The Programme for International Student Assessment has become an important policy tool that has affected educational practices in many countries. Despite some remarkable results in PISA's global ranking tables from China's Eastern provinces, China's distinctive policy response has not been well documented or understood. We systematically examine…

In 2015, Pakistan committed to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4's provision of quality education for all. Target 4.7 of this Goal acknowledges that delivering quality education means ensuring that students develop a set of attributes characterised by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in terms of…

After eight years of piloting, China's National Assessment of Education Quality (NAEQ) was administered for the first time in 2015. The NAEQ was introduced during the country's transition from exam-oriented to quality-oriented education. The public, in particular parents and students, were required to subscribe to this reorientation. To ensure…

This paper analyzes the impact of global governance by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on the Korean education policymaking from 1993 to 2017. This analysis also discusses the implications of educational governance in Korea within the context of a globalized world. We found that the inevitable influence of global…

In this article, a study of combined discursive emphasis on the concepts "culture for learning" and "learning outcomes" in recent education policy messages is presented. These concepts have been individually examined but seldom as parallel or converging policy messages. Inspired by discursive institutionalism, we address the…

This paper examines how the policy process around initial teacher education (ITE) during the pandemic of 2020 was experienced by the leaders of ITE programmes across England. Education policies, it is argued, are solutions to perceived problems, revealing latent values that drive action. Group interviews with leaders of ITE programmes across the…

While a number of studies have established the growing role impact PISA has had on national education policy, much less is known about the global-local recontextualization of policy transfer, and the role of national policy officials. Through interviews with key policy officials in Norway and New Zealand, the study revealed a growing…

The OECD is an inevitable force in contemporary education. This paper illustrates how the OECD affects recent education policy-making in Iceland with a particular focus on recent documents establishing the new Education Policy 2030 in Iceland and on OECD reports that directly relate to this policy. We illustrate the relationship between these…

The importance of enhancing social and emotional skills in educational settings has gained prominence, with many countries and organizations embracing the Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) framework to equip individuals with the tools needed for shaping a self-identity, emotional regulation, goal achievement, empathy, nurturing relationships,…

The global diffusion of outcome-based accountability in education is contested, with accounts of universal convergence being challenged by perspectives emphasising heterogeneity across different national or local contexts. This study uses data from PISA to explore, firstly, the spatial and temporal diffusion of accountability across OECD…

This study investigates the timing for a global education reform to be adopted locally. Drawing on the Multiple Streams Approach while expanding it with a transnational dimension, the Free-Semester Program in Korea is used to examine the convergence of the streams of problem, policy, and politics. An analysis of policy documents, media accounts,…

Critical policy analysis examining how powerful actors use educational policies to reproduce unequal social structures presents many challenges. These challenges are amplified by the politics of spectacle, where duplicity comes to dominate how educational policies are conceptualized, presented to the public, and subsequently enacted. The pursuit…

Many factors influence students' experiences in upper secondary education and beyond, including upper secondary curricula, programme design and support for students. But a good transition from earlier levels of education is the first, essential step in a successful journey through upper secondary education and into further education and/or…

This paper investigates how and why test-based accountability (TBA), a global model for education reform, began to dominate educational debates in Norway in the early 2000s, and how this policy has been operationalised and institutionalised over time. In examining the adoption and retention of TBA in Norway, we build on the cultural political…

The Republic of Ireland has a history of high reading scores in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Analysis from PISA 2018 shows that although the country has many cultural similarities to the four UK nations (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland), 15-year-old pupils in the Republic of Ireland achieved…