In Ireland as elsewhere, the value of putting evidence and scientific advice at the centre of public policy-making, has rarely been more evident. The prominence of the science-policy interface has renewed interest in the prospects for evidence based policy (EBP) in education. Notwithstanding the political rhetoric around EBP in education, little…

Does empirical evidence or ideology most influence homeschooling policy? It depends. Where empirical research and social experience abound, regulations seem less restrictive but where there is less data or experience policies seem more restrictive and ideologically driven. By comparing Europe and the United States with a look at South Africa,…

Parental involvement is crucial for children's academic success, with their engagement known to play a significant role in enhancing learning outcomes. Despite this recognition, the current learning crisis highlights a lack of effective mechanisms to foster parental engagement, resulting in disenfranchisement from the learning process for many…

The Department for Education (DfE) in England seeks to determine the actions of educationists in both the public and private sectors through the use of targeted instructive documents and white papers where broader policy intention is presented. Since 2010, as we will show, there has been a shift in the nature of such papers towards justification…

This paper offers analysis of the policy drivers and legal frameworks associated with school exclusion in Northern Ireland. This activity is timely given limited analysis in this area in recent decades. The research is an element of an UK-wide, multi-strand, ESRC Large Grant project, examining the Political Economies of School Exclusion and their…

In playing with the concept of 'credibility', this article presents a critical examination of the discourse of evidence and the programming of upbringing in early intervention policy and practice. The truth claims of the evidence discourse in policy are explored through a single complex case study of an early intervention city in Northern Ireland.…

This article seeks to provide a new paradigm for questioning how quality and excellence in teaching practices are understood and evaluated. By combining ideas from complexity theory and Michel Foucault's conception of polymorphous correlations, I argue that a shift away from the forms of thought that engender reductionist evaluations can become a…

Purpose: The direction of causality between job satisfaction and job performance (known as the holy grail of industrial psychologists) is undetermined and related research findings in different organizational contexts are mixed. Based on the ample literature, mainly from Western countries, on the relationship between job satisfaction and job…

The paper studies the rise of neuroscience in initial teacher education, paying attention to the relatively recent Australian Government (2023) report titled 'Strong Beginnings'. In taking up a critical policy sociology lens, we focus on the first priority within the reforms, which is mandating brain science and the 'brain and learning' as core…

Over the last decade, there has been a proliferation of policy engagement bodies set up within universities worldwide. The present study focuses on the British experience of this phenomenon but with relevance to other contexts. Multiple factors are at play to explain this growth, from the Research Excellence Framework impact agenda (which assesses…

Background: The literature on evidence-based policy in education offers insight into the need to form partnerships between researchers and practitioners with particular attention to the role of "intermediaries." However, the operationalisation of the partnership, especially in school violence prevention, the focal policy of this…

Evidence-based education aims to support policy makers choosing between potential interventions. This rarely involves considering each in isolation; instead, sets of evidence regarding many potential policy interventions are considered. Filtering a set on any quantity measured with error risks the "winner's curse": conditional on…

Background: Despite the growing attention given to the political process of evidence-based policymaking (EBPM), we still know little about how evidence is processed at the early stages of the policymaking process, especially at the agenda-setting stage. Whether and when political elites pay attention to evidence-based information is crucial to the…

In this paper, we draw on policy sociology and democratic theory to illustrate how evidence-based practice not only limits teachers' capacities to exercise professional discretion and authority, but also jeopardises the democratic project of schooling more broadly. Using theoretical concepts from Foucault's discipline with Connolly's…

This research focuses on how members of the UK Parliament engaged with evidence in relation to the policy decision leading to the Selective Schools Expansion Fund, a policy designed to enable the existing 163 English grammar schools to apply for additional funds to expand their intake. Although a small case study, the narrow focus provides a…