This article contributes to the growing debates about the criticality of global education (GE). Our study responds to the critical post/decolonial debates that point out that GE remains complicit in the perpetuation of social inequalities in the world. Contrary to the macro discursive character of those studies that show that GE is complicit in…

This paper argues that more focus on the temporal is needed in critical policy sociology in education. In so asserting, the paper extends the concept of 'historically informed' as included in the foundational definition of policy sociology in education proffered by Jenny Ozga. There are four foci to this extension to encompass the temporal, taken…

This article reflects on what doing critical policy sociology means in shifting theoretical, empirical and methodological contexts of education. We focus our analytical lens on two primary considerations. First, we reflect on the "politics of criticality," examining differing claims and debates about what it means to do critical research…

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…

In this special issue response paper, we pick up from prior discussions to suggest areas where we think policy sociology can benefit from further conversation and research. In particular, we bring together our respective readings and work on policy mobilities, in conversation with the contributions of this special issue, to think further about…

Software code, algorithms, data analytics and infrastructures have become inseparable from policy processes and modes of governance. This article introduces 'digital policy sociology' as a way of studying the role and influence of digital technologies in education policy. Building on existing 'policy sociology' approaches combined with emerging…

This paper resists normative definitions of 'creativity' to argue that the concept is constructed by neoliberal discourses in education policy. The analysis is firstly centred on the Australian context, and this is further informed and complimented by a global perspective. Focusing on two pivotal policies, The Melbourne Declaration of Educational…

In this article, we attempt to define and explore a concept of 'radical digital citizenship' and its implications for digital education. We argue that the 'digital' and its attendant technologies are constituted by on-going materialist struggles for equality and justice in the Global South and North which are erased in the dominant literature and…

In the light of some recent transformations in higher education, a moral governance of university teachers is starting to emerge, suggesting a decrease of professional autonomy. By drawing on the idea of Gilles Deleuze's "clinical analysis", the aim of this article is to re-problematize the increasingly common moral image of students'…

This paper looks critically at the Responsive Classroom (RC) program, a social/emotional learning program used ubiquitously in elementary schools for teacher and student training, in the US as well as in Australia, the UK, and other parts of Western Europe. The paper examines empirical studies on RC's efficacy and outcomes, many of which were…

This paper examines how international, large-scale skills assessments (ILSAs) engage with the broader societies they seek to serve and improve. It looks particularly at the discursive work that is done by different interest groups and the media through which the findings become part of public conversations and are translated into usable form in…