. In particular, several different interpretations of the concept of inclusive education and its enactment in practice have arisen. For instance, the definition of the pupil groups in focus varies greatly. There are also varying definitions of the importance of pupil-placement, when it comes to organisation of inclusive education. Using a theoretical framework combining Bacchi's [1999. "Women, Policy and Politics. The Construction of Policy Problems." London: Sage Publications] poststructural policy-analysis and concepts from Popkewitz [2009. "Curriculum Study, Curriculum History, and Curriculum Theory: The Reason of Reason." "Journal of Curriculum Studies" 41 (3): 301-319. doi:10.1080/00220270902777021], this article illustrates that The Salamanca Statement allows for a variety of interpretations of inclusion. As a policy-concept, inclusion encompasses an amalgam of political ideals, including welfare-state ideals where education is viewed as a public-good, as well as market-ideals of education as a private-good. Policies of inclusion also define the desired citizen, through categories of disadvantaged children, the ones excluded but to be included for their own good as well as for the good of the future society. The conclusions are that researchers and policy-makers should elucidate what they mean by inclusion with for instance moral- and practical arguments rather than vague references to The Salamanca Statement.

Between 1970 and 1990 enrolment in Newfoundland and Labrador schools dropped by 22 percent. The first wave of major educational reform (1990 to 2000) saw massive reductions in public school expenditures and the reduction of more than 1650 teachers. Facing continued enrolment loss and a large current account deficit, in 2004, government again consolidated school districts. In this paper I examine the 1997 and 2004 reforms and argue that the "rationalization" agenda set by government was aggressive--driven primarily by fiscal and corporate factors. While the reforms accomplished their corporate goals, they also resulted in educational and organizational costs which should be weighed against potential benefits. (Contains 2 tables and 4 footnotes.)

Over the last 20 years, technology and education policy discourse in Alberta, Canada has been philosophically polarized and dominated by value-neutral ways of thinking about technology (Brooks, 2011). While technology policy implementation has significant ramifications for schools and systems, for much of this time, system leaders, specifically the College of Alberta School Superintendents, (CASS), did not engage the discursive circle. This paper identifies a probable rationale for the historic lack of engagement in technology and education policy by CASS. Concluding discussion offers reasons for and early impacts of CASS' first formal move into provincial technology policy discourse "System Leadership for Learning Technology Success". (Contains 2 tables and 2 footnotes.)

This paper compares how educational reform documents in Korea and the U.S.A. conceptualize teachers and teacher education and examines how, if at all, the discourses of one country appear to influence those of the other. Special attention is paid to the ways in which reform documents incorporate different conceptions of professionalism in framing and in proposing remedies for the problems with teachers and teacher education. Eighteen reform documents issued in the two countries by national governmental and non-governmental organizations since the 1980s were selected and analyzed. It was found that while both Korean and American documents seem to draw on elements of the functionalist (or trait theory) conception of professionalism, Korean documents put more emphasis on issues related to the power/autonomy of teachers. Regarding cross-country influence, Korea seems to have appropriated ideas and moved toward the structures and practices evidenced in the U.S.A. during an earlier period. (Contains 1 table and 10 notes.)

The importance of enhancing social and emotional skills in educational settings has gained prominence, with many countries and organizations embracing the Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) framework to equip individuals with the tools needed for shaping a self-identity, emotional regulation, goal achievement, empathy, nurturing relationships, and responsible decision-making and overall well-being. In this paper, we aim to connect the globally acknowledged Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning SEL framework with international policies that underscore the importance of social and emotional skills in the school context. To accomplish this goal, we first provide a brief overview of the key components of the SEL framework. Subsequently, we explore two significant educational policies within the European context. The first policy is the World Health Organization Health Promoting Schools initiative. We present its objectives, a WHO-affiliated program example, the promoted and assessed competencies of students, and its results, connecting its framework with the CASEL SEL approach. The second focus is the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Study on Social and Emotional Skills, describing its developmental process and the assessment framework. Finally, we describe the alignment of SEL with these European educational policies and illustrate their role in advancing and improving the evaluation of SEL initiatives in educational environments.

This study explored how 14 higher education and student affairs (HESA) professionals navigated institutional policy vacuums to address interpersonal racial conflict between students. Grounded in perspectives of policy vacuums, findings revealed that HESA professionals learned about racial conflict by referring to their own personal, professional, and academic training. Additionally, they employed strategies that were often self-generated and informal to address racial conflict. The paper concludes with a discussion of the findings, specifically highlighting that relying on HESA professionals' dispositions is an insufficient way to address racial conflict and that more institutional support is necessary to train racially responsive HESA professionals.

The curriculum policies for students with special needs across Australia have been reviewed. The Curriculum Framework in the Australian Capital Territory is used to inform their school based curriculum. The Northern Territory Curriculum Framework describes what learners are expected to achieve and what learners have achieved. The New South Wales and Western Australian Curriculum Framework identifies some essential and fundamental learning in each subject area and common outcomes for all students. The Tasmanian curriculum is organised into areas and standards, the areas being content based. The Queensland Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Framework is based on a set of essential learnings embedded within standards across all key subjects. The South Australian Curriculum, Standards and Accountability Framework are also based on essential learnings constituting of a series of expected outcomes in each subject area. The Victorian Essential Learning Standards outlines a set of common state-wide standards which schools use to plan student learning programs. In spite of each of the state and territory government's commitment towards inclusion, as manifested in the curricular provisions, the present review surfaces the lack of specialised documentation for these discrete group of learners.

The authority of the nation states and their capacity to govern their education policy has been reconfigured by the processes of globalisation. This paper examines recent education policy in Pakistan in order to reveal the nature of national authority in education policy-making in a challenging context. The central piece of analysis is the pre-policy text issued by the Ministry of Education, Pakistan--the White Paper. This analysis is further supported through interviews with senior policy actors and other significant policy texts. The paper identifies several tensions caused by the interaction of global and national education policy priorities and explores how the national government of Pakistan seeks to expand its SoA through "soft" governance approaches despite the material and financial constraints within which it operates.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is threefold: to sketch the current policy context that frames the education of migrant children in Shanghai; to explore the work lives of school leaders in the privately owned but government-supported schools; and to understand the socio-cultural and educational factors that shape the leadership practices in these schools. Design/methodology/approach: This paper drew from publicly accessible policy papers and interview data with four principals leading migrant children's schools in Shanghai. Findings: Migrant children's schools have received increasing policy recognition and attention. Principals of these schools have strived to adopt various leadership strategies to enhance the quality of education as received by migrant children. However, due to the institutional barriers such as hukou, multiple challenges continue to face migrant children and leaders leading migrant schools. Originality/value: This is one of the first few papers that collected data from principals leading migrant children's schools. The paper contributes to further understandings about leadership in high-needs school context and about education quality and equity in relation to programme for international student assessment success in Shanghai.

Conscious and balanced use of information and communication technologies (ICT) is one of the main foundations of the concept put forward as new economy. Studies on the forming process of new economy in Turkey are conducted, but failures are also experienced in forming an accurate policy in terms of information, technology and innovation. The aim of this study is to investigate the predictions and decisions with regard to information and communication technologies (ICT) in the development plans of Turkey and make an investigation in parallel to this. For this purpose, document analysis technique was employed in the research, and content analysis was used for the data analysis. Themes emerging from the data analysis were analyzed in terms of problem, purpose and application policies in the development plans. In this context, the results of the study revealed that problem, purpose and application policies with regard to technology production, technology development, technology policy, technology plan, and information and communication technologies were not included at all in the 1st and 2nd development plans. Moreover, it was found out that technology policies were first emphasized in the 3rd Development Plan in terms of purpose and application, and a technology plan was first emphasized in the 5th Development Plan as purpose. As for the information and communication technologies, it was first involved in the 8th Development Plan. Therefore, it was concluded that Turkey has latched on to the policies still valid today in the Information, Technology and Research field from the very beginning; however, failed to practice them in real life. The findings of the study are discussed with their causes and effects in Turkey. (Contains 5 tables.)

New Public Management (NPM)-inspired higher education (HE) governance has become increasingly topical in recent years. However, while existing research provides an overall understanding of relevant changes, it does not offer a complete analysis of complex governance and falls prey to deterministic and relatively narrow ideological impositions. Scholars are overwhelmingly oriented toward governance models or modes and the ideas of efficiency, effectiveness, and competition in NPM. They either promote these aspects as an approach to organizing HE governance or criticize them in addition to evaluating or comparing their outcomes. Therefore, based on a literature review and drawing on Foucauldian ideas of political rationality, this paper proposes a shift from the ideology-based problem-solving paradigm to a renewed approach. By calling for an increased focus on bottom-up initiatives that stem from below while studying NPM-inspired HE governance, this paper recommends conducting a discourse analysis of technical policy papers together with empirical-analytical studies to identify interpretive political rationalities and histories. Overall, the approach proposed in this paper would limit the deterministic mode of policy analysis and lead to more refined ways of understanding HE governance in certain fields, clarifying problematic situations, and effectively estimating future directions.

Extracurricular activities (ECAs) and their impact on student employability has become a focus of the higher education sector, with a recent emphasis on experiences such as global exchange and skill acquisition that prepares graduates for the workforce. Despite the initiatives and effort put into supporting the general student population, students with disabilities are underrepresented in these opportunities. This causes such students to have less access to employability opportunities that set them apart from their peers and leads to a distinct disadvantage when seeking to enter the workforce. The literature suggests that there are various benefits of participating in extracurricular activities for university students, including some literature about students with disabilities. However, there is a distinct lack of focus on how the scarcity of support for participation in these programs fails to address equality and discrimination legal obligations, as well as the failure of disability specific initiatives to include these activities as essential to their core mission. This paper aims to examine how Australian University strategic plans addressing disability inclusion and supports for students with disabilities extend to the extracurricular space, and what more can be done to include these students in all aspects of campus life. Through a search and policy analysis of University Strategic Plans, Disability Action Plans, and scholarships for students with disabilities to participate in extracurricular activities, it was revealed that this issue is not being sufficiently addressed through university strategic responses to disability inclusion. This paper provides practitioners and universities with recommendations to improve their compliance with antidiscrimination measures and address this deficit to improve student outcomes.

This paper analyses Japan's COVID-19 response drawing on a survey of more than 3200 prospective international students affected by the (colloquially named) #JapanTravelBan. The paper charts the evolution of Japan's COVID-19 response from the earliest border restrictions in February 2020 to the eventual blanket reopening to international students in Summer 2022. Subsequently, survey DATA provide evidence of (1) the drastic mental health effects for prospective international students during this time, (2) students' loss of agency due to the protracted uncertainty of both policy and communication from the Japanese government, and (3) potential damage caused to Japan's reputation as a study destination. Drawing on these findings the paper offers broader suggestions for appropriate student migration policymaking: greater transparency, attention to students' security throughout their study sojourn, an emphasis on stability, and resilience to crises.

Since the early 1990s, the advocacy of teachers and other queer allies have sought to alter the curriculum and educational policies of British Columbia's schools so that queer youth are no longer harassed, bullied, ridiculed or discriminated against by the system, teachers, and other students. Court decisions and Human Rights Tribunals have recently imposed more inclusive policy responses by government and school districts respectively. This article considers to what extent such legal discourses are remediated by competing discourses and practices. The article concludes by considering the limitations of policy priming as an advocacy strategy, and considers what approaches might be taken to achieve civically informed outcomes. (Contains 6 footnotes.)

This paper interrogates Stacey's assertion that New South Wales (NSW) education policy is underpinned by a 'particular instance of neoliberalisation' which has significant 'direct and material impacts' on teachers. It examines the role Evidence-based Practice can play in the neoliberalist reform of education globally and analyses the Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation's What Works Best documents. The paper asserts that the character of education policy in NSW is consistent with the wider Global Education Reform Movement and continues to exhibit and extend the neoliberalist tendencies identified by Stacey. Furthermore, it claims that, through a collection of neoliberalist devices, teachers are being 'governed at a distance' through documents such as What Works Best. It is hoped this paper might provide teachers with 'insights and arguments to help them to resist unwarranted expectations about the role of evidence in their practices and even more so of unwarranted interventions in their practices'.

This paper explores the relationship between education and diversity from a different perspective as compared to the current human rights education-based discourse on the subject matter. Instead of portraying education as the means and respect for diversity as the end, the focus rather lies on a concept of education that incorporates diversity as one of its fundamental conditions. I argue that Wilhelm von Humboldt's concept of diversity as an integrated component of his educational idea(l) of Bildung precisely follows this line of argumentation. In the spirit of Humboldt, exposure to diversity is both a necessary and a sufficient condition for Bildung. Since Humboldt neither explicitly outlined nor systematized his argument, this paper reconstructs and interprets his line of thought. By juxtaposing contemporary policy papers on human rights (education) with Humboldt's educational theory, rooted in his original work, this paper opens a new -- even though more than 200 years old -- outlook on diversity and education.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the move to remote education exposed old and new inequities, yet it also represented an opportunity to rethink inclusive education. This paper presents findings from a one-year project "DIGITAL in a time of Coronavirus" and draws upon policy analysis and interviews with teachers, principals, and community leaders from six countries in the Global North and South (Italy, England, Malaysia, Australia, United States and Chile). By mobilising education assemblage theory to challenge binary divisions (included/excluded, modern/colonial, local/global), it presents five concepts to rethink inclusion and its relationship with technologies. It illustrates how during the pandemic alternative entanglements of digital and non-digital technologies challenged narrow and Eurocentric constructions of the digital divide enabling inclusive subjective experiences. Drawing upon local possibilities and histories, re-habilitating non-scientific knowledges, especially in view of future experiences of blended education, the paper seeks to provide policy tools to rethink current understandings of inclusive education.

Contrary to common assumptions, the vast majority of the world's refugees reside in neighbouring countries in the Global South. This paper explores the complex interaction of global vocational education policies with the local realities of five communities within the under-researched yet highly relevant refugee context of India, across three major cities. It examines whether the stated policy purpose of VET addresses the practical requirements and aspirations of refugees. Drawing on interviews, focus groups, and participatory drawing with 66 respondents from Afghan, Rohingya, Somali, Chin, and Tibetan communities, and staff members from refugee organisations, this paper argues for a move away from the unidimensional goal of economic self-reliance for refugees. By bridging the capabilities approach with intersectionality, the paper calls attention to, and draws policy suggestions for, increment and diversification of VET opportunities to address multiple facets of refugees' lives, and their inclusion in national VET institutions.