Currently, when there is a lot of political talk about the need for "evidence-based policy", and when public policy seeks to calibrate research quality and impact, there is a pressing need to reconsider the relationships between education/al research and education policy. This article seeks to do this, beginning with considerations of the…

This paper critiques the notion of community capacity building (CCB) and the way it is increasingly being invoked in social policy as a way of tackling disadvantage. The paper argues that CCB and a number of its derivative terms are not as straightforward as they appear. Superficially, CCB presents as a useful way of approaching school and…

This paper argues that under the influence of neoliberalism the role of schooling has been narrowly redefined as helping students to gain the knowledge and skills to "get a job". Drawing on the recent policy pronouncements of the new Rudd Labor Government in Australia, the paper examines how the advocates of human capital theory have effectively…

In recent years, international organizations (IOs) and, more specifically, intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) have played an important role in educational policy-making at the national level. These organizations encourage world change and promote particular ideologies through a set of complex actions and policy recommendations that exploit…

In this paper I attempt to explore the implications for education policy arising from aspects of Third Way political thought and its troubled relation to neoliberalism. In particular, the implications for equality arising from Third Way reforms to secondary education are considered. The limits of contestation that mark out the centre ground of UK…

This paper explores the spatial dimensions of neoliberalism, in relation to educational policy change in the inner-city of Sydney, Australia. It offers a response to Peck and Tickell's challenge that studies of neoliberalism are often undertaken as discrete macro- or micro-analyses without attention to the links between, and across, these scales.…