Framed by Homi Bhabha's concepts of hybridity and the third space of enunciation, this study explores postcolonial relationships conceivably enacted through policy borrowing processes of learner-centred pedagogy (LCP) in Ghana. Nine Ghanaian and nine foreign stakeholders were interviewed. Conscious of the power imbalance implicit in traditional…

Girls' education has been widely promoted as the answer to a wide range of problems. This article maps four key ideas that have framed this formulation. These are firstly, a techno-rationalist approach linked to narrowly defined interventions, termed here 'what works'. Secondly, a more normative engagement is outlined, termed 'what matters' which…

This article analyses the implications of recent policy changes for the portrayal of minority nationalities in the latest China's history textbooks published around 2017. We argue that ideological responses to the fierce ethnic clashes of the late 2000s and the leadership transition since 2012 have generated increasingly contradictory official…

Whilst in the past three decades Taiwan has developed a powerful policy and legal framework to protect and support Indigenous rights and development, culminating in the establishment of the Historical Justice and Transitional Justice Committee, Indigenous peoples are still the most disadvantaged, marginalised, and vulnerable group in the country.…

The OECD is a key player in global education policy advice and part of the edu-business network. This network comprises of companies, philanthropies, consulting agencies and think tanks profiting from educational governance reforms and large-scale testing. This article investigates the structure of the OECD global policy network and its capability…

International comparative ethnographic studies of ECEC (Early Childhood Education and Care) are difficult to conduct but worth the effort. Comparative studies featuring thick description and polysemic interpretations can challenge taken-for-granted assumptions, expand the menu of the possible, expose the provincialism of national approaches, and…

How and why do some ideas attain agenda status while others do not? This paper seeks to explore these questions in the context of the policy changes observed in European education policy. By drawing from the literature on agenda-setting and employing process tracing, the paper develops a theoretical argument to investigate the causal mechanisms…

Recent research has focused either on the internationalisation of China's higher education (HE) as soft power, or on soft power with 'Chinese characteristics'. There is a paucity of research combining these two foci. This paper fills this gap by: (i) unravelling the meanings and features of the 'Chinese characteristics' embodied in the policies of…

Whilst Hong Kong's return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 has influenced education in various ways, major reforms perceived as promoting mainland control have been resisted. For two decades, Hong Kong's educational autonomy under the 'one country, two systems' formula was thus largely maintained. This changed radically with the response to the…

The development of the modern nation-state was an inherently centralising process. Education policy and the institutionalisation of mass public schooling played a key role in this process, facilitating industrialisation and the generation of mass loyalty toward the state. In almost all federal systems, however, education policy remained an…

Over the last decade, education has been advanced as a new and legitimate core of the humanitarian crisis response. "Education in Emergencies" (EiE) developed into an institutionalised field of humanitarian practice, advocacy, and scholarly work. Identifying how emergency discourses have been critiqued to operate as "social…

This article builds a case for critical historical geography in comparative education to examine how, over time, the social production of space contributes to educational disparity. It draws on Gupta and Ferguson's contrasting concepts of the "power of topography" and the "topography of power" and Lefebvre's tripartite theory…

Although international student assessments and the role of international organisations (IOs) in governing education via an evidence-based educational policy discourse are of growing interest to educational researchers, few have explored the complex ways in which an IO, such as the OECD, gains considerable influence in governing education during…

In this paper we examine state and indigenous education in Bolivia. Focusing on debates about the hidden curriculum, we conceptualize the school as a political space where tensions between the overlapping jurisdictional powers of the hispanicizing state and indigenous authorities are played out. Our analysis of these tensions highlights the…

This article examines the policy cycle and vernacular globalization in the context of higher education reform in Vietnam. Through an analysis of the development of the Vietnam National University--Hochiminh City as part of the post-1986 reconstruction of Vietnamese higher education, the article considers the complex interrelationship between…