In this polylog to the special issue on "The rise of Chinese language education policies in the oil-rich Arabian Gulf: New players, discourses and linguistic markets," three researchers with different personal and professional connections to the three languages 'at play' in the region -- English, Chinese, and Arabic -- offer their…

While reference societies as an "externalization" process are often used to justify borrowing policies from abroad, a concerted attempt to understand how "power" influences this process, particularly regarding "semiperipheral" references to the periphery, remains absent. This article explores the externalization…

After the fall of the communist regime, Romania launched the first multi-systemic reform in the education sector in 1995. The reform was largely financed through a World Bank loan and closely followed the neo-liberal ideology promoted by Bank officials. It aimed to privatize and to implement private sector management principles in the public…

The overarching objective of this study is to become more closely attuned to the politics of curriculum by identifying the discursive practices employed by governments to position curricular reform. In particular, this analysis aims to show how the twinning of neoliberalism and neoconservatism has served to justify shifts in curriculum at three…

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…

Established in 2009, Swedish Higher Vocational Education (HVE) gives employers an opportunity to initiate state-funded but locally conceptualised and managed training programmes. This article investigates the system, the ideas used in policy to mandate this arrangement of vocational education and training (VET) and the institutional relations of…

As we tentatively emerge from the imposed isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic and as the status quo reasserts itself, it seems timely to consider the current state of teacher professionalism. This task seems critical, given the wider backdrop of the neoliberal policy pandemic that has driven the commodification and instrumentalization of education…

Besides Foucault's own focus on liberal contexts, the relatively limited application of his thoughts in illiberal countries may also result from the misunderstanding of power. The traditional juridico-discursive model interprets power as a possession wielded by one group over others, merely functioning as something forbidden. Thus, policy analysts…

This paper performs a critical examination of the Ofsted Education Inspection Framework (EIF), which was accompanied by an Inspection Handbook for Further Education and Skills, and argues that this policy document reinforces the neoliberal project in education. Drawing on concepts from Michel Foucault's analysis of the nature and effects of…

Despite the increasing focus on incorporating the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into education through curriculum mainstreaming, related research remains lacking. This study explored the representation of SDGs in Taiwan's national curriculum in terms of selection and organization. Through a content analysis of the social studies and natural…

This paper explores the intersection of neoliberal ideologies and language policy in the context of Chinese language education in Oman's higher education system. Drawing on critical discourse analysis and theoretical frameworks of neoliberalism, the study investigates the introduction of Chinese language programmes within Omani universities, with…

This paper considers 'democracy' with reference to education in the (neo)colonial context of Aotearoa (New Zealand). It discusses impacts of the western project of colonisation, arguing for the need to counter damaging hegemonic discourses such as white supremacy and racism that have underpinned and fuelled its operation. It identifies…

In order for decolonization to avoid becoming yet another orthodoxy, this book argues that it is necessary to recognize the neoliberal ideologies and imperatives that drive so much work in universities in both the Global Norths and Global Souths, and to understand the enmeshment (both historical and ongoing) of universities in colonial practices.…

Socioeconomic expropriations (Landnahme) have a direct impact on democracy and the processes of struggle of the working class, precisely because they impose a certain common sense and normalization of social relations, which, according to Marx and Engels, act in the "taking" of social consciousness. In this line, we seek to discuss the…

There is an increasing focus on relationship-rich education and relational pedagogies in higher education. Engaging students as partners (SaP) to nurture values-based pedagogical relationships is one such approach, yet it is contested with limited research outside of Anglophone countries. To advance a collective understanding of SaP as a global…