Significant collaborations with research partners in China are seen in many Western countries. With increasing US-China geopolitical tensions, governments, research institutions, and individuals in established scientific systems are increasingly required to address a proliferating array of risks and challenges associated with collaboration with…

Geopolitics is shaping the international education landscape. International education has trationally been used as a tool to boost transnational cooperation, foster multilateral and global ties, and reduce tensions between nations. Such a role has been eroded and international education has been weaponised in the context of escalating political…

Purpose: The Australian Government has long used its international scholarship programs as an instrument of soft power in international diplomacy. The paper examines an international scholarship program and its role in Australia's soft power efforts during a period in recent history. Design/methodology/approach: The Australia in the Asian Century…

Australia's system of vocational education and training (VET) is based on the principle of partnerships between key stakeholders: governments (Commonwealth, state and territory), training providers, employers and employees. Industry representation and governance in the VET sector in Australia has undergone several transformations in the past, and…

School and community interaction is an important topic in education, as evidence suggests that communities that value their local schools engender more positive long-term outcomes and a strengthening of the social capital for the students from those schools. Although school and community interaction has been explored from the schools' perspective,…

This study, jointly conducted by the University of Warwick Institute for Employment Research (IER) and SQW Ltd., discusses the UK Government's intention to accelerate the process of ceding more responsibility for delivering a range of services to the local level. The logic is that local actors are better placed to identify local priorities. This…

This paper explores the repositioning of state curriculum agencies in response to the establishment of the Australian Curriculum and the key national policy organisation responsible for its development: the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). I begin with an analysis of the federal Labor government's role in the…

The importance of a positive start to school has been highlighted in a range of national and international research. This has stimulated considerable ongoing research attention, as well as initiatives across policy and practice, all with the aim of promoting a positive transition to school for all children. Despite the common interests across…

The internationalization of higher education globally continues to grow more and more towards commercialization and neoliberalism paths, despite growing concerns about the underlying consequences. Building further on our work and using Saudi Arabia as a national case, this article critically investigates how and in what ways the Saudi government's…

Forming more effective partnerships with national governments in the Asia-Pacific region has been an important policy focus for the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) since 2006. AusAID is increasingly engaging in sector-wide approaches and working through partner government systems. This paper explores how new partnerships…

This article is concerned to respond to recent UK governments' attitudes to teachers, who are predominantly women, and who are denied a voice and sense of professionalism. It looks to the role of teacher research in school decision-making, including school improvement, historically in England, which set a pioneering example in years before the…

An effective innovation system requires productive interactions between all its parts. Within Australia there is a view that business-university interactions are suboptimal. Government has set a target for doubling the interactions between business and publicly funded researchers by 2020; and the Group of Eight has a strategic priority to build…

In curriculum policy, discourses of "policy partnerships" and "communities of practice" have become increasingly prevalent and were reflected in Western Australian curriculum policy processes from the mid-1990s to the late 2000s--a period of significant, highly contested change. This paper presents the findings of an empirical…

Whilst the past 35 years have seen numerous attempts at national curriculum collaboration in Australia, these have invariably failed largely due to the constitutional reality that the States have responsibility for curriculum. Federal government involvement in curriculum can only be achieved, therefore, with the consent of the States. To achieve…

In recent years there has been an overall lack of a clear and cohesive research funding policy for higher education which poses real risks in Australia's ability to sustain research excellence and is likely to lead to a decline in Australia's research performance at the international level. This could well lead to a decline in the reputation of…