In this article, I explore the central characteristics of the "psychosocial" as a field of knowledge in Norwegian education policy and the ways in which these characteristics are conditioned by their constituting social structures and historical contexts. This is achieved through a policy document analysis. Even though the psychosocial…

In this study, we examine how the issue of considering criminal history in college admissions is represented and constructed as a problem in Ban the Box (BTB) policies in Maryland and Louisiana. We draw on Bacchi's "What's the Problem Represented to be?" approach as an analytic tool to interrogate key policy artifacts such as legislative…

Compulsory school attendance policies establish a school entry age and a school leaving age for students. In 1916, the Province of Manitoba introduced a compulsory attendance law that mandated students attend school from the age of 7 to the age of 14. Fifty years later, further amendments were made to the school leaving age, but the school entry…

Granting access to student information, for what purpose, and to whom, is rarely a simple decision. Academic records have long been critical to the functioning of a university, but leveraging institutional data has become increasingly important (Lester, et al. 2017). Data stewards in higher education institutions nationwide confront a…

Universities have increasingly been subjected to policy- and industry demands to produce multi- and interdisciplinary knowledge. This paper explores the extent to which different higher education policy instruments are used to promote interdisciplinarity in teaching and research at universities in the German higher education system comparing them…

In this article, we contribute to the research on the process of privatisation of Finnish early childhood education (ECE), describe how the privatisation has proceeded within the legal framework and how profit making has become possible in ECE. Furthermore, we analyse how local key policy actors justify the privatisation of ECE and what the…

Physical restraint is an emergency procedure restricting the movement of an individual and is used in events where students pose an imminent threat of physical harm to themselves or others. Students with disabilities are subjected to these procedures seven times more than typically developing students. Over the past decade, there has been…

Many states report school performance grades as a way to inform the public about school quality. However, past research has shown that when these grades drew largely on proficiency-based measures, they served to capture variation in school and community demographics rather than school quality. We extend this literature by examining whether a…

In the Republic of Ireland, school leadership policy adopts a distributed leadership model nationally. Given that this is a relatively recent policy development, research conducted on distributed leadership to date has highlighted that there are particular challenges for school leaders in enacting this model in practice and, more significantly,…

Using critical race theory (CRT) as both our theory and analytical framework, we interrogated vocational, career, and technical education (VCTE) policy as a racial instrument. We applied key CRT themes to examine both primary sources; including historical and contemporary VCTE Acts (e.g., Perkins I-V) and Congressional reports; and secondary…

State governments have the purview to interpret federal special education policies as they see fit. Interpretations of these policies to music education rarely are addressed within state special education policy. The authors selected four states to analyze and compare state special education policies; Illinois, Michigan, Texas, and Virginia.…

This paper aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of the evolution of teacher education in Poland from 1970 to 2024, detailing socio-political and economic changes that have shaped educational policies. The study uses a historical and policy analysis approach, examining legislative documents, policy developments, and educational outcomes across…

Though "Lau v. Nichols (Lau)" has garnered substantial educational gains for multilingual learners (MLs), we address two limitations. Namely, there is a need to historicize the interlocking language, ability, and racial differences and to examine MLs through an intersectional lens. We delineate the historical entanglements of language,…

Recent education policies and laws such as a new rule to "Title IX" by the U.S. Department of Education (2020) and the "Parental Rights in Education" (HB 1557, 2022) also known as the "Don't Say Gay" law in Florida have important implications for how educational leaders are expected to address issues of gender,…

Statewide assessments in reading and math are required every year under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015, at an annual expense of billions of taxpayer dollars. Analyzing 10 years of school-level results from public schools in two states-- Nebraska and Texas--we found that year-to-year correlations of schools' test scores were…