This article examines the inter-relationships among citizenship, class and disability through the methodological juxtaposition of critical policy analysis of constructions of disability and an autobiographical sociology of global middle-class parental strategies in school admissions processes in the Middle East. The author advances the theoretical…

In Australia as well as elsewhere, initial teacher education has become centre stage to a political agenda that calls for global competitiveness in the knowledge economy. The common problem cited has been declining educational standards linked with the quality of teaching and teacher education. The avalanche of review and policy reform has exposed…

This article concerns policy implementation and examines the processes of translation through which policy may be enacted at local level. In particular, it focuses on education policy and constructions of teacher professionalism, drawing on a framework of critical logics--social, political and fantasmatic--which examine different dimensions of…

In this appreciative discussion paper I provide an overview of the reforms made to education in England, and engage with the politics of education through examining the simultaneous and inter-related processes of politicisation, depoliticisation and repoliticisation of educational matters. I engage in a discussion of the papers in this special…

In rapidly globalizing systems of schooling around the world, economic considerations have led to a push to impose neoliberal reforms in the field of education. Under this influence early childhood education and teacher education in Asia have increasingly become positioned as regulated markets governed by neoliberal policies, leading to peak…

Health education in Aotearoa New Zealand is an enigma. Premised on ostensibly open and holistic philosophical premises, the school curriculum not only permits, but in some ways prescribes, pedagogies and teacher dispositions that engage with the diversity of young people at its centre. A capacity, to not only understand contemporary health…

In this article I examine the structural barriers in the recertication trajectory of internationally educated teachers (IETs) in British Columbia (BC). By applying the Bourdieuian concept of field, I extend from IETs' experiences in the recertification process to institutional and political factors that affect these experiences. I demonstrate how…

This article examines petitions submitted to the Egyptian state by students and parents over the span of a century. These sources reveal that Egyptians from across the economic spectrum were shifting their construction of schooling in response to changing political and educational policies and evolving conceptions of educational need. Over the…

Purpose: The paper explores the relationship between vocational education and training (VET), the labour market and social justice in the current conjuncture. Approach: The paper adopts an approach rooted in critical policy analysis. It consequently sets the discussion within the wider socio-economic and political context. Such an approach enables…

This article proposes a framework for thinking about the ghostly, thus arguing that policy can be understood as a landscape of intersecting and colliding temporalities from which arouse curious workings of barely-there forces, spooky energies and vibrating saturations of affective ambivalences. I present an empirical study of a policy agenda of…

Radical economic policy change from the 1950s had major implications for Irish education which had traditionally drawn its values and orientation from Catholicism and cultural nationalism. While change to the economically-related administrative structures were bold and innovative, responses in the sphere of education were less so. This article…

This article presents the results of a textual analysis conducted on policy discourses on international students in the UK between 1999 and 2013. A number of rationales for and against increasing their numbers have been made, which have largely remained consistent over changing political administrations. One key rationale is that international…

The 1991, Swedish upper secondary school reform presents internationally an unusual case of the far-reaching integration of academic and vocational programmes. It has often been claimed that late tracking, such as characterizes this reform, helps to reduce inequalities between different social classes. This article addresses the question of how…

Schools do not receive much recognition within urban sociological research for the role they perform in shaping the demographic, structural, and social features of neighborhoods, cities, and metropolitan areas. In contrast, this article links schools, and the racial avoidance that operates through educational policy, to the extreme economic…

A "worldization" process of the education system started during the later years of the last millennia. This movement has been strengthened through the participation of supranational organizations, in which their recommendations have served as the source of guidance in the definition of educational policies of the associated countries.…