This paper examines the epistemologies and ontologies of education policy studies. Our aim is to posit a reinvigoration of policy studies to hedge against undue ossification and co-option of critical policy studies. We do so by arguing for the need to develop new concepts for policy studies using the "posts" (e.g., post-structuralism and…

This article introduces the challenges of temporality into policy studies utilizing US education policy and young mothers as a working example. Situating the need for attention to temporality amidst the ruins of inquiry and ruins of education outcomes for young mothers, the author builds on recent "spatial policy sociology" and turns to…

I work selectively with poststructuralist theories in order to give an account of the subject of policy as a constitutive relationship between social policy and the embodied human subject. Drawing on theories of subjectivity, narrative and governmentality, I articulate possibilities for analysing narrated accounts of experience as a mode of…

This paper moves from a reading of processes that are transforming public services in ways that amount to a dismantling of the welfare state in the UK. In order to interrogate these processes, the paper focuses on "youth" and "youth services". Framed by an analysis of the aggressive disinvestment of "austerity", we…

This paper explores the possibilities for critical policy analysis afforded by Lacanian discourse theory, with its emphasis on the unconscious and the agency of the letter, and considers its significance for critical policy analysis in education, in ways that complement and supplement the insights of post-structuralist discourse theory. To explore…

Offered through a split-text, this article mounts/destabilises the argument that policy research that cites authors usually associated with post-structural thought and which is published in a mainstream education policy journal is overwhelmingly realist in its ontologising practices. It reminds the reader why that is problematic and calls for a…

This article explores the relationship between commensuration and affect in various contexts of education policy. Commensuration is the process through which disparate qualities are transformed into a common metric and is central to the production of performance data. The rise of governance through numbers in education has resulted in a…

This paper draws on theoretical insights from Michel de Certeau to formulate a response to questions of whether, and in what ways, poststructural policy analysis can "transcend critique to offer potential grounds for alternative social and political strategies in education". The paper offers a discussion of how Certeau's concern…

Educational policy-makers around the world are strongly committed to the notion of "scaling up". This can mean anything from encouraging more teachers to take up a pedagogical innovation, all the way through to system-wide efforts to implement "what works" across all schools. In this paper, I use Bourdieu's notions of…

Social emotional learning (SEL) is common in preschools and schools both in Europe and North America today. Programmes for socio-emotional training and the rise of what is labelled therapeutic education have dramatically increased during the first decade of the millennium. In this article, a manual-based programme used for SEL in a Swedish school…

Ability grouping in schools and classrooms constitutes something of a policy hiatus in the Australian context, in contrast to the conspicuous visibility of equity and quality as explicit policy goals. This article examines what I am calling the dialectics -- i.e. moments of negation that allow for creation -- and dilemmas inhering in the complex…

Growing consensus in popular and academic commentary suggests the lived reality of Western childhood differs considerably from its dominant cultural construction as an innocent period free from adult responsibilities. Sociologically, this disjuncture is conceptualised as adultification. Adopting a critical theoretical lens, we question if…

In the education sector, new public management (NPM) has crystallized in policies such as school autonomy, professionalization of school principals, standardized evaluation and teachers' accountability, and it has been widely disseminated by international organizations, such as the OECD, which enjoy a great prestige when it comes to frame…

What we have come to understand as education has a temporal dimension: the school year, progression based on time, timetables, and so on. Similarly, our understanding of teaching is framed by temporality, primarily through salary structures and an implicit coupling of performance with time in the field. We argue that this underlying generative…

How research can better inform policy and how policy can have a better research base are longstanding issues both in educational research and across public policy generally. Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt, this article argues that progress in increasing the impact of research can be made through a clearer understanding of the nature of…