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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."

Using CiteSpace to draw a keyword co-occurrence knowledge map for 1,048 research papers on the quality of higher education from 2000 to 2014 in the Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index database, we found that over the past 15 years, research on the quality of Chinese higher education was clearly oriented toward policies, and a good interactive relationship formed between research and policy. Looking at research topics, apart from macrodiscussions of the spirit of several educational reforms, the relevant topics are mainly focused on higher education quality issues in the massification stage, issues of higher education academic management, issues of student cultivation, and issues of ensuring and evaluating higher education quality. Of these, issues of ensuring and evaluating higher education quality have continually been the mainstream of research on Chinese higher education quality, and there has been an increasing trend of emphasizing ensuring internal quality within schools, emphasizing student participation, and evaluating the effectiveness of student learning. Scholars had a renewed focus on the topics of higher education academic management and student cultivation after 2010, and truly improving the quality of higher education will become a future hot topic of study, however there is an urgent need for further study. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

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 façade to legitimate preferred policy options. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Fair access and widening participation currently occupy a prominent position in the UK higher education agenda, but these terms remain ambiguous. In this paper we identify two prominent strands of policy in the government's approach to access and the widening of participation and contrast these with a third, more progressive perspective. The academic strand seeks to attract 'gifted and talented' young people into an unreformed higher education system. The second strand, which we term the utilitarian approach, posits a need for reform. However, this is undertaken largely to meet the requirements of employers and the economy. In contrast, a transformative approach values diversity and focuses on creating a system of higher education that does not place the burden of change upon potential entrants. This framework is used to explore some of the implications of the government's White Paper The future of higher education. First, the purpose of higher education is discussed, with particular reference to the distinction between economic and social objectives. Second, the government's view of the structure of the higher education sector is examined, by scrutinizing the notion of institutional differentiation and the role of the access regulator. We conclude that within a more differentiated higher education sector different aspects of the access discourse will become dominant in different types of institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is about differences between, and the adequacy of, response rates to online and paper-based course and teaching evaluation surveys. Its aim is to provide practical guidance on these matters. The first part of the article gives an overview of online surveying in general, a review of data relating to survey response rates and practical advice to help boost response rates. The second part of the article discusses when a response rate may be considered large enough for the survey data to provide adequate evidence for accountability and improvement purposes. The article ends with suggestions for improving the effectiveness of evaluation strategy. These suggestions are: to seek to obtain the highest response rates possible to all surveys; to take account of probable effects of survey design and methods on the feedback obtained when interpreting that feedback; and to enhance this action by making use of data derived from multiple methods of gathering feedback. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computer assisted assessment is becoming more and more common through further and higher education. There is some debate about how easy it will be to migrate current assessment practice to a computer enhanced format and how items which are currently re-used for formative purposes may be adapted to be presented online. This paper proposes an evaluatory framework to assess and enhance the practicability of large-scale CAA migration for existing items and assessments. The framework can also be used as a tool for exposing compromises between delivery mechanism and validity--exposing the limits of validity of modified paper based assessments and highlighting the crucial areas for transformative assessments. [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]

The article discusses the highlights of the 2021 International School Choice and Reform Conference (ISCRC). It details the presentation of the Patrick Wolf Best Paper Prize to Martin Lueken for his paper "The Fiscal Effects of Private K-12 Education Choice Programs in the United States" and to Brian Ray, M. Danish Shakeel, Fred Worth and Valerie Felder for "Four Barriers Affecting the Choice to Homeschool." An invitation to the 2022 ISCRC is also presented.

This paper critically examines the concept of collaboration, and how it can be mobilised in policy and practice in the pursuit of educational change in the context of the Scottish education system. Policy analysis and interviews with primary school headteachers highlighted the lack of definitional agreement but common conceptual characteristics of collaboration, and the implications of this for how it is led and governed in the pursuit of change. Highlighted in this paper is the complex interplay between forms of, influences on, and drivers of collaboration and how this results in varied outcomes of it. It is argued that collaboration across systems should be focused, purposeful, and supported with high levels of trust from those involved or enabling it to happen, and meso- and macro-level structures which are flexible to enable diverse forms of collaboration to emerge. This paper presents a framework for collaboration that supports the complex consideration of the interrelated domains of forms, influences, and drivers of collaboration, and the leadership practices and governance arrangements necessary for collaboration to lead to improvement and change. [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]

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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]

This article introduces the Special Issue 'Re-reading the OECD and education: the emergence of a global governing complex'. Its distinctive contribution is related to its dual epistemological aims: to explore how different conceptual lenses and methodological approaches add to our understanding of the OECD as an intergovernmental organisation; and second, to understand the ways in which the strategic activities and priorities of the OECD have been constructed, historically and contemporarily, and the implications in terms of governance and education on a global scale. Broadly, this dual dynamic – of 'seeing the OECD' and 'seeing like the OECD' – has generated the papers included in this Special Issue. Our Introduction outlines the specific foci and contributions of these papers with reference to four thematic lines of analysis in the research literature: (i) the changing capacities and positions of the OECD in global governance; (ii) the main ideas and styles of reasoning underpinning OECD governance; (iii) the formal and informal processes and workings of OECD's policy formation; and (iv) the impact and wider implications of the OECD in education policy and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of social justice has been regularly addressed in many published papers in mathematics education research, particularly after 2000, when the discipline took a more explicit socio-political turn. However, there does not appear to be a consensus as to what the term designates and includes. This paper is a systematic review of the empirical studies published from 2000 until the middle of 2019 that explicitly address social justice from the perspective of practising mathematics teachers and/or teaching. More specifically, we examine (a) how social justice is conceptualised in the identified studies, (b) what specific issues are investigated and methodological approaches employed to do so, and (c) the main key points that arise from their empirical findings. Implications and suggestions of how the field can move forward are discussed at the end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attention to children's emotional health and wellbeing (EHWB) has increased over the last decade due to a decline in children and young people's mental health. COVID-19 escalated this need globally as children were subjected to immediate and drastic changes to their education and daily lives. This paper reports on a UK qualitative study exploring the perceptions of teachers working in primary schools and the level of support they require for children's EHWB. Semi-structured online interviews were conducted with teachers during COVID-19. The findings highlighted four themes of professional support that were required: 1) funding support 2) support with pedagogical responsibilities, 3) external support and 4) home and parental support. Overall, teachers considered there was a lack of provision for their role, with additional pressures placed on them to support children's EHWB. The paper concludes that more resources are required long term to support teachers in a post-COVID-19 education system. [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]

This policy study examines how policymakers and policy experts in Norway made us of research and studies - produced in Norway, in the Nordic countries and outside the Nordic region - to explain the 2020 incremental school reform. In total, 2 White Papers, 12 Green Papers and 3438 texts, cited in the White and Green Papers, were used as data for the text-based social network analysis. The three major findings were the following: First, the policymakers and experts make excessive use of references (on average, 246 references per White or Green Paper). The publications they cite are highly specialized and issue centred with little overlap between the various papers. Second, the policy references for the 2020 reform were mainly domestic. Approximately 70% of the referenced texts were published in Norway. Finally, the social network analysis enabled the authors to identify five texts that were influential and that bridged curriculum with quality monitoring reform topics. The authors suggest that more attention should be paid to an analysis of incremental reforms such as the 2020 reform in Norway. They identify a few of the blind spots that the more commonly used focus on fundamental reforms tends to produce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shena Simon (1883–1972), a leading English socialist and educationist, actively called for the reform of secondary education in the 1930s and 1940s in order to bring the ideal of ‘equality of opportunity’ into the English educational system. This paper explores the continuity and changes in Simon’s proposed reforms in relation to her ideals of social democracy from the appearance of the Spens Report (1938) to the publication of her book,Three Schools or One?(1948). In addition, Simon’s transnational visits to the Soviet Union, the USA and Scotland, as well as the impact of her international and comparative perspectives on different educational systems on her policy agenda, are also examined. It concludes that as many policy issues shown in the current paper continue to be debated, Simon’s democratic ideals and discourses are still relevant in the present and suggest implications for the future of secondary education in England. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

The Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), originally proposed in the UK government's Higher Education White Paper, now the Higher Education and Research Act 2017, is a national mechanism to assess teaching quality in universities. This article provides a critical account of the TEF, underpinned by an overview of the policy context and marketisation and employability agendas exploring the rationale for implementing TEF within universities. We argue, first, that the White Paper's narrative, the rhetoric of the TEF, seems positive but its implementation appears to be conceptually flawed. Second, its complex quality metrics system demands yet another layer of bureaucracy in an already micro-managed system of higher education. Third, claims made by the White Paper must be supported by evidence-based research to ensure that the objectives are clear. We conclude by questioning whether the quality of the student experience can be improved by the TEF reforms. [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]

The article focuses on the World Bank's Education Sector Policy Paper, which highlights issues and trends in the development of education. It examines the relationship between education and development. The significance of education can be shown in the following ways: education as a basic need; education as an instrument to support programs designed to meet other basic needs and education as an activity that sustains overall development. Meanwhile, a set of problems that affects educational development include equality in educational opportunities; internal efficiency of educational systems; management of educational systems and source of funds for education.

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]

The article discusses some changes in the World Bank's Educational Policy Paper. According to the author, the 1974 and 1980 Educational Sector papers of the World Bank show some major shifts of emphasis in its attitude towards educational development in less developed countries. Some changes include: emphasis on the internal functioning of educational institutions; support on software faculties such as economics and management and recognition of the difficulties associated with manpower forecasting. Lastly, the paper suggests the development of educational policies geared towards a balanced educational system, where all school levels and all kinds of curricula have their place.

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]