The neoliberal turn has driven attempts to marketize education, but how does marketization occur? In this article I draw on ethnographic and linguistic-ethnographic methods to investigate marketization through a microanalytic lens. My investigation focuses on a team of educational professionals, who participated in a workshop led by an…

English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers and students are often pressured to use generic, globally published textbooks featuring 'inner-circle' social realities. While some studies look at specific instances of content that socially marginalizes their intended audiences, few attempt comprehensive examinations of the multimodal ensembles on…

Turkey has become a powerful example of rising ethno-religious nationalism since the ruling Justice and Development Party allied with the Nationalist Movement Party in 2016. Conceptualising the political ideology in power as Islamic nationalism, I expose ways in which this ideology is articulated in the education reform discourse of 'new Turkey'…

As multivalent concepts, projects and formations such as China's Belt and Road Initiative continue to cleave through new spaces, it is increasingly important to attend to the construction, framing, maintenance and dissemination of the sign systems that enable them. Whether or not these systems constitute forms of cultural imperialism, move across…

Situated in an understanding of contemporary US education as heavily influenced by a neoliberal technocracy we conducted a Critical Discourse Analysis of the 2010 and 2016 National Education Technology (NETP) plans released by the US Department of Education. Our investigation was also guided by a cyber-archaeological excavation of digital…

This article examines the symbolic power of language to construct and convey disabling discourses, albeit ample rhetoric, on the need to reinstate and safeguard disabled people's human rights and entitlements. The role of language and its discursive ramifications need to be explored and problematized in the light of legal mandates and…

We examine how discourses of leadership and responsibilisation are used in contemporary universities to deepen neoliberal administration and further the corporate university's business plan by restructuring and redescribing academic work. Strategically, responsibilisation discourse, promoted as "distributed leadership", is a technology…

Academic publication is an international phenomenon, annually involving thousands of scholars, publishers, and institutions worldwide. Despite global authorship, influential publications operate primarily zones of geopolitical and economic power in North America and Western Europe. The primary objective of this paper is to examine the effects of…

This article investigates different kinds of learner subjects that study-abroad programs produce. It is based on discourse analysis and ethnographic fieldwork in May-September 2011, involving three students from a US college studying abroad short term in Europe. The discourse of immersion in study abroad valorizes a learning-by-doing, individual,…

In undertaking a critical discourse analysis of the professed aims and objectives of one of the most influential curricula in the teaching of thinking, this article foregrounds issues of power and ideology latent in curricular discourses of rationality. Specifically, it documents the subtle but powerful ways in which political and class…

As the power of tests lies in their uses, language tests that are used to assess immigration eligibility exercise enormous power. Critical Language Testing calls for exposing the power of tests by examining the intentions of introducing tests and their effects on individuals and society, especially from the perspective of test-takers. This case…

This inquiry explores who is the "good teacher of color". Through Michel Foucault's notion of biopower and disciplinary power, the analysis attempts to problematize the subject-position of "teacher of color" by exploring how a Latino intern and a Latina intern negotiated their subjectivity in a large diverse school district. Participants'…

This article presents a different portrait of Singapore's educational success, using data collected from a qualitative in-depth interview study of a group of Singaporean youths, showing the cost of its education policies in terms of youth subjectivities. How the participants categorise their temporalities, that is, their lived experiences of time,…

This paper presents a study from the Scottish Independent School Project (SISP). The first part of the paper provides an overview of the characteristics of Scottish independent schools (e.g. location, structure, fees) with the aim of distinguishing the different orientations of schools in the sector. The second and main part of the paper is a…

This article discusses citizenship education, education policy and discourse to explore their relations with the exercise of power in society. Taking the case of 1990 and 1997 legislative debates on citizenship education policy in Hong Kong, it briefly surveys the substantive arguments favouring or opposing the retention of government controls…