This paper revisits and reassesses the influence of the context of production on the origin, development and use of the term 'policy sociology' in research in the sociology of education in the UK from the 1980s to the contemporary period. Starting with the first use of the term 'policy sociology,' and its definition as 'rooted in social science…

This paper examines the increasingly diverse range of roles played by the corporate sector in shaping education policy. While a growing body of scholarship has documented the deepening embeddedness of the corporate sector within policy-making processes, empirical research on the strategies mobilized by corporate actors remains unsystematised and…

This paper contributes to discussions about the nature and scope of higher education (HE) business in light of some of the emerging ways in which countries seem to be reframing the impact of globalism. In particular, it develops a discussion about spatialities and temporalities of HE policy by drawing on the Kingdom of Bahrain's distinctive…

This paper examines how elite transnational policy and research organizations are framing emergent technologies as a hypermodern risk. It outlines how innovations in artificial intelligence and machine learning are feeding into global policy imaginaries and responses oriented to education and skills as adaption and minimization of potential…

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 contributes to a growing literature on policy mobilities by proposing that affect be considered in analyses of the movements and transformations of policy over time and space. In particular, collective affective conditions, the role of affect in terms of infrastructures and actors of policy apparatuses and the mediating influences of…

This paper suggests that the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) education policy work of the last 20 years has achieved a paradigmatic shift in the thinking and framing of education; however, this process was not exclusively based and dependent upon the cold rationality of numbers. Crucially, as the article will show, it…

This study examines the influence of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 1999 results on mathematics education policy in Israel. Analyzing various documents, the study shows how these results transformed policymakers' discourse regarding mathematics education. In order to achieve improvement in Israel's ranking, the…

This article explores the uptake of so-called fast policy solutions to problems in different education policy contexts and highlights the potential impacts that can arise from such policymaking approaches. We draw upon recent literature and theorising around notions of fast policy and evidence-informed policymaking, which suggests that, in an…

In recent years, a new breed of political organizations has had remarkable influence in American educational policymaking. Proponents of neoliberal reform, these groups have been labeled as Education Reform Advocacy Organizations, or ERAOs. I situate these organizations within the larger network of Intermediary Organizations (IOs). To understand…

Over the past 25 years charter school policies have spread through the United States at a rapid pace. However, despite this rapid growth these policies have spread unevenly across the country with important variations in how charter school systems function in each state. Drawing on case studies in Michigan and Oregon, this article argues that…

How research can better inform policy and how policy can have a better research base are longstanding issues both in educational research and across public policy generally. Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt, this article argues that progress in increasing the impact of research can be made through a clearer understanding of the nature of…

Currently, when there is a lot of political talk about the need for "evidence-based policy", and when public policy seeks to calibrate research quality and impact, there is a pressing need to reconsider the relationships between education/al research and education policy. This article seeks to do this, beginning with considerations of the…

Despite its ideological saturation, recent neo-liberal education policy has been deeply depoliticising in the sense of reducing properly political concerns to matters of technical efficiency. This depoliticisation is reflected in the hegemony of a managerial discourse and the decontestation of terms like "quality" and…

As a meta-concept, "globalization" has the tendency to create master categories such as an emergent global/izing education policy. This paper critiques the thinking and assumptions that underpin a global education policy. The paper proposes that "global assemblage" is a more helpful conceptual thinking about the way education…