With the rise of accountability measures in education, many policymakers have also argued the need to record, assess, and certify students' holistic development. However, using China as a case, we caution how a policy-driven reform on the assessment of holistic development might fall into the pitfall of performativity. Borrowing from Ball's (Ball,…

This brief is our fourth annual review of how states are and could make a difference in school attendance with new policies and practices. Reversing today's chronic absenteeism requires state leaders to make reducing chronic absence a priority. In our work with states, we see how state leadership, especially from governors and state education…

In this critical, political discourse analysis, we trace how two concepts, equity and quality, became discursively linked and contested in the administration of postsecondary education policy over time (1968-1994) -- a developmental process we refer to as (e)quality politics. By engaging in a historical analysis, we investigate (a) the racialized…

In 2021, Illinois became the first state in the United States to require that K-12 students learn about Asian American history. Illinois achieved this when lawmakers passed House Bill 376 (H.B. 376), colloquially known as the Teaching Equitable Asian American Community History (TEAACH) Act. H.B. 376 received praise for being the first legislation…

Policy change is an integral part of the modern education policymaking process. Policy changes can be done with different tools, one of which lies in policy transfer. The cons and pros of the education policy change and transfer can be seen comprehensively in post-socialist states, as the education system changed fundamentally in line with…

In Australia and globally, there is a push for accountability systems that focus on impact on student learning as an indicator of teacher quality. Therefore, how the impact is defined in Australian policy documents in teacher education must be made clear before it can be enacted in practice. This study uses Foucauldian archaeology and associated…

This paper firstly presents Statement Archaeology, an innovative and rigorous method devised to systematically operationalise the approach to historical exploration used by Michel Foucault in pursuit of the question "how do certain practices become possible at particular moments in history?" Drawing on an analysis of the theoretical…

The paper problematises conceptualisations of Vocational Education and Training (VET) and its relationship to social justice by examining a number of debates. It explores a post-structural policy analysis which is sensitive to the manner in which, through research, we constitute the object of our inquiry and as a result of this process subtly…

K-12 educational systems are currently facing the issue of special education teachers leaving their positions prematurely and the struggle to retain highly qualified special education teachers. The attrition rate of special education teachers continues to rise due to the demands placed on this group of teachers, such as behavior and discipline…

As part of the current "Review of Education Governance in Scotland," the "Headteachers' Charter" is perceived as a central policy solution. The Charter changes the responsibilities of the headteacher by altering the relationship between headteacher and local authority, and thereby bringing about changes to the governance of…

Inspired by the 'material turn' in the social sciences, education scholars have engaged in discussions on various materialist modes of policy analysis for a long time now. This paper continues these discussions by experimenting with an agential realist re-reading of the instrumentation approach originally proposed by Lascoumes & Le Gales.…

Teachers and schools face multiple demands regarding how they should respond to student diversity. Thus, it is crucial to study these different demands in order to understand how they shape inclusive education in practice. Following this line of reasoning, this article presents an analysis of Swedish educational policy documents, which shows that…

Since the late 1980s, Taiwan has moved away from Mandarin-only language policy in favour of greater recognition of local Taiwanese languages as part of a greater localisation movement. While continuing to implement language policies aimed at promoting local Taiwanese languages, in December 2018, Taiwan announced intent to implement a bilingual…

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) in education necessitates a shared understanding of its intended purpose and societal implications. This paper underscores the significance of "societal perspectives" in AI and education, often overshadowed by "technological aspects." At the same time, policy guidelines for…

Educational policies in the Netherlands reveal that the current mainstream participatory approach to citizenship education jeopardises students' autonomy. Especially in Dutch post-secondary vocational education, citizenship education has been shown to be mainly aimed at socialization: initiating students into tradition, internalising rules,…