Enthused by the invitation to bring narrative and autoethnographic data to engage critically (with) key global education policy issues, I present a rather unconventional way of scholarly writing, in which there is neither a showcase of a generic formulaic academic article nor an exclusive report of a specific research study. Instead, anchored in…

This study aims to elucidate how joint programmes can be used in the transfer and translation of Western policy to the local level in the context of China's efforts to build first-class higher education as a rising power. Although the Sino-French joint programme being studied was intended to be a wholesale adaptation of French engineering…

This paper exemplifies a way of recasting researchers' autobiographical narratives as an intellectual resource. In so doing, it aims to describe the inherent complexity and multilayered nature of the onto-epistemic foundations for studying global education policy (GEP). It seeks to achieve this aim through self-reflective thinking about my own…

This article argues that contemporary education policies promoted by UNESCO and the OECD are embracing two distinct post-humanist visions, which I call the 'sustainable futures' and the 'techno-solutionist' strand. I will relate these strands to two conflicting agendas of education after World War II: the humanistic-emancipatory perspective…

Are changing geo-political dynamics, and an increasingly multi-polar world, significant for education? We explore this question by engaging a debate on whether BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) can be considered as a form of sub-imperialism or not. We use a limited form of the concept and focus on connections between the BRICS…

This article historicises the global education policy (GEP) field's developmentalism and the psychological and political inequalities that it naturalises. Building upon de- and postcolonial theory and science and technology studies, it illustrates how GEP studies tend to overlook the field's developmentalist premises, which naturalise the norms…

Through the concept of ritual governance, this paper argues that it is impossible to separate the secular from the religio-spiritual, cosmological, or onto-epistemic aspect of policy. An inescapable feature of social science and the humanities, including in the study of policy and bureaucracy, pertains to those assumptions at the most basic level…

This article introduces and discusses the findings of the United Kingdom School Choice Policy Index (UKSCPI) which provides an overview of the development of school choice policies across seven indicators over the 1980-2020 period, comparing how each of these policy areas have developed across the UK. The findings reveal that school choice has…

Between 2000 and 2015, the eight UN Millennium Development Goals were central to the UN agenda, forming a blueprint for development. However, the manner in which multilateral agencies establish such global priorities is not well understood. The article analyses how and why universal primary education was selected as a Millennium Development Goal.…

Ideas about educational improvement are contextual and contested. This study proposes a critical and pragmatic framework to analyse systemic improvement, taking into account the paradoxes and limitations of quantitative sources. The study compared 83 subnational educational systems of three federal countries in Latin America: Argentina, Brazil,…

This article contributes to a better theoretical understanding of the social processes underlying the development and implementation of schemes to improve the recognition of prior learning (RPL) in vocational education and training (VET). It traces the global diffusion of RPL, and then analyses the formulation of RPL policies and design and…

This paper provides a 'home international' comparative analysis of education policy on social and emotional wellbeing, drawing on the case of the UK and its four distinct education systems of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have developed more holistic policy in this area, which stands in stark…

With early childhood inhabiting a firm position on policy agendas, an emerging global consensus acknowledges the need for research into early childhood education and care (ECEC) systems. However, standardised approaches to comparison dominate the field. These studies tend to be grounded in methodological nationalism, assuming nation states as the…

Since the 1990s, Singapore has firmly established its reputation in the global education policy space as one of the best education systems in the world. However, existing policy transfer literature on Singapore has been mainly interested in Singapore as a decontextualised, ahistorical case, rather than as a unique player in the global education…

The Programme for International Student Assessment has become an important policy tool that has affected educational practices in many countries. Despite some remarkable results in PISA's global ranking tables from China's Eastern provinces, China's distinctive policy response has not been well documented or understood. We systematically examine…