External and standardized assessments based on student results are a contested education policy among school actors. Movements of opposition have emerged in different countries, especially in those contexts with high-stakes accountability systems. However, this phenomenon has not been analyzed in soft accountability systems. The objective of this…

The UK education system is becoming increasingly dominated by exclusive economic and political ideology. The neoliberal agenda marketises young people and encourages them to take part in a competitive system. The rise of multi-academy trusts (MATs) further exacerbates an already inequitable system in which young people with special education needs…

This contribution explores how multinational companies (MNCs) have managed to develop their own policy that sets international standards for education, in particular in the sphere of corporate education. It criticises education policy studies for leaving the study of corporate education mainly to management and human resource studies. As a…

This article examines the potentiality, acceptability and ethical considerations of a mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) for supporting pupils' mental well-being in a junior school. To date, research has predominantly focused on the psychological or behavioural benefits of MBIs rather than broader and more philosophical issues of implementation.…

Education acts as an important catalyst for socioeconomic and democratic evolution in society and is a critical tool for building an equitable system. In our paper, we have historicized one of the most important educational policies, viz. Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (SAMSA) in India that carries large expectations to minimize the educational divide.…

In "Can Education Change Society?" (Apple, 2013), Apple described a number of tasks in which the critical scholar/activist needs to engage. Among them are telling the truth about what is happening in the creation of inequalities, illuminating spaces of possibility, and acting as the critical secretary of the movements and people who…

Low cost private schools are becoming more prevalent in developing countries as governments fail to meet the demand for quality education (Heyneman & Stern, 2014). For-profit private schools are systematically being promoted by supra-national organizations such as the World Bank. Bridge International Academies (BIA) is one such low-cost,…

This article examines the intersection of three concepts in education -- cultural security, globalization and the postcolonial critique -- are related in order to advance the application of cultural security studies in educational administration and leadership. The first section discusses constructivist security studies as they apply to…

At our workshop at the inaugural Conference on Community Writing on the rhetoric of the corporate university, participants noted that the values espoused by community literacy "in the community" are being eroded "at the university." Furthermore, they noted the underlying rhetorics of missionary zeal, whiteness, and…

Since 2010, the number of urban Chinese high-school students applying to US universities has rapidly grown. Many of these students have chosen emerging international curriculum programs established by elite public high schools in China. These programs prepare wealthy Chinese students for the US college application process by exposing them to an…

The article challenges the deficit view in which education in the Arab region is portrayed by examining the process of educational regionalisation. It takes as its case study the Arab Regional Agenda for Improving Educational Quality in order to explore the construction of an educational quality space that uses data as a governance model. Drawing…

This review essay examines recent texts by Nancy Welch and Tony Scott, both of which use embodied activism as a starting point for their inquiries. Taken together, these works point to a distinct shift in composition studies' turn toward the social, one that calls on workers both within and outside the academy to actively engage in grassroots…

This paper is a theoretical effort to support but complicate critiques of disaster capitalism and neoliberal strategies to profit from public education. We put into conversation a discursive analysis following Michel Foucault and a spatial analysis following Henri Lefebvre that focus on monumentalized disasters. We argue that neoliberalism carries…

In Someone Has to Fail, Labaree (2010) offers an admirably concise overview of the history and promise of education reform in the United States, combining insights from the history of education, policy studies, and a refreshingly accurate and nuanced account of what it is like to actually manage a classroom environment. While in this essay we…

The past decade has witnessed a notable shift in the international education policy environment, characterized by a rapid growth in private educational provision. In the context of a divisive debate on the role of the non-state sector in primary and secondary education, this paper grapples with the theoretical underpinnings of both advocacy and…