The transformation of higher education provision by neoliberal values has been well documented. However, recent criticisms and even attacks upon higher education indicate a new politics extending beyond neoliberalism. This article draws on the sociology of conventions to unpick the distinctions at work in these new criticisms of universities. By…

Critiques of international education policy frequently take issue with how it stabilises neoliberal values at the expense of the progressive aims of education. Yet the humanism underpinning these debates can work to exclude environmental concerns from the remit of educational policy. This article offers a posthuman critique of the "Australian…

The purpose of the current study is to examine the discourses in the education-themed TED/TEDx presentations within the framework of critical pedagogy and neoliberal understanding. The study was designed as a case study in the qualitative research method. Data were collected by using the document analysis method and descriptive analysis was…

This study aims to explain the reasons for the difficulties in the implementation of Human Resources Management (HRM) in the Turkish education system by revealing the incompatibilities between them. A literature review and document analysis on official statistics, laws, and newspapers were conducted. First, we reviewed the implementation of HRM…

In contemporary writing on higher education, globalization and internationalization are increasingly popular terms, and they are also increasingly being used as frameworks for higher education research. This article discusses the meaning and application of these terms, documents their usage in higher education research, and critically reviews this…

This paper explores the vocabulary and frameworks offered by two theories of public policy process: the advocacy coalition framework (ACF) and the narrative policy framework (NPF) and what they offer to the study of global education reform. The foci of ACF are policy subsystems, formation of advocacy coalitions around policy issues, and their…

Neoliberalism as a concept, ideology, or theoretical lens has emerged in the last couple of decades as a monolithic presence in education research, and the social sciences more broadly. We bring two aims to this Special Issue: to critique the rigour of neoliberalism as a theoretical framework utilised within education research; and second, to…

This article analyses, mingles and blends divergent and complementary strands from the thinking of Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) and Sir Alec Clegg (1909-1986), two contemporaneous but different influential public figures and thinkers in the post-World War Two period. The paper uses these strands to construct a critique of the current colonisation of…

This paper explores how the twin processes of neoliberalism and neoconservatism work together on, and through, curricula and their associated pedagogies. It bridges the gap between policy and classroom practice, focusing on the particular example of the school subject of mathematics and the notion of mastery, operationalised in the English…

Drawing on neoliberal ideology as a theoretical lens, this study critically examines how neoliberal ideological assumptions shape the interpretation and implementation of TGUP (Top Global University Project) as an English-medium instruction (EMI) policy in the Japanese context at multiple levels of government, universities, and multilingual…

Purpose: This paper aims to analyze how the legitimacy of the policy of external quality assurance (EQA) in Colombian higher education has evolved over the past 30 years through an examination of its two main instruments: the compulsory control of minimum quality standards for academic programs and institutions (registro calificado) and…

This article examines a number of teaching resources produced by the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, the leading centre for character education in the UK, in the light of the claim advanced by Kristján Kristjánsson, the centre's deputy director, that various criticisms of character education are best regarded as 'myths'. The analysis…

This article offers a response to some recent critiques of character education in a UK context, in general, and the approach promoted by the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, in particular. The article argues that critiques of current UK character education betray an inadequate grasp of significant factions within its group of advocates,…

The liberal and neoliberal world order is increasingly under attack. Global levels of democracy have been declining for over a decade, accompanied by rollbacks in some kinds of rights. We examine the implications of increasing criticisms of the (neo)-liberal era over time for educational reform discourse around the world by drawing on a unique…

In this article, we use the zombies as a metaphor for reforms in the Polish academy and a description of how neoliberalism works. According to the interpretation of the production of zombies as a critique of late capitalism, we want to show, by using an autoethnographic method, how subjectivity, relationships with others and the world are changing…