This paper focuses first on the issue of measuring education. When we consider "education and equity," we tend to quantify educational outcomes and compare these figures with others. While it is necessary to consider "equity" (or inequity) through comparisons with others, if we quantify the achievement of outcomes and evaluate…

The Australian "National Indigenous Reform Agreement" (Closing the Gap) aims to address inequalities in various aspects of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' lives. Scholars have repeatedly critiqued its failure to tackle structural inequalities. The agreement was revised in 2020. The current study adopts Carol Bacchi's…

This article considers the realm of knowledge in early childhood education (ECE); what knowledge is valued, and how different types of knowledge position children and educators. To this end, two different examples of practice informed by different types of knowledge are provided: one from an educator working in a long day care service (Duncan) and…

Despite increasing calls to build equitable data infrastructures, the education field has yet to have a shared guideline around equitable education data management and stewardship. To address this gap, we propose one framework from the data governance literature: the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data management principles…

Concerns about racism and race equality have been widely reported in the first decades of the 21st century, following the Black Lives Matter protests and campaigns such as 'Rhodes Must Fall'. Yet 'race' remains largely absent from policy debate and research concerning further education colleges in the four countries of the UK, particularly in…

In "The Tyranny of Merit," Michael Sandel argues that the American society is not meritocratic, that belief that it is causes various social harms, and that some of those harms -- in particular, the costs to social solidarity -- would be caused even if society actually were meritocratic. He also explores the way that the structure of…

This study seeks to explore the effect of tools of school governance advanced by the global reform agenda (1) on student performance and (2) on reducing the effect of sociodemographic variables on this performance. To do so, we compare two Nordic welfare states with an egalitarian tradition: Sweden and Finland. The Swedish school system has…

Self-regulation in the governance of higher education systems is often assumed to improve institutional performance, accountability, and responsiveness. Although studies of higher education governance have addressed the extent of self-regulation across national systems, there has been less investigation of the links between self-regulation and…

In 1923, Los Angeles teachers protested the state's biennial budget, a controversial document from newly elected governor Friend Richardson that significantly cut funding to government agencies. The budget was the culmination of more than a decade of fiscal policy reform that reflected a significant shift in anti-tax sentiment. The expansion of…

In this article, we examine how policymakers from three Nordic countries, Finland, Iceland and Sweden, reflect on the future at 2 different points in time: just before the first PISA study (1998-1999) and more than 15 years later (2015-2017). The empirical data consist of interviews (N = 37) with national policymakers, collected in two comparative…

In the recent Australian 2021 census, the socio-technical construct of algorithmically driven decision-making processes made LGBTQI+ data as a category of diversity, inclusion and belonging an absent presence. In this paper, we position the notion of 'data justice' in relation to the entrenchment of inequalities and exclusion of LGBTQI+ lives and…

Equity policies in higher education are focused on dismantling barriers and redressing inequalities that restrict the participation and success of students from historically excluded groups. In some Universities across Oceania, "underrepresented" includes students of Pacific heritage alongside students from low socioeconomic backgrounds,…

This paper calls for systematic inquiry into the relationship between secular governing formations and education inequalities. We present a thematic analysis of existing scholarship on secularism, the secular and post-secular in education. Our review of 184 texts reveals a frequent implicit or explicit reliance on the liberal state to address…

Failing to recognize the role of leaders in quality and equitable schooling is unfortunate and must be redressed. Leadership is fundamentally about organized agency and collective vision, not managerialism, since it is an organizational quality, not merely a positionality attribute. Most important, if change is to be systemic and transformative,…

Schools around the world are diverse and there are a variety of progressivist initiatives in place that aim to promote quality and equitable pedagogy and overcome formalist paradigms. Country contexts present different challenges based on factors such as the type of governance, teachers' autonomy, and pedagogical cultures. Most critical, however,…