School reform is almost always born out of big dreams and well-meaning desires to change the status quo. But between lofty reform legislation and the students whose education is at stake, there are numerous additional policies and policymakers who determine how reforms operate. Even in the best cases, school reform initiatives can perpetuate…

Inclusive educational reforms have important policy shift implications. This paper examines an educational policy reform from Chile, which focuses on transforming grade retention practices. Before this policy, grade retention in Chile was a common practice, largely unchanged over decades. Effective in 2020, the reform marked a significant shift…

This book presents a sociocultural account of logic, or a pedagogy, that governs Cambodian education, from policy-making to classroom practices. In so doing, it seeks to not only provide an introduction to Cambodian education, but also to help readers understand the complexities involved in reforming educational practices by drawing on an…

In "Can Education Change Society?" (Apple, 2013), Apple described a number of tasks in which the critical scholar/activist needs to engage. Among them are telling the truth about what is happening in the creation of inequalities, illuminating spaces of possibility, and acting as the critical secretary of the movements and people who…

Background/Context: Prior research demonstrates that the policy images of critical target populations, which reflect the ways in which they are socially constructed in the political sphere, have important implications for policy prescriptions and design (Cochran-Smith & Fries, 2001; Jansen, 2001; Schneider & Ingram, 1993). In examining the…

Ontological politics has received increasing attention within education policy studies, particularly as a support for the notion of policy enactment. While policy enactment offers serious challenges to traditional approaches toward policy implementation, this paper takes up ontological politics as a concept that extends beyond implementation and…

A Special Issue of the "Journal of Philosophy of Education" in November 2012 explored key aspects of the relationship between philosophy of education and educational policy in the UK. The contributions were generally critical of policy developments in recent decades, highlighting important shortcomings and arguing for more…

This paper investigates the policies and politics of including European Roma students in mainstream educational systems within the context of two European Union (EU) policies: the Decade of Roma Inclusion (2005-2015) and EU National Roma Integration Strategies (2013-2020). Drawing on the scholarship about inclusion and its practical achievements,…

The adoption of the principle of Education for All has catalyzed major efforts in special education throughout the world, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has developed educational policies to meet the special education needs of students since the late 1960s. Despite these efforts, there is no current policy in the KSA that provides specific…

The environment in which school leaders and teachers work is shaped by educational policy. Policy is, in turn, derived from the dominant political ideologies at any particular time. The interrelationship between ideology and policy shapes both the overall organization of education and the operational practices and procedures of staff in schools…

This research presents a review of the literature around meeting students' learning needs in Australian schools. It is referenced to one group of students with refugee experience who have been in Australian schools for over 15 years; students with a background of oracy from Southern Sudan. The development of psychological health and literacy…

Since devolution in the late 1990s, education policy in England has diverged further from that in Scotland and also from policy in Wales and Northern Ireland. In this paper we review the roots and trajectory of the English education reforms over the past two decades. Our focus is the schools sector, though we also touch on adjoining reforms to…

In recent times, a growing consensus has emerged, among researchers and policy-makers, that a well-educated, competent and adequately supported workforce is crucial for the quality of early childhood education and care (ECEC). Despite governmental initiatives aimed to enhance the professional preparation and continuing development of early years…

This paper reviews developments in policy on early childhood education and care--early years--under the Coalition Government in England. Three factors came to define the Coalition's performance and record in this area: ambivalence about the rationales for the two areas of early education and childcare; a disconnect between early years and other…

This account of what, at first glance, might seem like a narrow and obscure historical case of one U.S. state's preschool program is a vehicle for raising questions about how early childhood policies have developed in other locales, for the contemporary policies and programs that exist around the world are the result of efforts by many…