In the first three sections of this paper we comment on some of the ideas developed in the forum papers, pointing out possible misunderstandings and constructing new explanations that clarify arguments we made in the original article. In the last section we expand the discussion raised in the original paper, elaborating on the limits of the use of…

Comparative and international education has been both a particularly generative area for the exploration of themes in relation to gender and education, but has also tended to impose limits regarding how gender and education are understood. In reflecting critically on the history of my own work in this field, and some of the early scholarship of…

In 2014, the Australian Federal Government attempted to de-regulate higher education fees so as to allow universities to set their own tuition fees. The associated public debate offer critical insights into how the identity of a student as a "customer" of higher education is understood and deployed when developing higher education…

In this essay, Doris Santoro examines the discourse of "fidelity of instruction" to show how it is doublespeak for teacher compliance that is incompatible with democracy and education. Analyzing the distorted use of the term "fidelity" by market-based reformers, Santoro illustrates how it can be used as a weapon against teacher…

K6015, a South Korean firm seeking to commercialize its magnet technology in the US market, entered a technology commercialization training program structured as a competition. Through this program, K6015 (and others in the program) used several genres to progressively interest different sets of stakeholders. To understand how K6015 applied these…

The entrenching of competitive values within the public-market field of secondary education has led to the formation of academically focused institutions whose budgets and reputations are based on gaining large numbers of students who have the best chance of attaining highly in public examinations. Although parents have become savvier about their…

"Sustainability" has a captivating but disingenuous simplicity: its meanings are complex, and have political and policy significance. Exploring the application of the term to adult education, this paper argues that a particular discourse of "sustainability" has become a common-sense, short-circuiting critical analysis and…

This paper reviews some government policy measures aimed at strengthening competition in the Russian university market and looks at the best international practices in this area. It analyzes the competitive behavior of universities under the current government policy on higher education and research and development and suggests an approach to…

Can Dewey's Moral Principles in Education throw light on a contemporary policy issue in education, namely the privatisation of education through the establishment of academy schools in England? The article first considers what the policy entails, in terms of its conception of education as a market commodity. The next section suggests an…

This paper aims to explore educational markets literarily -- in situ -- at quite unique 'real' market places, where buyers and sellers of educational commodities meet and negotiate values and preferences. Thus, the place we chose for this study was some of the 'school fairs' held in huge exhibition halls all over Sweden every year. At these fairs…

Many universities today are businesses, embracing the priorities and values of any other consumerist enterprise. There is an argument that, insofar as the phenomenon of marketisation is a function of what (Michaels, F. [2011]. "Monoculture: How one story is changing everything". Red Clover Press) terms a global economic…

In this paper I reflect on my experience as a member of the editorial executive board of "Teaching in Higher Education" between 1996 and 2005, during which period I was first reviews editor and then editor. The paper begins by outlining the editorial procedures established in the first 10 years of the journal and highlighting two major…

Rankings work by comparing higher education institutions (HEIs) using a range of indicators, which are usually weighted according to priority. Rankings are used to inform student choice and stakeholder opinion, and to assess the performance of scientific-scholarly research. Research has shown that students, public opinion and government are the…

Driven by a desire to improve academic outcomes and transform "failing" schools, governments around the world have often turned to the development of new forms of state-funded school. This paper looks at three such instances of the introduction of new forms of schooling, within three urban localities (academy schools in London; charter…

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in two towns in the Republic of Ireland, this article explores the local negotiation, endorsement, and contestation of two community-level Irish language advocacy organizations' attempts to regulate the use of Irish in business by mobilizing discourses of language commodification to position Irish as a commercial…