Policies of dispersal are increasingly favoured internationally for the resettlement of refugees and asylum seekers. With forty percent of the world's forcibly displaced people being school-aged children, the dispersal of refugee-background people into regional areas means that rural schools are central sites of community response to refugees.…

Despite their geographical distance, the UK and Australia share proximity with their hostile immigration policies and managed migration practices, characterised by inhumanity under the guise of deterrence. People Seeking Asylum (PSA) who seek sanctuary typically endure protracted temporariness, which denies them access to state resources and…

The education systems of the four UK nations are diverging, and the education system in Wales is undergoing major reform with substantially increased emphasis on health and wellbeing. Understanding the implementation of major policy and system reforms requires an understanding of system histories and starting points. This study aimed to explore…

This interim report shares emerging findings and recommendations from a collaborative project. The project examines post-16 Education and Training (E&T) in the UK. It is focused on analysing the divergent approaches to E&T policy across the four devolved nations to understand more deeply the key policy issues and challenges facing E&T…

Background: Knowledge brokering is suggested as an instrument to improve productive use of research in policy organisations. Previous research asserted that research utilisation is dependent on dynamics of knowledge exchange in institutional settings, but these claims have not received substantial empirical attention (Saarela et al, 2015; Akerlof…

This article reports findings from a study that sought to identify barriers to music and music education in the UK. Emerging from empirical research involving n = 723 participants and clarified by an evidence base of over 10,000 research participants, the key findings presented in this paper relate to "pupil and participant voice and…

Australian universities are places of great diversity and there is broad acceptance that promoting and learning through diversity can enhance all students' university experiences. However, there is little known about how this is done across the Australian higher education sector. As the composition of the student population continues to expand, it…

This convergent parallel mixed-method study (quan + QUAL) relies on systematic classroom observations of mainstream teachers considered highly effective with multilingual learners in the United Kingdom and the United States (N = 9). Using a critical sociocultural theoretical lens, we use an established quantitative observation rubric and lesson…

This review tracks the last 50 years of the journey towards the inclusion of disabled students in Higher Education (H.E.). It provides a critical overview of the impact of evolving U.K. policy aimed at widening participation for disabled H.E. students. The overview spotlights the historical, ideological and political influences on policy and…

International comparative ethnographic studies of ECEC (Early Childhood Education and Care) are difficult to conduct but worth the effort. Comparative studies featuring thick description and polysemic interpretations can challenge taken-for-granted assumptions, expand the menu of the possible, expose the provincialism of national approaches, and…

With neoliberal policy central to the many challenges faced within the education system including an increasing gap between rich and poor (Reay, 2017; Giroux, 2014), this article explores how an Education Studies programme, drawing on the principles of critical pedagogy, can help students to better understand and interrogate neoliberalism and its…

This article describes the evolution of inclusive education in Hong Kong, moving from segregation via integration to inclusion. The outside influence of education policies and trends from Britain, Australia, and the United States are identified, and the current situation is described. In particular, obstacles that are encountered on the route to…

This book explores changing practice in history classrooms from the autonomy of the 1980s through the introduction of GCSEs and the National Curriculum to the prescription of the National Strategies and the pervasive influence of league tables in the first decade of the twenty-first century. It uses individual narratives from history teachers to…

This article examines the academic experiences of five mid-career female international students who were parents of preschool children. These women were studying on a 1-year Built Environment master's degree in the United Kingdom. We applied Tinto's "sense of belonging" as a theoretical framework to interview women who were studying full…

This paper examines responses to the trend for increasing participation in tertiary education, linking developments in higher education with those in apprenticeship systems, in Australia and the United Kingdom. In both sectors, expansion proceeded for several decades, but was robustly criticised in both countries. The expansion of access to these…