The Swedish education system has undergone an extensive transformation and a new policy context characterised by external control, marketing and managerial accountability is now in place. In previous research, the new context has been presented as something school leaders have to "balance against" democratic professionalism but…

Around the mid-2000s a crisis discourse emerged in educational policy-making in the EU and in Sweden. Using the EU and Sweden as empirical references, this article explores how this crisis discourse has been and is employed by politicians and NGOs. Discourse Institutionalism is used as an overall theoretical framework focusing on how the crisis…

Philanthropies and private foundations are increasingly acting as key nodes of the policy assemblages through which neoliberal and neomanagerialist policies are entering the field of education in Italy. In a country where public school 'ineffectiveness' and 'resistance to innovation' are taken for granted nowadays, policy…

The current era of neoliberal capitalism has witnessed the domination of public education by business interests which openly promote the spirit of competition among schools, educators and students through a policy of high stakes accountability for immediately measurable educational outcomes. In the USA, this policy proposes to make teacher…

In this article, inclusive education is analysed from the perspective of the interlinked, dynamic relationship between international neo-liberal movements and national policies and practices. The aim is to explore the significance of "competence" in recent Norwegian reforms and the changing position attributed to inclusion. The analysis…

As Sweden drew nearer to the 2006 national election, two themes emerged in the educational debate: a concern for order and discipline in schools, and the ambition to raise educational levels of achievement. The objective of this article is to locate these two themes within a broader framework of understanding by: 1) discussing examples of how the…