This paper tackles what is arguably one of the most pressing and intractable educational issues confronting western democracies--the disengagement and disconnection from schooling of alarming numbers of young people. The paper looks at the policy response in Victoria, Australia, and through ethnographic interviews with a small number of young…

A lack of esteem for teachers and the teaching profession is a central tenet underpinning policy reforms put forward by the 2010 UK Government White Paper "The Importance of Teaching". This article argues that the policy problem and solutions presented in the White Paper lack awareness of the historical and social positioning of…

Since the 1980s, state schools in England have been required to ensure transparency and accountability through the use of indicators and templates derived from the private sector and, more recently, globally circulating discourses of "good governance" (an appeal to professional standards, technical expertise, and performance evaluation…

In recent years, education and family policy in the UK has sought to incorporate the views of children and young people through an active participation agenda, in the fulfilment of children's rights under the obligations of the UN Convention for the Rights of the Child. Drawing on empirical evidence, this paper suggests that this aspiration…

This paper explores how the strong policy push to improve students' results on national literacy and numeracy tests -- the National Assessment Program, Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) -- in the Australian state of Queensland influenced schooling practices, including teachers' learning. The paper argues the focus upon improved test scores…

Young people's aspirations remain an enduring focus of education policy interest and concern. Drawing on data from an ongoing five-year study of young people's science and career aspirations (age 10-14), this paper asks what do young people aspire to at age 12/13, and what influences these aspirations? It outlines the main aspirations…

Policy implementation at school level is often recognised as transformative enactment. Positioning school leaders as gatekeepers in this enactment is limiting. This study of one Australian school explores the complex contextualised agency of school leaders showing that their role, far more than gatekeeping, can be enabling and transformative.…

The increasing use of zero tolerance discipline policies in the USA has led to a "discipline gap," in which minoritized students receive harsher and more frequent suspensions and expulsions than their peers from dominant cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. Though disciplinary decisions are made by educators at the school level,…

This paper addresses the vexed educational policy aspects of area-based "interventions (ABIs) in neighbourhoods designated as "disadvantaged" in an Australian context. We find that the way in which the policy of ABIs is supposed to operate and impact education is highly problematic. What we present instead in this paper is a much…

In its advancement towards an education quasi-market, Catalonia has recently been driving the development of "school educational projects" in all schools (both public and private) as a tool to facilitate school autonomy and family choices. A school educational project is a formal document in which schools identify their pedagogical…

Differences in reputation between schools and in classes within schools shape parental choice in the Finnish urban context, even if the differences in school performance and the risks of making a "bad" choice are relatively small. This study analyses the instrumental and expressive orders of schools in a specific educational context. Two…

With the proliferation of choice policies in education, parents are increasingly positioned as "consumers" tasked with choosing the "best" school for their children. Yet a large body of research has shown that the process of selecting a school is far more complicated than policy-makers and researchers often predict. This…

Citizenship education in Australia is embedded throughout the school curriculum. Despite a coherent policy context for the inclusion of citizenship and civic education at all levels of schooling, the links between education and civic minded citizens are tenuous. This paper explores these connections by drawing on the views of participants in an…

This paper focuses on the dual dependencies apparent at the intersection of the media society and the audit society by empirically exploring and discussing the relationship between Swedish local newspaper coverage and school inspection activities. The research questions pertain to the Inspectorate's media strategy, how inspection is…

While it is generally acknowledged that being "historically informed" lies at the heart of critical accounts of education policy-making, the use of historically focused retrospective research methods within the field is rare. This paper makes the case for retrospective research at a time when some of the most significant episodes of…