Many seem to believe that researcher-made tests are unnecessary, if not inappropriate, for evaluating reading comprehension interventions. We suggest that this view reflects a zeitgeist in which researcher-made (proximal) tests that align with the researchers' interventions are closely scrutinized and often devalued, whereas commercially developed…

The present study examines cross-national variation in school-based bullying victimization. Specifically, we address whether decommodification, a concept implicated in Institutional Anomie Theory that measures the degree of a society's social welfare protection, is a protective factor against school-based bullying victimization. To test this…

International schools in China have enjoyed soaring popularity in recent years. Many of these schools adopt curricular forms and/or school brands originating from the US, UK or Canada, and they brand themselves as American-style ("meishi"), British-style ("yingshi") and Sino-Canadian ("zhongjia") international schools…

In market-oriented higher education (HE) systems, fee-paying students are positioned as customers, and studying is juxtaposed with service use. In this study, we investigate how students position themselves in relation to the student-as-customer discourse in Finnish HE, in which only students coming from outside the EU and EEA areas are charged…

This paper provides a critical analysis of the United Kingdom's higher education Key Information Set (KIS), which was implemented following the 2011 UK White Paper 'Students at the Heart of the System'. It argues that one of the central tenets of the KIS -- providing information that students within a free market can make an informed choice and,…

In recent decades, universities have put considerable emphasis on their 'Third Mission' and have thus expanded their portfolio of core activities to include activities related to university-industry collaboration and science commercialisation. An important mechanism to implement the university's third mission is the creation of academic spinoffs…

This study examines the phenomenon of English-medium instruction (EMI) in higher education through the lens of neoliberalism and linguistic entrepreneurship. Although commonly reported benefits of EMI include improved English proficiency and better job opportunities, there is a lack of research critically examining the relationship between EMI and…

This study analyzes the effect of spatial competition on public schools' efficiency in Chile, an extreme case of market-oriented reforms in the educational sector. To address this issue, we use a measure of competition that captures three major characteristics of market competition in a spatial context: the number of competitors, based on distance…

A government report criticised Australian universities for low proficiency in commercialising epistemic production (research and knowledge). A critical omission was a comparable measure of academic productivity to substantiate whether underperformance correlated with the commercialisation value of research output or whether academic productivity…

Internationalization of higher education has increased the diversity of the student body at higher education institutions. There is evidence that the experiences of international students vary according to their region of origin, but trends on a larger scale remain underexamined. Drawing on Eurostudent VI data from the Republic of Ireland, this…

The proliferation of low-fee private schools (LFPSs) in the global South is one manifestation of the marketization of education. LFPS literature on teachers emphasize exploitation, de-professionalization, and higher accountability, but teachers' own voice and representation has largely been absent. Based on interviews with 35 Kenyan LFPS and…

This is the second of three articles on "Sources of Authority in Education". All use the work of Amy Gutmann as a heuristic device to describe and explain the prevalence of market-based models of Education Reform in the United States as part of what Pasi Sahlberg terms the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM). This movement is based…

The public/private distinction is central to higher education but there is no consensus on "public." In neo-classical economic theory, Samuelson distinguishes non-market goods (public) that cannot be produced for profit, from market-based activity (private). This provides a basis for identifying the minimum necessary public expenditure,…

The use of corporate management tools in universities has been widely critiqued in recent decades, as it is viewed as undermining academic goals and promoting marketization and corporatization. Responsibility center budgeting (RCB) is one popular management tool that has been decried as promoting market logics, internal competition and…

Marketization in all public spheres, including academic discourse, has led to the increased importance of promotion. One of the promotional tools usually used in Research Articles Introductions (RAIs) is claiming centrality. In this study, we aimed to explore differences between native and non-native writers in the use of strategies for claiming…