This paper proposes an extension of the concept of organizational actorhood. This concept is very useful to understand contemporary higher education institutions, but it pictures these organizations as relatively passive, subject to normative pressures. The conceptualization lacks attention to dynamic agency of higher education institution. Using…

Evidence suggests that the incidence of research misconduct is not in decline despite efforts to improve awareness, education and governance mechanisms. Two responses to this problem are favoured: first, the promotion of an agent-centred ethics approach to enhance researchers' personal responsibility and accountability, and second, a change in…

This paper explores research in the always already colonized spaces of academia with people in what is now the United States. In research projects, Wilson (2008) reminds us to begin with community relationships. Through ethnographic work, we trouble the idea of beginning research via local powerbrokers, who may privilege particular narratives and…

This article is personal and rather anecdotal as it is an attempt to sum up my experience of 30 years of Ofsted inspections. The key questions remain what they always were. How do you deal with the sometimes conflicting requirements of support and accountability, objectivity and impartiality, styles of inspection, reporting and grading? Perhaps…

Within neoliberal regimes of educational performativity, expectations of teachers' work have become increasingly prescriptive, standardised and formulaic. To counter the reductive effects of this 'exteriority' of influence over teachers' work, we draw on three conceptual prompts--"relational pedagogy," "informality," and de…

In South Africa, the scholarship of epistemic justice has taken on an historical gaze with higher education framed as a social institution that might ameliorate the historical traumas of colonialism. Undoing the legacies of colonialism has been framed as the democratisation of the knowledge project. Using the White Paper 3 of 1997 that posits…

While never a loved organisation, Ofsted's reputation has perhaps never been so low. Amid a myriad of calls for reform or abolition, former HMI Adrian Lyons reflects on his 20 years of inspection with over 16 years employed by Ofsted as an HMI. He concludes that one of the biggest problems with Ofsted is its frequent change in policy, activity and…

This paper utilises the concepts of "post-performativity" and "the post-performative teacher" to explore the private school context in China. It does this by drawing on in-depth interviews with Chinese language teachers and utilising metaphor analysis to highlight three recurring teacher identities that collectively constitute…

"Through-year assessments" are assessments that are administered in multiple parts and at different times over the course of a school year that also produce summative scores that can be used with state accountability systems (Lorié et al., 2021; Dadey & Gong, 2023). These assessments are alternatively known as instructionally…

I grew up on free school meals and now work as a school improvement adviser. In this article, I address discontinuities within my 'support and challenge' role, a role that can be constrained by educational policy enacted within a performative and panoptic culture of fear. Successive governments have concerned themselves with promoting equity…

To afford school middle leaders meaningful opportunities to initiate change, we must provide them with the space and flexibility to engage with agentic and creative responses to policy and practice. Whilst we argue that the tensions identified in Bennett's seminal reviews persist, there may, nonetheless, be opportunities for school middle leaders…

Despite being regarded as the great equalizer, public education's close ties with the market economy have made it the great perpetuator. High school teacher Jonathan Lancaster writes that public education has become a structure in which students become career ready, as opposed to world ready. Therefore, educators should shift the narrative away…

When engaging in community-based research, it is important to consider ethical research practices throughout the project. While current research practices require many investigators to obtain approval from an ethics review board before starting a project, more is required to ensure that ethical principles are applied once the investigations begin…

The academic capitalization in higher education has aroused much public attention with its impact on every aspect of universities. To survive in the market, universities in Hong Kong have been striving to build desirable images among stakeholders in public communication. Drawing upon critical genre theory and the notion of interdiscursivity, this…

The federal government is the lender for the current student loan system, but replacing it with a system that harnesses the advantages of a marketplace of private lending would save $212 billion over the next 10 years while also benefiting students by helping them avoid risky educational choices. Due to ongoing court cases and upcoming regulatory…