This article argues that contemporary education policies promoted by UNESCO and the OECD are embracing two distinct post-humanist visions, which I call the 'sustainable futures' and the 'techno-solutionist' strand. I will relate these strands to two conflicting agendas of education after World War II: the humanistic-emancipatory perspective…

Ideas about educational improvement are contextual and contested. This study proposes a critical and pragmatic framework to analyse systemic improvement, taking into account the paradoxes and limitations of quantitative sources. The study compared 83 subnational educational systems of three federal countries in Latin America: Argentina, Brazil,…

This article contributes to a better theoretical understanding of the social processes underlying the development and implementation of schemes to improve the recognition of prior learning (RPL) in vocational education and training (VET). It traces the global diffusion of RPL, and then analyses the formulation of RPL policies and design and…

This paper provides a 'home international' comparative analysis of education policy on social and emotional wellbeing, drawing on the case of the UK and its four distinct education systems of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have developed more holistic policy in this area, which stands in stark…

With early childhood inhabiting a firm position on policy agendas, an emerging global consensus acknowledges the need for research into early childhood education and care (ECEC) systems. However, standardised approaches to comparison dominate the field. These studies tend to be grounded in methodological nationalism, assuming nation states as the…

Since the 1990s, Singapore has firmly established its reputation in the global education policy space as one of the best education systems in the world. However, existing policy transfer literature on Singapore has been mainly interested in Singapore as a decontextualised, ahistorical case, rather than as a unique player in the global education…

The Programme for International Student Assessment has become an important policy tool that has affected educational practices in many countries. Despite some remarkable results in PISA's global ranking tables from China's Eastern provinces, China's distinctive policy response has not been well documented or understood. We systematically examine…

This article examines the intertwining and evolution of neoliberal and nationalist discourses in post-colonial Hong Kong and Macao, arguing that their combination reveals the dual layers of political rationality in the dynamics of higher education policymaking. It suggests a move towards governmentality with Chinese characteristics, marked by…

Framed by Homi Bhabha's concepts of hybridity and the third space of enunciation, this study explores postcolonial relationships conceivably enacted through policy borrowing processes of learner-centred pedagogy (LCP) in Ghana. Nine Ghanaian and nine foreign stakeholders were interviewed. Conscious of the power imbalance implicit in traditional…

Girls' education has been widely promoted as the answer to a wide range of problems. This article maps four key ideas that have framed this formulation. These are firstly, a techno-rationalist approach linked to narrowly defined interventions, termed here 'what works'. Secondly, a more normative engagement is outlined, termed 'what matters' which…

The Indian Government released the latest version of its National Education Policy (NEP) on 31 July 2020 -- a document last revised in 1986. The Early Childhood Education (ECE) section of this new policy urges a Developmentally Appropriate Practices (DAP) approach incorporating 'play-based, activity-based, and discovery-based learning' (NEP…

Since 2000, girls' education has been an increasingly high-profile concern in international development policy. At the same time, there has been a trend towards the greater production and reliance on quantitative data, indicators and targets in national and international education policy. Scholars have raised concerns about the rise of…

In Anglophone countries, narratives of public schooling tend to emphasise generic hopes about schooling as central to the idea of a public good, including fostering community, delivering equality and protecting broad notions of democracy. However, as public systems become more open to privatised logics, these hopes sit alongside fears for the…

The article investigates how and when the two first movers in knowledge-based regulation -- the OECD and the World Bank -- developed policy brokerage as an instrument of global governance in the education sector. We also examine how their target clientele -- national governments -- responds to this instrument. Given the surplus of research…

Over the past decade, the OECD has gradually shifted its governing mechanism from promoting 'best practices' based on comparative data on pupils' cognitive skills to actively advocating for individual and collective well-being as an "alternative" and "ideal future." This article focuses on the OECD's use of 'techno-scientific…