Since the 1980s, education in Canada has been through a process that led to school choice, targeting the improvement of students' performance through school competition. These policies fostering an education quasi-market became an ideal framework for the expansion of IB schools. Since the Diploma Programme of the International Baccalaureate (IBDP)…

This study demonstrates how stakeholders' treatment of English language as the sole marketable/saleable commodity in educational setting can have implications for multilingualism and existing linguistic diversity in Pakistan. Language commodification refers to the valuation of languages as marketable/saleable commodities and their relative…

Although national and EU policies and recommendations encourage varied language learning, English has ruled as the most studied foreign language, while other languages are decreasingly being studied in basic and upper secondary education in Finland. The purpose of this paper is to examine the implications of this development in practice.…

Since the mid-twentieth century, higher education has been subject to spectacular growth. While the expansion of higher education is undoubtedly a general trend, its actual characteristics in terms of its specific conditions and driving forces vary by context. In this article, our aim is to develop such a socio-political historical narrative of…

The results of a 3-year fieldwork study within France's National Centre for Distance Education are presented, specifically detailing the impacts on higher education middle management overseeing curricula design for a series of French 3-year degree programs undergoing revision in how students are financially charged for the programs. Following the…

Education reformers have spent decades doggedly working to improve student outcomes in K-12 education by championing policies spanning federal, state, and local jurisdictions. Higher education is a much different story. Policy ideas at the federal level are plentiful; however, state- or institution-level policies are examined and implemented far…

We focus on describing some of the effects of austerity capitalism in the public educational sector in Poland, a country that was a part of the Soviet bloc from WWII and experienced dramatic transformation after 1989. This transformation from "communism" to "democracy" involved all spheres of the life of society and individuals…

While research investigating the mediatisation of education policy has primarily been undertaken in school contexts, this paper reports on a study conducted in the context of early childhood education. The paper examines how a major policy in early childhood education in Australia -- the National Quality Framework -- has been mediatised in…

In this paper, we offer a critique of neoliberal power from the perspective of the gendered, sexualised, raced and classed politics of motherhood in English universities. By using dialogical auto-ethnographic methods to examine our own past experiences as full-time employed mother-academics, we demonstrate how feminist academic praxis can not only…

In this paper, we problematize current conceptualizations of agency in education. We begin by considering how the construction of the hyperindividual, one that is entirely determined by its own internal capacities, has become the norm within Australian educational policy. We propose that this conceptualization produces undemocratic educational…

Our paper examines the rise of a new category of professional support staff whom we refer to as 'audit-market intermediaries' in the context of a rapidly changing regulatory and funding environment in British higher education. We explore the roles they play in articulating environmental changes in research-intensive universities related to the…

This article analyses the construction of linguistic value and recognition of linguistic resources in educational spaces in Finland, where Swedish is the second national language and in Sweden, where Finnish is one of five official minority languages. Drawing on ethnographic methods, critically informed notions of language policy and spatial…

This article discusses the role of university academics as researchers. In present-day society which touts instant gratification, the primary role of a university is being undermined. In Malaysia, academics no longer teach and research as they please but are 'guided' by government agencies and influenced by the priorities of funding agencies. One…

School choice is expected to place pressure on schools to improve to attract and retain students. However, little research has examined how competition for students actually operates in socially embedded education markets. Economic approaches tend to emphasize individual actors' choices and agency, an undersocialized perspective, whereas…

The aim of this paper is to consider the ways in which Arendt's writings on totalitarianism act as a warning sign for political and miseducational circumstances in the USA. Because the term totalitarianism has been used imprudently (largely in the mass media) to express repressive conditions in so-called models of democracy, this paper seeks to…