The Lisbon European Summit in 2000 has been a milestone in reframing education policies to foster a "knowledge economy", whilst amid the challenges of the new decennium Lifelong Learning (LLL) has been propounded as a powerful lever for attaining "sustainable growth". The present article aims to elucidate the development of an…

As primary school enrolment rates in Rwanda near ubiquity, completion rates remain low and repetition rates remain high. This study investigates the impact of the "hidden costs" of schooling in the context of Rwanda's fee-free education policy. Using a social-science case study, focus groups and interviews were undertaken with 200…

This issue of "Voices in Urban Education" examines different aspects of asset-based education for English Language Learners (ELLs). Rather than write about ELL education as a problem, dilemma, achievement gap, or crisis, these innovative practitioners, scholars, and policy analysts shift the paradigm, reminding and urging us to embrace…

This article discusses the principles developed to assure the quality of international ranking practices for higher education, the so-called Berlin Principles, and the role given to them in the higher education community. While the principles are generally regarded as proper quality assurance principles, they are problematic both in their content…

This paper empirically investigates Grimmett's (2008, 2009) thesis that recent Canadian teacher education policy is best characterized by dual forces of deregulation and professionalization resulting from a neoliberal policy environment. Specifically, we examine teacher education governance, policy reform, and political context from 2000 to 2010,…

Universities have recently strengthened their class attendance policies along with associated practices that intensify the surveillance of learning: a series of administrative and pedagogic strategies that monitor the extent to which students conform with behavioural expectations associated with learning. Drawing on university policy statements,…

The European Union (EU) has developed comprehensive policies in recent years to promote multilingualism. In this article, major EU policy statements on multilingualism are analyzed to demonstrate how their underlying language ideology produces paradox by both encouraging multilingualism and regulating its definition within the EU. The first…

The paper analyses continuing vocational education and training policies in the UK in the period 1979-2010 with a focus on regulation and governance. It reviews Conservative and Labour party policies to ascertain their principal components and explore their evolution through time. More specifically, the paper reviews the paradoxical existence of…

In this article I will investigate a perceived tension in Swedish early childhood education (ECE) policy between reevaluating certain foundational claims on the one hand and following universal moral commands on the other. I ask the question; how is it that certain commonly held assumptions are being debunked and others left undisturbed in this…

In this article, I serve as a secretary for the critical policy analysis presented by hundreds of teachers, parents, students, and community members during 19 public hearings on school closures in New York City. In testimony at hearings, community members rejected the narrow, statistical approach they felt the Department of Education was using to…

In the quest to improve measured educational outcomes national governments across the The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and beyond have instituted large-scale assessment (LSA) policies in their public schools. Controversy almost universally follows the implementation of such testing, related to such topics as: a)…

Despite widespread acknowledgment of the importance of interdisciplinary pedagogy, disciplinary teaching remains the norm on most campuses, primarily due to cost and institutional constraints. Bridging the gap between literature on interdisciplinary teaching and active-learning techniques, this article describes an innovative and less costly…

Richard Ruiz wrote "Orientations in Language Planning" in 1984, and it became an influential article in several language disciplines. How is it that this article became so popular and had such lasting impact? In order to answer this question, I undertook to understand the language political scene at the time, looked at his contribution…

Global attention to early childhood education (ECE) has led to an increased focus on ECE teacher training as a critical component of providing young children with access to high-quality ECE programs. In this paper, we ask how Tanzanian stakeholders at different levels of implementation experienced and responded to efforts to build capacity in…

High school graduation rates in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) have shown remarkable improvements over the past 16 years. Students used to be about as likely to drop out as they were to graduate; now they are three times as likely to graduate as to drop out. Moreover, recent large improvements in the percentage of students on-track to graduate…