This article traces the emergence of the world culture theory in comparative education using critical discourse analysis. By chronicling the emergence and expansion of world culture theory over the past four decades, we highlight the (unintended) limitations and exclusive regimes of thought that have resulted. We argue that the theory's…

This article revisits the newly "discovered" island that world culture theorists have repeatedly utilised to explain their theoretical stance, conceptual preferences and methodological approach. Yet, it seeks to (re)connect world culture with the real world by replacing their imagined atoll with a real one--the island-nation of Japan. In…

Globalising processes are shifting the established nation-building project of twentieth-century national education systems. This historic axis between education and territorialised state power is being re-spatialised and remade as a globally networked, lifelong learning educational order. Political sociology of education theorises these de- and…

Both the Portuguese appropriation of the lifelong learning policy proposed by the European Union since the mid-1990s and the definition of adult education policy in Portugal were based on a discourse that emphasised an "unacceptable educational deficit" for democracy. The role of the State in the "governance" of the public…

This paper examines the specificity of the education-class nexus in an elite independent school in Singapore. It seeks to unravel the puzzle that meritocracy is dogmatically believed in Singapore in spite of evidences that point to the contrary. The paper draws on discursive (analysis of media materials) and institutional (analysis of interview…

This article argues that the adoption of the competitive Vocational Education and Training (VET) markets in Australia resulted in shifts in institutional perceptions and practices. Using situated experiences and perspectives from quality assurance auditors, training managers, international students and VET teachers from seven commercial for-profit…

The argument in this paper is that action and participatory research developed within the context of social and political movements aimed at promoting democratic relationships and institutions represents a methodological strategy for deconstructing and reconstructing the hegemonic perspective of knowledge and knowledge production. After a brief…

The Bologna Process is one of the most extensive examples of policy borrowing processes. Based on qualitative data, this article argues in favour of studying part of this process as "global smallness", centring on the organisational effects of the implementation of a globalised curriculum. Through Derrida's notion on hauntology,…

The restructuring of European higher education (EHE) since the 1980s is a widely studied subject. However, this paper argues that previous studies have paid insufficient attention to the role of transnational policy-making groups in this complex and multilevel process. This argument is supported by focusing on how the European Round Table of…

In this era of amplified regionalisation, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean's (ECLAC) conceptualisation of 'open regionalism' is pertinent to examine the role of regional governance mechanisms in constructing what I call the "Caribbean Educational Policy Space." With the aid of a latent content…

Interventions in the field of early childhood education policy, drawn from global policy flows, are reconfiguring the work of early childhood educators in Australia. One such intervention is the requirement to designate an "educational leader" (EL) in each service for young children and their families. This policy intervention has its…

Contemporary global transitions are remaking education as a social institution and re-positioning educators in a lifelong learning political order. In this paper, I reflect on a research project that investigated the teaching occupation in learning societies in order to explain the concept of "educational work": the form of labour that…

Elite schools established in the nineteenth century in the image of British public schools now face intense competition from newly established elite schools. Located within the broader research project that this special issue discusses, this paper examines some of the ways in which an old elite school in India has sought to utilise is history to…

Education policy has undergone transformation in many countries over the last decade. In this article, we focus on the effects of the most significant international initiative in secondary education, which is the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). We analyse…

In the former Soviet Union, the upbringing of children in the spirit of Marxist-Leninist values was central to the project of societal transformation. More than 20 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it is important to understand how the education of young children in this region has changed in response to a world rapidly globalising and…