Nations, institutions and researchers worldwide are increasingly demanding their governments set out a systemic change to humanise the present order of the world. In Bhutan, introducing a Gross National Happiness (GNH) philosophy in the 1970s and applying GNH indicators in the early 2000s was a deliberate attempt to embed Bhutanese values into…

This report compiles the results of a survey of Maine superintendents and special education directors that was conducted in May of 2022. The purpose of the survey was to determine districts' awareness of ongoing policy conversations about transferring responsibility for preschool special education services from Child Development Services to School…

The purpose of this dissertation is to understand how and why different state financial aid policy designs have developed, with particular attention to external influences, and what effect those design choices have on student outcomes. In the first essay, I use the theoretical framework of diffusion to understand the design and adoption of…

Research on mathematics classroom learning opportunities shows that student's experiences with mathematics affects not only what they learn, but also how they view themselves as learners and doers of mathematics (Boaler, 1997, 2016; Jackson, 2009; Langer-Osuna, 2016). High-stakes testing policies have implications for the kinds of mathematics…

The aim of this study is to explore the way teachers enact policy regarding the tasks of complementation and compensation in Swedish School-Age Educare. As a result of numerous policy changes, school-age educare as an institution has undergone significant and substantial changes in terms of its social mandate, educational objectives, and content.…

This paper explores how educational interventions impact the districts they are implemented in above and beyond their intended outcomes. We argue that such unplanned "ripple effects", in which program elements are recontextualized into other settings, are an important aspect of bringing educational interventions to scale. We analyze…

The purpose of this study is to explore how neoliberal ideas have been institutionally contextualized in Korean and Japanese higher education. As Japan and Korea are both located in Northeast Asia, they have long influenced each other's society and economics, and higher education is no exception. Since 1990, the governments and universities in…

Novice teachers' need for support and induction is widely recognized, and so is the role of principals in that process. Accountability-driven reforms in education have compelled principals to increasingly focus on managerial responsibilities, whereas teachers are subjected to external assessment of their professional qualities and their students'…

The article explores the potential of theory in expanding how we can think about a globalization that can encompass the affirmation of diversity. This happens at a critical time, when policy areas, including education, are constrained by a global mode of neoliberal predatory capitalism that is in turn confronted by a return to national(ist)…

Despite the marginal success that anti-affirmative action groups have had at paring back the use of race in college admissions practices, affirmative action has remained largely in-tact as a tool to promote diversity on college campuses. But what might happen if "diversity"--the very thing that heretofore has protected affirmative…

Increasingly, school leaders and teachers are being expected to use digital technologies to collect data to analyze, plan and organize teaching and learning. Such expectations can be traced to a number of policy initiatives over the last decade. This study is concerned with how educational policy puts forward ambitions of digital school leadership…

(IOs) are influential policy actors in higher education. Yet, little is known regarding the role of philanthropic foundations in sponsoring IOs for policy promotion. By relying on longitudinal analysis of grants, semi-structured interviews, and social network analysis, this study examined the most central IOs within foundation-sponsored networks,…

Education policy signals the level of support or importance for high-performing or gifted and talented students to school leaders, educators, parents, and other stakeholders. These policies communicate the value or goals of departments of education. Given the importance of education policy, there remains a void in the analysis of gifted and…

Sound educational policy recommendations require valid estimates of causal effects, but observational studies in physics education research sometimes have loosely specified causal hypotheses. The connections between the observational data and the explicit or implicit causal conclusions are sometimes misstated. The link between the causal…

Background/Context: Chronic absenteeism has received increased attention from educational leaders and policy makers, in part because of the association between attendance and important student outcomes. Student attendance is influenced by a range of student-, school-, and community-level characteristics, suggesting that a comprehensive and…