Current national reforms in Australian higher education have prioritised efforts to reduce educational disadvantage within a vernacular expression of neoliberal education policy. Student-equity policy in universities is enmeshed in a set of competitive student recruitment relations. This raises practice-based tensions as universities strive to…

This review essay discusses the history, evolution and development of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and traces the growing impact of its education work. The essay is in four main sections. The first discusses Carrol and Kellow's "The OECD: A Study of Organizational Adaptation" (Edward Elgar) and…

This paper examines the perverse effects of the new accountability regime central to the Labor government's national reform agenda in schooling. The focus is on National Assessment Program -- Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) results that now act as "catalyst data" and are pivotal to school and system accountability. We offer a case…

While numbers, data and statistics have been part of the bureaucracy since the emergence of the nation state, the paper argues that the governance turn has seen the enhancement of the significance of numbers in policy. The policy as numbers phenomenon is exemplified through two Australian cases in education policy, linked to the national schooling…

Governing processes in Europe and within Europeanization are often opaque and appearances can deceive. The normative practices of improvement in education, and the connected growth in performance measurement, have been largely understood in their own terms. However, the management of flows of information through quality assurance can be examined…

This article draws on Bourdieu's field theory and related concepts of habitus and capitals, to explore policy implementation in relation to a particular case of teacher professional development in Queensland, Australia. This implementation process is described as an effect of the interplay between what is called the policy field and the field of…

Bourdieu did not write anything explicitly about education policy. Despite this neglect, we agree with van Zanten that his theoretical concepts and methodological approaches can contribute to researching and understanding education policy in the context of globalisation and the economising of it. In applying Bourdieu's theory and methodology to…

This paper uses Bourdieu to develop theorizing about policy processes in education and to extend the policy cycle approach in a time of globalization. Use is made of Bourdieu's concept of social field and the argument is sustained that in the context of globalization the field of educational policy has reduced autonomy, with enhanced cross-field…

This paper is concerned to demonstrate the usefulness of the theory of Bourdieu, including the concepts of field, logics of practice and habitus, to understanding relationships between media and policy, what Fairclough has called the 'mediatization' of policy. Specifically, the paper draws upon Bourdieu's accessible account of the journalistic…

Argues against the juggernaut view of globalization, suggesting that much depends on how we engage with global forces to mitigate their worst consequences and use them to advantage. Views democratic nation-building, informed by education, as pivotal to the engagement process. Locally, educators must retrieve the "public" in public education. (MLH)

The corporate federalism concept illustrates the way a national approach to policy development for Australian schooling has been utilized by the Hawke Labor government. Negotiated consensus at the Australian Education Council has been used to arrive at these policies and to circumvent politically the constitutional and financial realities of…