This article analyzes the influence of Stephen Ball's work on research on markets and school choice in five European countries (Finland, France, Norway, Spain, and Sweden). The main focus is on the intellectual circulation of ideas, but the authors also take into account the relationship between ideas and social and political changes, as well as…

Arguably, one of the major achievements in the 1990s in South Africa was the final toppling of apartheid government and the triumph of democracy over the unjust and unequal past legislation. Since then schools are some of the institutions that have infused democracy ideals into their policies, curriculum and other aspects of school life. The…

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is currently engaging in a worldwide feasibility study entitled International Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO). This feasibility study seeks to develop measures that would assess student learning outcomes that would be valid across different languages,…

The higher education (HE) subsystem in Ethiopia has passed through a series of policy reforms in the last 10 years. Key reform areas ranged from improving quality and relevance of programmes to promoting equality in access to and success in HE. Despite the effort underway, gender inequality has remained a critical challenge in the subsystem. This…

As states struggle with the notion of international competitiveness, the quality and rigor of academic content standards has come into question. While Ohio's content standards are well regarded, the state initiated a process to revise the standards and eventually joined with the majority of states in adopting a voluntary set of national…

Complexity of information security has become a major issue for organizations due to incessant threats to information assets. Healthcare organizations are particularly concerned with security owing to the inherent vulnerability of sensitive information assets in health informatics. While the non-technical security management elements have been at…

For more than 20 years school choice programs have provided parents opportunities to send their children to public or private schools more suited to their needs. Choice and competition in education benefits students. Today, 21 states and Washington, D.C., have school choice programs serving more than one million students. Impressively, nine out of…

In 2012, the Australian government introduced a "demand-driven" entitlement system for domestic higher education students in which recognised higher education providers are free to enrol as many eligible students as they wish in eligible higher education courses and receive corresponding government subsidies for those students. This…

Policy and program decisions typically involve selecting one choice from among a set of options, and research about the effect of those options can help inform the decision process. However, for the research to be useful, decision makers need a way of drawing accurate lessons from what often can be a large assortment of relevant studies.…

This timely and thoughtful book provides multiple perspectives on closing achievement gaps. Closing persistent gaps in educational outcomes between different groups of students has been a central goal of educational policy for the past forty years. The commitment to close existing achievement gaps poses an unprecedented challenge to policy makers,…

Background: In the context of Cyprus' accession to the European Union (2004) and a noteworthy increase in immigration towards Cyprus, the Cypriot state was called upon to build more complete and coherent policies addressing culturally diverse educational settings. Cypriot education has historically enforced the nation-building project. However,…

Analysts have heralded the principle of "multifunctionality" undergirding the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy "Second Pillar" support mechanisms as a "new...and strong paradigm" for agriculture (van der Ploeg and Roep 2003), with the potential to re-embed social, environmental, and ethical concerns into…

This paper provides a critical analysis of the Australian government's education revolution policy as promulgated in the media release document, "Quality Education: The Case for an Education Revolution in our Schools". It seeks to problematize the government's claim to marry quality and equity, via an analysis of the discursive…

This article examines the renewed interest in early childhood education and care in European politics, and the implications for research in changing policy contexts. Based on the policy analysis, it argues for a radical reconceptualisation of how, with and for whom, and to what end we design, conduct and interpret research in early childhood in…

This critical policy analysis uses critical race theory to provide a counter narrative to the P-16 initiative in Texas known as "Closing the Gaps 2015". Findings indicate that while these reforms aim to increase educational access and achievement for people of color, they fall short of addressing systemic inequities such as enduring…