This article examines the strategies and forms of expertise on language and communication mobilized to engineer commodifiable migrant workers. Drawing on an ethnographic account of counselling practices in a state-run Italian job guidance centre for newly arrived migrants, I examine the calculations, tactics, and forms of expertise on language and…

Community colleges in the United States and Canada operate within postsecondary environments that are being reshaped by neoliberal policymaking. As community colleges in both countries respond to the pressures of neoliberalism, their capacity to serve students already marginalized by their "nontraditional" status may be affected in…

The Tennessee Achievement School District (ASD) is among several state-run districts established to turn around underperforming schools. Like other such districts, the ASD removes schools from local control and is not accountable to local political institutions. Despite its authority, the ASD has encountered opposition within Memphis where its…

A sustained policy press to improve quality and reduce disparities in public education is driving U.S. public school districts to organize and manage instruction for excellence and equity. The purpose of this analysis is to elaborate and to animate patterns and dilemmas in this work. The analysis identifies five domains of work central to this…

The effectiveness and quality of the educational process in modern school depend, among other things, on the level of conflict in the team, on the confidence of interactions in the teacher-student-parent system. In order to analyze the factors of conflict in the educational space of the modern school, the authors conducted a study. The leading…

In England the balance of responsibilities between national and local government for the governance of education is changing. Relationships between schools are shifting and new structures, groups and alliances are being created in response to national policy. The article is part of a project to understand how the new local education landscapes are…

This paper describes the current state of governance and reforms of Indonesia's higher education system. It seeks to identify the impact of and the constraints on the national higher education reform agenda with respect to institutional autonomy for public universities. Under the prevailing government regulations, 11 public universities have been…

Reformers are increasingly calling for and adopting practice-based approaches to teacher preparation, with particular emphasis on identifying and centering core practices. In this article, we argue that organizing teacher education around core practices brings its own risks, including the risk of peripheralizing equity and justice. Situating our…

In the past three decades, the administration of many institutions of higher education have progressed towards a corporate style management structure. What has been a collegial, collaborative approach to managing the institution has given way to a top-down, corporate style management intensely focused on revenues, and directing rather than…

Attempts to measure the quality of teaching and learning have resulted in an overreliance on quantitative performance data and the normalisation of a set of reductionist practices in England's further education sector in recent years. Focusing on lesson observation as an illustrative example and drawing on data from a national study, this article…

In the field of education, evidence means an objective ground for setting or judging an educational policy, plan or method, as an effective means to attain a given political end or educational objective. Evidence-based education has been regarded as a decisive device to pursue the accountability and improve the quality of education by connecting…

Business and industry, in cooperation with governmental agencies, special interest groups, and educational outsiders, are not only siphoning public monies, but also influencing public education. The author suggests targeting the strengthening of school cultures from within and advancing what educators think is good for public education.

A key focus of teacher preparation should be critical self-reflection, especially given the current context of market-driven school reform, which often leads to school closings, increases school segregation, and devastates local communities. The question, then, becomes how best to guide critical self-reflection for preservice teachers so that they…

In this paper, I have positioned myself with Kean Birch and explored some of the political-economic actors/actants of policy suites implicated in the biotechnologies and bioeconomy. In particular, I have considered Australia's recent National Innovation and Science Agenda and allied documents and entities (that is, Innovation and Science…

This article is based on research conducted during a semester-long professional development workshop series for Spanish-speaking family childcare providers in Wisconsin aimed at creating space for dialogue regarding the ways in which care and professionalism are intertwined. We examine the historical, economic, and political forces accompanying…