As the demographics of the Australian population changes, it is essential for the public education system to not only cater for the needs of the new community groups that form but also to help ensure that education is used as a vehicle to facilitate social harmony, understanding and equality. The link between disadvantaged and marginalised…

This paper examines the nexus between Indigenous rights, the modern university, and graduate attributes and theorises the potential of the university in postcolonial democracies to address Indigenous rights in its professional education programs. It posits the postcolonial professional as one who has been educated about internationally recognised…

The Review of Australian Higher Education (Bradley Review, 2008) and the Review of Higher Education Access and Outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People (Behrendt Review, 2012) identified the need for tertiary institutions to incorporate Indigenous knowledges into curriculum to improve educational outcomes for Indigenous…

In the Australian higher education environment, often preoccupied with internationalisation of education and associated issues around intercultural competencies, there is an uncomfortable awareness of the commensurate lack of attention on 'Indigenisation of the curriculum" and the interconnected 'Indigenous cultural…

This paper analyses how high-stakes, standardised testing became the policy tool in the U.S. that it is today and discusses its role in advancing an ideology of meritocracy that fundamentally masks structural inequalities related to race and economic class. This paper first traces the early history of high-stakes testing within the U.S. context,…

This paper in commenting on the contributions to this special number demonstrates the necessity of historicizing and contextualizing the rise of test- and standards-based modes of accountability in contemporary education policy globally. Both are imperative for understanding specific national manifestations of what has become a globalized…

This paper explores Rizvi and Lingard's (2010) idea of the "local vernacular" of the global education policy trend of using high-stakes testing to increase accountability and transparency, and by extension quality, within schools and education systems in Australia. In the first part of the paper a brief context of the policy…

In the 1990s and 2000s, New Zealand governments monitored national educational performance broadly through cyclical "light-sampling" of primary school students, and the annual proportions of secondary school students who gained formal credentials. In 2008, a centre-right coalition government legislated for national standards of…

This paper describes how a locally developed school ranking system affected student enrolment patterns in British Columbia over time. In developing an annual school "report card" that was published in newspapers and online, the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute created a marketplace for school choice by devising an accountability scheme…

High stakes testing has been long established in the English school system. In this article, we seek to demonstrate how testing has become pivotal to securing the neo-liberal restructuring of schools, that commenced during the Thatcher era, and is reaching a critical point at the current time. Central to this project has been the need to assert…

This article describes part of a transition process in teacher education in Trinidad and Tobago. After assisting the University of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT) in the development of a four-year Bachelor of Education program that replaced the previous system of two-year in-service training at Teachers College, I describe the contested, complex process…

In this paper we describe a qualitative research project conducted at a public elementary school in a rural community in Guatemala. From analysis of interviews with teachers and the school administrator, we found that a key concern of participants was how they viewed the increasingly problematic relationship between their local educational…

Current government discourses on partnerships tend to assume an uncritical belief in the existence of equal ownership and equal power relations between development partners and partner governments. The rhetoric of shared visions, common strategic directions or complementary approaches to development in the Pacific begs the question of how such…

This article considers a parallel marginalisation of Education for All (EFA) as a holistic approach to education, and the civil society actors and coalitions who address sidelined Dakar goals of early childhood care and education, adult literacy, quality and non-formal education. I argue that in spite of over two decades of EFA rhetoric prizing…

Pacific Island countries are recipients of considerable education reform projects, many of which are sponsored by various global donor agencies. These agencies have become partners for development in the region. Research cautions that development projects may have detrimental influences as their designs and delivery often ignore the economic,…