Major policy changes make teachers reconsider how they teach. In Sweden, a new curriculum, a grading system, and national tests were introduced in science education in Year 6 (Y6) for the 2012/2013 academic year. After two years, the national tests were made voluntary, and they ended the following year. In this interview study, we investigate what…

Despite numerous attempts by the Free State Department of Education to train primary school principals on how to design and implement school policies, numerous schools do not implement school policies satisfactorily. In this article we examine the implementation of school policies in township primary schools in the Free State province, South…

Norway has been going through numerous changes in its education system. In the last 10 years, Norway has retrained its teachers to obtain master's degrees, redrawn its curricula objectives, and instated national exams for certain subjects. These changes are occurring at a time of intensified globalisation and increased displacement of people. With…

All teachers in Australia must now achieve and maintain certification through mandatory accreditation processes that include specified professional learning hours. While key policies that outline teacher professional learning in Australia and New South Wales make no specific reference to a role for universities, this discussion paper proposes that…

In recent years, attention has turned to the development of evidenced-based learning progressions/trajectories as a means of identifying the likely paths learners might take in developing a deep, well-connected understanding of key aspects of mathematics. However, the extent to which this work influences what happens in mathematics classrooms…

In the context of neoliberal reforms, teacher education policy discourses have shifted away from social justice imperatives toward technocratic approaches. I examine these shifts by applying the tools of critical policy and discourse analysis to accreditation standards and other policy texts of the last decade. Using Marcuse's theory of…

Purpose: Taking läxhjälp/homework support in Sweden as a case, this article aims to further explore shadow education, especially as a pedagogical object from curriculum theory perspective. Design/Approach/Methods: Approaches including policy analyses, ethnomethodological work based on video-recorded interaction, and narratives have produced…

The overall purpose of this study was from an educational management perspective to explore the effectiveness of the re-entry policy implementation in public schools in Lusaka District, Zambia, and highlight the missing links between the stipulated re-entry policy of 1997 and the actual practice on the ground in terms of its implementation in…

Comparative research into technical and vocational education and training (TVET) and policy transfer focuses primarily on the system level. This study was designed to extend the focus of research work to policy transfer at the institutional level. This article presents a project that investigated the German concept of peer review in TVET as a…

In this article, we regard inclusive education as a policy phenomenon that contains a range of ideas about the purpose of education, the content of education and the organization of education. As a political ideal expressed in policy, inclusive education competes with other political ideals regarding education, for instance economic discourses…

One of the features of the growing prominence of English across the globe is the proliferation of English-medium instruction (EMI) programmes at all levels of education, driven by a neoliberal agenda which places a disproportionate value on English over other languages. While this spread has primarily affected more developed, urban contexts, EMI…

The Chameleon Educational Policy Reforms' (CEPR) 25th anniversary was celebrated at the Global General Assembly with the 2075 Decennial Analysis of Schooling (DecAS) announcement of the attainment of a benefit-cost ratio of >1.0. The attainment of a global positive net value of education is directly linked to the educational reforms established…

This study examines policies of English language teacher recruitment in Iran as part of broader education policies reflected in official national documents, and briefly investigates the implementation of these policies in selected educational institutions. Seven major documents are scrutinised using qualitative content analysis revealing three…

In this article, we address the questions: How is the purpose of higher education constructed within policy texts from the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), England and Sweden? How does this position students in making the transition from Bachelor to Masters? We do this through analysis of two recent policy documents from each of the EHEA,…

The decisions that students make about their educational attainment have profound impacts on their future economic, demographic, and social outcomes. These decisions, however, do not happen in a vacuum. There is a long tradition of research in sociology, education, and behavioral economics that has studied inequality in educational decision making…