A concerted attempt to offer an affect (emotions, desires, moods, and/or attitudes) lens underlying the global university rankings (GURs) phenomenon remains absent. Using two commercial ranker case studies ("Times Higher Education" (THE) and "Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd" (QS)), this article provides a critical policy analysis…

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…

The policy and educational ideal of parent-school engagement rests on assumptions about effective communication with parents about children's educational progress and well-being. Yet communication between school and home varies, and can be a source of parental satisfaction "and" frustration. Here we consider perspectives of Australian…

From a critical ecological linguistic perspective, this paper argues that South Korean English-language-policies are constraining students' agency. Since the millennium, as a legacy of neoliberalism universities of non-English-first-language contexts have implemented EMI (English-Medium Instruction) courses top-down to further internationalise.…

Policy analysis can be useful for learning about 'what works' in policy. Contemporary policy studies literature highlight that such learning is influenced by power relations in government that shape our ways of knowing the world. This paper offers a critically reflexive narrative account of power relations present during Indigenous higher…

This article explores the conception of authority relations in the classroom that are implicit in some examples of related policy documentation in Scotland and England. We argue that the importance of the constitutive role of the micro-dynamics of face-to-face interaction in classroom settings is neglected in documentation of this type. We explore…

In recent years, many programs and manuals for 'norm criticism´ have been produced for schools in Sweden. In this article, I situate norm criticism and norm critical pedagogics within discourses of values and norms, legal rights and policies through a close reading of the material produced for the Swedish pre-school. I explore the targets, modes,…

The collection of papers presented in this issue of Critical Studies in Education adds to the expansive body of work on teachers and teaching. Collectively, the papers draw our attention to new ways the field is problematising the emerging and evolving conditions that shape the work, lives and identities of teachers. With this editorial…

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…

This article contributes to a growing literature on policy mobilities by proposing that affect be considered in analyses of the movements and transformations of policy over time and space. In particular, collective affective conditions, the role of affect in terms of infrastructures and actors of policy apparatuses and the mediating influences of…

The main objective of this article is to discuss the affective dimension of resistance in critical pedagogy in a way that would recognize neoliberalism's affective repercussions. The point is not merely to show that affect is involved in the emergence of resistance in critical pedagogy, but rather to expand the articulation of resistance in…

This paper underlines three foundations upon which the current condition of the Israeli education system is predicated. These are: (a) the separation between Palestinians and Jews in the Israeli education system and isolating both from any significant contact; (b) endorsing a strong ethno-religious ethos and narratives that widen the chasm between…

Neoliberal higher education reforms in relation to quality assurance, managerialist practices, accountability and performativity are receiving increasing attention and criticism. In this article, I will address student assessment as part of the technologies that increasingly govern academics and their work in universities. I will draw on…

This paper reviews New Labor priority educational policies since 1997 that have attempted to break the link between poverty and low educational achievement in England. It does so by examining these policy priorities against a mapping framework developed by the author for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's Education and Poverty programme. This…