Does empirical evidence or ideology most influence homeschooling policy? It depends. Where empirical research and social experience abound, regulations seem less restrictive but where there is less data or experience policies seem more restrictive and ideologically driven. By comparing Europe and the United States with a look at South Africa,…

Research at the intersection of social science and genomics, 'sociogenomics', is transforming our understanding of the interplay between genomics, individual outcomes and society. It has interesting and maybe unexpected implications for education research and policy. Here we review the growing sociogenomics literature and discuss its implications…

The Department for Education (DfE) in England seeks to determine the actions of educationists in both the public and private sectors through the use of targeted instructive documents and white papers where broader policy intention is presented. Since 2010, as we will show, there has been a shift in the nature of such papers towards justification…

In this article, I conduct a critical scrutiny of how best to frame "Teacher Professional Learning" (TPL) in a time of uncertainty, to what extent, contemporary mainstream literature provides a complete description of this construct and, if not, what might be missing, hidden, unintended or otherwise overlooked. I draw from critical…

This article seeks to provide a new paradigm for questioning how quality and excellence in teaching practices are understood and evaluated. By combining ideas from complexity theory and Michel Foucault's conception of polymorphous correlations, I argue that a shift away from the forms of thought that engender reductionist evaluations can become a…

Since the advent of the twenty-first century, science has experienced a crisis pertaining to the replicability of quantitative research findings, which has become known as the 'replication crisis'. The replication crisis has particularly afflicted research in the behavioural sciences, and psychology in particular. Given the relevance of psychology…

In his essay, Mel Ainscow looks at inclusion and equity from an international perspective and makes suggestions on how to develop inclusive education in a 'whole-system approach'. After discussing different conceptions of inclusion and equity, he describes international policies which address them. From this international macro-level, Ainscow…

The paper studies the rise of neuroscience in initial teacher education, paying attention to the relatively recent Australian Government (2023) report titled 'Strong Beginnings'. In taking up a critical policy sociology lens, we focus on the first priority within the reforms, which is mandating brain science and the 'brain and learning' as core…

This paper seeks to raise awareness among educational researchers and practitioners of some significant weaknesses and internal contradictions of randomised control trials (RCTs). Although critiques throughout the years from education scholars have pointed to the detrimental effects of this experimental approach on education practice and values,…

The US uses an evidence-based approach to education (US-EBE) as a strategy for pursuing two major goals: (1) to raise achievement in the US overall by facilitating improvement among all students, including students in disadvantaged groups; (2) to narrow achievement gaps between socially advantaged and disadvantaged groups by levelling up…

In this paper, we draw on policy sociology and democratic theory to illustrate how evidence-based practice not only limits teachers' capacities to exercise professional discretion and authority, but also jeopardises the democratic project of schooling more broadly. Using theoretical concepts from Foucault's discipline with Connolly's…

The complexity of contemporary higher education policy making and the multitude of evidences and actors in policy networks mean that relationships between higher education researchers, policy makers and research evidence are not straightforward. In this article, we use a theoretical lens of time, Adams' Timescapes, to explore this relationship and…

We begin by arguing that the continuing dominance of 'evidence-based' thinking in educational policymaking does serious harm to the notion of evidence itself; also that it brings a loss of coherence to education as a practice that might wish to be regarded as a coherent and research-informed one. The second section of the article suggests that the…

Education reform efforts stemming from the Programme in International Student Achievement have strengthened in recent years, particularly in response to the growth of global references societies -- high achieving educational jurisdictions such as Finland, Hong Kong-China, and more recently Estonia and Singapore. Despite political rhetoric,…

The field of specific learning disabilities (SLDs) has faced three kinds of challenges. "Constitutional challenges" arise from classification and definitional complexities, identification issues, comorbidity, and ontological debates. "Internal challenges" include the inherent difficulties of scientific thinking that compete…