This paper critically examines articulations of relationality present in education policy texts that shape particular discursive representations of relationality between students, teachers and curriculum. The policy texts of Australian state and territory education departments are considered as a set of discursive statements to illustrate how…

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 article reports on a critical policy analysis of discourses related to school exclusions. The management of problematic student behaviour is one of the intractable problems facing education systems today. Despite being ineffective, school suspensions and exclusions are commonly used in many countries as a discipline strategy to manage student…

National internationalization strategies are produced by governments to frame and drive their internationalization agendas. They are relatively new, but growing in number. This paper contributes to an emerging strand of international education research: that of discursive policy analysis. We analyse the Australian Strategy for International…

In recent times, education policy and reform discourses have become increasingly politicised by neo-liberalism, with critical policy methodologies struggling to catch up. Critical policy sociologists have noted that critical commentaries rarely succeed in changing or impacting dominant education policy pathways. This article presents a framework…

Policy classifies and shapes people/subjects in particular kinds of ways. Focusing on the context of Health and Physical Education (HPE), this paper analyses policy documents from Australia, the United States of America (USA) and Wales. We pay particular attention to how learners are represented within and across the three policy documents, and we…

A trend towards evidence-based practice has developed in policy and practice in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia in recent years, evolving to become a powerful hegemonic force. This paper considers this latest impetus to teach according to the mandates of a narrow evidence base as a symptom of the post-truth condition, one that…

Within the broad landscape of early childhood education and care politics and policies, calling quality reform into question is a political act. As numerous scholars have pointed out, policy structures that measure and identify what constitutes quality (and what does not) are not value-free and reflect neoliberal human capital economic agenda…

Universities in anglophone countries responded to soaring numbers of non-traditional enrolments by expanding student support services. They have done so without being able to guarantee that international students will develop in their English language during a university degree (Humphreys, 2022, The need for English language development in…

The recasting of accountability in teaching and teacher education as a problem of impact across many countries has seen a proliferation of policies and strategies that datify the work of students and teachers. The enactment of such policies can be interrogated from the perspectives of multiple policy actors to understand the effects of the 'impact…

This paper presents lesser known accounts from policy makers whose experiences as elite informants span 40 or so years in Australian early childhood education and care (ECEC) policy history between 1972 and 2009. Drawing on a post-structuralist theoretical frame, this paper employs a Foucauldian-influenced approach to discourse analysis. Given the…

Many governments have launched the top-down early childhood curriculum (ECC) reforms to enhance the accountability of early childhood education and care (ECEC) services. The present discourse analysis of latest ECC policies across four diverse but representative countries -- Australia, China, New Zealand, and Singapore -- aims to examine the…

The movement of students across borders has had profound impact on higher education policy development. This article seeks to unpack international student mobility through a discourse approach, using five policy documents on international student mobility from well-established recruiters of international students. Eight headline findings are…

Many have observed challenges in translating internationalization policy into practice in universities. When key policy documents provide inconsistent messages, a gap can emerge between vision and practice. Understanding the complexities of an institution's local, national, and global context and its rationale for internationalization can shed…

This paper reports on the findings of a genealogical study and argues that the global discourse of quality in early childhood education and care (ECEC) is based on a number of problematic assumptions that converge to identify 'quality' as the site of government investment. Using the Australian policy context as an example, the assumption that only…