This study explores the production, dissemination, and reception of the discourse of educational excellence and internationalisation in Japan's Designated National University Corporation System. The study frames the policy initiative within the longstanding goals of the Japanese government and demonstrates how the work of Michel Foucault helps…

This study investigates 'partnership' as a key discursive tool for extending neoliberalism in the field of international development. As a case study, it examines the language-in-use among development organizations when discussing public libraries as potential partners in Africa. Critical discourse analysis of 20 interviews with development…

In this paper, we make initial advances towards building an argument for the inclusion of Critical Literacy Awareness within the new Early Career Framework in England. Using illustrative examples from recent research projects, we argue that post-2010 education policy has discursively divided practitioners, structuring relationships between…

PISA allows for comparisons and contributes to the distribution of certain types of capital among countries, which is converted into soft power. Education has been considered an important pillar of the increased status and power China holds globally. However, Chinese participation in PISA differs from other countries, whereby only some of China's…

As an imprint of Confucian culture, China's education intersects state governance in making and governing educational subjects as 'talent', an official translation of the Chinese term 'rencai' (literally, human-talent). Whereas the English word 'talent' itself denotes '[people with] natural aptitude or skill', 'talent' is currently mobilized in…

This paper examines how the initiation of a national-level curricular reform invites different educational ideas and how such ideas attain legitimacy through policy narratives that confer meanings about school knowledge, schooling, and the nation using the case of the South Korean national curriculum reform of 2015. By critically analysing…

This research shows the power of powerful metaphors in a language or linguistic perspective. It aimed at examining the important factors like reproduction of metaphors according to the theme of contestation, its duration, use of electronic media and problems associated with their forms, class and syntactic structures in a linguistic perspective.…

Beginning in the 1970s, education has responded to the rise of neoliberalism across macro-, meso-, and micro-level contexts through shifts in practice and structure. Meanwhile, language learning is often promoted as an instrument in job attainment and transnational business communication. For example, in language education, courses in language for…

The higher education sector has been undergoing a far-reaching institutional re-orientation during the past two decades. Many adjustments appear to have strengthened the role of competition in the governance of higher education, but the character of the sector's emerging new political economy has frequently remained unclear. Serving as the…

The study examines second language identities constructed in small stories around intercultural communication. It presents a detailed narrated-event and narrating-event analysis of small stories narrated by an Iranian user of English as a second language (ESL). The analysis suggests that small stories can become a site where second language…

Academic careers are social processes which involve many members of large populations over long periods of time. This paper outlines a discursive perspective which looks into how academics are categorized in academic systems. From a discursive view, academic careers are organized by categories which can define who academics are (subjectivation)…

Similar to other European countries, the introduction of non-academic, especially managerial, criteria in higher education has shaped and altered Austrian universities since over a decade. This paper presents the results of a frame analysis of Austrian higher education debates from 1993 until 2010. It outlines how reforms in higher education were…

Focusing on the interplay of context and language, this study examined a group of high school students and their mentors' use of language during a robotics competition. This informal setting allowed us to gain insights into the mediation and manifestation of power within the group. Using critical discourse analysis of competition transcripts and…

This paper describes how a locally developed school ranking system affected student enrolment patterns in British Columbia over time. In developing an annual school "report card" that was published in newspapers and online, the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute created a marketplace for school choice by devising an accountability scheme…

This paper examines the notion of schooling and draws on the experiences of Malaysian teenage schoolgirls in contemporary postcolonial Malaysia. Using a critical approach to understandings of schooling, the author unpacks the links between the macro, micro and the personal in examining these girls' negotiations with discourses of schooling. The…