We draw on theories of policy enactment to explore the ways in which the situated, material and external contexts and professional cultures in adult literacy in the UK have influenced practitioners. Our analysis of the transnational (OECD, EU) and UK external policy contexts found that skills-related education is prioritised, with a focus on…

Following the Tomorrow's Schools administrative restructuring, a second wave of educational change installed globalised discourses as governmentality policies in Aotearoa New Zealand. Drawing on Foucault's "toolkit", this genealogical policy chronology traces the transformation of curriculum and assessment into a specific political…

This policy chronology traces the institution of globalised school curriculum and assessment discourses, as a vernacular and specific form of public rationalisation and educational governmentality in Aotearoa New Zealand. Without functional national standards or national testing, official discourses constructed an assessment-driven framework as a…

Opportunistic attempts have been made by successive governments to establish--some would say impose--sets of criteria against which the effectiveness of not-for-profit organizations like schools can be gauged. Most have been subjective: the extent of staff involvement in decision-making, the appropriateness of the leadership shown by senior…