This paper presents an overview of critical policy scholarship (CPS) in education. Historically, policy research has been dominated by what is commonly referred to as the policy science tradition, which is positivist in its philosophical stance and instrumentalist in its purpose--it focuses on producing knowledge relevant for policy decisions.…

This article reflects on what doing critical policy sociology means in shifting theoretical, empirical and methodological contexts of education. We focus our analytical lens on two primary considerations. First, we reflect on the "politics of criticality," examining differing claims and debates about what it means to do critical research…

Measured in per capita terms, Australia has one of the most generous refugee resettlement programs in the world. This paper investigates the extent to which refugee status is recognized as a category of disadvantage in Australian higher education. Drawing on a scalar view of policy work and Fraser's notion of misframing, the paper assesses the…

The World Bank uses a combination of financial and non-financial aid to influence educational reform in aid-recipient countries. Drawing on an interpretive policy analysis methodology and using Pierre Bourdieu's concept of symbolic power as a 'thinking tool', this article aims to shed light on the Bank's non-financial pathways of policy influence…

The revitalization of Ethiopian higher education (HE) has been underway since the early 2000s. As well as the economic optimism evident in the "knowledge-driven poverty reduction" discourse, social equity goals underscore the reform and expansion of the system. Notwithstanding the widening participation and the equity policy provisions…

The prevalent knowledge economy discourse has direct implications for higher education policies and practices. It is expected that the higher education sector supports national economic competitiveness mainly through promoting scientific research, supporting technological transfer and innovation, and producing "knowledge workers" such as…

Primarily developed as an alternative to narrow measures of well-being such as utility and resources, Amartya Sen's capability approach places strong emphasis on people's substantive opportunities. As a broad normative framework, the capability approach has become a valuable tool for understanding and evaluating social arrangements (e.g. education…

The higher education (HE) subsystem in Ethiopia has passed through a series of policy reforms in the last 10 years. Key reform areas ranged from improving quality and relevance of programmes to promoting equality in access to and success in HE. Despite the effort underway, gender inequality has remained a critical challenge in the subsystem. This…

In the context of low-income countries, the role of donors in public policymaking is of great importance. Donors use a combination of lending and non-lending instruments as pathways of influence to shape policy directions in aid-recipient countries. This paper reports some findings from a doctoral study on the role of the World Bank in the recent…

Under the influence of the external policy pressure of donors such as the World Bank, higher education in Ethiopia has witnessed a series of institutional and system-wide reforms. This article reviews selected policy documents to show key neo-liberal policy agendas endorsed in the reforms and explicate how they have affected social equity in the…